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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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Also funny pics to keep the attention.

Kulak is finally living up to the libertarian/objectivist ideal of ruthless optimization.

Galeev, by the way, is lately posting in Russian on the futility of developing unique products in peripheral countries:

[…] 3. The most complex, but also the most interesting case. The development is there, it works, it is really unique - and yet objectively not bad. If it were at the centre of the world system, it might even have a future. But it is taking place on the semi-periphery, so there is no future for it and there won't be one. It will remain unique.

The relationship between the centre and the periphery/semi-periphery is asymmetrical. Original solutions - technological, economic, or anything else - can emerge anywhere. The problem with the semi-periphery is not that original solutions don't emerge here, but that they don't scale.

The scaling happens in the centre. Here an original and promising solution may be seen, invested in, polished and brought to fruition. And then, in a package with other ready-made solutions, they export it to the semi-periphery. Which in most cases is the most grateful and solvent consumer for the producers of solutions from the centre

This is generally understandable. From the point of view of the managers and authorities in the semi-periphery, buying a ready-made package of solutions from the centre >>> creating their own solutions. They are, incidentally, almost always right: imported solutions are indeed better. Largely because the centre has the environment and infrastructure to bring them to fruition, while the semi-periphery does not. And because of this fact, it is doomed to perpetual catch-up, while its truly unique and truly good solutions are doomed to remain unique

Uniqueness = (In the best case scenario) inability to scale

His tweeting style is designed to scale. So is Kulak's. It's not unique but it gets the job done.

Kulak is finally living up to the libertarian/objectivist ideal of ruthless optimization.

Yeah, apparently he keeps a spreadsheet of all his tweets to track how well they do and he's reposting old ones now that he has more followers.

Galeev, by the way, is lately posting in Russian on the futility of developing unique products in peripheral countries:

Yes, and note that Kulak is writing about the US even though he's Canadian. He often writes about specific things that have no applicability to Canada at all, like the legality of advocating for revolution. This is a criminal offence in Canada.

Its ambiguous... I avow Marxist political economy ( but libertarian actual economics)...

So it'd be a struggle for them to actually prosecute me without defacto claiming that all marxist deserve jail time or worse.