Youtube comments of Andre Falksmen (@andrefalksmen1264).
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@andyramirez9872 my PhD is an economics, and while I typically deal with much more contemporary issues, I've done enough historical research to know that your argument is insane.
First off, the British East India Company was immensely profitable as an enterprise, and end of company rule did not mean any reduction in the profitability of India as a colony, the vast sums of opium which British sold into China was grown and india, the British milked the Indian population through taxes and impost, and of decimated their domestic textile Market through forced Imports of British textiles. It is the same story over and over again with the European empires, they extracted labor and resources, often through concessions to private companies, to their colonies. At no time, aside from in the white dominions, did they ever seek to expand great amounts of money developing their colonies as self-sufficient entities. They're expressed policy was the exact opposite.
Ask for america, I don't know what part of the world you live in but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Firstly, America was not a major industrial power until the beginning of the 20th century, prior to World War 1 America's largest export was cotton. Furthermore, throughout the 19th century America's federal government was financed through a general tariff, and the primary ports that generated the revenue for the federal government, and the funds they needed to conquer more lands to the west to continue their colonial the price, was the ports of the slave holding south. Slavery did not simply benefit the slave holder, it was the foundational benefit of the entire United states. At the time, they were not shy about admitting the centrality of Slavery to the functionality of the prosperity of the United states. If you want to understand this more thoroughly, see the writings of John C Calhoun. Lastly, America was also a deterred Nation prior to World War i, and then that was primarily owed to British creditors who's wealth came from distracting resources in the British Empire.
If you want to understand the centrality of slavery, colonialism, and genocide to the American Enterprise see the book The half has never been told. If you want to understand how Americans viewed the benefits of slavery see John C Calhoun's disposition on government. As far as the European Empires go there are so many books. I doubt that you have done serious research on the matter.
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@bertanelson8062 I wouldn't necessarily say it's up to the people, people power is grossly overrated, the people are easily manipulated and deluded. However, the economic and political Elites of West Africa have grown disillusioned with the West in every sense of the word and even with liberal democracy, they've seen the success of China. They have experienced the racism and abuse of the West, they're ready to end the"International Partnerships ". They know the value of natural resources, they know that their wealth is being plundered by the corrupt and by the West, I just want the West out and internal sovereignty. This is more dangerous than it sounds, because from what I'm hearing on the ground, this is not a matter of passive resistance. Those who slip up and make themselves allies of the West, openly, are risking death.
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@100c0c yeah, that would be a nice thought, unfortunately it's not looking that way.
I am an economist, I can come to the data, there's no country in the world besides China which is headed on course to have a significant impact. Since the 1990s there are only three countries which have been on track to enter the first world ranks.
The first, is obviously china, the other two are actually moving faster, but they are very small, that is Kazakhstan and azerbaijan. They're combined population is smaller than beijing.
When we look around the world, we see a West deep in Decline, with an aging population, unfunded social welfare obligations, stagnant socio political structures which require structural adjustment which is not politically feasible, and current account deficits.
Germany, the last of the western Nations to hold out as an industrial producer, has sacrificed itself to the American delusion of defeating Putin in ukraine.
When we look outside the west, the situation does not look promising. Obviously South Korea will continue to hold its own. Beyond that, there are no countries that are making the economic, structural, or political reforms, to set themselves up for development. India is a vain hope for those who foolishly think there is an alternative to china. Indonesia could be a force, but I don't see the Indonesians disciplined enough to climb the value chain with their natural resources. The Turks, long before erdogan, won't give up their love of Keynesian economics and constant inflationary policies.
To whom do you turn, there's no one!
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@andyramirez9872 taking just a few of your points. Your claim that slavery was almost only profitable to the slaveholder is absurd, and contradictory to the contemporary evidence and statements to the time. The entirety of American industrialization was built on slavery, not merely the revenue generated from the income of the consumption of slave holders to the sale of cotton, the financing of the growth of cotton and slaves, the insurance of cotton and slaves, the transportation of cotton by both Rail and sea, and the Milling of cotton grown by slaves, although American Mills would not be competitive with those in Britain until the 20th century. You seem, for person who says he has studied the subject, to be unfamiliar with the concept of settler colonialism. America is a settler Colonial project, like australia, canada, and new zealand. The vast sums needed to equip and finance the armies which conquered the American West came out of the coffers of the federal government filled from the prophets of slavery. In turn the US captured new resources and additional land, some of course which was worked by slave such as the Louisiana Purchase and texas, others which were given to White settlers. In any event, additional capital was procured from the British and its exploitation of its Empire.
Regarding the British empire, your claim is even more bizarre since the Americans make great effort to hide the origins of their development, the British do know such thing. The finances of the British India India company, however precarious, do not take into consideration the vast sums paid to the British Parliament in taxes or the significant dividends which were paid to its shareholders which went on to finance many industrial projects in britain. Indeed, the Mills of Great Britain were not spending English rule, they were spinning the slave grown cotton! The railroads of Great Britain carried that slave grown cotton and it's finished textiles, the shipping of Britain transported that slave grown cotton and the resulting textiles! There's been more than a few academic Works which have traced the shareholders of the British East India company, as well as many of the largest British slaveholders in the caribbean, and their investments into the industrial projects of the British empire. That is not even to get into the vast sums that the British made from the sale of opium to the Chinese, or the vast sums of money made from their rubber, tea, and palm oil plantations in the tropics. Of course, the belgians most ruthlessly exploited the Congolese and that regard, and the record of their profits from such brutality was known to their contemporaries, as well as the 10 million dead to achieve it.
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@sauce89124 dude, I know you think you're smart, but you're really quite stupid. All banking systems work on a fractional Reserve banking, that is how Banks make money, they taking deposits maintain a portion in reserve, and lend the rest out. The difference in between the interest rate they charge in the interest rate they pay, is there profit or at least Revenue.
The prefix in the word Euro, as in euro dollar, euro Yen, Euro Euro, simply designated as an offshore Market. It started in Europe people who were tired of dealing with American regulators and American Banks, but held dollars chose to create a separate Capital Market in Europe dealing in dollars, hence the prefix Euro.
Today Banks deal with every type of currency, including dollars which are held outside of us in non US Banks, hence the term the euro dollar market. There's nothing essential about the dollar for the Offshore Banking sector, as previously mentioned there is offshore borrowing and lending of every major trading currency, including the Chinese Yuan.
As United States is a pringle debtor Nation, with a horrible trade imbalance, there are more offshore dollars floating around than any other currency. But there's nothing essential about the dollar that has to be used for international borrowing our trading, other than the dollars historic and now declining role as Reserve currency. Save your nutty American jingoism for someone who does not understand economics. Or you can just Retreat into Fantasy Land as the world changes around you.
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@andyramirez9872 the point of my comments is because the information presented in the video is inaccurate and misleading!
Are you 15 years old? Do not understand that the placement of industry is not relevant to its reliance on slavery? What were Northern railroads hauling, what was their primary freight? Cotton! What was the largest in industry in the North? Textiles, and what were those textile mills spinning, slave grown cotton! Same thing as Great Britain, which the textile mills of Britain worth spending long after slavery was abolished in the British Empire proper. What was the primary Freight on American ships? Cotton! What was the primary item of insurance and primary collateral of banks in America prior to the civil war? Slaves! What was the primary export of the United States up until the turn of the 20th century? Cotton! What was the primary source of federal revenue prior to the American Civil War? Tariff revenue from Southern ports, brought with money from slavery! If you would like a detailed account of this information, again see the book "The Half has Never Been Told".
I don't know where you got information about the British empire, but it was established Imperial policy to operate each colony at a profit, and they did. The cost of maintaining the colonies was trivial compared to the vast sums of Revenue they raped, hence why the British allowed repeated famine in India to the point that 4 million people starved during World War II in order to maintain grain supplies to the White dominion. I don't know what Shameless apologist for Colonial Empire you have been reading, but none of your Claims can be substantiated by any serious scholar. If you wish to understand how the British administer their colony and how they were able to maintain profitability, and the scale of profitability of their empire, I recommend the book "Trouble of the World" by Zach Sell.
We can go back and forth ad nauseam, but you're not going to change my mind about a fact which has been substantiated by more than 20 years of research on my part, and I doubt I will change your mind from a Prejudice that you seem to have formed in order to justify some opinion of the world which you would like to be true.
The little taunts and barbs, that you have made here mean nothing to me. I simply invite you to read the books I've recommended, that you might have a little bit of an education so you would not fall for such absurdities as that presented in this video.
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Japan is a primary example of the false narrative of "comparative advantage" used by the West to discourage developing countries from pursuing industrialization. While comparative advantage is real, the specific advantage may vary, is not innate and can be created. So, often Western Nations will tell third world Nations that they should focus on agriculture and forget about manufacturing because they have no capital, or past experience, or natural resource. Japan, just like taiwan, singapore, and South korea, broke into the critical area of heavy industry, steel manufacturing, even though all of the prerequisite materials had to be imported and remained cost-competitive by diligently building up their capital, knowledge-based, and efficiency. While, the West will often deny it today, at the start of the industrialization of the East Asian tigers, there were predictions of dismal failure. Today, We are told that Koreans are especially intelligent, but that was not their position in 1961 at the start of the heavy chemical and industrial drive. Park Chung he said if he had listened to the experts "he would have done nothing".
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Los angeles, as a city goes, is probably one of the best if not the best in the us. Better infrastructure, better amenities, no risk of flooding, still has an economic base, good weather. What people complain about is expense, which means you can't afford to be here. That's not a bug that's a feature, if you want affordability you can go to the Rust Belt or you can go to the Deep south, there's a reason why they're affordable, nobody wants to be there and no one has any money.
