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naraburns  nihil supernum  8mo ago (text post)   30267 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Why I don't think that Ukraine has bright future ahead
Disclaimer: This is not an anti-ukranian or pro Russia post, I wish only the best for Ukrainian people and Russia has most of the same and many unique problems.

Ukraine in 1991 was one of the richest countries in Eastern Europe, being on par with Russia and above such countries as Poland and Belarus. The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.

Such estimates of GDP PPP per capita in this context are often criticized for ignoring the problem of the shadow economy or, in plain language, "envelope wages". Only this problem is not unique to Ukraine, but a common feature of the CIS countries, and in it, it is more pronounced than in Belarus or Russia, but not enough to explain such a large gap.

Also, quite often one can hear about the supposed difference in the distribution of economic development in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, allegedly in the second there is greater decentralization and a smaller difference between regions. But in terms of GRP per capita, excluding, for obvious reasons, oil and gas regions like Yamal, in both countries one can see approximately same and strong difference between the capital and the poorest regions. This is also true for Belarus. Similar trend can be seen in HDI ranking - Russia standing at 52nd place, Kazakhstan at 56th Belarus at 60th and Ukraine at 77th.

There are many possible reasons that could explain such an outstanding backwardness of Ukraine even by the standards of the CIS. From crazy theories about the genetic or cultural inferiority of its inhabitants to a more adequate analysis of the particular corruption and arrogance of the elites. I won't pretend to know the right one and I don't even need to find some exact answer to this riddle. It’s enough to ask the question: “Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?”.

War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014. A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore. Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go? They will go there the next time if there current corrupt system remains. European integration? It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro. Why would EU want the poorest European country after Moldova, with the highest corruption and similar to Georgia problems(that of course could be theoretically solved in the near future but this is beside the point)? EU had enough of one Hungary with Orban stealing economic aid with his cronies, it doesn't need a second one. These internal problems will have to be corrected on their own, before, and not after, entry.

But there might be not enough time to for solving them. Ukrainian demographics are awful, a very old population with average age much closer to western countries and not states with similar economic development, which, at the same time, also has the opportunity to relatively freely leave for better countries. For the same reason that Ukrainian patriots in Canada still not returned and will not return in their entirety to help their homeland, major part of today's refugees have already found or will find work and will remain in Europe, having made a reasonable, rational choice.

P.S. It is more my personal pet peeve and not part of the argument but I think that this and similar economic deals that still going on are very strong evidence of some corrupt dealings going on between oligarchs from both sides.

Ukraine has sucked since the 90s and I see no reason why bombing its population centers will cause a change of course

Okay, I get why you might argue that. But what's it got to do with the EU? Leaders will continue talking about "the long road" as long as Ukraine is politically popular. Which will remain true as long as they keep making Russia look bad. So I agree that Ukraine will not enter the EU any time soon. But funding them against Russia is still the rational choice.

I mainly talked about economical matters in context of Ukrainian prosperity. Maybe even giving bribes to their politicians is rational choice for EU but this is besides the point.

The liberation of Kherson is the first time in the history of the EU that victorious troops raised the European flag in celebration. People care about that kind of thing.

Ukraines was on a fairly similar to path since 2014 as other former Soviet colonies. First you have the corruption but eventually you clean up you system in a second step and then you end up rich like Poland.

Demographics are an issue but if they start having more sex after the war I would expect them to end up a higher income country.

I think the point of your comments is to imply that Ukraine deserves war because they are bad corrupt people. But these issues were similar in every other CIS and over time were fixed. There is no reason to have expected Ukraine to follow a different path than their neighbors who were all successful after Ukraine became free in 2014. It takes time.

Demographics are an issue but if they start having more sex after the war I would expect them to end up a higher income country.

That will be difficult if all the women stay in western Europe. It's likely a lot of them will want to stay instead of returning to a bombed out country, especially considering that they will have built lives while the war is going on.

It could be an unfortunate side effect of a policy designed to save their lives.

But if you look at economic data there no great change after 2014. Ukraine is still poorer than even Belarus, country not known for being free from corruption or russian influence.

Ukraine's tfr is at western Europe levels. People have sex enough already, they just don't want the kids. And there was already mentioned current situation with many women in Europe. Men could join them there and maybe even have higher than average birth rates but many of them wouldn't want to return to war torn poorer than Belarus homeland.

No, this wasn't the point and this senseless war makes things in both Russia and Ukraine worse. "But these issues were similar in every other CIS and over time were fixed" presicily the opposite, in all those countries corruption reigns supreme and wasn't even remotely fixed, you can check this in any independent corruption index. It doesn't mean that it categorically impossible to solve this kind of issues but it seemingly takes way more time than 8 years. And this is the time that Ukraine doesn't have based on its demographics.

Post 2014 could be argued that it takes time to reorient economy. I would expect a more recent pop but they have been at some degree of war too during that time.

Is your data just picking up oil? I’m seeing 34% of Belarus exports are energy and while I thought Ukraine did some it seems like agriculture is more important. Also a good bit larger country so perhaps Belarus has performed better because of more energy per capita which depends less on trade networks.

Id still call fighting this war as Ukraines only choice. Long term they should look more like Poland.

What oil? There is less oil reserves in Ukraine than in Belarus. And this 34% figure is for export of refined petroleum products, that while can only be possible because of the export from Russia is still option that was not locked for Ukraine.

"Id still call fighting this war as Ukraines only choice" Of course it is but main point of my post was disagreement with this "Long term they should look more like Poland" sentiment.

I was trying to explain your income gap. Oil would be convenient and that is the first thing that popped up on Wikipedia as a difference.

Unless there is specific genetic weakness in the Ukranian people I see no reason to not expect them to reach the income levels of their neighbors when there is a clear desire to adopt the policies of the neighbors. That seems like a reasonable bet.

But there many more possible reasons. For example in difference with Belarus or Russia political structure where there aren't any one ruling oligarch clan and instead several competing. Better theories can be found in economists' works.

What oil? There is less oil reserves in Ukraine than in Belarus.

Export of oil and fertilizers is a huge source of Belarus income. Cheap oil and gas from Russia are necessary for those industries to be viable, and are de facto subsidies from RF to Belarus. Lukashenka's regime , despite being much more brutal than Ukrainian even during Yanukovich times, ensured that most enterprises were state owned, and larger share of profits stayed in Belarus (unlike Ukraine, where whole industries got privatized, their owners through lobbying avoided large taxes, and profits were rerouted to tax havens somewhere in Cyprus and later used to buy mansions in Nice).

The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.

I think this is an important part of your argument but it's based on fuzzy culture ideas whereas we have access to less fuzzy economic policy history.

After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.

Without a doubt, Poland joining the EU had a big impact on the Polish economy, but that became reality in 2004, when Poland was already on a nice growth path. Another way to look at this that I found helpful was that Poland, among other post-communist countries, can be categorized as a "Sustained Big Bang" transformation, where Ukraine falls under "Gradual Reforms" (Russia falls under "Aborted Big Bang").

Now, this still leaves the question open of why Poland decided on bold free-market reforms while Ukraine didn't? Sure, I think your general argument about corruption was a component here, but I'd wager that a much bigger component was that Poland was much more separate from the Soviet Union than Ukraine was, meaning, it the influence of Russian corruption and neglect was lesser. Look at how eager Poland was to join NATO and the EU--after independence, it was clear to Poland that the optimal direction to align themselves with was "the West", especially the US. In contrast, Ukraine seems to have been more skeptical toward aligning itself with Europe/US, which is evidenced in the slow rate of reforms and its close ties with Russia in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?

A few things appear to have happened to Ukraine since 2014 that haven't happened to it before. For one, there has been a crystallization of the Ukrainian national identity. Another is the massive migration to and out of the EU, which I think entails two things: first, real-life experience of life in "the West" that forces the question of "why can't we have the same?" This was a huge undercurrent in Polish culture that led to a lot of emulation of not only things like food or music, but also management and leadership practices. (There is also the curious pattern of early Polish emigrants staying abroad, whereas much of the newer emigrants return to Poland. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern will play out or is already playing out among Ukrainian emigrants). Second, is the realization that there is no reason to look eastwards. That way lies only corruption, humiliation, and death.

Of course, I wouldn't expect positive changes to come fast. Poland is still struggling with its communist legacy--corruption, lack of civic engagement, watered down national identity, etc.--30 years after becoming independent. If anything, Ukraine is much earlier on a similar path, so we should expect to see the corruption you describe. But, if we compare Ukraine with Russia, which in all aspects appears to be in a state of stasis since the early 90's, Ukraine is changing, which creates opportunities for something better to come about.

After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.

During Solidarity, emigré publications like Kultura were read through and discussed in Poland, with the anti-communists reaching a clear consensus of what to do. Upon coming to power, they had coherent policy already drafted and prepared. Elsewhere, only after the Warsaw pact or USSR fell were they able to start discussing policy etc. but were then under pressure of momentary politics, corruption, people fiefdoms etc. This is how Poland was able to immediately sign treaties with Ukraine and Lithuania, abandoning revanchist territorial desires - they had already long since decided on this.

Poland is still struggling with its communist legacy--corruption, lack of civic engagement, watered down national identity

I am not sure is "watered down national identity" a real problem in Poland. Other two are problems, but ones with noticeable progress.

I am not sure is "watered down national identity" a real problem in Poland

Which level of Narcissist's Prayer are you on? It's not happening, or it is happening but it's not a problem?

(a) It is not happening on large scale

(b) In cases it is happening then it is not "communist legacy" but "I am European, and I do not care about Poland" euposting.

Less antagonism, please. Don't accuse people of being narcissists or arguing in bad faith just because they have a different viewpoint.

This wasn't intended as antagonism; The Narcissist's Prayer is literally the name of the thing. I am in the same unfortunate situation as the residents of Fucking: in that the name itself carries unfortunate connotations.

If there's a more plain-spraking way of denoting the concept I am happy to switch...?

