domain:youtu.be
quiet_NaN
8m ago
I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to freeze a society as a given technological level.
You're in one right now, and you don't notice it because it's a massive worldwide co-ordinated effort by the most technologically-advanced nations.
This is one of the things the modern regulatory/bureaucratic state actively exists to do, as it's in its interest not to let technology develop that would make it more difficult to govern.
Modern reform governments, like the one in the US right now, tend to degrade the bureaucracy's ability to do this as its first order of business. Progressive-conservatives would rather make sure the seals aren't emotionally affected by your rocket launches.
The massively capital-intensive nature of manufacturing the highest technologies doesn't help either, of course.
zeke5123a
23m ago
This just isn’t the norm. As a general rule, PE buys an entity with debt. Banks don’t permit cash to leave the banking group.
The only time is when banks lend money to an existing PE owned business with the express intention of repatriation cash (ie a levered recap). Most liquidity events aren’t levered recaps. Moreover, banks aren’t interested in lending to businesses that will go bankrupt (ie banks don’t want to equitize their debt; they want to get paid back on the debt). So generally leveraged recaps will only occur when the risk of bankruptcy is remote.
None of this means all PE companies survive, but in generally PEs cannot successful generate returns by bankrupting companies.
The British were not kind to India.
They were incredibly kind to India as an imperial overlord.
They actually paid money to the Raj government when deploying Indian troops for imperial operations that didn't have to do with the defence of India. The cost of war would be borne by the British treasury, not the Indian treasury. India also got access to British technology and investment. When WW2 ended, India had twice the rail network of China.
In some respects India got a better deal than the US gives its allies today. Britain and Australia don't get rebates for joining in US wars in the Middle East, they get sneered at for not spending enough of their own money on 'defence'.
Who prevented Russia from gobbling up India in their southward push through Central Asia in the 19th century? Who protected India from the Japanese (world-class experts in the field of imperial cruelty)? The British, despite huge 'Quit India' protests. The Bengal Famine was mainly due to the Japanese invasion of Burma. Unsurprisingly, if rice imports from Burma are cut off and millions of refugees flee North, during a time of wartime strain, there will be problems in Bengal. Wherever the Japanese went, there was famine. Famine in the Philippines, famine in Indonesia, famine in China and famine in East India.
And we see the same incredible overgenerosity today where Indians/ex-Raj ethnicities get all kinds of special privileges in the UK - jobs that are safeguarded for non-whites, police refusing to crack down on them despite unmentionable abuses lest they seem racist. Then there's all the foreign aid they gave India post-independence.
India just finds it easier to blame Britain for everything that goes wrong, all the poverty that remains. It also helps unite the country, there's nothing so universally popular as hating and blaming outsiders. The British and Europeans generally did far more harm to China with the Opium Wars and unequal treaties (let alone the Japanese) yet China has come out well ahead of India today.
If the British were half as cruel as the Indian media likes to suggest, India would be a servile, loyal colony today. They could've liquidated Gandhi on the spot or prevented any Indian intellectual class emerging in the first place. They could've crushed any revolt with heavy-handed suppression, machine-gun fire, gas and incendiary attacks. Just imagine the amount of devastation they inflicted on rich, industrialized Germany, all the millions of men they put into the field instead redirected instead to repress India. Success would be assured. They could've used Indians as cheap labour in factories, instead they let them start their own trade unions. Britain even let Indians become the commercial class of East Africa, enjoying the fruits of empire as a subject.
Goldenpath
40m ago
I'd agree that for better or worse the 'capital T' Traditional world is dying. I think an important factor that's often overlooked is that the ubiquitous preindustrial peasant sustenance economies that dominated almost the entire globe 200 years ago are gone entirely or radically diminished today in Europe, America, East Asia and increasingly the developing world as well. Most old religious and cultural traditions were made by and for people who lived in in societies that were arranged very differently from ours, and these traditions served the needs and aspirations of the people who lived in these types of societies.
Obviously there are differences; Rome isn't Babylon, which isn't the kingdom of Mercia, which isn't the Delhi Sultanate etc. However, there are some very broad comonalities in premodern agricultural societies that dont apply to today. We aren't as subject to the seasons or time of day for our livelihoods anymore. Our lives arent determined by the will of a military aristocracy. Corvee labor isnt really a thing. I feel that if the spirit of our traditions is to continue into the future, it will need to confront and interact with the world we have, not the one our ancestors did.
For a tradition to survive it needs to retain its core foundational ideas, while simultaneously adapting its teachings and doctrine to the industrial world and really decide what they want to integrate vs discard. Are vtubers haram? Maybe. Is launching a nuclear war moral in X or Y circumstance? Maybe not. But I think that having these sorts of ready made answers would be a massive boon for most religions, even if the rulings are arbitrary or rely on esoteric theology.