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@Aussie-Mocha come on man, it's 100% the thought of the West / nato. James Baker gave his word, and Gorbachev was stupid enough to believe, that a NATO would not expand further than germany. Russian leaders as early as Yeltsin we're complaining about the expansion of NATO. This is not a moral issue, this is not a metaphysical discussion about the rights of nation, this is a geopolitical issue of major players. No matter how much you might hate russia, it is a major player. It has a full nuclear triad, and all the capabilities of a superpower. No matter how much people try to downplay the Russian economy, which PPP is actually fine, it is a superpower. Russia will know more tolerate the expansion of NATO up to its border than America will tolerate the Shanghai cooperation agreement forming bases and placing missiles in Mexico. America already demonstrated its feelings about this sort of behavior during the Cuban Missile crisis. It is sure hypocrisy and hubris on the part of the West to expect the Russians to accept nato, no matter the feelings of their neighbors, on its border.
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@greenl7661 again, you clearly know nothing about economics. Not even the most basics, you're just repeating pop culture talking points. So as a real Economist let me educate you.
US Dollars position as a world Reserve currency is absolutely a legacy of the Bretton Woods system, at the time the US represented the largest portion of trade in the Free World and thus had a right to hold the reserve currency position. That is no longer the truth, commodity, oil for most amongst them, prices currently being priced in US dollars play a major role and US dollar Reserve status, but heavy-handed use of us sanctions is causing that situation to rapidly deteriorate. The largest trading nation in the world today is china, the US is simply a massive consumer of world goods, parasite made possible by printing money.
After the seizure of Russia's foreign reserves there is already massive sell-off of dollar Holdings by central banks all over the world, we need only look at the most recent reports and there is already plans underway to create an alternative to Swift that doesn't involve clearing funds in the us. As someone who actually works in such a field, and not an armchair observer, I can tell you that financial institutions around the world will be racing to that new system do not be subject to us sanctions, us laws, or other impediments to global trade created by the United states.
With regard to how foreign countries recycle their US dollar balances from America's parasitic consumption of other people's productivity while only supplying pieces of paper in exchange, in the past, they have purchased US equities, Treasury bonds, and even sometimes hard assets, but for the most part all they got were more pieces of paper and exchange for the real Goods Americans consumed. American Reserve Monopoly and paper Printing has allowed all Americans to live far beyond their means, productivity, and represents theft from the entire world. Every American is effectively guilty, not just the top 1%, but every American who earns us dollars.
As for the rest of your nonsense, about the choice of Reserve currency, American safety, Etc nonsense. The position of the world Reserve currency is not one which is held because other countries trust or like that country, it is merely a factor of production and consumption, of global trade. America's holding on to a legacy position, just like that of Great Britain and just like Great Britain prior to the end of the Sterling block, there may be some Nations who would like the United States to maintain the reserve currency position, but the economic reality is something quite different and your nonsense jingoistic americanisms will not save America from economic reality.
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@madensmith7014 if you're aware of the state of the United states, it is unlikely that we will be in a multipolar world for very long. The world is not going to be divided in half, the Chinese have displaced the United States as the primary manufacturing nation, the primary trading nation, the world's largest consumer of commodities, the largest supplier of finished consumer goods, the world's largest supplier of producer goods. The declining situation the west, combined with the precarious finances of the West means that any long-term capital investment and innovation in the world will be coming out of China. Even here, I have my fears, because China is plague with an aging population like the west. However, alas there are no countries with growth growing economies, toward the trajectory of full scale first world development, and a young/growing population.
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@donald12998 authoritarian regimes are always clean, safe, and orderly relative to their peers. The relative economic development of a regime has nothing to do whether it is authoritarian or not, but with the level of capital invested per capita. That's why Democratic India is in poverty while authoritarian China is economically dominant. As for tyranny, I know the Bete Noir of westerners, and Americans in particular, is some all-pervasive tyrannical State, but for most peoples in the world a functional, even if tyrannical state, it would be a dream, the real tyranny they suffer is lawlessness and chaos daily fearing rape and robbery at the hands of criminal gangs and Rebel groups in possession of small arms.
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Yes, Stalin was a great man! Took a nation of backward superstitious peasants and made them, not their sons and daughters, physicists, Engineers, doctors, a fully industrial nation and a world power. Was it a painful transition, Of course! Deaths during Stalin's transformation of the Soviet Union or nearly 6% of the population, But remember transformational periods are always deadly. 9% of the Prussian population died under Frederick the Great, 8.5% of the French population died under Napoleon, and 4% of the English population died in the English Civil War, but 41% of the Irish population!
As for Stalin's alleged Marxism, remember Stalin was the one who introduced minimum work quotas and Pay for performance. Was it a command economy? Yes, but a rapid industrialization of that sort would not have been possible Without at least some heavy mobilization of coercive power.
Remember the difference between an industrial command economy and an industrialized market economy is the difference between 1 and 10, but the difference between an industrial economy of any type, And a peasant/ subsistence economy is the difference between 10000 and 1.
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@wei270 this is all quite true, I studied economics, but I work in finance. Not as much of a change, but I saw many people from the stem Fields move into management and finance.
However, this change, which many Neo Marxist academics mistakenly call "late stage capitalism" actually a result of a stagnant system in need of structural adjustment, but structural adjustment cannot be achieved because it is not politically feasible.
First off you don't have real savings, so without any real savings you try to Garner growth through quantitative easing, but even when you print the money, there's no place you can invest the money without disrupting a displacing industries, which is not politically expedient, so it goes into existing assets, creating the asset bubbles we have seen since the 1960s, where the average person in the Western World can't even afford a home and the largest metropolitan areas of their country.
If you want to be in the flow of the money, you've got to go where it's flowing, which isn't too existing assets, the financial sector. If you're a civil engineering major, you could do all right, but in the Western World there are quite a bit of barriers to real growth that requires construction, better take your math skills get an mba, and work for a real estate private equity fund.
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@ptaylor4923 you should take into consideration the contemporary statements of a United States Senator and vice president, as well as the most brilliant political mind the American Republic ever created. Not only did John C Calhoun not delude himself by speaking about vague metaphysical natural rights, but his speeches on the floor of the United States Senate are factual and material, he speaks only of facts and figures of the slave section material contributions to the maintenance of the American Republic.
However, I do not expect that you would be pleased to read John C Calhoun. In fact it is why he is not read today, again despite being the most brilliant mind the American Republic ever created, because while the left may abhor his blatant racism, the right cannot bear to be reminded that America is soaked in Blood and could not exist otherwise, that it is not some metaphysical vague ideas of Liberty, or the sun shining out of the behinds of its founding fathers that made America a power, but it was the systematic brutalization and torture of a people that did so.
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@madmouse4400 so I don't know where you got your list, but it's wrong first off, Germany also had as colonies Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Samoa.
Secondly, Tanzania is not infertile, quite the contrary it's extremely fertile, and has the benefits of being both tropical and temperate, I should move from the coast into the Highlands European, tempered weather, crops can be grown with ease. Moreover, German Cameroon was larger than the area of the German Empire in europe.
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@stallonegodinho6296 so you have a basic understanding of economics let's take it one step further.
Do you understand what monetary regimes are? The traditional neoclassical framework of supply and demand can be applied to currencies as well.
In general, exports generate demand for your currency and imports create supply of your currency. The relative value of your currency is affected by Supply and demand, or more particularly Imports or exports. We will set aside the case of the United States as a reserve currency.
Now, if a country has more Imports than exports, barring external earnings from Capital assets, their currency will go down.
If a country has more exports than imports, sitting aside the shoe of a weak currency policy, their currency will go up.
Tying it all together, do you see how a country wishing to preserve the purchasing power of its currency would seek to minimize the need for imports, one way to get the Imports necessary is colonization!
Now you say colonization happened primarily under the gold standard, that is correct. With a gold standard, excessive Imports over exports causes a drain of liquidity and a reduced price level, while increased exports drives up liquidity and increases the price level.
Colonization serves two-fold purposes, it allows the country in question to avoid expending its foreign currency/ gold on imports from a secondary country, it also allows the colonizing country to earn wealth by exporting the resources of the colonized country. That's why a man like Leopold of Belgium who worked approximately 10 million Congolese people to death, is Remembered in Belgium as " the Builder King", because he used the vast wealthy earned from the Congo to invest in infrastructure and public works in Belgium.
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@mrreyes5004 well now you're just making stuff up , you're putting together a mishmash of propagandic talking points. Neither Saddam Hussein's Iraq, nor the Soviet Union, nor North Korea, nor Singapore, nor China, are Rife with crime or dangerous streets. That's just stupid, you obviously have no sense whatsoever. As for their level of cleanliness, it varies to their level of economic development, but it is always higher than a Democratic Society of the same level of development.
Furthermore you clearly have never spoken to anyone who's actually lived under an authoritarian regime and then saw it collapse, then saw the decline in security and functionality after it collapsed.
There may be many faults with authoritarian governments, but as the name would suggest, lawlessness is not one of them.
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The Los Angeles Aqueduct is one of the greatest, unfortunately also one of the last ,examples of civilian Civic leadership, engineering genius, and Empire Building Mega projects. As the 20th century continued, civilian Civic leadership would take a backseat to megaprojects planned and initiated by government with all of the inefficiencies, economic illiteracy, and special interest concerns such things entail. In the 21st century, the West has (a whole), lost its energy, drive, and vision, to carry out great projects and wishes to sacrifice everything on the altar of Mother Nature. The respect, admiration, and love of civilization is missing, hence why it is a civilization rotting before our eyes. Of course, great irony is as other civilizations, China particular have regained their faith, courage, and vision to carry out great Mega projects, such as South North Water diversion program, the West looks with incredulity and envy, expecting the Chinese to be as feckless and complacent as themselves about the future.