Okay but how Poland explains Ukraine being poorer than Belarus? Is Belarus engaged in successful free market reforms? Is it free of corruption or Russian influence? Of course polish western turn is the best strategy available, but Ukraine fares quite worse than its neighbors that didn't took it. And migrants generally return into their country of origin only if they see real raise of standards of living there. Ukrainian ones didn`t do this before the 2022, why would they return now. And this general take "Yes, Ukraine maybe poorer but it changing" is popular since 2008 and Ukraine stays mostly the same in economic terms.

Okay but how Poland explains Ukraine being poorer than Belarus?

Belarus hasn't been under attack for 9 years? Plus terrorism going back further, e.g. the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, president after the Orange Revolution? Investors would be worried about France's stability if Macron was disfigured after being poisoned by terrorists plausibly linked to Joe Biden.

From 2015 to 2022 Donbass situation for Ukraine was more like Afghanistan war for America than anything. But you could say this yes. Still before 2014 Ukraine already was poorer than its neighbors.

Like the Afghanistan war, if it was happening across the entire West Coast, and it was led by people who wanted to join China, and China had a large border with the US, and China had a large military base on Staten Island, and the US was very inferior to China in conventional military terms, and the US had given up its nuclear weapons, and there was a large risk of China intervening if things went too well for America, and China was providing military/financial support for the Taliban.

So not very like the Afghanistan war for America, and certainly not more like that than anything else. Under those circumstances, I would expect investment and confidence in the USA to be low. When you're over a barrel, people tend not to trust that you have their back.

If by neighbours you mean nearby ex-USSR states, there were three of them: Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. Ukraine had roughly similar conditions and GDP per capita to Moldova. It had worse GDP per capita than Russia, which was less corrupt/better run/more stable than Ukraine + has a lot of natural resources per capita, and Belarus, which is less corrupt/better run/more stable than Ukraine + economically supported by Russia. Remember, Ukraine had a major revolution in 2005, plus a very messy 9 years after that, and e.g. Leonid Kravchuk's control was never comparable to Yeltsin, Putin, or Lukashenko. Ukraine has always no more than a few bad decisions away from civil war and possible Russian intervention to e.g. safeguard Crimea in a Ukrainian civil war.

A paragraph of questions is generally not one actually looking for them to be engaged, but I'll take a stab.

War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014.

And has had multiple decisive impacts against Russian intentions since 2013.

Multiple Russian efforts failed due to various sorts of nationalism by oligarchs refusing to cooperate with Russian pressure efforts. This started with the elite split over the Russian pressure on Yanukovych's corrupt reversal on the European Union association agreement in favor of the Eurasian Union in 2013, and dramatically escalated when many of the oligarchs in Yanukovych's own power base refused to support his Russian-pressured effort to start shooting protestors during Euromaidan, and then the major flop of the NovaRussia uprising in Eastern Ukraine where oligarchs generally supported post-Maidan Kyiv rather than join the Russian effort to astroturf a grassroots popular revolt. This doesn't even touch on the 2022 government cohesion in face of Russian invasion.

It's not that war has made patriots out of corrupt oligarchs. There is a war because a surprising number of corrupt oligarchs were already nationalists even before 2014.

A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore.

The relevant consideration for Ukrainian corruption considerations isn't because there's a new president, but that the war has created a new legal contexts and oversight measures with Ukraianian political support. This has not happened so many times before.

First, let's just be clear on something. The primary donor of economic aid, the states of the European Union, are not out to 'fix everything and fix corruption.' This is a false standard.

It also misses a key point of the European Union, which uses what others might call obvious corruption via patronage networks as a standard cohesion mechanism. The European Union is absolutely involved in the patronage system, and the way that even internal EU aid works is that governments taking aid are expected to use it broadly in the categories intended (agriculture subsidies on agriculture, not yachts), but who, exactly, gets the funds and how are left to the governments. It's a basic pro-European incentive scheme to build pro-EU interest groups who really like getting money and so are positively inclined to European influence in order to keeping it coming. This sort of pork is not what the Europeans consider unacceptable corruption, and patronage network of government elites building pro-government business elite networks is not the problem.

Since the war has started, Ukraine has gotten not only increased aid, but increased attention and various oversight mechanisms. Western donors, after all, have strong interests in seeing where their increase goes, and that it's having the desired strategic effect. The Ukrainian government, which is dependent on them in a way it was not under previous presidents, is in little position to refuse access, and has actually had an interest in granting access to its own information systems just to underscore how desperate the situation is. What has resulted is various access and tracking systems to western backers, which both gives institutions like the IMF insight on what is needed economically, and the Americans access militarily, but also also establish mechanisms. While some level of fraud is unavoidable- just look to the various western corruption issues around COVID monies- the war has brought new access into systems were the unacceptable corruptions rely on being opaque.

The war has also changed the political dimensions for western-pressured reforms. The Europeans have absolutely used the leverage of aid and Ukrainian desires/desperate to join the European community to pressure the Ukrainian government to make legal and administrative changes to improve on corruption. One of these results- something no previous president did- was dissolve the Kyiv Administrative District Court, one of the most notoriously corrupt court systems in the countries.

Between a confluence of crisis letting the government act, unique access and leverage by westerners pressing reforms, and domestic political support for the both, Ukraine has been undergoing major legal and structural shakeups no previous president of the last decades has matched.

Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go?

To the front, to salaries, to infrastructure and item purchases, and many other things needed in a war.

This is what I mean by question streams not actually being asked with the intent of receiving answers. The first is not a question or even referring to a specific thing (or, in the case of Marshal Plan 2.0, a thing that has happened), the second conflates the value/cost all forms of assistance, and the third presumes corruption for unanswered questions, even when the question doesn't even make sense.

Where does aid go? It depends on what the aid is, and when, and how one calculates. Since Ukraine is in a war, let's just take a single example: a single vehicle donation to the Ukrainian military.

Let's take a BMP-1. A BMP-1 is an early Soviet-era armored personnel carrier. It's not particularly good, but it serves a purpose. A google search says a single one costs roughly 1 million USD. But what is the cost? Not, actually, 1 million USD. BMP-1s are old, the cost of production was already consumed long ago, and in many cases are just legacy hard ware not intended for current use by their own militaries, and were slated for eventual replacement by more modern kit. Giving 30 BMP-1s is not equivalent to taxing your citizens $30,000,000 and then handing it over to the Ukrainian government for them to turn into yachts.

The answer to all unknown expenditures is not 'it was all wasted due to corruption.'

It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro.

Appealing to the 90s, when Ukraine's elite and public were very indifferent about European association (and the European Union did not exist), and not 2014, when a major seminal moment saw the Ukrainian body politic actively affirm a desire for European association, is willfully ignoring quite a bit of context. Euromaidan wasn't a pro-European fanclub protesting, it was a result of long-established European-supported engagement structures successfully connecting with both publics and key elite interests to such a degree that a Russian-pressured lethal force crackdown was rejected by key members of the ruling coalition. The pro-EU political base in Ukraine has not been fair-weather or transient, enduring almost a decade of war now and demonstrating both enduring strength and conviction in a way that many of your examples have not, divided as they were for internal reasons.

Turkey is an interesting argument if you want to make it, but I'd argue Turkey was more interested in joining in the 90s/early 2000s than the EU was in letting them in... but this is due to factors not relatable to Ukraine, such as being a large muslim country and UK internal politics. The Ukrainians are not seen as outsiders in the way Turkey was, nor are they an election or two away from a conservative muslim government.

MTF for character limit.

Why would EU want the poorest European country after Moldova, with the highest corruption and similar to Georgia problems(that of course could be theoretically solved in the near future but this is beside the point)?

Global food stability, advanced chip making, strategic depth, sentiment, internal European power struggles over the political center of gravity take your pick. The question is not 'why', but rather 'why are not you aware of the following?'

To start, being poor is not the issue for Ukraine. A poor GDP per capita in the European context is a cheap work force, which is a significant part of corporate viability in the European model. This is absolutely a mixed bag, but also kind of the point for the european economic model of the internal market and internal migration from east to west. Nor is the monumental costs of rebuilding Ukraine the objection- this is, after all, money that will be spent by European countries on their European companies to do business in Ukraine, in the name of integration. Different stakeholders have different interests, but no one expects Ukraine to circle a drain of constant recession and de-investment, which means there is profit to be made.

First, global food stability under European influence. Ukraine is poor in many things, but very, very rich in food, and had roughly a global share of nearly 9% global wheat, 10% barley, and 16% corn. This is 'regional famine prevention' levels of food production, and having it under European auspices- and not under Russian, where the food pressure has been used already for macroeconomic blackmail attempts- is a major global asset in the expected decades to come of global demographics. When the third rail fear of European politics is mass migration, having the food stability of the middle east not under Russian influence is rather important.

Second, Ukraine was responsible for 50% of global production of neon gas, which was a byproduct of industrial plants specifically built for it during the Soviet Union. This is relevant because industrial-grade neon is a key resource in high-value chipmaking. Any polity wanting to play for the advanced technology spheres needs a good source of neon, and while the war has degraded/destroyed a lot of Ukraine's, it's still a strategic interest to have regardless of corruption.

Third, strategic depth between Europe and Russia doesn't just go in Russia's favor. One of the key shocks to the European public was the realization that war was literally only a long day's car drive from Berlin, and the prospects of a Russian-dominated Ukraine on the border of Poland is a significant concern to countries like Poland. Among other things, Ukraine is a buffer, and like Finland a demonstrably capable buffer able between Russia and others.

Fourth, sentiment is not to be overlooked. European governments are broadly accountable to their voters, and the pursuit of re-election does mean that things that are popular with the voters will effect decision maker cost-benefits. This is most obvious in leading power Germany, where the government's obvious resistance to aiding Ukraine- from the helmet fiasco to stated fears of escalation- have been regularly overpowered by not just external pressure, but internal pressure. A German government whose voters supported neutrality would be much more resistant to pressure- a German government whose own voters want it to deliver arms finds itself backtracking its prior concerns. The same applies to corruption- corruption of Ukraine is not the most significant emotional concern European voters have about it, and corruption is only an obstacle in so much as people are otherwise neutral.