No_one
41m ago
But to succeed, PE generally needs to in the aggregate sell businesses for more than it purchased them for.
It doesn't. It just needs to get more money, by say, buying back stock or paying dividends to themselves.
Forgive me for being a bit skeptical. The only time I came across PE was reading about the fate of US gun makers, where the PE invariably made things worse and their business model was basically exploit the good name of a company they bought by lowering quality and then saddle it with debt and finally let it go bankrupt.
E.g. Remington was bought for $360 million, immediately issued a billion $ worth of debt. 10 years later, 700 millions are written off in a bankruptcy, even though they sold off their buildings to a company owned by the PE group so they could rent them back.
KMC
1hr ago
You can't help but put words in my mouth.
The null hypothesis is the preamble of the constitution: we do this for ourselves and our children. Not for Koreans. No hate required.
And the Georgians agreed to these terms, at least until their partners failed to honor the agreement and then conquered Georgia. I don't think what they wanted for themselves has mattered since 1865, and certainly not since 1964.
Regardless, since 1789 states have not been allowed to set their own immigration policies, and so I need not be a Georgian, merely an American.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
I am skeptical of your general argument, yes.
I’d like to think this skepticism is rational rather than reflexive. It’s certainly not intended as commentary on your erudition.
OliveTapenade
1hr ago
Are you a Georgian? I still haven't seen any evidence that Georgians hate Koreans or are opposed to their presence in the state. Why should it be the null hypothesis that Georgians want these people out? Nothing in the top level post quoting the WSJ indicated that natives have any problems with the Koreans, and the Koreans seem to contributing well to the local economy and cultural acclimatising to American ways, including by taking English names. I can find the full article by archiving it and there seems to be positivity there, including by Georgian government officials. Some local union workers have complained, but it also seems like most of these Koreans have come legally, consistent with Georgia's laws.
I mean, this mostly seems like a model minority situation to me. Koreans have mostly come to Georgia via the legal process, which Georgians themselves established via their state government, and those that have come have respected the local culture, worked hard, and tried to fit in.
Now, sure, maybe native Georgians hate them for some reason and want them to go, but you can't just assume that as your starting point. Be careful not to typical-mind here - maybe you don't think Koreans should live alongside Americans, but it is hardly clear that that is a majority opinion in Georgia.
At any rate, some Koreans coming to Georgia to live and work there, if consistent with Georgia's existing laws, cannot be said to constitute 'replacement' in any reasonable sense of the word.
KMC
1hr ago
I'd prefer a borderer or WASP to a tueton, and I'd prefer my borderer to be married to an American and not a foreigner. At least he's half-scot.
But you dance with the one that brought you, and you fight with the soldiers you have.
Hieronymus
1hr ago
I’d like to break the “retvrn question” down along two axes. One is the criteria of evaluation: truth, helpfulness, and social attainability. The other is the spectrum ideologies under discussion: groups who agree on critiques of liberal modernity have very different ideas of the right path forward.
Truth
The criterion of truth is the most important, and it’s the only one to apply to questions of metaphysics and religious doctrine. You, I, and society, should seek to believe true things. Is willingness to buck the social consensus here liberal? Not necessarily. First-century Jewish Christians stood against the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Sanhedrin; first-century gentile Christians contrasted even more starkly with the pagan social order.
This does contradict some critics of liberalism: neoreactionaries and some rightward-inclined rationalists want to talk about religion in utilitarian terms. But they are wrong to do so. We have a duty to the truth; even if we didn’t, the cost of ignoring it is beating one’s head fruitlessly against the brick will of reality.
Helpfulness
Helpfulness is, if not more controversial, then definitely less objective. There are always tradeoffs to be made. And the variety of liberalism’s critics becomes obvious here. You may be thinking about neoreactionaries or integralists. But I, as someone who loves American classical liberalism, share concerns with these other critics.
One is that increased social and religious diversity has exposed cracks in liberal principles that were safely papered over in a more coherent society. Much discourse and litigation over religious liberty since the middle of the twentieth century is a fight between three groups of people: people who want to pass laws and to expect those laws to be followed, people who expect freedom of religion to keep the government from making their religious duties illegal, and people who expect freedom from religion to exclude religious considerations from the regulated sphere of life.
Another is that the synthesis of progressivism and liberalism seeks state intervention to free individuals from the influences of their families, churches, and other societies of private life. No-fault divorce is now ubiquitous. Governments forbid male-only fraternal organizations. Some state universities de facto ban religious student groups by requiring them to admit as members or officers those who don’t share their convictions. After a while one begins to think that liberalism as it exists will not leave well enough alone; and if the state is to intervene, I want it intervening to support my idea of the good and not to ban it.