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@dwells7747 Because it absurd. A fundamental element of racism is that their are EXTERNAL factors to you, namely bias against you because of your race, that is outside of your control. Now, how's the details of racism unclear,even denied in this Society, it's impossible for you to know exactly which is your choice will cause you to suffer greater repercussions are any repercussions, versus the majority of society.
We can synthesize the big stuff like a difference in criminal prosecution for things like drug use or first sentence, but I have seen minorities be prosecuted and sentenced for " terrorist threat" for simply saying " I could kill you" with no follow-up, simply out of anger. Meanwhile in that same setting, with the same people, I have seen whites make far more elaborate threats, and have to be restrained, with no punishment.
it's a bewildering world, will your constantly walking on eggshells, never knowing exactly which rules apply to you, and to what extent.
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The evils exposed in the cahiers were not accidents of the age, but the bequest of malignant forces at work for centuries. Irresponsible power, the caprice of war, slavery, intolerance, arbitrary arrest, the deadly prison, the inhuman aggravation of the pains of death, had been the steady produce of elaborate design. The men who struck at the misery inflicted by traditional authority believed no dogma so firmly as that of the folly of their ancestors. The supreme object of their striving was to depose and to degrade a tyrant who, at his best, was blind and ignorant and cruel, and who, moreover, was dead. Their sternest resolve was that generations of astrologers, sorcerers, and torturers, of legislators unable to read, of sovereigns only able to kill, that the wisdom of the code noir and the statute book of George II. should not be suffered to reign over Watt and Hunter, over Lavoisier and Laplace, Smith and Kant; and the most vigorous of the revolutionary thinkers, Sieyès studied both to banish the past and to prevent the present from again overshadowing the future. It was under this flag that the armies conquered Germany, destroying and transforming, and left no institution standing but the monarchy of Frederic the Great.
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Lord Acton
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@sauce89124 dude, you have entered the realm of magical thinking, there's something special about the US dollar?. There's nothing special about the US dollar, it's simply had a historical role as the world's Reserve currency. That role is rapidly diminishing, and it will be replaced most probably by the Chinese Yuan.
As for the United States, it is a debtor nation, with a massive current account deficit, a massive national debt, and massive national deficit. United States does not have the exports to hold up the value of the US dollar, absent its status as Reserve currency. You can dress up all you like, you can claim all the magical mystical ideas of why the world must use u.s. dollars, it's just a currency like any other, there's nothing special about it.
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@MihaiRUdeRO do you have any idea how backward Spain was before WWII? There is not a Slavic country that did not reach its technological Heights, height of industrial capacity, height of cultural development in terms of education level of the average person under communist regimes. So, revisionist history only can convince those who came of age or were born after the fall, this. For those who live to the Communist regime's, they know the truth, and unless they have a specific agenda, like fascism, what openly admit their countries have fallen behind. Even today, Eastern Europe Loose as leeches off of subsidy money paid by Germans into the EU. Eastern Europe has never recovered his technological or industrial capacity since the end of Communism. If the EU ended tomorrow, or Germany withdrew the subsidies, Eastern Europe would collapse. Under communism, the Slavic states of Eastern Europe were self-sufficient.
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@Curt_Sampson I see you also suffer from the same delusion. If Putin had wanted a quick and easy victory, he would have repeated what Americans do and boomed Ukraine to the ground and occupied the rubble. Instead, he has been willing to fight a war of attrition, grinding the ukrainians down and depleting their military supplies, all in a bid to minimize civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure. Personally I would not have gone that route, whether I believe these people are my brothers are not, try to deserve their fate, and I would have leveled Ukraine to the ground. Either way, Ukraine has no way to win this war, they are outgun in every capacity by Russia, they exist merely by Russian restraint. The war will be over soon and Russia will have its victory.
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@Spacedog79 I would agree with most of that. However I would disagree about the financial sector controlling the political landscape, the West has always been a plutocracy, and that was for the best. However, that plutocracy was made up of men who owned businesses that produced real things, sure the financial interest was always represented, industry requires quite a bit of capital, but that Capital financed real production. Over the last 70 years, the West has become more democratic we see this in the United States with the introduction of the primary system, whereas before party bosses appointed the candidates representing each party in an election. We see the same in europe, with more Grassroots organization of the masses and they said selection of candidates, all of this has made for a messy and disruptive political sphere. As we learned from the 1930s, unbridled democracy in the west leads to populous fascism, to the left or to the right it doesn't matter, the masses are easily pimped by those promising free things and retribution.
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@rotinoma what China has is a massive amount of capital, willpower, and a huge domestic market. China is looking to recreate the entire semiconductor supply chain within its borders, both for security and economic reasons, and will succeed in doing so. There are a number of additional factors that will determine whether or not Chinese production will undercut the rest of the global marketplace, you must remember that China is as large in population as the the entire developed Western world combined, I regard Latin America as Western but underdeveloped, so that is a possibility. The existing supply chain could continue to exist to supply South Korea and japan, and you could even have a situation where manufacturers use Chinese Source chips for products destined for the Chinese market and countries friendly to china, while using non Chinese Source chips for Western countries and countries antagonistic to China. However if this proves to be a major price disadvantage, the lower cost for advanced technology rebounds to China's benefit.
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Would not you say the current economic panic over the coronavirus is leading to fiscal, as opposed to monetary, stimulus, particularly in the United States if not in Europe as well, which will cause significant inflation in the coming years.
The temporary effect will be to it rude the real value of existing debt for both private persons, corporations, and governments, but I would see that the long-term it would mean the loss of the United States dollar as the World Trading currency. The timing all depends on how long the primary manufacturing Nations, which are in Asia, and the primary suppliers of raw material which are in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa are prepared to chase the value of the US dollar down. Specifically, are the Chinese prepared to chase the value of the dollar down or to break the peg/ trading band.
In any event, the near-term seems to be an environment of a so economic boom, as consumers, corporations, and governments, are able to finally lighten their debt load with inflation. They may not be able to contract new debt, but they will be able to increase their Purchasing Power and corporations which were saddled with high debt before becoming increasingly profitable and this environment.
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@JohnBrowningsGhost Calhoun was only vice president, and I might be considerably biased, but I do not believe there's a single of America's founding fathers who could hold a candle to John C Calhoun. Although I do not hold your founding fathers in much high regard, either with regard to the founding of the Republic or their general intelligence.
Calhoun Lays out a realpolitik all of the actual interest, conflict, and motivations under a system of popular government. There is no observed metaphysical nonsense about abstract rights derived out of thin air, or belief in the fairytale good nature of men or community Spirit, but cold hard reality of human selfishness, interest groups, pride, and jealousy. Calhoun illustrates it all with the example of the Antebellum politics of the American Republic.
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@JohnBrowningsGhost I would say that your question is an error, because those things do not operate on the macro level of a society. While there may be pretense of unlimited empathy or selfless charity on the part of the society or the politicians oh, they are in fact near pretense for self-aggrandizement or advancement of one's interest.
The problem with the metaphysical nonsense of natural rights, aside from the fact that they have no basis and material Facts of Life, is that it creates logical inconsistencies and prevents the correction of the errors they introduced to the society.
While there are fact no true conservatives in America, conservatives in America being a version of a broad-spectrum liberal, because a true conservative, of your peins ready, does not believe in metaphysical rights but draws the justification and role of government from history, UC so-called conservatives complaining about the degradation of culture, yet at the same time defending the idea of freedom of speech. How can you at once wish for the culture not to become coarse and debased, and yet the clear everyone has a right to say whatever they so choose.
“If the whole community had the same interests, so that the interests of each and every portion would be so affected by the action of the government that the laws which oppressed or impoverished one portion would necessarily oppress and impoverish all others (or the reverse) then the right of suffrage of itself would be all-sufficient to counteract the tendency of the government to oppression and abuse of its powers, but such is not the case. On the contrary, nothing is more difficult than to equalize the action of the government in reference to the various and diversified interests of the community and nothing more easy than to pervert its powers into instruments to aggrandize and enrich one or more interests by oppressing and impoverishing the others; THIS TOO, UNDER THE OPERATION OF LAWS, COUCHED IN GENERAL TERMS AND WHICH ON THEIR FACE APPEAR FAIR AND EQUAL. Such being the case, it necessarily results that the right of suffrage (by placing the control of the government in the community) must lead to conflict among its different interests ;each striving to obtain possession of its powers as the means of protecting itself against the others or of advancing its respective interests regardless of the interests of others. For this purpose a struggle will take place between the various interests to obtain a majority in order to control the government. If no one interest be strong enough (of itself) to obtain it, a combination will be formed and the community will be divided into two great parties (a major and minor) between which there will be incessant struggles on the one side to retain and on the other to obtain the majority and thereby the control of the government and the advantages it confers."
John C. Calhoun
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@JohnBrowningsGhost natural rights can be logically consistent, but their Advocates cannot be consistent when they pair such beliefs with a desired outcome in terms of societal order or governance. The idea of natural rights is a religious profession, either you believe in free speech or not. However, if you believe in free speech then you must accept all the consequences that come with it, you cannot bemoan the necessary degradation in the moral standards of the community that comes with an unrestrained free speech. To do so is to wish that human being were other than what they are, that is to be good angels. Hence, the metaphysical nonsense of the American founding fathers about the better angels of our nature, so forth. These Bane professions of natural rights bear no resemblance to reality. Though we may argue that all men are equal and ought to have an equal say and governance, we do know that not all men equally contribute to the maintenance of society and that some men are more necessary than others. To argue that each man ought to have an equal vote in the society for which they do not equally contribute in for which the society is not equally Reliant is insanity.
