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On the failed peace negotiations and the US blockade of Iranian oil
This started out as a reply to last week's CW post about the Islamabad negotiations having failed, but then I got into the blockade and decided to drag this to the new CW threat instead.
When Trump chickened out of becoming one of the top four genociders of all time by ending Iranian civilization, he called the Iranian ten point plan a "workable basis on which to negotiate". I was a bit surprised by that (call me naive for being surprised by anything out of of the White House), given that this plan was basically the wish-list of Iran,
but then again I am not a "stable genius" master negotiator.Honestly, I thought this was the best outcome the world was going to get. The world gets their dirty energy fix. Iran gets on the order of a dollar a barrel in transit fees, whatever. Perhaps Iran and Israel nuke each other in the next decade, but at this point I can not really bring myself to care -- religious crazies will do as religious crazies do, and the best thing the civilized world can do is to stay the hell out of it.
Presumably, at some point, someone in the White House thought to actually read the ten point proposal, and noticed that it would place Iran in a strictly better strategic position than before the start of Trump's special military operation. I am kind of amazed that they took 21 hours to realize that they had no overlap. I think Vance rejected anything which was not the miracle victory Trump would need not to get slaughtered in the mid-terms, and Iran was unlikely to budge on key issues such as the control of the strait or their nuclear program, whose strategic importance Israel and the US had just made blatantly obvious.
People have been pointing out that the Trump timeline was obviously never meant for production use for a decade, but lately things have been going to shit at an accelerated pace.
Now Trump has apparently announced that the US is going to block the strait of Hormuz. I wonder who could have given them that idea, and expect Trump to announce that the US will start enriching uranium next week and the US will start funding Shia proxies in May.
More seriously, a blockade is an act of war. Arguably, it is not only an act of war against the country being blockaded, but also against any neutral country who wants to peacefully trade with the blockaded country.
Not all blockades are created equally. When Kennedy blocked the peaceful trade of medium-range ballistic missiles between the USSR and Cuba, he could point out that actually this was a rather narrow blockade aimed to interdict a specific strategic weapon.
Iran's blockade is much harder to justify. Saudi oil being sold to Europe or Asia is not of direct military importance for any conflict Iran is currently fighting, their blockade is a weapon aimed at global trade itself. This makes them a rogue state and gives any country which trades oil with the gulf states a legitimate casus belli against Iran: simply send a single tanker under your flag through the strait claiming innocent passage. Either Iran sinks it, in which case you have war, or it does not, in which case you have no blockade.
The problem is that Iran does not exactly care, which is sound strategy given their situation. Blocking the strait is their one way to squeeze the balls of the world economy to exert pressure on the US, of course they are doing it.
Some strategists might notice that the United States find themselves in a slightly different situation than Iran. So far, they have not been considered a rogue nation willing to wreck the global economy to exert pressure on their opponents.
A US blockade of oil tankers bound for Iran would be as little justified as the Iranian blockade, but like the Iranian regime, they would probably get away with it. China is sadly not in the position to champion the free, peaceful trade between nations by sinking a few US aircraft carriers blockading Iran. Everyone can see that trying to end Iran's capability to block Hormuz will be a military mistake, trying to attack the US over their blockade will end just as badly.
Of course, this strategy will also not work very well for the US.
The Iranian blockade works because the median US voter reasonably cares more about the prices of gas than the regime in Tehran. Oil is the lifeblood of the economy, even a modest disruption will wreck the economy to a far greater degree than what a US presidency can survive.
The US blockade will not work because the Iranian regime cares a lot more about who rules in Tehran than their quarterly growth numbers. The US and Israel just spent tens of billions in bombing the shit out of Iran, with the net result of hardening their will to resist (if only someone had warned us!).
The idea that economic constraints might achieve what getting bombed did not seems absurd. Put bluntly, the regime in Tehran can survive a year with Hormuz being closed (especially as there are countries in whose strategic interest it will be to support them, even if they can't buy their oil, in the same manner in which NATO countries support Ukraine). The one on DC can not.