I think there are more people in this camp than there are neoreactionaries and integralists. We thought parts of liberalism were pretty swell, but they haven’t worked out as promised. Was that contingent on the winds of politics? Or could liberalism only support a healthy society so long as there was enough of Christendom left as a foundation? It’s difficult to say.
Social Attainability
I really don’t what is attainable, particularly in the long run. I don’t think we Americans in 2006 could predict where the country would be in 2015, less than a decade later. Heck, I don’t think that in January 2016 we could predict where we would be in November 2016. Much is in flux.
You are right that we won’t see a return to medieval Christendom. But that’s not the only alternative to liberalism. And I worry that we’ve lost healthy classical liberalism anyway, that that option is no longer attainable.
No_one
1hr ago
The court case also establishes that the RSP person of interest, suspected of leading the RSP shooting from areas not under control of the police, has been accused of- though not proven to be in an Ukrainian court of law- having been secretly under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
You should explain what 'RSP' in this context even means.
have been easier for the Ministry of Interior to find fanatics in Ukraine, even if the nationalistic fanatics for a MOI-conspiracy would p
Are you suggesting the MOI was interested in .. shooting their own officers, making them retreat and give up ground and escalating a protest into a bloodbath ? Why? At the day in question, the snipers caused the police to retreat and give up ground. None of this was in the interest of MOI or the government.
Thus, as was established by the results of the court proceedings, on February 20, 2014, in the period from 05:00 a.m. 30 min. until 9 a.m. unidentified persons used firearms to attack law enforcement officers, as a result of which 3 law enforcement officers were killed, and another 39 received gunshot wounds. A shot from a rifle in the direction of a law enforcement officer indicates that the accused began to implement the intention to kill such employees - the Supreme Court also drew attention to this (ruling dated 08.11.2022 in case No. 446/838/21, source: https:// reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/105774898). Responding to the situation, which as of 8 a.m. 30 min. formed in the epicenter of the confrontation, individual units and groups of law enforcement officers began to independently and spontaneously leave their positions, which caused a further massive and disorganized retreat of law enforcement officers as a whole. Taking advantage of these panicked actions of the law enforcement officers, the activists also spontaneously and en masse went beyond their barricades and began to chase and attack the law enforcement forces with the use of "Molotov cocktails". In this way, the activists advanced up the street. Instytutskaya behind the bridge above it, the positions of law enforcement officers at the intersection of St. Instytutska and Khreshchatyk near building No. 7/11 (Ukrkoopspilka), forcing one part of them to flee down the stairs to the October Palace, and the other - in the direction of European Square. In the future, the activists also took under their control the nearest to the street. Khreschatyk (left) entrance to the building of the October Palace and approached the central entrance to it.
This make absolutely no sense as false flag. You are here saying you suspect this was police action. Right.
(that the RSP were protestors who were secretly affiliated with the government, who wanted the protestors to be attributed as responsible in the chaos).
The shooting was coming from the part of the hotel where hardline nationalists were residing in. It's incredibldy naive to say the maidan protesters who were pretty well organized would have let their premises be used by armed provocateurs from the MOI ? That's.. quite a claim. If armed nationalists were in the hotel, which they were according to the testimonies, they'd not have let armed strangers in there.
They raise data on how a false-flag attack was carried out, not why a false flag was carried out or in whose service.
That's your conclusion based on your emotional requirements. The snipers who fired from nationalist positions could not have been MOI controlled unless the MOI was somehow involved in staging the coup itself and actually was running parts of Maidan. No force in a situation like this is going to let armed men it doesn't know walk around precisely bc of danger of provocateurs etc. Clearly, the shooters were known to the nationalists in Hotel Ukraine.
kky
1hr ago
Self-sacrifice, I think, is born in part of the realization that nothing important is sacrificed.
If people believe the “self” is paramount, they will sacrifice everything at that altar. That’s a pretty tidy modus ponens. Reality is that the self is nothing but a heat haze. It comes, and it passes. There are other things more enduring. Duty, for instance. Then it’s easy to do things that are hard.
The other day, my father said to me: “I don’t really feel pain as deeply as other people. I think it’s because, in my youth, I had a few times when I was in really intense pain, and couldn’t do anything about it. So, I suppose, my body learned it wasn’t anything life-threatening. So it doesn’t bother me any more.” So too threats to the “self.” One lives through them. But enforcing it, I think, may just make it worse. Simply support them. Show the fruits of another life, and they may be persuaded.