That is putting aside the fact that these metaphysical natural rights have never been observed in human history until the last 250 years and in their most broad application in the last 100 years have brought about nothing but societal Discord and degradation. Even more so they have caused a complete retardation and arrested development and every non-western society in which they have been applied prior to an authoritarian economic development program. These metaphysical natural rights my more accurately be called the customs of the West born from The Spoils of global exploitation and plunder. In fact we see that the more successful economic countries, particularly those which have lift themselves out of poverty and into the first world, without a history of colonial exploitation, the less liberal the society is. Germany the least liberal of the western nations, with a slim history of colonialism and the colonial Empire which was built after it became industrialized, is and was the least liberal of the western nations, with a traditional all its own called prussianism. It is also the only Western nation which has not undergoing deindustrialization and still maintain the regular trade surplus of any substantial size.
The ills which affect the Western world today are the same ills that affected the Florentine Republic, and that is why Machiavelli and his magnum opus a history of Florence so vocally railed against both Republican governments and humanism which or at the root of the degradation of public order, morals, and, although he did not quite say it, the economic Vitality of the his Nation.
as for True conservatism in the Western World, there are two Traditions one coming from England and the Protestants States, the other from the continental and Catholic States. The English and Protestant tradition is one of a reform the Church and a Monarch which is the first servant of the state. Although some English conservatives have been infected with a pop culture conservatard thinking of America, but tradition is still alive all the week. In English conservative wishes to preserve the established church and the prerogative of the monarchy. An English conservative seeks to preserve the system of governance which has been developed over hundreds of years of tradition with in Britain. All of the positions of a true English conservative are founded upon tradition, not metaphysical rights or philosophy. However, note a fundamental difference between a Protestant / English conservative and a continental conservative is the fact that there is the subordination of the Church of to the state, not the state to the church.
A continental conservative, owing to the position of the Catholic Church, seeks for an absolutist State under the absolute rule of a monarch and the church, where there is no civil society and there is no separation between the state and Society along with the church. The concept of limited government or a sphere of influence in which neither the state or the church had Authority would be bizarre and anathema to a true continent conservative. For them there is no such thing as limited government, the king having divine right and the church as the representative of God on earth have dominion over all things.
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@chickenfishhybrid44 the problem with your side is that you attempt to make slavery seem as if it was an unfortunate social custom limited to an underdeveloped region of the American Republic. In actuality slavery is the main event in the history of the American Republic, without which there could be no America. Not only did slavery provide all of the staple crops such as cotton, tobacco, Indigo, sugar, and rice which financed the revenues of the federal government exclusively until the introduction of income taxes via tariffs and exercises, but it supplied the mill towns of the north, which still were not competitive without tariffs against the mill towns of England, and stocked the ships of the northern Merchant fleets and was the basis of the extension of credit for Northern Banks, and the underlined asset for Northern Insurance.
Without slavery there would have been no basis for the underlying extension of credit to the United States to grow and develop as a nation, there would be no revenues to support the payment of interest on such credit, either public or private.
this is all aside from the social dimension of slavery which is critical, as John C Calhoun points, to America's liberal political order. You cannot operate a system in which every white man has an equal vote, without a general despoliation of Rich by the poor ,without the ability to enfranchise the poor by annexing more land from Natives and beating and torturing blacks into working it for free, thus giving poor whites Assets and a stake in the system.
And having a hated and despised underclass, upon which all the ills of the society can be blamed, as well as all members of the enfranchise Society can fill above, creates a great feeling of unity and commonality among the citizenry.
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@thealienrobotanthropologist okay, let's drop the conspiratorial populous cloak.
The Western Elites are first and foremost western, and proud chauvinist, they don't hate their countrymen, they indulge them, and that is the problem. The Western Elites have bent over backward to accommodate their mass, and that is why they are in the trouble they are in. After World War ii, Western workers were given extremely indulgent pay and benefits packages, far beyond anything that could be supported by the productivity of the workforce. Hence, globalization is a response to try to prop up living standards Beyond productivity, by sourcing production from lower cost countries. All of this is made possible by artificially high value of Western currencies relative to their non-western manufacturing peers. Because global trade is priced in us dollars, will support my commodities, and the US will support the currencies of other Western countries, non-western manufacturing countries are forced to devalue their currencies, propping up Western living standards, in order to be competitive.
What are the bloated balance sheets about, what are the deficits, and the debt about, it is social welfare spending, it is the government employee, it is the free social services, all these things are for the masses, not the elite. Sure the Western Elite have made money as they can from globalization, from the asset price bubble, but the insolvency in Western economies comes from indulging the masses, not the elite. The lack of savings, the welfare benefits, the wages of a productivity, the demands of the unions, the lack of applicable job skills, these are all choices of the masses not of the elite.
When we speak of a multipolar world, we are speaking of a world in which there are more than three nations that can hold their own economically and technologically, and that is not likely to happen sure you can close your doors, but that does not mean that you will have the domestic savings, talent, or willpower to be a manufacturing and technological powerhouse on your own, and without that you will not have the economic gravity to be a pole in a multipolar world.
The increase hostility toward China is the growing realization and the part of the Elites in the west that China is going to displace them because they cannot and will not discipline their mass. The Chinese Elite have no problem whipping the mass of China into shape. The Chinese have domestic savings, they have high productivity, wages in line with productivity, and real investment on hampered by lobbying and interest groups. The West has thought it could curtel China's Advance by controlling the supply of natural resources, largely by destabilizing africa, but Russia stands prepared to supply China with all of the natural resources that it desires. With an alliance between Russia and china, and China's own internal discipline and focus, the Western Elites have no ability to stop the growth of china. And it is culturally, politically, and economically impossible to revive the fortunes of the West because they don't have the stomach to put their mass in line.
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@conniekabasharira7084 exactly! The white Western masses are fed a simplistic understanding of white supremacy which is about white chauvinism, they think it's about white culture and values, excetera nonsense. However, the white elite understand Supremacy is about the ability to dominate others through material means. If the West leaves Africa, if they cannot control Africa's resources and Africa is left to develop on its own, the West cannot maintain white supremacy. When the white masses complained about non-white immigration to Western countries, and the white elite allowing it to happen, they don't understand that this is a policy that is used to maintain white supremacy. If the West cannot convince non-white people to collaborate with them, that there is some chance at participation in the west, as we see with non-white immigration, they are more likely to go their own way and cut a deal with Asia, which would be a blow to White Western Supremacy. The West has shown itself not willing to pay the cost in blood that it would require to maintain non-white countries through Colonial means, moreover with Russia willing to supply weapons and China as an alternative Market coercion is no longer a real option. This puts white Western Elites in a real hard spot, but you have the white masses, like little children speaking out of turn, throwing temper tantrums.
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@s.leemccauley7302 well once again, these are the basics of Economics, as the cost of production goes down, those who have money, spend less on the goods they consumed, and therefore have additional funds to purchase other things, creating new employment and generating new income.
However, as a boomer, you're real issue is that America gave you a life that was inflated, beyond what you actually earned. You benefited from the America that had an advantageous position and an unfair advantage. Post World War 2 America could demand any price they wanted for industrial Goods now that time is gone America could also and still does live as a parasite on the world, printing US dollars receiving real goods in exchange.
As Americans have been forced to compete on a more level playing field, they have seen that they are not up to Snuff and are reduced a living standard.
Some people want to cry about it, I say slap people in the face and make them get on with it and be better. Its sad for you, but consider the billions of people in the world who slave away for an honest wage for honest work and save their money, not demanding welfare or that billionaires/ corporations give them free things, and then when they go to exchange their money from their local currency to u.s. Dollars it is reduced by half or more because global trade has been conducted in dollars and Americans are getting more than their share.
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@stefannicholson852 this woman is far from intellectually serious, and if you believe her to be so, that simply shows your lack of critical thinking skills. All she has done is parrot back the same standard Western propaganda regarding its adversaries, which is to say that they're somehow irrational. If her claims that Russia is kleptocratic oligarchy, which is standard Western propaganda, why haven't the oligarchs been able to overthrow Putin over the imposition of Western sanctions? Her constant babbling about the so-called rules-based International order is again standard Western propaganda to distract us from the reality that it is really a set of Institutions to implement Western hegemony which the West will use to their advantage and the detriment of subject Nations at every turn. Please, tell the palestinians, the afghans, the libyans, and all others who have been subject to the so called rules-based International order the power of Western Justice.
No Nation, which includes Russia and china, that has the power to escape Western hegemony, for which the so-called rules based International order is merely a paper veneer, will willingly accept it. It is only rational and a matter of self-interest to secure your nation sovereignty.
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@Aussie-Mocha you are delusional Beyond belief. First of all, Russia is not asking anyone to join the Russian federation, it is simply trying to protect its borders and protect itself from infiltrated in destabilized by the United States and its NATO allies. What does NATO have that would make anyone wish to join it? Its manufacturing is gone it, it is essentially a series of financial lies economies, living as parasites on the manufacturing of East asia, with its only technology being e v u lithography which is 30 years old and for which there are three other sets of patents created by the Japanese, and for which the Chinese have basically caught up. Which brings us to the real issue at hand, Russia as opposed to the West as a completely different set of sensibilities. Russia is the only natural resource rich country which has an industrial base, the therefore it cannot be controlled and it doesn't have a desire to control anyone else. The West on the other hand is natural resource dependent and which is to exert its influence around the world to suppress rivals. To that end, the West attempts to encircle China by cutting off China's access to Natural resources, which China is also a natural resource importer like the west, and to do that they need to enable russia. Russia well aware of this is taking every reasonable action to counteract the West attempt to subvert and destroy it. The West whole aim is to use Ukraine as a wedge to gain control of Russia or through it into chaos in order to prevent it from being able to supply natural resources to China and thereby have a control over the chinese. All of this is a considerably poor plan that will fail. The sheer weight of Chinese manufacturing which is now 30% of global manufacturing will Force the majority of countries, including the natural resource Rich countries, into the Chinese orbit and as China is the world's largest seller and buyer of all commodities, exempt them from Western interference and pressure.