Fifth and finally, internal EU politics. There are two key nexus of interests that have an interest in resisting Ukrainian entry regardless of corruption- EuroFederalists, who fear a new nation will be too emotional to defer to the EUropean nationalism intended to replace nation-based nationalism, and the French-German axis, whose power within the EU frays as more members join, to the point that the French-German alignment is no longer the 'motor' of European policy in the way it once was. To those groups, any entry of a state of 40+ million people (half of Germany) would be a major barrier to the centralization of European Union power over European states, or the ability of France and Germany to jointly dominate that power over the other European states. To other countries, this isn't a bug, it's a feature, and expansion-of-the-EU-to-weaken-it has been a core policy of much of the European Expansion advocates, which has included powerful countries (UK, previously), weaker countries (who want to keep the EU loose instead of centralized), and especially the Eastern countries (who doubt Germany/France having their interests at heart vis-a-vis russia policy). Regardless of any level of corruption in Ukraine, people who want to move the political center of gravity eastward, or at least away from France and Germany, and who are not on board with a European unitary state will have an interest in Ukrainian ascession. Notably both parties are flexible on this as part of the give-and-take of European politics- the French and Germans have raised the prospects of watering down the veto as a precondition to allowing entry, others have used the Ukrainian issue to leverage the French and Germans into Russia policies that both were inclined to resist until dragged across the line.

There are plenty of reasons, and whether you find them compelling or not, you should at least be aware of other people's perspectives.

EU had enough of one Hungary with Orban stealing economic aid with his cronies, it doesn't need a second one. These internal problems will have to be corrected on their own, before, and not after, entry.

The EU's problem with Hungary and Orban isn't 'stealing economic aid,' it's that he uses the patronage network funding for non-pro-EU patronage networks. He's a fly in the ointment, but the ointment has always been largess to build patronage influence.

All in all, my position is you radically misunderstand the corruption dynamics involved in both Ukraine and in the EU itself, and are over-fixating on this issue. Corruption isn't why Ukraine will be barred entry by the likes of Germany or France- corruption will be the pretext used to facilitate, further, and defend their own interests within the European Union, that a Ukrainian entry might disrupt. The Europeans engage in their own corruption a plenty, and are quite willing to turn a blind eye when it suits them- what matters more is not that there is corruption, but the sort, and the tradeoffs.

Ukraine was responsible for 50% of global production of neon gas, which was a byproduct of industrial plants specifically built for it during the Soviet Union.

This is interesting, and I'm totally unfamiliar with neon production. What is the realistic medium term impact of, say, this production disappearing completely? Are there significant barriers to production being ramped up elsewhere? Is it mostly just some capital expenditure, and since the Soviets dropped das capital previously to build it, it hasn't been profitable to build much else, but if it disappeared, then within 5-10 years, new capital could be easily dropped to pretty much make up for the gap with some modest final price increase?

Not exactly an expert on neon production, though for a good pop-culture roundup on the importance of neon production that overlaps, try this-

https://www.rdworldonline.com/why-theres-a-neon-shortage-and-why-it-matters/

That is where the current situation in Ukraine enters the picture.

Air separation plants are expensive to build and operate. The products aren’t particularly difficult to transport, whether as a cryogenic liquid or compressed gas, but they are expensive to transport. Air separation plants generally serve a relatively local market or a large consumer. Distillation processes scale well, benefitting from what is commonly called the “two-thirds scale factor.” This is a mathematical relationship between how big something is and how much it costs to build. The capital investment to build an air separation plant grows at only 2/3 the rate of the capacity. Stated simply, bigger is better.

The neon industry in Ukraine takes advantage of very large air separation plants associated with steel manufacturing. These have economies of scale. They are a source of low-cost, crude neon-containing material that is a great starting point for making the purified neon used in lasers. Two manufacturers, Ingas and Cryoin, came to dominate the neon supply. They built on a feedstock advantage, gaining a further scale advantage. By some accounts, Ukraine was supplying about 70% of the world’s neon. Others estimate closer to 50%. No matter what the exact figure, the result is a dramatic and significant drop in the supply due to the war.

The current disruption is making many re-evaluate the global neon supply chain. It will likely lead to new entrants into the high-purity neon market. It is also causing a re-examination of neon use in excimer lasers. There is no replacement for neon, but use patterns are being examined in an effort to reduce consumption. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 prompted a flurry of research on reducing neon usage. Recycle systems for neon are commercially deployed, but are costly.

So to guess at your questions-

-From what I've read, the chip market is going to suck for the forseeable future, and this is separate from the US lawfare against Chinese chip-making capacity. (One may even suspect that it was timed and launched with this expectation.) Chip production bottlenecks for the next several years- easily 5-to-10?- are going to hurt a lot of industries, and compound the economic woes of anyone currently either unable to afford relevant industries (potentially Europe with energy prices), legally access relevant technologies (China and Russia), or just weren't a player.

-Ramping up production elsewhere is possible, but difficult, and it's unclear how fast/able anyone is able to do this. Ukraine was used during the Soviet Union for reasons including steel production and logistics. Steel production- which provided the economies of scale mentioned before- is very energy intensive. The European energy-intensive industries were based on assumptions of cheap Russian energy imports... which aren't here anymore. I'd bet my blouse that China and the US have efforts, but I'm not familiar with anything specific.

-While in the longer term I'm given to understand a lot more people will develop neon production capacity out of need, the issue isn't so much the final price of neon then, but what the dynamics of the interim are between now and then. By the time neon supply restabilizes, the world could go through some major economic transitions or inflection points that radically reshape the global economy. Europe's efforts to combat Russian energy warfare are disguising a lot of the industrial pain behind consumer price controls. China has basically given up deflating some serious economic bubbles in the name of social stability... which means worse effects if they pop. Global demographic changes are accelerating, as rich countries get older and smaller. This great chip disruption could be the sort of thing that snarls a lot of countries on that front for a few years... by which point it's too late.

Or maybe that's over-stating it. Regardless, having any sort of control over a vital high-technology input resource is useful.

Thanks!

"It's not that war has made patriots out of corrupt oligarchs. There is a war because a surprising number of corrupt oligarchs were already nationalists even before 2014."

This irrelevant to my post about economical prospects, nationalist corrupt oligarchs are still corrupt oligarchs that prevent any meaningful raising of quality of life. "

"Between a confluence of crisis letting the government act, unique access and leverage by westerners pressing reforms, and domestic political support for the both, Ukraine has been undergoing major legal and structural shakeups no previous president of the last decades has matched."

This is a good point and you can say that maybe western oversight in relation to war will fix things generally. I personally don't believe because western influence while helping to win wars generally doesn`t fix corruption, but this can be special case because of the closeness of Ukraine to Europe, so there only way to test this is wait a couple of years.

"To the front, to salaries, to infrastructure and item purchases, and many other things needed in a war."

I know why would you think that I am talking about recent military help by US but I not. This text could have been written and posted before the war with almost no changes. I'm talking aid and loans that were given before and didn't help Ukraine reach at least Belarus level. Military aid mostly goes to the front because it is question of survival to the corrupt elites(and many civilians but they aren`t people who decide) and most of them are nationalists.

"Appealing to the 90s, when Ukraine's elite and public were very indifferent about European association (and the European Union did not exist), and not 2014"

Do you disagree with the factual statement talks of the euro integration started in the 90s? In my opinion this is objectively true and this is why I written it like I did. I don't say that ascendancy to EU is impossible in the next 20 years. I just showing of countries like Montenegro that widespread support isn`t enough to join quickly. If war related campaigns will succesfully pressure European countries into accepting Ukraine with all of its barrage of problems than it will be great but I don't think this is likely.

"The question is not 'why', but rather 'why are not you aware of the following?'"

You can list similar benefits for any country bordering the EU problem along this pros there are cons, some them not so obvious.

"To start, being poor is not the issue for Ukraine"

But why is it poorer than Belarus - this is the issue. And actually it very much the problem for people who live there and that's why they are trying to escape it, sometimes going through the occupied territories because borders of their own country are closed for half of population.

"The Europeans engage in their own corruption a plenty"

For some reason corruption perceptiveness and other indexes don`t show it. Corruption in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus is staggering, you can't talk about it lightly. You at least should agree that your view of EU is quite unusual.

This irrelevant to my post about economical prospects, nationalist corrupt oligarchs are still corrupt oligarchs that prevent any meaningful raising of quality of life.

This is entirely relevant, because nationalist corrupt oligarchs have priorities greater than solely self-enrichment. Hence the qualifier.

I know why would you think that I am talking about recent military help by US but I not.

You didn't talk about any specific sort or amount of aid. Raising military aid as an example demonstrates the shortcoming.

This text could have been written and posted before the war with almost no changes. I'm talking aid and loans that were given before and didn't help Ukraine reach at least Belarus level.

Are you? Because you're not actually identifying any specific aid packages, by any specific amount, with any targetted goal that they failed to meet. You're continuing to conflate different types and targets of aid, and inventing a metric they failed by. This is basic assuming the conclusion.

Even the metric you're probably referring to- GDP per capita- doesn't actually speak to corruption or failure of aid. Belarus is a country of about 10 million people, whose economy is a not particularly impressive but still established manufacturing economy in value-adding industry. Ukraine is a country of about 40 million, but far more of a farming and resource-extraction based economy, much further down on the value chain. The fact that Belarus has a GDP per capita of about $8.5k USD to Ukraine's $5k USD is neither particular surprising.

Nor does it indicate a failure of aid, because- again- you're not identifying any actual aid amounts give, or what their target effects are. Raising to $5k GDP/capita could be an amazing result, or a normal result, or a terrible result- you're not indicating. Raising GDP per capita may not be the goal of aid at all- the aid could be going to other purposes, like developing civil society institutions, or developing state capacity, or other things for which raising average citizen salaries is neither the point or the goal.

Do you disagree with the factual statement talks of the euro integration started in the 90s?