Shrike
1hr ago
I don't think the tension between living in a liberal society and holding liberal values (classically defined) while living conservative lives is quite as large a gap as is often suggested. Most religious denominations are quite comfortable with liberal values – for example today the Catholic Church's official position is that religious freedom is good, and I think most religious people (in the USA) are quite comfortable with liberalism as classically defined.
Liberalism, it seems to me, is a problem for a small subset of intellectuals who say "if the rule that you followed led to this, of what use was the rule?" I wouldn't necessarily say this is a bad question to ask, but I think a lot of times it results (or stems from) a sort of terminal thinking, the idea that because a democracy led to bad things, it will lead to more bad things in the future. But of course it's quite possible that (classical) liberalism will snap back – the Americans of the 1760s were liberals, it's entirely possible for classical liberalism to accommodate extremely conservative sentiments.
My point here isn't that I think RETVRN TO THE 1790s is going to happen at the voter box, exactly. But societies evolve in unpredictable ways. And because we know that classical liberalism worked quite effectively (arguably much more effectively) with conservative social mores in the past, if liberal social mores are unsustainable – as they now in many ways seem to be – it's quite reasonable to be optimistic about conservative social mores within the framework of classical liberalism in the future. That's not a RETVRN in my mind – the only way out is through. Likely we will not see a return to 1790. We shouldn't want to! What we should want is a 2040 that is better than a 2024, better even than a 1790. And if conservative social mores are good, then although they might be to some degree different in the age of AI and automobiles, building a better future means building one with conservative social mores.
Perhaps I'm missing your point here – feel free to correct me if so!
cjet79
1hr ago
I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to freeze a society as a given technological level. The Amish have done it. I think some Buddhist groups in Asia do it. Vows of poverty by monks in Catholicism sort of have a similar effect.
If any people in a particular time period feel like they are at an optimal balance of culture and technology, they could run a tech freeze. As long as they can shelter in a larger culture that will prevent invasions.
The fact that it happens so rarely leads me to believe that everyone has some nostalgia glasses on and believe they just missed the golden ages that were their childhood. Rarely is anyone satisfied with the current culture enough to attempt to lock it in place and preserve it. Or they are some combination of optimistic about the future and powerless in the present.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1hr ago
why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects?
A Christ shorn of his supernatural aspects is just a charismatic ascetic who bamboozled some poor and sick people by saying spooky unverifiable nonsense. Judged purely by his personality characteristics and by the very limited record of his non-supernatural deeds, he does not come off as some great hero, nor even a stellar lifestyle role model. (He died unmarried, childless, and with seemingly no wealth, possessions, or notable professional achievements.)
I am facing this exact problem right now as I am trying to seek a religious tradition and community. Reading the Bible, I am struck yet again by how little the figure of Christ resonates with me. If one cannot bring oneself to take the leap of faith to believe that he truly was exactly what he said he was and all of his prophecies are of deep import, then it’s easy to interpret the Gospels and Acts as the record of a bunch of fairly reasonable local institutions displaying a quite healthy fear of a revolutionary doctrine urging their populace to leave their jobs and families to go follow a madman ascetic into the desert.
The faith which I’m currently earnestly investigating (Mormonism) believes that Jesus Christ was sent to earth to, among other things, set the example of the Perfect Man; humans can progress toward divinity by striving to emulate the example set by him and to try to become more Christ-like. But the best I can muster regarding Christ is that he was an example, among others, of a life path worth emulating. Certainly he has admirable characteristics — his charitable spirit toward the downtrodden, his interpersonal leadership skills, his obvious self-control and abstention from vice — but we absolutely do not want every individual in our society to attempt to emulate his life or deeds as closely as possible. There are other figures, historical or religious/mythological, who ought to be seen as equally valid life models worthy of emulation.
Shrike
1hr ago
Believing in God just because, assenting to a teaching just because — that’s gone. Intelligent people need to be persuaded.
I think this has pretty much always been the case. Apologetics is a very old discipline for this reason.
So if people are willing to die for a cause that has no supernatural aspects, why shouldn’t they be willing to live selflessly for a Christ that has no supernatural aspects?
This is underdiscussed (in part because of what those people did) but people absolutely are and this explains a lot of the last century and a half or so. Progressivism took some moral cues and language from Christianity but in practice was often essentially materialistic. I think this was truer in Europe than in the United States but as I understand it lot of mainline Protestantism was retreating from the supernatural and fiddling with cool new social causes to usher in a utopia as you say. Embarrassingly, those causes turned out to be things like "eugenics" and "banning alcohol" and a lot of the "progress" that was made was unwound and then memory-holed, but people are absolutely willing to live selflessly for a Christ with no supernatural aspects.