A chess grandmaster often has different objectives he achieves with a single move. Likewise, Trump has an uncanny ability to make strategic blunders which hurt American interests in a lot of different ways.
In the grand scheme of things, Iran does not matter. However, the US is just establishing that they consider broad trade blockades of enemies a legitimate strategy. This seems foolish not just in principle but because there is a country which matters which might be vulnerable to blockades, which is Taiwan.
(So far, China has been the adult in the room, refraining from any special military operation adventures. The CCP might be evil and bend on world domination, but at least they seem competent. Xi Jinping seems to have object permanence and an inclination to stay out of social media, both qualities which I find aesthetically pleasing in world leaders, and as far as avoiding a paperclip maximizer goes, I trust the CCP more than I would trust Altman, Zuckerberg and Musk. Still, looking at this timeline, it seems sadly possible that Xi Jinping might decide to walk in the footsteps of other elderly world leaders and decide to fuck up the world a bit before he exits the stage.)
Purely on capabilities, it does not matter if there is a precedent for a blockade of Taiwan or not. But narratives matter, especially when allies are concerned. Before, China blockading trade to Taiwan would have been an outrage. Now, they can simply point out that just as the US prohibits Chinese oil tanker from approaching Iranian ports on pain of war, China is blockading western container ships approaching Taiwan.
Where in his tweet dies he call for mass murder with intent to eliminate Iranian as an ethnic group? He is clearly using "civilization" as a synonym for the Islamic Republic regime. A clear stretch of the term, but less of a stretch than calling a total regime change, a genocide, as you are, and many in the mass media are implying.
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Orbán defeated
As I wrote about it yesterday, Orbán's defeat was clear from the polls, but the scale of it wasn't so sure and it is massive. If you'd like some background on what the topics and issues of the campaign were (not the typical culture wars that many online threads try to shoehorn this into) check that post, but let's now look at the results and what could come.
It's a landslide with a bigger supermajority (around 138-140 seats of 199) than any of Orbán's victories in the last 16 years (the largest was 135 seats). The turnout was 80%, the largest of all free elections since 1990 by a good margin (Orbán's previous defeat in 2002 held the record with 73.5% turnout).
However, this was not only a defeat of Orbán but also of the old opposition. The Socialist party (the legal successor of the old communist state party from before 1990) and its spinoff previously headed by the former Socialist PM Gyurcsány (2004-2009) have been demolished too. The new parliament will be filled with many new faces, and most of them are young enough that they were not involved with or socialized under the pre-1990 system - which I see as a very positive development - and they were also not politicians of either the left or the right in more recent times.
This parliament will have three parties, the broad-tent center-right pro-EU Tisza (138-140 seats), Orbán's pro-Putin right-wing Fidesz (53-55), and the radical nationalist / antivax-right Mi Hazánk (6). The left-wing and progressive liberal parties did not run for the election and instead supported Tisza. This extra-parliamentary party landscape is quite small, but the liberal-progressive centrist Momentum stands out as one that may have a chance to return in a more proportional electoral system and had at least in the past passed the 5% threshold in an EU Parliament election. The green Dialogue for Hungary is only relevant as being the party of the liberal mayor of Budapest, but never had significant measurable support. Now I haven't mentioned the last party who contested yesterday's election: the formerly joke party Two-Tailed Dog Party received less than 1% of the vote and are on the way to irrelevance. It is therefore a moment where the whole political system is prime for refreshment.
Tisza is unlikely to remain as such a broadly popular party. Their main feature is and was in this election that they could form one unified block under a charismatic leader who could unite all opposing sentiment to Orbán's system, from various disparate directions, while not being tainted by the "old opposition". Previously the opposition block always had in its ranks the despised pre-2010 Socialists and their spinoff Democratic Coalition (DK), which simply could not gather the necessary amount of votes. Magyar managed to win by remaining a blank slate on which anyone can project their desires. He avoided divisive topics in the campaign. He promised to keep the southern border fence and not to accept a migration deal, but didn't talk much about the asylum system and immigration. He does not support a fast-tracking of Ukraine's EU membership, but he is against Putin and much less hostile to Ukraine than Orbán. Magyar did not take part in the Pride march last year, which was banned by Orbán and anyway turned out to become the largest participation ever in a Pride march. He supported it in generic terms, the liberty to love who you want etc., but didn't focus on these topics. Instead he toured the countryside in national costumes, always carrying the Hungarian flag, singing folk songs at rallies, visiting Hungarian communities in neighboring countries, wearing national symbols, referring to historical heroes, national poets etc. However, his party does contain more liberal people as well, and social issues will likely be led by Kriszta Bódis who wrote illustrated children's books about gay love and so on. As I said, it is a heterogeneous block.