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@andyramirez9872 LOL. I've given you sources, now go and study. Both the books I've cited are chock full of footnotes, why don't you actually review them before commenting. I know your pride in the line that you hold so dear hurt, but anyone with half a brain can do enough research to find that the argument that colonialism was not profitable is a fringe and baseless one. In any event, you are some random person on youtube, your insults matter less to me then cow manure, cow manure I can sell for a profit. P. S., for future reference, you might wish to Enlighten yourself, as you appear quite ignorant of many things, there is a field called developmental economics, in which historical patterns of political economy are always studied.
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@JK-gu3tl are you actually familiar with the history of Brazil? If you bother to do any research whatsoever, or read any of the books I cited, you would understand the difference between Brazil and the United states. Most notably, the service class of the United States both reinvested and obtained capital from Britain to invest into the infrastructure of the United States, further propellants development. However, as the Ardent defender of slavery, and fire either from South carolina, Senator John C Calhoun pointed out numerous times, none of it is possible without slavery, both the proceeds It produced and the income in generated. Secondly, another major note of difference is that the slave plantations of Brazil not produce cotton.
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@stallonegodinho6296 let's see come one is a scholar of that particular field of history, and the other two are right wing talking head hacks. Friedman has some followers in academia, but that is largely fallen off over the last 20 years as monetarism has not proven, particularly this current climate, to largely be in error about its arguments that inflation is a purely monetary phenomena. Thomas Sowell is a talking head apologist for white supremacy, he is not taken seriously in any academic circles, as an economist he is a standard neoclassicist. You were spouting the talking points of pop culture revisionist White conservatism. None of this past academic muster, any history of the East India Company, by an actual scholar any scholarly Research into the finances of the British empire, and scholar of the primary figures of the British Empire will all tell you the same thing, the business of empire was a wonderful business! For that matter, any scholar of British constitutional law will also tell you that the business of empire was quite profitable as the British Empire had a rule that every colony had to be self-supporting and financially contributory, which led to a number of unique constitutional arrangements to maintain this policy. One of the best examples, is the force merger of the colony of Newfoundland with Canada in order to make it a fiscally sound.
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@stallonegodinho6296 lol. I see you're still very much in the simplistic pop culture phase of understanding economics and politics, hard facts and data are obfuscated by Propaganda and bias.
Let's start with economics, economics is a science, the understanding and the position of the economist should be the same regardless of his political worldview. They may come to different moral positions, or feelwe should take different public policy choices based on the economic data, but the reality of the data and its interpretation should not change. Case in point, every competent economist, whether he was a Neo classicist, a marxist, an austrian, or historicist would tell you that if you want to achieve economic growth then there has to be more Capital invested in society, typically that means savings. It's only in the last 40 years when you have supply-siders and monetarist, like Milton Friedman, who would tell you that you can get economic growth simply from increased demand. One might argue that what the supply-siders and monetarist are arguing is that the increased demand will spur greater investment. Well, maybe, but from where will the capital come to Spur greater investment, will you have more savings? Their answer typically would be that the central bank can provide the additional capital, that is monetary easing, but that comes with its own significant host of problems.
Ludwig von mises himself, was a classical liberal, and his economic ideas are largely sound, the Austrian theory of the business cycle most accurate at that. However, the people who represent him at the Ludwig von mises institute, alabama, are libertarian / paleo conservative nut jobs. Milton Friedman's economics were popular, but he was only a mediocre economist's, his biggest contribution being a restatement of the cause of inflation through monetary expansion. However he was an absolutist in that view, saying "inflation is always a monetary phenomena", well as we see with the sanctions on Russia, Supply shock inflation is a real thing.
Thomas Sowell, much like his mentor Milton friedman, is a so-so economist, a standard Neo classicist with nothing particular interesting about his views. He makes his reputation and money being a paid talking head for white supremacy. Real economics is not political in the same way, it is not sexy and people outside of the field rarely buy books or know who is truly Innovative in the field. If you're interested in actual groundbreaking economist see William Baumol and Robert Gordon, and for their part, I couldn't even tell you what their politics are, they stick only to the data and facts.
As for Hong kong, you do realize for the vast majority of British rule in Hong Kong it was dirt poor and filthy. Only after World War II when Britain lost his Empire and enacted the east of Suez policy, in which they no longer had a geopolitical stake in the area's east of the Suez canal, did Hong Kong emerge as a free trade and financial center, largely one trading with mainland china. The British record in the rest of its colonies, particularly the Heyday of colonization is quite abysmal. However, you forget that your example disproves your point, did not the British derive greater benefit from the development of Hong Kong as a financial center, being sovereign over one of the largest Financial Centers in the world, and having access to the monetary reserves built up by the Hong Kong people?
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@stallonegodinho6296 listen kid, this is what I'm telling you you don't understand what you're talking about. Tax cuts in and of themselves are not savings! The money from tax cuts would have to go to savings, not consumption in order to Spur economic growth. There is no way to ensure that tax cuts, in and of themselves, will go into savings. That is the difference between these recent Supply Siders and monetarist, and pretty much every other real school of economics. Not to mention, I have met Milton friedman, and his wife, I've sat down to dinner with him, I've read his work, the whole phase that you're in, been there done that. As for Thomas Sowell, never met the man, have read all of his work, again a mediocre Economist at best.
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@stallonegodinho6296 I'm going to try to stay polite. You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. You are regurgitating the talking points from the think tanks that you admire and who have hired hacks to advocate for a position that they claim is objective. Let me help you understand basic economics. Economic growth depends on capital accumulation, capital accumulation is the result of investment, Real investment requires savings. You can make an argument for monetary easing, expansion of credit through the central bank and those funds used for Capital investment, but it becomes extremely nuanced as to whether the resulting inflation is defeated by the increases in productivity from the investment. Will a tax cut in and of itself spur economic growth, no! Let me repeat that for you how about you seem a little thick, no! If taxpayers take their tax cut and run with the money to a foreign jurisdiction are consume it all, it will not spur economic growth. In fact, you would get more economic growth if the taxes remained High and the government spent the money on things like infrastructure. Yes, despite the talking points from the think tanks that you love, there are cases in which government spending would be more productive than the actions of private individuals and firms! Yes, that's how that works!
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@JohnBrowningsGhost "A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
- James Madison
“I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Above is example the nonsense spouted by the founders of the American Republic, partially educated Minds drunk with philosophy and little education in history. Such people are one of the great complaints Machiavelli makes about the Florentine Republic and it's declined, and how wise the ancient Romans were to drive away the philosophers of Athens from Rome.
This is where philosophy always falls into error, it fails to take into consideration the real world application of the ideas and situation of the people in question. The American Republic allowed every white male landowner to vote, this was hardly a barrier considering that there were hundreds of thousands of subsistence peasant landowners. Anyone well-versed in history United States knows that there was nothing particularly competent about these people other than in the rapacious Greed for Indian Land or the cruelty with which they drove Negroes. A little bit more the study into the Financial History of the United States would inform you of their rather incompetent management of their own and the nation's finances. What is a more interest is that their militant egalitarianism, founded on a vain pride in the color of their skin, would eventually sweep Jackson into office and Institute Universal white manhood suffrage, and so the slippery Road begins.
Again, you must actually read The Works of John C Calhoun. He admits and comment heavily upon this political dynamic. He articulates an idea called the concurrent majority, that is government by supermajority, because the majority of Voters do not actually contribute much to the maintenance of the nation, and those that do, should not have their willpower overwhelmed by those who do not.
On a side note, if you wish to read the thinking of a true conservative, and understand the absurdity of the American Revolution and of slavery in the minds of a true English conservative, see the works of Samuel Johnson.
As for the West owing its position to exploitation of other people's, but is a somewhat complicated discussion. What is most apparent is that the liberal political system, of universal suffrage democracy, of so-called human rights, is only possible in the western world because of exploitation of non-western peoples. As I mentioned before, the one significant Western example of a nation which achieved industrialization before colonization, Germany, became a byword for an a liberal political system called prussianism. Civilization means greater coordination a people into more complex systems for the greater utilization of resources for higher standards of living. Therefore, civilization means more discipline and control overpopulation, not less. Well anyone familiar with the actual, and not pop culture history of the development of, Western Civilization is well aware of the significant and bloody periods of forced organization and discipline upon its population, the rather egalitarian nature of Western Society, compared to say in Japan or South Korea, is Possible only because of the harshest measures and lowest positions were saved for non-white westerners.
Europe is a have-not continent, save for Russia, all of the Commodities which financed the development of Western civilization after 1500, from the cotton in the Mills of England, to the Opium sold to China, to the tea imported, from tobacco, to sugar, to spices,etc, none of those things could have been grown or produced in Europe proper, and had to be cultivated in regions which we're not conducive to the health of Europeans.
However, what makes your particular stand out in the history of civilizations, is not their brutality, is not it's rapaciousness, it is not every other civilization had a policy of open if not forced assimilation, whereas the West sought diligently to keep its subject peoples forever a toiling debased underclass.
God, if there is a God, we'll be the judge of the morality of this matter, but it means that the West will have no Marchman, and is degeneration and collapse will be unmitigated, with no friends, with commonality of values, to offer any amelioration to its condition.
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@thomeri 9292 that's a nice polemic, however the South seceded first oh, and with it went the primary source of revenue for the federal government for tariffs of goods in southern Port paid for with the profits from slavery. At that point there was nothing to risk in abolishing slavery, as the great loss had already occurred. The abolition of slavery merely punish the southerners.