Sure. I disagree it's the relevant facts to assessing or characterizing the situation that you are describing, and thus an unfit argument. If you are almost two decades out of date of relevant context, you are two decades out of date.

The nature, characteristics, level of social and government commitment, and reciprocal interest in Ukrainian association with the EU is entirely different between now and the 90s. Making a like-to-like argument of the conversations of the 90s to today is a false comparison, even if individual facts are true.

In my opinion this is objectively true and this is why I written it like I did. I don't say that ascendancy to EU is impossible in the next 20 years. I just showing of countries like Montenegro that widespread support isn`t enough to join quickly. If war related campaigns will succesfully pressure European countries into accepting Ukraine with all of its barrage of problems than it will be great but I don't think this is likely.

To restate- you're not giving relevant facts, because the relevant fact isn't 'widespread support,' but a collection of dynamics of which 'widespread support' is just one. You did not make the argument on the basis of broader contexts.

You can list similar benefits for any country bordering the EU problem along this pros there are cons, some them not so obvious.

Of course I can, but the topic of your post isn't other countries bordering the EU, it is Ukraine, and you were the one making on argument on the reasons, or lack of reasons, for the Europeans to consider it.

If you intend to make an effort post on the pros and cons of Ukraine, I expect you to be able to competently speak to the pros.

But why is it poorer than Belarus - this is the issue.

While I am always pleased to see a motte and bailey alive in the wild, this is not the issue you were basing your argument on before, and is not actually an obstacle to joining the European Union. It's also appealing to a selective metric- while GDP per capita is poorer than Belarus, GDP is richer, and this is without considering other factors like the ongoing consequence of the multi-year war.

For some reason corruption perceptiveness and other indexes don`t show it. Corruption in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus is staggering, you can't talk about it lightly. You at least should agree that your view of EU is quite unusual.

Of course it is. It's also coming from someone unusually well read, and unusually interested in understanding how states interact. It doesn't change that "treason never prospers, for if it prospers none doth call it treason" has been an insight older than most of the modern states of the EU.

The reason that corruption perceptiveness doesn't register for most forms of corruption is because they aren't perceived as corruption by the societies doing them. It's 'just a way of business,' or cultural tradition, or some other euphism. What makes corruption distinct is that it is treated as a pejorative... but if it's treated as a euphism, or a beneficit thing, it's categorically different. That's why it's a corruption perception index, and not a patronage network index, even though patronage networks are one of the most classic forms of corruption.

In the European Union, one of the various systemic patronage network on the continent is the European Cohesion Fund. Between 2021-2027, it is allocated a 48 billion euro budget. The description of the fund, in its own words is: The Cohesion Fund provides support to EU Member States with a gross national income per capita below 90% (EU-27 average) to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the EU. It supports investments through dedicated national or regional programmes.

This is not some secretive conspiracy. It's proudly announced in the European Commission website, including a nifty map graphic tool to look up individual projects to see just how much is being spent in your country or region:

https://commission.europa.eu/funding-tenders/find-funding/eu-funding-programmes/cohesion-fund-cf_en#budget-and-performance

It American political terms, this is pork barrel projects. In systemic power structure terms, this is a 8-billion-euro-a-year patronage network system in which richer countries pay the poorer countries for deference and continued alignment with the policy preferences of the EU's leading (donor) powers... and, as demonstrated in 2022, punish the poorer dissenters by withholding the patronage until compliance improves, when Hungary and Poland had their cohesion funds suspended (or threatened to be suspended). This is power of the purse politics.

In outsider terms, this is also a pretty basic form of monetary influence influence over elected leaders. Legitimately elected politicians are variously being bribed to support policies their electorates may nor, or being fiscally punished to coerce them into changing policies that do have electorate support. This is being done across levels of society to create parallel influence structures outside of electorate control, as these pressures can be used to target national leaders (nationally-distributed funds) but also bypass national leaders to pressure select regions or targeted dependencies (regional funds) to apply political effects in exchange for cash. These funds are broadly going into efforts that are not, and would not be, economically viable without these grants, developing dependencies by special interest groups hooked on maintaining, and expanding, these artificial funding stream and do so by applying influence from the inside of the power politics in favor of external monetary interests.

But it's not going to be perceived as corruption to most Europeans because this is accepted business, and the petty nuances of political policy changes in exchange for money aren't bad if you use the right words. It's about Fortifying Democracy, or Countering Far-Right Governments, or Restoring Rule of Law. It's Good Things, and thus cannot be corruption because Corruption is Bad.

But it's still a patronage network aimed at creating political effects in favor of the patrons. Corruption is a pejorative, but at its heart most corruption at a social level is various forms of patronage networks and groups making deals with eachother. Corruption is just what people call these dynamics when they don't approve of them- it's just a 'who, whom' instead of actual opposition to patronage networks trying to influence politics.

It's about Fortifying Democracy, or Countering Far-Right Governments

The practical effect of the Cohesion Fund thus far has been channeling vast amounts of €€€ to the same far-right governments, though, arguably helping them maintain the economic growth that has, in the end, underpinned their rule (and also served as an avenue of corruption, ie. Orban's childhood friends getting real paid and so on). Of course, one can see the (heretofore ineffective) threat to end that money as EU pulling leash... but another way of seeing it is that it really is bad when Orban sends my tax euros to some guy's companies because he can, and it's good if that sort of a thing is ended even if Orban's show of picking conspicuous fights with EU is effective for making it look to some like he's just being punished for loving his country too much.

I don't disagree that you can have that perspective, but this gets back to my point that Orban's sin isn't running a corrupt patronage network, but in running a corrupt patronage network in the wrong way. The patronage network itself is not the problem- the European Union system wouldn't care if Orban was sending your tax euros to some guy's companies if Orban was singing the right tune, just as the American system doesn't really care when the family members of leading politicians end up as well compensated members of corporate or charity boards, or retired from government directly into media gigs of the Fourth Estate supposedly watching them during time in government.

At the end of the day, the European Union, and the governments of Europe that compose it, are groups of people grouped by political alliances and mutually beneficial arrangements. 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' is one of the oldest quid pro quos there is, and it only sounds nefarious if you call it quid pro quo as opposed to 'compromise' or 'horse trading' or 'coalition building.' Different words can be used to re-characterize the same pushes and pulls of power.

There's actually an argument I've read before that corruption- at least in these more modest forms of mutual benefit- is a key part of building and maintain broad social groups, which would fall apart into zero-sum infighting without the common largess. This does seem to be a deliberate point of the European Project- a sort of bribing everyone to go along and get along- and is one reason the Polish and Hungary 'rebellions' are so politically disruptive. It's not about the money itself, but the rejection of a social contract that used money to mitigate the issues / autonomy of minor states, even as the European Project focused on the highest priority issue of controlling the risk of conflict between the most power (and richest donors), Germany and France (and, to an extent, UK). The EU, as a project designed to keep peace on the continent, has no higher priority than keeping Germany and France at peace, and certainly not beneficit corruption to keep others happy enough.

Where it falls apart, however, is when people start stigmatizing the natural, or the common, and losing sight of what their euphemisms actually decide. When people talk about Ukraine as a corrupt system, it's not a corrupt system in the sense of 'the cartels have intimidated the government into turning a blind eye,' or 'the police chief is always drunk and just does what the occupying army says.' It's important to understand that there are different types of corruption, the types that are relevant in different ways, and how different they are from your own euphisms and accepted practices before you point them out as the Obvious Reasons This Won't Work.

(Which you didn't, but I'm just rambling.)

This is entirely relevant, because nationalist corrupt oligarchs have priorities greater than solely self-enrichment. Hence the qualifier.

It can be relevant to political discussion, it is not to discussion about Ukranian economy.

You didn't talk about any specific sort or amount of aid.

The point in the post that you replying served only to answer sentiment that bright future for Ukraine is guarantied because of American and European aid. I don't need to delve in the specifics, I just need to cite the existance of aid before and that this didn't help economical development of Ukraine. Maybe its givers didn't have this as a goal, but this is one of the many explanations of ukrainian poverty that I decided to not list to limit size of the post.

Belarus is a country of about 10 million people, whose economy is a not particularly impressive but still established manufacturing economy in value-adding industry. Ukraine is a country of about 40 million, but far more of a farming and resource-extraction based economy

You can propose this as an explanation but is wrong and obviously wrong to any person that lived or lives in those countries, if you don`t could have at least looked at the Wikipedia's page for both nations' economies and than find that in both nations majority of gpd claims service sector(Belarus 51% Ukraine 60%) and agricultural sector being minor differs slightly between countries(Belarus 8% Ukraine 12%). If we decide to compare Ukraine and Belarus we can say that Ukraine has modern service based economy while Belarus still has large industry sector. But this can't be explanation to anything as can't be alternative reality Ukraine where it farming and resource-extraction based economy, they aren't categorically poor.

If you intend to make an effort post on the pros and cons of Ukraine

No, I'm not trying to show pros and cons, only the reasons why I'm not as optimistic about Ukraine's future as an average twitter user(Ukrainian, Russian or American). Pros are already assumed in the context of discussion and I replying to them by showing economic data and trends that show that these benefits didn't help Ukraine before.

While I am always pleased to see a motte and bailey alive in the wild, this is not the issue you were basing your argument on before, and is not actually an obstacle to joining the European Union

You misunderstood me, not poverty, not gpd per capita, not giant shadow economy are issues that are in my opinion are an obstacle to join EU but the cause of these issues, cause that I don't name because nor I nor experts in the field are sure about it.

Of course it is. It's also coming from someone unusually well read, and unusually interested in understanding how states interact

Thank you for expressing your point and I will not argue with it because while I disagree with it, I'm not well read on this to try to defend my position on EU.

From my discussions with Ukrainians and Russians, it was commonly understood before the war that Ukraine was actually far more corrupt than Russia was. It also doesn't have any resources like you pointed out. Belarus doesn't either, but it gets subsidized with cheap oil/gas from Russia to help its economic growth.