Part of the problem is that when you strip the supernatural aspects from Christ, there's not much left that isn't subject to radical reinterpretation (if you read the Gospels Christ arguably tends to rain on utopian parades in favor of, well, the supernatural gift of everlasting life). Hence the modern progressives are basically radically opposed to their forebears from 100 years ago even despite the much-remarked-upon resemblance of "woke progressivism" to a "secular" "religion" – the through-line is essentially the same. What's missing is consistency – progressivism has flitted from cause to cause and emphasis to emphasis from decade to decade. I don't think religions are free of this at all, but grounding the authority of a religion in a transcendent supernatural does provide a focal point for a religion to return to. Progressives of today can't return to the writings of their forebears from the 1880s or 1920s because those guys were all incredibly racist by today's standards and nobody – not even the authors – are claiming to be inspired.
Marxism comes the closest to this – and perhaps this explains its enduring power – because it claims to be a MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE and thus inevitable, which is a sneaky way of claiming to be infallible WITHOUT invoking the Divine.
Earendil
Then over Middle-Earth he passed
1hr ago
The next target appears to be globalism.
Kinda weirdly the opposite, actually, in a twisted way. Good guess though. But wasn't this chapter against globalism?
Tagged you in another post about the trans stuff. Thanks for reading.
KMC
2hr ago
Why not forever?
Because I'm being reasonable.
What will have changed by then to merit any tolerance of foreigners, if their presence is so noxious now?
The same thing that happened d to the Germans in the 20th century. No gobbledegook languages on public signage or ballots or ducking welfare applications. First names like Kyle and John and Susan, even if the last names as Rodeiguez and Pham. And intermarriage, so that foreigners don't just produce more foreigners amongst themselves.
We did this all before, and I want to do it again. The blueprint is right there.
KMC
2hr ago
I'm comparing people to plants and just like a plant where it's not wanted is a weed, a person where they're not wanted is a foreigner.
They can go back to their garden, where my kind of plant isn't allowed to grow.
I think this is a misrepresentation of the scenario. Is the state of Georgia like your garden bed? Are the Koreans choking out native Georgians? That's not clear at all.
The garden is the country or state. Citizens are both the plants and the gardener, just as man is both sculptor and marble.
Foreigners do suppress native birth rates, even more so when they are of another race. They compete for housing and employment, driving the cost of the former up and the wages of the latter down.
It's not even clear how race or ethnicity is relevant
I can't force you to see something you're choosing to ignore. It's clear as day to me, as obvious as the nose on your face.
People like their own kind (kind as in kin).
the issue is that Koreans consume more resources
If you want to grow a dandelion bed, then grass is a weed. If you want a lawn, dandelions are weeds. If you want a rose garden, both grass and dandelions are weeds. The problem isn't Koreans, it's grass in my rose garden, or dandelions in my lawn.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2hr ago
That same article also claims "Immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment."
At some point according to this paywalled CNN article, DHS (in the person of assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin, not anyone from ICE) said the arrest was for "alleged assault".
I'm not offended, but will note that I have a lot of smart friends who have argued over this with me time and again, and have convinced many — but never, ever the ones with mixed-race children.
I don't actually know that about you for sure but will guess. And apologies if that seems crass; I think it's both pertinent and illuminating.
With the labor force constrained to the people currently living here, when we want to do >Y production, we can bid up the wages for it, or we can figure out ways to produce more efficiently, both of which are strong, socially-positive alternatives to simply capping production. Importing more workers achieves neither.
You have gall, I'll give you that.
The other effect keeping to a fixed pool of labor provides, it seems to me, is that there is less incentive to simply write off the sort of people you evidently hold in such contempt. If we cannot simply export jobs or import cheap foreign labor, we have a vested interest in keeping our people from turning into human waste, and a vested interest in salvaging absolutely any of them that we can. It appears to me that you are rating these people as worthless in order to continue the process by which they lost their worth.
I was recently reading an article about drug problems, and it mentioned the communities that have been blighted by drugs "since the economic upheaval of the 90s". the 90s was when we started buying in to the pitch you're making here. I remember that pitch when it was new, how there would be some disruption but the economic prosperity would lift all boats. I remember small towns with their town squares, full of bustling businesses and broad-based prosperity. I drive through some of those old town squares now; they're uniformly ghost towns, boarded up and crumbling. We were foolish to buy the pitch then. Buying it now requires a special sort of derangement.
Adopting your view necessarily means devaluing our countrymen. If I'm going to devalue my countrymen, I'm going to do it for more fitting reasons than pecuniary interest.
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