Once we get past pop culture conservatism, where the sun shines out of the founding fathers behind, and get down to the hard facts, we have to ask the question how was the US federal government financed before income taxes? Who were the primary pairs of US taxes? How were those taxes used? What was America's primary export? What was the primary source of financing for American industry? How did the industry generate Revenue? When we ask these questions we see the Real History of the United States and we see that it is built strictly a pain plundered, without a slave class unable to bargain for enumeration United States could never have existed. Without the financing From Slavery to pay for American expansion, American could not have absorbed the millions of immigrants and enfranchise them on a one man one vote for every white man basis. You can jump & Jive all you want around these facts but they are the facts.
The success of America is not a story of Liberty, but doesn't make sense for any society, nor is it the story of self-reliance personal discipline and capital investment as we see with east asia. No, the story of America is one of continual exploitation and plunder of the other for the enfranchisement in the inclusion of the majority group. If you're in the majority group, good for you, if you're not then why would you have any interest in the preservation of the system?
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Authoritarian governments are bad for economic growth? You might want to rethink that. Industrialize command economy, is obviously inferior to a market industrialized economy, however it's still Superior to a non industrialized economy, no matter how free. You have a political agenda and that political agenda does not what's an objective test. Clearly everyone knows but authoritarian China has drastically outperformed Democratic India. There's not been a non-western country to achieve Industrial Development to First World levels that did not pass through and make most of its strides under an authoritarian regime. Whether we look at the Asian tigers of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea all of which were under authoritarian / non-democratic government or we look at the more recent industrialized countries like the one-party state of Malaysia, the authoritarian regime of Kazakhstan, the dictatorship of Azerbaijan, or even the gulf Arab states , all the nations that have made rapid strides to modernity made them under authoritarian regimes.
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@alanhonlunli yeah, no. No one is hardwired into the US dollar system because of inelastic demand. It's simple that, it is a legacy of the Bretton Woods system. It continues to carry weight because commodity producers, most importantly the oil producers of the Middle East continue to sell their commodities for us dollars. Secondarily, and you can argue even more critically, China who is the world's largest exporting nation, continues to sell its exports for us dollars. The system was already stretched with China piling up mountains of US dollars as Reserves and looking to buy assets all around the world to reduce the dollar pile, as an economy the size of China and one which is the primary trading Nation cannot avoid the world of the reserve currency for long. Secondarily, as the primary consumer of Natural Resources in the world has become china, and China is already there largest trading partner, it makes only sense that they should ditch dollars and use Chinese yuan. So America if it's lucky may have another 10 years as a reserve currency whatsoever, but it's fate is pretty much the same as the British pound after the end of the Sterling block. Again, it seems as if armchair pontificators have not bothered to do any research on how global banking and trade actually functions.
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@HyzersGR lol. Clearly you have not been paying attention, too many YouTube videos? The alternative Swift system is already forming, Russia has already connected its banking system to China's union pay, and there is already direct lending of Yuan by Russian banks. We have even seen hostile countries to china, like india, purchase Commodities from Russia and Chinese yuan. However, at the end of the day countries just want to be able to freely trade and an alternative to swift, with the US dollar and American extra territorial jurisdiction, offers that. This is all aside from the deciding factor that, China is the world's largest trading nation, the largest trading partner for most nations in the world, and therefore there is already an ecosystem of Yuan Surplus and Yuan deficit countries that can settle their current accounts in Chinese Yuan without skipping a Beat.
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@HyzersGR lol. Your low level of understanding of basic economics is hilarious. What percentage of China's GDP is exports? Not gross exports, net exports, the answer is 2%! I know westerners like to think that the Chinese live to manufacture things for them and cannot survive but for the west, but in reality China exports to pay for the commodity Imports it needs for its industrial base which is to supply domestic consumption and investment!
Not to mention, the Chinese Yuan has performed quite favorably against most of the G7 currencies as of late, and as a reserve currency would perform even better given that it no longer needs to position itself vis-a-va Reserve currency.
As for manufacturing leaving china, okay much over hyped. That is low level manufacturing that is going to places like vietnam, and Vietnam doesn't even have the infrastructure to absorb the factories leaving china.
Lastly, remember I said the words NET exports, not gross exports. I know you have a comprehension problem. What most people tend to mention is gross exports, or gross imports. While those measures can be helpful to identify things like supply chain integration, they are not useful in understanding the dependency of a country on trade.
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@skyisreallyhigh3333 I see your understanding of Economics is not even basic. Your argument is that technology has made everyone more productive, well that's a hard argument to make because in every sector you have to show that technology has been employed to make workers more efficient, that is clearly not the case. When we look at the industrial sector we would measure productivity, by the dollar value of units of production per worker per hour. However, that can be highly misleading, when we start looking carefully at the American industrial sector by units of production produce per worker per hour, setting aside the bloated prices government and government contractors are prepared to pay for made in America industrial products, we see no productivity increases since the 1960s. Sure, there have been productivity increases in the mining sector, although there is significantly less mining, and we would see the same thing in the financial sector, information technology, and other things of that sort. However, when we look into the service sector, large parts of the secondary economy like logistics, Warehouse services, and government bureaucracy we see no increase in productivity why, Baumol's cost disease, look it up.
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@BonsuBigWhale P.S. Osama Bin Laden saw the tendency in the West to try to play the good guy and realize that he could use it to draw the West into a trap that would drain it of men and resources, he was right, and the West played directly into his hands. However it cost him his life.
Couldn't have been much smarter! For forty years the Soviet Union used active measures against the West with very little success. But Putin had a epiphany, you don't try to introduce new ideas to the West, you take the ideas that they already preached, liberal social order and democracy, which they preach to Third World Nations to keep them disorganized and impoverished, and you force them to take these ideas to the extreme in their own Society. So you can jackasses of the alt right, you get catalonian independence movement, you get Briexit, and the West is thrown into chaos, so they cannot reject power abroad.
The cost to Putin has been minimal and the damage to the West has been incalculable. This was a massive stroke on his part. The only failure is, relatively speaking the greatest beneficiary is not Russia, but China, because it is China that has the economic weight to fill the vacuum of a diminished and beaten West.
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@la tulipe noire okay, so you have a very naive view of the world, and you are all so confusing political economy and economics, as well as various forms of political systems.
Let's start from the top, accountability is a myth. We are human beings in human societies, and all human societies have hierarchies, at the very top of the hierarchy we find the completion of authority and accountability, meaning, whether it is a group or an individual, at the top of the hierarchy of our society or societies, there is no further accountability. Humans possess the natural right of rebellion, but of course if you lose you forfeit your life and property.
As for the issues with Communism, traditional communism as opposed to Neo Marxism, the problem was the ability economic calculation under social circumstances as well as, toward the end, and inability to continue to accumulate capital. Understand unequivocally, the determining factor for the standard of living of a society is not a democracy or dictatorship, it is not Freedom or slavery, or any other political system, it is the amount of capital accumulated per person. That is why an industrial society of any economic orientation always beats a society which is not industrialize, thus Democratic capitalists Philippines and Democratic Socialist India, had a lower standard of living per capita than the Soviet Union or the entire Eastern Bloc.
I am not a Marxist, but I will not deny the accomplishments of the Soviet Union, or Stalin. Nor will I try to excuse away the obvious fact, the Eastern Bloc did have higher levels of industrialization, standards of living, and technological ability than free or unfree, Democratic or undemocratic, Societies in the third world. Once again, political ideologies are really not that important, and even economic regimes are important only to the degree in which capital is accumulated.
Next, you are confusing communism and fascism, which is generally bizarre. A fascist regime is one in which there is a single leader, or group of leaders, whose role is primarily focused on ethno-nationalist concerns of maintaining tradition in the society. This may involve a significant degree private ownership means of the means of production like Nazi Germany, or it might mean a very active policy of State ownership like Franco Spain. A communist regime generally is one which believes in significant changes to the society as part of its Vanguard ideas about a future Marxist Utopia, but most strikingly almost complete State ownership of the means of production. The most striking difference in the political ideology is a fascist regime looks backward and a Marxist regime attempts to look forward.
Lastly, you seem to be confusing the failures of Western political economy with a general failure of capitalism, when most of the ills that have Afflicted the west are a result of its political ideology. While capitalism is particularly noted by private ownership of the means of production, it also requires as all economic growth in any political system does, greater accumulation of capital, for which the West has been greatly slacking over the last 50 years being primarily focused on social spending, welfarism, and income inequality. These things are generally exacerbated by the breakdown a family, at aging population, and Rising economic challenges from East Asia, again all of these are socio-political issues, not something inherent to the system of capitalism.
You may have some bizarre utopian hope for the 21st century, but one cannot defeat human nature. No matter what system one envisions, you'll either have State ownership or private ownership of the means of production, or possibly some combination. Whatever the political Arrangement there will still be political and social hierarchy in the society.
The general problem with democracy is that in the system prone to paralysis too many factions of a say in government and no bold action can be taken even when the situation becomes critical. Moreover, democracy in the west has lent itself to a fetish for equality which has closed its citizens, particularly those in the dominant ethnic group in those societies, to believe that there are to be actual equality in government despite the significant differences in performance and standing. While the West Was generally able to reach wealth from the rest of the world via the legacy of colonialism and imperialism, think u.s. dollar Reserve status, as the economic playing field has evened out with the rise of Asia and this rent extraction has been greatly diminished oh, you will find that those who pay to support the state will become increasingly less willing to tolerate being outvoted by people who are mere consumers of tax revenue. Culturally democracy has a stronghold on the west, but the Practical problem of being outvoted by tax consumers over the taxpayers will eventually cause the system to implode.