Corruption and the low growth it brings are difficult to change, but not impossible. And if there's anything to catalyze change, an existential war has to be one of the best. After the war, there's going to be a massive political push from Ukraine and likely the broader EU to get Ukraine entrenched in Western institutions like the EU and maybe NATO. A precondition for this is anti-corruption reforms, which could plausibly put Ukraine on the same path as Poland.

Turkey and Serbia's accession bids stalled because the political will to join the EU died out in both countries before they could join. That's not going to be the case in Ukraine.

Slow morning, eh?

For some time now, we've been discussing the implications of Hunter Biden's laptop, and whether the information it contained was relevant to our political system. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we know that the FBI knew about the laptop's contents roughly a year in advance of the 2020 election, and used its official access with the major social media companies to prepare their censors to perceive the story as Russian disinformation. Then when the story actually broke in the press, the FBI successfully pushed the social media companies to censor it.

From the laptop information itself, we know that for quite a while now, Hunter Biden has been engaged in various grifts, selling purported access to his father in exchange for lucrative sinecures with various foreign corporations, selling "art" for amusingly inflated values, and so on. The supposition on the Red side has been that this grift implicated Biden as well, and Trump's attempts to have that theory investigated led directly to his first impeachment. The laptop emails backed this story with evidence, with Hunter referencing how "the big guy" was getting a significant cut of his grift money, and one of his associates confirming that "the big guy" was in fact Joe Biden.

Blues on the other hand claimed that there was no reason to suppose any corruption was happening. While Hunter was obviously a junkie fuckup grifter, and was obviously making his money claiming to peddle influence, there was no evidence of actual payments going to Joe, so this was all meaningless. My impression of the previous threads is that even those here who thought Hunter was paying Joe, assumed that there would be no formal exchange of money, but rather quid-pro-quo.

Now it appears that Hunter Biden has been paying rent to live in his father's residence in Delaware, to the tune of $49,901 per month. For completeness' sake, it must be mentioned that this is the same residence where Joe was found to be improperly storing classified documents, alongside his Corvette. While it seems doubtful that the files would be of interest to a junkie who prospers by peddling influence for foreign corporations, it's a detail that does add a touch of piquancy to the overall narrative.

So this appears to me to be pretty open-and-shut. Joe Biden is corrupt, selling influence to foreign corporations in China and Eastern Europe through his son Hunter. Hunter collects the money, then kicks a large slice back to Joe through rent, and quite possibly other, yet undiscovered "repayments". Trump was impeached when he attempted to have these activities investigated, while the FBI sat on the information they were given, and engaged in a protracted disinformation and censorship campaign to keep that information from leaking elsewhere. That information does in fact lead to provable direct payments from Hunter to Biden.

Impeachment when?

[EDIT] - ...Or perhaps not! @firmamenti points out that while Hunter is apparently living in the residence and renting an office space for 50k, the office space is not specified to be in the residence, and very well could be an entirely separate location entirely unconnected to Biden. The hunt continues...

I don’t think that’s what that document is implying.

The document appears to say that Hunter was claiming Bidens Delaware house as his own residence, and that also the business listed on the document was paying $50k of rent, presumably for an office space. That office space could also be Joes house, but that doesn’t seem to be indicated by the document.

There should be an investigation into this, and it should be public. I want these people in front of congress or a adversarial lawyer, and I want them questioned, including Joe.

Impeachment for Joe is a dead end, but his son needs to answer some tough questions, and if he doesn’t have the correct answers he should probably be in prison.

Agreed. The form was far from clear. I think there is a “there” there but this form doesn’t really move the needle.

Best case for Joe is that Hunter have the impression Joe was involved and all other evidence can be explained. But there is a lot of smoke here.

What's the over / under on whether (conditional on actually being guilty), Hunter Biden is actually investigated, convicted, and serves a sentence comparable to what a "regular Joe" would serve?

I would give something like 1:1000 -- or about the likelihood that the true "alt-right" has some sort of overwhelming awakening and victory (if a Mitt Romney or even Ron DeSantis-type Republican were magic-wanded into the Presidency tomorrow, I do not think he or she would push for much beyond some media noise).

On a related note, what would other people give as the odds ratio of the "alt-right" gaining some sort of overwhelming victory in the next 10 years? To me it seems like this would require some extreme sequence of events, for example DJT is assassinated by the FBI [1] and an overwhelming evidence trail comes to light.

[1] Dear Secret Service, I am not advocating for this to happen, it is a purely hypothetical scenario.

Didn’t the ALT right by the biggest media property in the world and has an owner followed by nearly everyone who spouts ALT-Right constantly.

That seems like a large victory.

Are you talking about Elon Musk and Twitter? Because I'm going to need some good evidence that Elon is an Alt-Righter, or some sort of White Nationalist.

Also, there is a new motion in the FBI Seth Rich FOIA case from the plaintiff that seems to make the claim that the FBI covered up Seth Rich's involvement in the email leak.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.197917/gov.uscourts.txed.197917.92.0.pdf

Previously from the FBI:

https://twitter.com/Ty_Clevenger/status/1601780110117703680

https://lawflog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022.12.09-FBI-reply.pdf

Ben Schreckinger’s book, The Bidens, builds a pretty strong case that both Hunter and Joe’s brother, Jim, have tried to cash in on Joe’s name with varying degrees of success and failure over the years, and when people close to Joe have raised the issue, Biden has repeatedly chosen to plug his ears, out of familial loyalty, and the belief that if he doesn’t know about it, he is in the clear. But also, that links actually connecting Biden to any corruption have not been uncovered.

Yes, Biden has ignored conflicts of interest and in a better world he would have been disqualified from holding office. But in terms of Washington, he’s sadly rather benign.

The darkly funny thing is the Bidens are so small-time when it comes to money, and a savvier man than Joe could have cashed in far more than Biden did, at least in his senate years when representing a state with only a million people and two-thirds of America’s Fortune 500 companies registered, there. But Joe was always far more interested in holding office, with a personal dream of becoming president. In one sense, hats off to the senile old mick — privately, Obama was never bullish on his prospects — but he did it.

Impeachment when?

This is a culture war section, so one joke of an impeachment needs to be met with one that also appears to be built on flimsy ground, because the other tribe did it? I’d rather wait until some substantial proof is uncovered. Let’s say a benchmark of something worse than Jared Kushner getting $2,000,000,000 from the Saudis six months after his father-in-law left office.

A tangent on Jim Biden — the seedier folks involved with Dickie Scruggs were tossing Jim’s name around as part of a new lobbying firm they were going to open in D.C. before the feds came down on them.

100% Joe needs to be impeached by the House. Retaliatory strikes are necessary in war. GOP can’t let the first impeachment stand unpunished.

This is what Trump should've taught the Republicans, but didn't really: you must fight.

But that just raises further questions! Like if you were a politician with presidential aspirations, would you let family members repeatedly cash in on your good name in shady ways for decades? Or would you try to distance yourself from them as much as possible? Imagine your brother or son just got caught for the third time doing corrupt shit and linking it to you, but they swear they did nothing wrong. Do you believe them?

What about if your boss did that at work, just let his family run around embroiling him in scandals and doing things that made him look corrupt - would you believe him when he said he believed they did nothing wrong? If you did believe him, would you trust his judgement or would you think he had an obvious blindspot rendering him easy to manipulate?

Biden is savvier than some give him credit for, and I think playing dumb is the right move here. If he gets himself actively involved in his brother and son's shady dealings, well, that raises the risk of being dragged down if they're caught. If you speak against them loudly and distance yourself as much as possible, as you say, you will have convinced approximately nobody that you're clean and have attracted approximately five million sharks who smell blood in the water.

Or you play dumb, do your own thing, and don't begrudge your family some cash paid by shady parties who think giving your relatives cushy jobs will buy them influence.

I mean - really, think about it. Suppose Biden came out tomorrow, and spoke out against his family. Suppose he condemned their influence-seeking and money-grubbing ways, coasting by on their surnames. That he'd swear up and down he had nothing to do with it, honest, fingers crossed.

Do you see that as a good move? Do you think that'll convince any single one of the people currently in doubt? Do you think it'll put the matter to rest even slightly?

I don't think it would. And in doing so he'd get people he loves and cherishes thoroughly incensed with him while just getting his opponents more ammunition: 'He knew all along! What isn't he telling us?!'

Better to play dumb. It is what it is.

The point of Joe denouncing Hunter's influence peddling operation isn't to make him look cleaner - as you point out, this wouldn't work. Never apologise, never explain is the right way to handle a scandal that isn't bad enough to concern people who are not political news junkies or enemy partisans.

The point of Joe denouncing Hunter's operation would be to let foreign crooks know that Hunter doesn't have the influence he is selling, because that would make Hunter stop. I will admit that I don't know if that would work either - I suspect the average corrupt Ukrainian businessman would assume that Joe's denunciation is performative and of course Hunter has the influence he is selling despite it.

I think pet of the issue here is that the prior on Joe Biden being corrupt is low, so you need more than circumstantial evidence to make people who are not already anti-Biden partisans care.

The theory that the MAGA crowd are pushing is that Joe Biden decided to run a large scale influence peddling operation, employed his junkie failson as a key fixer in it when he could have hired a professional, and then didn’t spend the money. That is possible, but it is not likely compared to a junkie failson ripping off clueless foreigners by selling influence with Dad he didn’t have and spending the money on blow and hookers.

I don’t see how that is true.

Biden had a cheating scandal at university.

Biden had a plagiarism scandal in the 80s.

Biden has had questionable dealings with his brother and certain banks.

Biden doesn’t come off as squeaky clean. He comes across at least to me as a cheat.

Remember when the Democrats had Biden look at the camera, break the fourth wall, and say "do I look like an extreme leftist to you?"

They know that as long as Biden has the looks and mannerisms of an upper-middle-class grandpa with a touch of dementia, most people will map him to "harmless and with good intentions".

In reality, Biden is a lifelong politician who has likely never worked an honest day in his life. All the things you cited reinforce that. The fact that his son Hunter is all sorts of fucked up to me also reinforces that (although only as part of a constellation of data points; it is far from conclusive by itself).