The supermajority allows reshaping Hungary from the ground up. Magyar has already promised to create a new constitution, and in contrast to Orbán's single-party constitution, it shall be voted on by the people in a referendum. He already called for the resignation of president of the republic Tamás Sulyok, who is even less significant of a figure than would be implied by the symbolic nature of the presidency in Hungary - he is for all intents and purposes an Orbán puppet who signs all laws without question, just like the previous presidents have been in his system. Magyar promises to also join the European Public Prosecutor's Office, and review EU and state fund mismanagement and corruption, to investigate FM Szijjarto's Russian ties and to retrieve stolen wealth by Orbán's inner circle. Such promises we have already seen many times when governments were changed, and usually nothing came of it, there were background deals and the economic sector found new ways to get close to the new system. What may be different this time is that Magyar seems to have a real personal motivation to see the old regime prosecuted. And there is massive public expectation of this and failing to deliver could destabilize this patchwork coalition, as the main topics holding it together are being outraged by Orbán's corruption and the state of public services, and the state of the propaganda media. Improving the education system and hospitals and the punctuality of trains is a much slower and harder task especially when the economy is on a downturn. So he will need some symbolic wins.
Overall, what I see is that post-1990 Hungary had an era of somewhat naive attempt at copying western democracy, switching the governing side each 4 years, until around 2006-2010 which was the first big flip and disillusionment and phase change into the Orbán era, and now there is another big reordering and phase change. I believe Hungarians, mainly the intellectuals, have become much less naive than they were in the 90s. Orbán ditched many unwritten rules and will have a hard time to criticize anything Tisza may do, including using legal trickery to remove Orbán's puppets from high positions even if they were elected for 9 or 12 years (except the chairman of the national bank, whom he said he'd leave there not to scare the markets) and to starve off Orbán's economic empire. Anything Magyar may do, there will be plenty of examples to point to in Orbán's conduct, and backed by an even larger mandate with record turnout, it will be difficult to claim that all this is really done by Brussels and Zelensky. Of course Magyar will want to present himself as not simply copying Orbán's methods. One big promise is to introduce a two-term limit for prime ministers, which is unusual in parliamentary systems, but signals that he doesn't have ambitions for serving as long as Orbán.
I love that his name is Peter Magyar. Imagine if the POTUS was called Joe America.
A Kiwi Farms user claims:
The USAian person most often memed in an equivalent manner is Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.
Also Cseh (Czech) and Rácz (Serb) are quite common, and somewhat less common Orosz (Russian), Görög (Greek), Ruszin (Ruthenian).
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Reading a recent shagbark post about how women are attracted to men who don't have bosses over 'wagies', I found myself thinking about owning a business. As as American it's obviously glorified, but I'm wondering if it's easier to own a business now than it was in the past?
Seems to my relatively uneducated mind that over time in America owning a business has in some ways gotten harder, some ways easier. Nowadays you can do the online business, make money not doing anything physical, just using your wits and social network, basically. Forms can be filled out electronically, etc etc.
On the other hand, back in the day it seems most Americans used to be business owners, especially when more rural lifestyles were more common. Folks owned farms, or a general store, and didn't really have many forms to fill out, though of course they paid (much lower) taxes.
Anyway as a somewhat half-assed tie in to the culture war - which tribe is better for business? Red tribe nominally wants to be but... they also seem to not follow through with that a lot. Blue tribe has become more kleptocratic lately. Maybe it's a tossup?