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@SK-lt1so See the book "Trouble of the World" by Zach Sell, the entire "line" of colonies was profitable to the British Empire. Very often, early colonial exploitation, as in places like India, zimbabwe, zambia, or carried out by private concessionaires and only after the colony was profitable and stable would direct Administration be taken up by the crown. If in the event a colony became financially deficient, even in the case of the white dominion of newfoundland, it would be forced into absorption by a financially solvent colony. If you are looking for a long white dominion that was operated on a less exploited basis, the history of British rule in Malta is quite interesting. On the other hand, Cyprus, a white Colony that was not a dominion, the British were quite brutal.
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@oliveoil7642 oppressive regimes? You sound like a pop culture American conservative, you don't understand the nuance of what it was to live in the Eastern block, actually felt repressed. Your grandparents left, they didn't live under the regime, and we're clearly bootlickers. Not to mention, the fall of communism saw a 90% contraction in living standards in the Eastern block. In some other countries, living standards wouldn't return to their communist-era levels for 10 years! Even in those Eastern European countries which joined the European Union, and which now receive ample subsidies paid by Germans, the actual capacity of the country never recovered. Bulgaria used to have a microchipped industry, Romania used to make satellites, hungry had heavy industry, none of that has returned. They all live at petulant children sucking down subsidies pretending that they are equal to the Western Europeans.
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@jakeldez558 again I told you to read the transcript of Solzhenitsyn speech at Harvard. However if you want to understand it on its most basic level, it's pretty simple, the West is full of s***. Its purported value system of democracy, liberalism, and human rights are all lies, westerners May indeed mean it for themselves, but they in fact do not really mean it for other people. More to the point, the West's ability to operate a liberal political program, which is quickly drawing to a close as the US loses Reserve currency status, is Possible only by its parasitic behavior on other societies. Other societies produce real goods and services, and the West sucks them down while running a less disciplined system which could never be sustained if they had to live by the sweat of their brow. Even more infuriating the West tries to shove its values and ideas down people's throat under some claims to the moral High Ground, in opposition to all known history, knowing full well that these values will only we can meet societies and make them remain in chaos, but that's the point, they want them weak can opened infiltration so that they can never challenge the West.
And then, after you have brainwashed the Unfortunate Souls from the societies, after you've made them bootlickers for the West, and they stupidly believed that they can join your society and they come and live as minorities, what do you do have them sweep floors and be whores, and try to blame all of your society's ills upon them. You make constant interventions, you shoved your nose into other people's business and societies, and then when the people follow you home as refugees from the chaos that you have caused, you want to complain about them destroying your Societies and not respecting your culture. Cease making interventions and you will cease receiving refugees.
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@MihaiRUdeRO LOL. Spain did not see economic growth until 1960s, entered into a separate period of decline in the 1970s and didn't start growing again until the 1980s. It is highly doubtful that any Eastern European country, capitalists or not would have seen any significant growth after WWII, the culture was too backward, but that's beyond the point.
Let's look at the numbers for these Eastern European countries, industry as a percentage of GDP is abysmal all are well below 30%, a number that even Germany hits a fully developed Western Country. Your economies are dominated by the service sector, you have negative net International investment positions, trade deficits, budget deficits, and a brain drain. As I said the time post-communism has contributed nothing to Eastern Europe except for you to live as Charity cases on Germany by the EU. If you had to carry your weight tomorrow and balance your budgets and trade by the sweat of your brow, you would collapse. During the era of communism, Eastern European countries were self-sufficient. Bulgaria made microprocessors, Romania made satellites, and so on. Today you have nothing and have allowed all your skills of self-sufficiency to atrophy, your best Engineers are retired or sweeping floors in the West. All of that you call progress, LOL. You are a sad people.
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@MihaiRUdeRO what makes you a sad people is how much of a bootlicker you are. It is one thing to say that you're glad that communism is over, it's quite another to the claim that communism achieve nothing and was a horror show of Oppression. You can praise the good while still putting out the bad, but for the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe there would never have been any development in Eastern Europe, same for Russia.
When we look at the situation today, no matter how you want to dress it up if anyone can look at Romania trade balance, Romania net International Investment position, Romania's consumption of subsidies from the EU, Romania is outflow of talent, and see that the country is failing, and would have already failed but for subsidies. You want to complain that the Communists produced outdated technology, the Communist at least produced any technology, at least you had any production capabilities, you have none now you're just a welfare case. Maybe you can take a page from the Hungarian to go on about how your white Christians and and hope that the rest of Western Europe forgets that you're effectively leeches. Have some pride have some dignity in your culture and in your history. Whatever your criticisms are communists, they made Romania stand tall and on their own.
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Wardog Fights The West is happy to see lawlessness and chaos regin in your country, but the minute a competent regime takes power establish order, crushes criminal and rebel groups, and eradicates petty corruption, they start screaming bloody murder claiming you are violating "human rights", start applying sanctions and calling for regime change. They'll find some buttlicking stooge from the country in question to defend them. Because in their mind defending degenerate filth is a "human right", but security, paved roads, and economic advancement is a privilege.
Of course when people flee from the wreckage caused by practicing "human rights" and try to immigrants to the West, they say "don't come here, your country is a wreck, if we let you in, you'll wreck our country".
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@xhy12 I may not be an expert on Semiconductor production, but I do have a PhD in economics and have an exceptional knowledge of international trade flows.
However, when you start with such nonsense like " distract from internal instability" I already know that you're an ignorant jingoist and have no understanding of the economic Dynamics at play divorce from your wishful thinking to maintain Western supremacy.
If China takes taiwan, there is no way to replace those Fabs in the short term, or even the medium term. In the short term the Chinese will not find it difficult, much like the South koreans, but much faster as a matter of national Prestige and with much greater access to capital, to replace the key materials needed to support the fabrication facilities. Nor will the vast majority of ethnically Han Mandarin speaking Chinese be opposed to Mainland control of taiwan. Not to mention that every non-western nation has incentive to get on with dealing with a Chinese control Taiwan and maintain the access to semiconductors for their own purposes, not wishing to sacrifice themselves on the mantle of Western supremacy.
Again you can keep thinking to yourself that China is going to fail, that the Chinese are on the brink of disaster, maybe you should go read some Gordon chang, and soothe yourself at night, that's not going to happen. At the end of the day, the Chinese population is larger than the entire Western world combined and continues to save and invest, the sure size of its internal market and focus investment will allow its Supremacy in the semiconductor industry within the next 10 years.
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The only reason a man like Peter Hitchens is taken seriously because he was a counterweight to his much more talented, yet still obnoxious, older brother Christopher Hitchens.
This man is emblematic with everything that is wrong with so-called " conservatives" in the modern West. To be conservative is to conserve the pre-existing social order in society, setting aside any difficulties with that position, that would mean one would be generally responsive deferential to the wishes of the authorities.
Here we are in a global pandemic, and this overgrown child is throwing a temper tantrum, and putting the Absurd veneer of individual rights upon it, because he doesn't want to wear a mask.
What type of so-called conservative, doesn't understand the idea that rights come with responsibilities and that one has also a duty to the other members of society to restrain one's personal liberties when such Liberties infringe on the well-being of others?
This type absurd narcissism draped in the robe Liberty, individual rights, and freedom, is why the West is dead. Yes I know you will love to blame bete Noire of immigrants, refugees, and minorities, but to quote Tonybee, "civilizations commit suicide, they're not murdered". the complete lack of discipline and responsibility on the part of the masses, the demographic majority mass, of Western Civilization is why is no longer competitive.
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@KuroshiKun let's take a look at the numbers, industrial-scale reverse osmosis requires between 3.5 and 5 kilowatt-hours of electricity per cubic meter of water! To pump one cubic meter of water to a height of 1 m, requires .002kwh of electricity, do you see the price difference is three orders of magnitude!
That is all aside from the fact that Aqueduct water, after being pumped uphill can generate electricity on its way back down hill, and desalinated water will also still need to be pumped.
From time immemorial, from the ancient Sumerians on, human beings bring the resources to them, that is the basis of civilization. California's the aqueduct program is not impressive by historical standards, the longest Aqueduct built by the Romans was 426 km. The length of the Chinese south-north diversion aqueduct is over 1,200 kilometers.
Until there's some massive leap in power generation technology, reverse osmosis is a pipe dream.
You want to know where the western United States could get the water needs, look up a proposed idea of the 1960s called the North American Water and Power Alliance.
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@KuroshiKun no I'm American, it's just easier to do the calculations in metric units for anything that has to do with science. Actually, I don't even know the calculations in imperial units.
So, like so much in life and the issue with civilization, it is a people problem not a natural resource problem. Politically, America's screwed oh, yes it is for the clean people to tap water from the Mississippi River, I wouldn't even say that is the best source to tap, but all sources face the same issue. You cannot maintain California's population, let alone agriculture, or what's left of Industry, on desalinated water.
I don't know what scientific journals you're reading, but desalinization it's not getting cheaper, the technology is not changing, and there is not the power source sufficient to make it cheaper. Once again, we're talkin about three orders of magnitude, 30 x! Even building nuclear power plants will be a political fight in California, and much like today in aqueduct, a nuclear power plant is expensive on the front end, cheaper on the backend. Regardless, the era when America could do both things and Achieve great results has long since passed.
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@Moped_Mike no, China blows America out of the water, and every other Western Country on a per capita basis, only on per Capital GDP in nominal terms does the United States run supreme. Also, when you correct the US numbers for units of production, rather than using dollar figures, over inflated US Government procurement prices, we see that the situation for the US is even worse. But at the end of the day all you have to do is consider that us net, not gross, imports, are higher than it's Total Industrial out.