Yep. Perception rules.

I thought the prior on Joe being corrupt was quite high. And basically assumed (along with most career politician earning thru some kind of grift). I also assume McConnell is probably corrupt. Nancy has likely traded on inside information.

The question on Joe i feel is whether he was being corrupt in ways that everyone does their corruption. Hunter Biden getting 300k a year to to work for the Delaware teachers union is corruption that we all accept and tolerate. Hunter working for a ukranian oligarchs energy firm was in my view past the line for acceptable or legal corruption.

Also been noticing on oline message boards a shift in tone of Joes corruption. People use to deny he was “the big guy” and that he did the bad kind of corruption. Now it seems like arguments run to sure he’s corrupt but you can’t “prove it”.

I agree - I meant that my prior on Joe Biden being corrupt in ways that are unusual for Washington is low, not that my prior on his being corrupt at all is low. Hunter's early career at MBNA and Amtrak board seat stink to high heaven and would not be allowed in sane world, but that sort of crap is common in the US (and most other countries). I don't buy the claim that Joe was running an influence peddling operation with Hunter as fixer which brought in tens of million dollars, mostly because Joe Biden does not appear to have tens of millions of dollars.

At this point it seems true that Joe was in fact attempting to run an international influence peddling scheme.

Not sure where your getting he doesn’t have 10’s of millions. This looks like a proper mansion.

https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/a34430021/joe-biden-mansion-greenville-wilmington-delaware-dupont-nemours/

Did you even click the link? Biden bought it as a fixer-upper for $185k, and sold it for $1.2 million in 1996 (no publically available information as to how large the mortgage was). Mansions in the sticks (and an exurb of Wilmington is the sticks) are upper middle class purchases - the rich buy in prime locations. At modern prices that looks like a 3 million dollar home.

Based on his published tax returns, Biden made about $15 million before taxes legally from book royalties and speaking fees between his terms as VP and President. His lifestyle at the time was entirely consistent with that level of wealth.

Think you framed “10 million”. Price would depend on location and was owned by the DuPonts. It still screams mansion and fits the demands of someone with 10 million. Could be more.

The prior is low because actual corrupt people who have served as a US Senator for 40 years make a lot more income than he did. And, yes, the relevant source of information is indeed the person's tax return, since that is the point of becoming a politician if you are corrupt: to earn lots of legal, or at least apparently legal, income.

We had corrupt politicians in Slovakia who owned literally nothing on paper and were regularly seen inhabiting multiple small palaces in various countries, sailing on yachts, riding in expensive cars owned by other people and so on. You must have a legal term for this - not owning but using property as if you owned it.

Are we supposed to believe this sort of trickery isn't possible in the US ?

EDIT:

Okay, well, this is an alternate explanation:

https://www.themotte.org/post/317/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/54089?context=8#context

Yes, of course it is possible. The question is whether it is likely in this case, given the evidence we have. And, it is pretty common knowledge that Biden was vastly less wealthy than was the norm for Senators. So, are we to believe that he engaged in Slovakia-esque "trickery," but no on else did.

And, remember, the issue here is ONLY what our prior should be. That is all.

That link estimates his net worth in 2008 as $24,000. That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Even the $360k for total investments it has below that sounds preposterously low given that he'd sold his mansion for over a million back in the 90s.

Given the performance of the stock market in 2008, the 360K is not surprising. Had he had it all in the SP500, it would have been 586,000 at the beginning of the year.

As for the house, if I buy a house for 500K and put 20% down, then sell it for 1 million, I walk away with $600,000. (And that does not count the apparently extensive renovations that were done on the house, which can easily run to the hundreds of thousands). But if I then buy a slightly nicer house for $1,100,000, my net worth, looking only at the house, is -100,000. And, depending on timing, given the housing market in 2008, it might be a lot less: If I bought in 2006, the house I paid $1,100.000 for might be worth only $900,000. It is completely believable that, because 2008 was such an outlier, his net worth would be unusually low that year. And note that the subsequent numbers are what you would expect from the recovery of the stock and housing markets.

And, don't underestimate the cost of putting three kids through private school, college, and in two cases, law school (and I guess in one case, rehab).

More to the point, as I said, the chart indicates that he was vastly less wealthy than the norm for Senators. Unless you think that he is somehow much, much better at hiding assets than are other Senators.

The chart only indicates anything if it's accurate. It looks auto generated to me, maybe scraped from public data. It's conceivable that a 65 year old lifelong senator had less savings than your average boomer but I'm gonna go with that unsourced website being bullshit. If it's not then he's certainly done well since then, Forbes put him at $9 million in 2018, so almost 400x as wealthy as he had been a decade before according to your numbers.

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Of course that is a bit question begging if the source of the info doesn’t contain the undisclosed payments.

As I said, "So, are we to believe that he engaged in Slovakia-esque "trickery," but no on else did." And again, this is about establishing a prior, nothing more.

Well it seems others did engage in corruption in different ways. For example, it seems obvious that Pelosi engaged in legal insider trading. Others do the “pay me outrageous sums for speaking fees.” These things are technically legal and therefore outside of political embarrassment need not be kept on the downlow.

Biden’s purported influence peddling is arguably illegal and therefore would need to be kept on the downlow. The question would be why he didn’t do the legal methods. My view is Biden isn’t particularly intelligent.

Hunter seems to pay for a lot of his dad’s expenses. This would be a way to funnel money to his dad without reporting it. Of course, that means Joe also committed tax fraud. So perhaps another thing to impeach him over if true.

Of course, that means Joe also committed tax fraud.

No, it doesn't. Gift income isn't taxable. You may have heard of gift tax but that's something entirely different—the purpose behind it is to prevent people from ducking the estate tax by giving all their money away before they die. As such, the burden of paying the tax is on the donor, not the recipient. In other words, if Hunter giving his dad large sums of money causes any tax issue's, they're Hunter's tax issues.

No. If I am performing services and are paid for said services, but instead of receiving compensation directly the party receiving the services pays my expenses, then that is disguised compensation and is certainly taxable income I failed to report. Key case here is Commissioner v. Duberstein.

The recipient of a gift does not have to report the gift as income. The giver reports the gift and pays any applicable gift tax.

Read my response to Rov Scam? There is a lot of caselaw (see what I cited) distinguishing between a gift and payment for services that results in taxable income. Assuming Joe is being paid as part of the influence peddling scheme, then the transferor (ie Hunter) isn’t giving Joe the money just because Joe is his dad but is giving him the money due to the business arrangement. Accordingly that means the payment is not a gift but is actually income.

Assuming Joe is being paid as part of the influence peddling scheme

Well, that is a pretty big assumption. And, I said: "The prior is low because actual corrupt people who have served as a US Senator for 40 years make a lot more income than he did." Your response is "well, if you assume he was part of a influence peddling scheme, his true income was higher." But whether he is corrupt is the question at hand; that assumption assumes the conclusion. So, yes, if you already "know" the answer, all evidence to the contrary is supposedly false or actually supports your conclusion. But you don't know the answer.

You said we shouldn’t expect Joe Biden to be corrupt because he has a low amount of income. My retort was you are basing low amount of income because of what Biden reported. If Joe Biden’s expenses are paid by Hunter (consistent with what Hunter claims in the email) then of course Joe’s low amount of reported income is not predictive at all of whether Biden is corrupt. That is, what you are basing your prior off of is questionable because of the known arrangement. Neither of us can prove it either way right now but it isn’t fair to use a highly questionable prior to make a Bayesian judgement here.

My comment about tax fraud is to say that it’s possible Biden has committed more crime than merely influence peddling.

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I think pet of the issue here is that the prior on Joe Biden being corrupt is low

Biden seems to say whatever is most convenient at the time, whether that be flip-flopping on policies or just making up stories about his own life. My prior is that Biden can't stay bought. So some interest might funnel him some money and get a meeting, but as soon as they are out of the room Biden will be playing to whoever is in front of him next. It's also just generally difficult for a President to have that much discretionary power to personally significantly damage the realm by selling out to some pecuniary interest. The worst things his administration has done seems to involve selling out the realm to some activist/ideological interest. Although if Ukrainian money getting to Joe Biden is the reason USG is involving itself in the Ukraine war, that would be big deal and potentially catastrophically bad. But I'm not sure that is the case, Biden might actually be more of a voice of sanity in his own administration, with the meddling in the Ukraine really being driven by the overall Zeitgeist.

There are many influential groups in and around Washington strongly in favor of supporting Ukraine and opposing Russia. Foreign service lifers like the Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland wing who are neoliberal interventionists, and folks working for the military industrial complex that had to delay buying a second vacation home or remodeling their mansion in northern Virginia when the Afghanistan tap got cut off, to name two of the more powerful. The likelihood that Biden is the primary advocate for the U.S.’s involvement seems slim.

That is possible, but it is not likely compared to a junkie failson ripping off clueless foreigners by selling influence with Dad he didn’t have and spending the money on blow and hookers.

We have no reason to believe that's the case. And that Biden went after the Ukrainian prosecution suggests he was involved in the corruption, if it was just his son doing stupid shit, he'd not have lifted a finger. Biden bragged on video about having the prosecutor fired!

And that Biden went after the Ukrainian prosecution suggests he was involved in the corruption

This is precisely what was in issue in the performative criminal investigation that Trump asked Zelenskyy to launch, and therefore in the first Trump impeachment. He probably didn't.

Biden bragged on video about having the prosecutor fired!

If Biden went after the prosecutor for other reasons, then it was stupid (because you shouldn't act where a conflict of interest exists, even if it is just for appearance's sake) but not corrupt. And there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that this is what happened - notably that the EU, the IMF, and the Ukrainian opposition all agreed that the prosecutor should be fired for slow-walking corruption prosecutions.

But there are a lot of corrupt politicians. Does tying aid to firing happen all of the time? Maybe — but it seems no one made that argument or at least no one that I’m aware of

Tying aid to progress in anti-corruption investigations happens all the time. According to a wide range of western-aligned institutions, the main way to speed up anti-corruption investigations was to fire the prosecutor who was slow-walking them.