As a serial entrepreneur I can give it a mixed review. Starting a business is hell, operating a reasonably successful business is superior to being an employee. Most companies fail, so most entrepreneurs will only experience the hell.
The difference between being self employed or freelancing and running a product company is vast and underappreciated. A freelancer is effectively an employee constantly chasing new contracts. Job stability is traded for higher income and higher flexibility. This path is works for self-motivated competent people. My best advice is to find freelancing work first and then start freelancing. Don't quit your job to start looking for freelancing gigs.
Product companies are a different beast. Developing a product or a service costs far more than you expect, takes longer than you expect, and it is harder to sell than you expect. There are so many aspects of a company and if you fail one, your company fails. A few years down the line life gets better. I don't have that much to do any more. Tech team has its road map, customer support has some questions, sales and tech team are bickering as usual, and I need to settle their dispute. I have a few candidates to interview. Other than that not much happens. More time is spent eating lunch and maintaining relations with people than actually working. Building and creating processes and institutional knowledge from thin air is tough, keeping them in maintenance mode isn't nearly as hard.
As for dating being an entrepreneur is a terrible idea. Expect to work far more than average. Expect to be in a world with 90% men. Replying to tinder messages is mentally taxing when you have dozens of unanswered slack messages and emails. Being in the right headspace for a date is tough when one of the investors is acting up and making absurd demands on a call a few minutes before the date. As you become successful you will be invited into new social circles. These social circles consist of married men who are older than you and who don't now 25 year old women. Women are far less interested in hearing about your startup than you think. It takes years to make a business profitable and during these years you are broke, over worked and don't have a real job according to women. You can have a company with 100k in monthly revenue and a team. If your expenses are 100k you make no money and women think you are unemployed spending your life on a hobby.
The stereotype of the new money man with a golddigger isn't purely based on the poor taste of new money. If you are stressed, only know men, work crazy hours and don't have time to date gold diggers will be the women you meet. Who will chase a guy on tinder who is average looking and rarely replies but has a fancy watch? A guy in a bar who doesn't go out a lot and hasn't had much flow with women for years and is severely sleep-deprived will only impress certain types of Asian and Eastern European women.
If you want to meet women get a job with average pay that is a bit relaxed and where you meet a lot of women.
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Can't really give you advice for the US, but at least in Germany you're 100% better of being a wagie. The entire system is clearly designed around you, especially the tax system, but also benefits, insurance, absolutely everything. My wife got a free 10k "stipend" as support from the government for her "women-led startup" when our second child was small so she was still partially in maternal leave. It was extremely stressful since we had to communicate with multiple agencies to find out how this is handled and the majority of their staff literally told us they have absolutely no idea, so we got bumped up to the local boss ... who also told us they have no idea, lol. After a while we found out at least that, despite being called a "stipend" which in academia is usually not considered an income, this one is anyway since there legally is no such thing as a stipend for a business, apparently.
The best part? Since the staff from the family office was hopelessly out of her depth on how to handle it in general, we structured my wife's maternal leave in such a way that she claimed was best so that we at least know how much maternal benefit we still get (greatly reduced, but at least we get no surprises from the family office). A few months later insurance calls us, and tells us that my wife has fallen out of the public insurance: Due to the structuring she is now considered fully self-employed. To add insult to injury, the way we originally intended to do it would have not led to this complication, it was entirely a result of our negotiations with the family office. Suddenly she has to pay a few hundred € every month that we wouldn't have to otherwise. We recently calculated it out - taxes on the stipend, lost benefits, extra insurance costs - and we got basically nothing out of the stipend compared to my wife being 100% in maternal leave for the entire time. It was a lot of extra stress and work, almost entirely spent on negotiations with legal bodies, for no benefit for anyone at all whatsoever.
Also, by my impression going up the corporate ladder of some BigCorp has a much better floor AND a better ceiling unless you're exceptionally confident in yourself. But it probably depends highly on the field, in some it seems to be unavoidable that you have to do a a jump from wagie to self-employed when going up the ladder, like attorney partnerships.
On the tribes, in very general terms blue is worse on pushing bureaucracy, but red fucks up international business.
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