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@ruedelta there's quite a bit unpack there. First off a nation of over a billion people is not going to be a service economy, at least not one that is first world.
Secondly, climate change has not been all bad for all the peoples at the equator, at least in the case of Africa it is actually led to more mild temperatures and increasing regreening of desert spaces. As well as an unexplained regrowth of trees in Savannah areas.
The Dynamics of a developed Indonesia would be quite unique, something that has never been seen before because Indonesia would not be a raw commodity importer, it has all the Commodities necessary for an industrial base within its own borders. Such a situation has only been seen in the case of the Soviet union, a nation having both an industrial base and the resources to support industry within their own borders. However, the major difference between the Soviet Union and it developed Indonesia would be, presumably, Indonesia would be a market-oriented economy. Again, there are a number of nations in the world which have all of the resources necessary to support industrial development, none aside from the Soviet union, have put aside the natural resource curse to take the funds and climb the value added ladder.
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@Curt_Sampson I'm not looking to have a debate with you about the merits of the war in ukraine. Russia acted reasonably given the danger it faced. A NATO aligned Ukraine could never be allowed on Russia's doorstep. To allow NATO in Ukraine would be to have NATO troops and arms on Russia's doorstep, which would mean NATO nuclear weapons too close to Russia for an early warning system to work, forcing Russia to make blind threat assessments, essentially creating a potential second Cuban Missile Crisis situation.
Putin did not bomb mariopol to the ground, to the contrary, he ordered his troops to surround the azov steelworks and force the Neo-Nazi soldiers based there to surrender, only using bombs on the last few remaining fighters. Again, contrast Putin's actions in Ukraine to America's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Americans bombed every piece of infrastructure, every military command center, and the civilian population Centers before they sent one ground troop into combat.
Putin believes that the ukrainians are his people, fellow Orthodox Christian slavs, and so he is not prepared to take such actions against them. However, once again Ukraine exist at Russia's pleasure, if tomorrow Putin grows tired of this nonsense and decides to launch non-nuclear ICBM missiles, 2,000 of them which Russia has more than enough, there will not be a Ukraine left to fight.
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@Curt_Sampson the continued Eastward expansion of NATO has been a source of contention with the Russians since the mid 1990s. Even because Gorbachev stated that Russia has been treated with disrespect and that the West continues to provoke russia. Secondly, according to both let me call Gorbachev and James baker, the United States promised Russia there would be no Eastern expansion of nato, a promise that Bill Clinton broke. While Baltic countries are members of nato, there are no strategic weapons stationed there, for the exact reason why Ukraine cannot be a member of nato. This could all have been avoided if the United States had acted in a restrained manner, but they have been threatening Russian security since the end of the cold war, and have been attempting to collapse the Russian State since it's revitalization under putin. The long-term plan is to neutralize Russia as a threat, and this is only caused a Resurgence of the Russian state. The West said hope to arrest its decline by paralyzing the Russian State and helping it would become as weaken as dysfunctional as ukraine, in the end this was all to contain china, instead they have driven Russia into China's arms, and the two together will devour the West.
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@Curt_Sampson lol. Europe is economically bleeding trying to support latest position on ukraine. Winter is coming, and Europeans will go cold, hungry, and unemployed. How long do you think Europe can last with 20% inflation and 600% increases and energy cost? I hope you don't believe in a fantasy of an alternative energy supplier to russia. Let me help you understand that compressed natural gas, like the kind that comes from russia, even before the crisis was six four to six times cheaper than l&g. Not to mention LNG requires specialized facilities on both the shipping and receiving end, as well as specialized ships to transport it. Any other line coming from the East would have to cross turkey, which has its own issues with regard to europe. Anything from africa, well that would require European to stop destabilizing africa. There is no alternative to Russian energy for europe, and therefore Russia can strangle the Earth, as it is. However, the Real Salt in the wound is the Chinese prepare to purchase all of the gas Europe was buying and more, at a lower discount to market!
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@utube7917 I will set aside your conviction in the vague metaphysical philosophies of natural rights, as they have no grounding in history nor any practical application. Man has no right before the tribunal of Nature, and other men are a part of nature. The world is of power and not of talk , the West has adopted an idea of natural rights which are based upon its customs of government which took hold after absolutism, but which have no historical relevance for other societies and which are unlikely to endure declining fortunes of Western Civilization.
The abstract freedoms which you so tout and which the West wish other parrot back to them are a little comfort when the streets are unpaved, there is no running water, feces and trash collecting in the street, and one lacks the personal security from Law and Order. Moreover, they do little to create environment supportive of capital accumulation. Hence why India with all the so-called Democratic freedoms which are touted up by the West is a hellhole, and China is the world's emerging power. Men do not live by abstractions, but by material realities.
With regard to the Soviet Union, you have to understand historical realities, despite the metaphysical Hegalian Obsession of the West for the last three hundred years, nothing is inevitable and the social historical realities of the former Russian Empire which would create the Soviet Union would never have allowed it to become an industrial power, and thus would have forced it to be subjugated to those Nations which were. Therefore, the only way the Soviet Union would have ever industrialize and catch up in capacities with the Western world was through an authoritarian command economy , why it was collectivist, that is Marxistin its nature, had to do with the social realities of having only exited feudalism for the majority of the population a mere 70 years before.
As for America moving toward collectivism, nothing could be more absurd. America first and foremost is a nation built on plunder, the pop culture conservative idea that Liberty or Freedom had anything to do with America's position is laughable once one is aware of America's history, true history, not the caricature that is believed by most Americans. Even John C Calhoun laid out the true nature of America. In it's most recent form American plunder took the form of America's position as the only large industrial power standing after World War II and the US dollar as the world's Reserve currency. America created a vast artificial middle class and since the 1980s, that artificial middle class has been crumbling as America's ability to extract plunder from the rest of the world has decreased. As the pie is shrinking and outside sources of plunder remained elusive, the US dollar as a reserve currency being the last of it, more and more groups are seeking to secure their slice of the pie. Of course, America has always had group's outside of the pie who never were included, namely minorities. This is the situation of the United States, a declining Empire with no outside sources of revenue to satisfy its lust and greed. It's obsession with individual rights and freedom merely serve as barriers to reform and correction, since individualism and freedom in American means freedom from responsibility and the right to live off of another.
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Mugabe was a fool, but he was right on that point. What every African leader has missed, something the East Asians with no natural resources has never mistaken, is that only wealth and power count. If you cannot make your own Planes, Trains, automobiles, missiles, satellites, and microchips, you're not sh*t you're just talking sh*t. With all the natural resource wealth of Africa, no African leader has ever taken those resources to industrialize their Nations, just BS with neo-marxism and Ubuntu nonsense.
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@sinic1978 I think you underestimate the relative state of the Gulf countries, they are fully developed and they even have a competitive heavy industrial production, it's just not significant given their oil wealth in solving wealth funds. For any other country Saudi basic Industries would be a Triumph coma for Saudi Arabia it's just a side project. That said, the end of Western dominance means the end of the religion of Western liberalism. While the Singapore model is largely ignored, are downplayed by the west, more and more Nations will look at the few successful models. While many of the Asian tigers gave into multi-party liberal democracy, and are suffering stagnation as a result, Singapore has maintained its one-party state against the tide Western pressure. Furthermore, both coming soon and Azerbaijan offer fairly good examples of resource rich countries which have used the revenues to diversify their economies and rocket up the development index. The Chinese model may seem somewhat elusive to emulate, but I think the finest example of rapid industrialization is South Korea under Park chung-hee. If there are only two models to study, it is Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and South Korea under Park chung-hee. Take the finance and governance model of Singapore and apply it to the industrialization and compulsion of Park chung-hee of South korea. However, if you want to turn peasants, not their sons and daughters but actual peasants, into industrial workers, engineers, and physicists, there is no greater model than Stalin's Soviet union.
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No. The entire Scandinavian model simply the welfare state. Individuals simply become leeches on the society, no self-worth, no contribution, and no assets. A model for equality is about giving individuals the ability to achieve, not making their outcome equal whether or not they do a chief. A society which pays garbage collectors the same as surgeons is a society which is headed for catastrophe, especially if there's no external source of plunder or Revenue to cover the loss of performance from people not being rewarded for their extra work. In the case of Scandinavia, the export of Natural Resources is largely the methodology of covering this Gap.
While opportunity will not solve all problems, as their issues that individual May face with support from his family unit that the state cannot overcome, it is the best way to see equality in a society. Although no one wants to talk about it, for all the so-called inclusion and diversity measures in the western world for invisible ethnic minorities these are little more than window dressing. A qualified minority, whatever his Merit, we'll have less opportunity than a member of the majority society as opportunities are first and foremost about the perception of the person and their fit for the organization, for which a member of the majority will be seen as a better candidate always.
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Yeah, I took my IQ test back when I was 19, scored 160, not that I put much faith in IQ scores. I also was an inveterate smoker, not because I had social anxiety, but because I suffered severe asthma and had tried everything, and I heard an old wives tale that smoking with what force a reaction on the lungs and through the asthma. I've been hospitalized an average of twice a year am I late teens for asthma oh, I was desperate for anything. I give it a try, sure enough it did clear up my asthma, of course I became addicted to the nicotine.
Roughly concurrent to the asthma situation, I grew morbidly obese ballooning in four years from roughly 180 lb to roughly 430 lbs. While still smoking roughly a pack a day, I went hard on a regiment of weightlifting, dropping from over 430 lb to 210 lb in roughly 10 months.
I did manage to quit smoking, but the personality effects without nicotine is that I have a somewhat aggressive personality. Luckily I'm call and muscular, so people tolerate my personality due to the halo effect of good looks.
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