Do you have sources on that? I know IMF ties funding to certain things, but wasn’t area of the US doing so (I thought it was military aid but could be mistaken).

Rarely is it mentioned that Shokin was then replaced with a prosecutor who dropped those prosecutions entirely.

This makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me so much of those times that the Democrats would push narratives about Russia and Trump. I remember making arguments at length that regardless of whether or not Trump was 'polite' the office of the presidency should still command respect; I thought these were strong arguments and maybe I still do. When are we going to try to be a more uniting force instead of continuing to hunt down scandals involving relatives?

Kushner being sent to build peace in the middle east was unorthodox in the appearance of nepotism, but in unorthodox times we need unorthodox solutions. I dare call this preoccupation on Biden's spawn obsessive. You're trying to hold 'the system' to a consistency it never had. Trump did things that angered the left and that made me glad, but as I think about a divided country I feel some shame for embracing that power, for now I see in you someone who is angered, much as the left was, over trivial, irrelevant, and imagined corruption.

Do you need to be told that Trump lost, get over it? Do you need to be told to look to the future and not the past? What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?

I guess the question is what is an acceptable level of corruption taking into account the cost of trying to stamp it out.

If Biden corruption is worse than acceptable level, then trying to make an issue of it is part of looking forward. Of course, the IF is playing a large role there.

Some of these points might be true but everything changed when they impeached Trump the first time. The right still needs to fight for getting to play by the same rules. Otherwise you would lose every elections and never project power.

While I have come to a conclusion we should respect the presidency and ignore small crimes the rights fighting culture war right now which means using power.

Otherwise you would lose every elections and never project power.

The right just lost elections because they can't let go of Trump. Trump doesn't project power he projects weakness. He used to be able to do it but his time is done. DeSantis has some strong points but I'm still hoping for someone a little better at silencing wokeness without feeding division.

Im not saying run trump. I’m saying we should be fighting back and one of the steps is impeachment of Biden.

I don’t think not being divisive is a choice. The war is here and the woke won’t quiet down because you asks them nicely.

I think RD can. You don’t win by that many points in Florida without getting some dem voters.

What are you looking for? What are you hoping to find?

You can't tolerate corruption like that.

... you think it's normal that Biden bragged about having Ukrainian prosecuted fired for investigating Burisma, the company that was paying off Hunter Biden ?

This is just corruption. In any western European country, that'd cause the government to resign. Ministers there resign over some piddly plagiarism nonsense, or minor oversights. Even in eastern Europe it'd be a major scandal and probably require new elections.

... you think it's normal that Biden bragged about having Ukrainian prosecuted fired for investigating Burisma, the company that was paying off Hunter Biden ?

Probably Bundestag MPs also had their children employed by Burisma.

https://www.uawire.org/news/german-deputies-advise-poroshenko-to-consider-changing-of-the-prosecutor-general

And some guy from SBU who accused Shokin of corruption and demanded his resignation also had dealing with Burisma.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/11/12/7088525/

And members of Kharkiv Human Rights Group...

https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/01/7/7094715/

And dozens of Ukrainian MPs...

https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2015/12/22/7093387/

... and that proves what? That Biden jr. being paid off is okay ?

No, that disproves your assertion that Shokin was fired on behest of Biden Sr because the latter wanted Shokin not to investigate his son. Of course, you could say that it WAS the real reason, and Biden just used reputation of Shokin being a corrupt prosecutor for plausible deniability in getting him fired. But then argue accordingly, not just put it as an undeniable fact.

Also Hunter Biden didn't commit any crime according to Ukrainian law by working there. Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, most likely did - but then it was during presidential term of Yanukovich, a figure very much beloved by some on American far right and far left, deposed by the evil CIA.

No, that disproves your assertion that Shokin was fired on behest of Biden Sr because the latter wanted Shokin not to investigate his son.

Yeah, it looks like Shokin was fired because he wasn't investigating the 'right' people.

**It still doesn't explain to me why you think politicians getting paid off by through their family getting cushy sinecures in foreign countries is remotely okay. **

It's okay in Ukraine. We get that, it's why Ukraine is that way.

In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.

In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.

Says a person from Slovakia 😩

Our graft is these days mostly limited to 15-20% cost inflation on government contracts. Your president is a an actor whose show was funded by an oligarch, who among other things,stole how many billion $ from Ukrainians by running a bank and giving out loans to friendly companies.. Was it 2 or 5 billion ? They still haven't bothered to wipe that shit off the internet. We had shit like this in mid to late 1990s. That was .. quite some time ago.

If these days Ukraine was as corrupt as Slovakia, you'd probably be as prosperous as Poland what with the better climate, natural resources and sea access.

Now, Slovakia isn't a normal country, but at least half of the parties wouldn't tolerate something like this, and it definitely wouldn't fly anywhere in western Europe.

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In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.

No, this is business as usual in the UK, France, the USA and more. You usually don't hear about it it because of how accepted it is. And that is because compared to corruption in Pakistan, China and yes Ukraine and so on it is tiny. There is no non-corrupt country but most of the wealthy Western ones have fairly minimal levels like said Hunter Biden issues. The amount of effort it would require to eradicate is just not worth it. And of course it's not like elites whose families benefit from it would want to. Even if they are temporarily on the other side of it for short term political gain. Trump does it even more directly with Jared and Ivanka and so on. It isn't exceptional, it is the norm.

Putting relatives of people with power on boards and in cushy executive positions is endemic almost everywhere. That might not make it ok, but please do not underestimate how common it is in "normal" countries.

That might not make it ok, but please do not underestimate how common it is in "normal" countries.

As an eastern European, we used to look up to Germany when it came to political culture, and they seem fairly intolerant with corruption.

Do they do this too ? Or is e.g. Schröder involvement in Gazprom only a scandal because it's politically advantageous to bash Russians ?

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But you've been tolerating corruption like this the entire time. The system is so corrupt that picking any one portion of it to get angry about is missing the point and falling into partisanship. Do you really want to debate the Democrat talking point of Trump's Ukraine phone call? It's a losing game.

The US government exerting influence like that over foreign countries is part and parcel of post-war foreign policy. Relatives of important officials getting cushy jobs in the hope that it buys favorable treatment isn't good, but that's about the level of corruption that I've always assumed to be present anyways.

Well, maybe, if US is so corrupt and so crazy it needs to stop telling other countries how to mind their business or conduct their foreign policy.

And other countries should not listen to it. Especially not countries that aspire to some level of good government!

If America has a corrupt and inefficient federal government, of a kind that'd not be tolerated in Europe, 100k dead per year from overdoses, people looting shops in major cities and a homicide rate a nice third world country might be mildly ashamed of, **why do we care about them **?

Europeans need to have their noses rubbed in American dysfunction till they stop giving America attention or caring about it.

**If Americans can't even run their own country, why are we listening to them ? ** Their governance is even more catastrophic than in Europe.

Their army is falling apart due to low retention and recruitment, their defence contractors can't even produce enough ammo, etc.

Europe is big enough and rich enough to deal with Russia...

Europe 'needs' the US same way NY delis used to need the Italian guy in a nice suit who came around from time to time and asked if everything was okay and got some money.

If Europe pitched in with some resources, it could have a perfectly good strategic deterrent in Force de dissuasion.

As much as I dislike French state, the French are orders of magnitude less nuts and hubristic than D.C.

You can't tolerate corruption like that.

Can't you?

I remember a bit in the 90's that Lewis Black did about how bad government corruption had gotten. That when he was a kid, you knew it was happening. It was like being in a hotel, and you don't know which room, but you know somewhere, someone is fucking. "Now" in the 90's government corruption is like two dogs stuck together in the alleyway, and you just can't stop them. You spray water on them and it does nothing.

In the 2020's, we're how many generations into open obvious corruption being all American's have ever known? As much as I hate it, it's hard for me not to treat politicians like I do auto mechanics. I know they are going to fleece me, the question is, will they at least keep my car, or the country, running while they do it?

Of course, my charge is that the current neoliberal successor ideology isn't even doing that. But it's probably an orthogonal issue to their blatant corruption.

In the 2020's, we're how many generations into open obvious corruption being all American's have ever known?

We have a rather different take on this in eastern Europe. Corruption needs to be fought. They'll keep doing that shit anyway, but as long as you're trying, the graft doesn't exceed 15-20%.

The only thing I have to add here is that Matt Taibbi mentioned something on his premium podcast that I haven’t heard elsewhere.

He said he believe this is a DNC opp to sideline Biden in ‘24. He implied that he believes this is the case based on certain unreported facts about the source of this brouhaha. He didn’t elaborate. More of a passing comment to his cohost.

Sideline Biden in favor of who, though?

The left does seem to have a weak bench because their national candidates come from very liberal places and they’ve struggled to gain any traction in a lot of regions but they still have a few options especially when Biden isn’t all that desirable.

Newsom - good looking big state governor

Pritzker - think he’s very age and not charismatic but I would think he can be the not a GOP candidate as well as Biden

AOC - I know some Guiliani people who say they would prefer her over Biden because there is no fear she’s compromised. Charismatic/good looking/social media game. Seems to be moving somewhat more to mainstream Dem and away from squad leader

There’s no real rising star I can see but between these candidates and a few others there are generic Dem candidate who aren’t much worse than Biden at turning off moderates

Polis could be the move.

But surely Biden wouldn't even contemplate running in 2024? Everyone was saying that Trump was too old in 2020, and Biden is 80 now, he'll be 82 in 2024 and already there are health (and cognitive decline) queries around him.

I can't see any reason for him to go for a second term other than vanity, and that would be stupid. The Democrats must have a better way of telling him he can't run than working up a scandal?

he’s never seemed to be particularly interested in acquiring great wealth the way that the Clintons and Obamas have.

This is like comparing a handsome lady's man with many conquest to a dopey homely schlub with a wife who tolerates him, and thinking of the second man "He's never seemed to have a particular interest in hot women."

You are confusing Joe Biden being terrible at corruption to not being interested. And, hypothetically, it's not hard to understand why this might be the case. Biden's entire career has been defined by telling obvious stupid lies, and saying the quiet part out loud. No matter how corrupt Obama, Clinton or Bush may be, no matter how absurdly obvious to all observers it might be, they still make the correct deflecting mouth sounds. Mouth sounds about process and bureaucracy and partisan critics. Any prospective lobbyist attempting to corrupt Biden through the usual Washington means risks Joe just openly bragging about it in much the same way he bragged about getting the prosecutor investigating the company that hired his son fired.

Now it appears that Hunter Biden has been paying rent to live in his father's residence in Delaware, to the tune of $49,901 per month.

Do we know that Hunter did in reality pay this rent, or is it him fucking up claiming that it was a mortgage payment (I see by the linked story he also claimed to own the house) or that he was trying to pull some tax dodge (e.g. claiming an expense against income)?

I mean, it's Hunter, the guy might not even remember how to put his socks on let alone fill out a form correctly depending on how drunk/high/shagged-out he was on any particular day, and that's not including his tendency to be massively dishonest anyway.

Hunter Biden revealed in a 2019 text message to his daughter that the family has an arrangement where Joe Biden collects half his son’s salary.

To be frank, this seems like simple prudence. The family knows he's a fuck-up and will only blow his money on (literally) hookers and blow, so to have any money at all for general expenses of life, someone needs to take it off him. That's Joe, it would appear. Maybe that is what the "rent" payment really is; they just call it 'rent' to put the best face on it, when really it's "Joe taking half Hunter's money to put it away for him, because Hunter can't be trusted with it".

The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:

Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?

No not really. Seems like the political calculus is 15 weeks.

I had been pretty default pro-choice, having been basically a 90s libertarian. I feel like I've moved a little bit in the pro-life direction. Reasons:

  • This article detailing how abortion access actually works across the first world. It seems to be significantly less accessible than the seeming American / Feminist default position of on-demand all the way up to birth across the rest of the first world.

  • Among left-wing activists, they seemed to have moved from the previous default of "safe legal and rare" to being proud of abortions, shouting them from the rooftops, and openly advocating for as many of them as possible. This seems sick to me.

  • A thought I had that doesn't seem to want to go away: If you're actually raising a child, would you tell that child at some point in their life that you had had an abortion previously? What would you expect them to think of that? Children can be really annoying and inconvenient at the best of times. Virtually all of them will be imperfect in some way. The reason why we give children unconditional love is because they are so extraordinarily dependent on their parents and they know it, so they're naturally terrified at the idea of being abandoned. How can a child expect that from you once they realize that you basically killed your previous child because it was inconvenient? Oh, we didn't have a good job and weren't sure how we would support ourselves - does that mean that once you actually have a kid, if you lose your job or get in an accident or things get tough some other way, it's bye bye kiddo? Okay so you don't tell them. Unless they manage to find out some other way. Or maybe just don't do something that you'll never be able to tell your kid?

This article detailing how abortion access actually works across the first world. It seems to be significantly less accessible than the seeming American / Feminist default position of on-demand all the way up to birth across the rest of the first world.

No compromise breeds no compromise. Supporters of abortion rights know well that pro-lifers do not want "reasonable regulations", but want to ban abortion completely at any place and time (and then move to ban contraception, pornography, "sodomy", race mixing and everything else they see as immoral).

The same in gun politics - gun right supporters know well that anti-gunners do not want "reasonable gun control", but ban everything that looks like gun (and then move to knives and all sharp instruments, like in UK). If you compromise with the uncompromising, you always lose.

Among left-wing activists, they seemed to have moved from the previous default of "safe legal and rare" to being proud of abortions, shouting them from the rooftops, and openly advocating for as many of them as possible. This seems sick to me.

Again, the same with guns. Instead of fudds who just wanted to shoot Bambi, you got hard core gun nuts openly carrying big scary black rifles. This seems sick to gun controllers, and this is the point.

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I personally have no interest in banning contraceptives because, again, who cares.

I want literally the opposite, largely because I am pro-life. I am tentatively in favor of forcing unmarried people to use contraceptives, except that there's no reasonable to enforce it without authoritarian government control that I'm not in favor of. At the very least, we should bring back all of the shame and stigma that used to be attached to unmarried sex a couple centuries ago, but only apply it to people who don't use birth control. Also make it free to incentivize people to use it.

First and foremost, this will reduce abortions. The argument against outlawing it is that people will just do it anyway but in unsafe ways. If so, the only way to truly prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies, so we should be pushing legal and social pressures towards doing so.

Second, I believe it is immoral to bring an unwanted child into existence. They will not have the love and support from their parents that a child deserves. Again, pro-choice people use this as an argument in favor of abortions, but I think having an unwanted child is less evil than killing them (otherwise we could replace orphanages with euthanasia clinics). But it's still evil, and more birth control would also reduce this.

Thirdly, I believe it is immoral to deliberately have a child as a single parent, even if you want one. I feel less strongly about this, and I'm not sure I would go so far to call it "evil", just misguided and irresponsible. All of the science shows that children with two parents have significantly better life outcomes, I don't think one parent alone can fulfill all of the responsibilities of both paying for and actually educating and caring for a child, and doesn't have the full breadth of wisdom and life experiences to impart, since they only have their own perspective.

Unmarried people should not be conceiving children, because it inevitably leads to one of these scenarios (unless you have a shotgun wedding, which is still likely to lead to suboptimal results if your partner wasn't someone you were previously planning to marry). Therefore, unmarried heterosexual people should not engage in unprotected sex, at least in any form with a nonnegligble chance of conception. I'm not convinced it is the responsibility of the government to prevent this, I don't think it's within the range of powers they ought to have. But at the very least anyone who does this is a bad person and we need social pressure that disincentivizes people from doing it. Slut shaming is a lost cause, but I hope that unprotected-slut-shaming (Of both sexes. Men are equally culpable for their actions.) can make a comeback.

The problem with this position is that it's precisely contraception that enables people to think about sex in a way that makes abortion seem desirable. As long as sex is something that is done primarily for fun, and only incidentally, sometimes, if it's desired, for procreation, then the "what if the contraception fails" argument for abortion will always loom large in the background.

Now one might respond to this point with resignation, "the cat's out of the bag", but the point is that this cat creates a gravitational pull toward liberal abortion laws. Because when you have a culture of people who believe they are entitled to have sex for fun, it doesn't work to tell them, "if you forget to take your pill, or if the condom breaks, etc. etc. then sorry, you're out of luck, you have to have that child." That runs totally contrary to the way they understand sex and so it seems unlikely to me that they will accept that state of affairs. Why should they have to give up that entitlement to consequence-free sex and accept a dramatic change to their lifestyle simply because they made a little slip-up one time?

So sure, who knows, maybe we'll never be able to undo the sexual revolution...but in that case I really don't see how we'll ever shift the landscape conceptually and fundamentally away from abortion, such that abortion loses its gravitational pull. Success, if it's obtained through political wizardry, would always be an unstable imposition on a culture that would naturally incline the other way.

People have had sex for fun throughout all of human history. Even in times with serious social stigma for it, people did it in secret anyway. Even the Bible is absolutely riddled with people having sex they're not supposed to. The cat was never in the bag: people have always and will always want to have lots of sex. It has gotten worse in recent years, but it has always been there.

The most realistic path forward that I see is advances in technology making better, easier, safer forms of birth control that don't have the flaws of current ones. Something like an IUD but less invasive and easier to just give to everyone and then not remove until they get married. Or some fancy injection you can regularly give people like a flu shot sterilizes them for a year before it wears off (with reliable predictable timing so nobody ends up permanently sterilized or having kids if it wears off too soon). At the very least, some sort of significant birth control pill or IUD-like-thing for men so that both people can independently control their reproduction status and not be vulnerable to the other one lying.

But in the meantime, we have to work with the technology that exists. And while I do agree that it does contribute to promiscuity, I think that the effect there is secondary and minor while the effect on reducing pregnancies is direct and significant such that the net effect at saving unborn lives is definitely positive.

If I had some god-given certainty that any population with legal access to birth control would, independently of any soft pressure or incentives other than the force of the law, end up with fertility below replacement, then I would begrudgingly accept legal controls on it to prevent the extinction of the human race.

With anything less than said absolute certainty, I would attempt to explore a number of softer options. You could provide tax incentives and/or literally pay people to have children. You could attempt to increase the social status of good parents and shame childless people. You could attempt to advance technology to create artificial wombs and have the state make and raise babies (not at all an ideal outcome, but better than extinction or forcing people to breed against their will). You could explore the replacement rates of different subpopulations and attempt to preserve and promote cultures with higher fecundity. Maybe all the liberal white atheists voluntarily go extinct as their population exponentially declines, and they get replaced by immigrants and Amish people who keep having babies. I suppose a religion which forces people to avoid birth control taking over the population is comparable to just directly outlawing birth control, but not the same because people can leave. Maybe we end up in a long term equilibrium where 1/5 of the population are strongly religious with a reproductive rate of 3, and 4/5 of the population are atheists with a reproductive rate of 1/2, so the total population remains constant (1 religious person and 4 atheists have 3 and 2 kids in each group respectively), and some fraction of the religious children leave the faith every generation such that the sizes of each group remain constant.

There are a lot of possibilities that would mitigate the effects. Extinction of specific subgroups and cultures via demographic replacement is a valid and realistic concern for people who care about those subgroups and cultures. But I don't think extinction of the entire human species by perpetually lowered birthrates is a realistic threat unless some sort of chemical pollution actually destroys biological fecundity such that even people who want kids can't have them.

The cat that I'm referring to isn't having sex for fun, it's believing that you should be able to have sex for fun without incurring any consequences. That social attitude, which is enabled by contraception, is what (it seems plausible to me) creates the gravitational pull in favor of allowing abortion. Without that attitude, it's just seen as foolish conduct, not something that people are victims of and need to be rescued from.

All of the science shows that children with two parents have significantly better life outcomes

Is this true after controlling for money and intelligence?