laxam
5mo ago
But they still have a clear path to a much larger GDP just by integrating rural peasants into the larger economy.
The rural population is aging faster than the urban population, is dramatically less well educated, and wages in urban China are rising too quickly to try a repeat of the world's cheapest workshop plan that worked in the 1990s.
There is still some steam left in that boiler, but not incredibly much and, once it's gone, it's gone.
laxam
5mo ago
Mainland China (and Taiwan for that matter) is going to be an extremely different place in 50 years. The demographic graying the mainland is going to go through is going to hit their economy like a flood of molasses and the 2070s are going to be exactly when they're in the thick of it.
The PRC essentially has until the 2040s to get something off against Taiwan, afterwards they will be struggling against the worst dependency ratio in world history. They have a good window between about now and 2035 when the American naval procurement cycle is at a nadir and they continue to grow competitive on hardware.
If nothing happens by 2035, nothing is likely to happen ever.
laxam
5mo ago
I'm just not crazy about it becoming a regular thing. If Tucker becomes an important part of the frame everything gets discussed in this thread, this place is going to go down hill, fast.
laxam
5mo ago
Or you could just make your own themed thread for talking about Tucker. Meanwhile, I'm 'going to post things' I'm thinking
laxam
5mo ago
I can kind of see it. The Federal government in 1860 more than 10x'd itself in just a few years, going from spending $80 million a year in 1860 to spending $1.3 billion in 1865. Over the course of doing that it organized and prosecuted a Continental war against a peer competitor, successfully. Starting from almost nothing in terms of the scale of its military.
Could you see the US government of today suddenly spending $30-40 trillion and getting anything comparatively useful done? That's 'jumpstart space colonization' money and I'm skeptical we'd get 'Moon Dust for All' once all was said and done.
laxam
5mo ago
Sure. Here I was not talking about the Cotton Plantations in the new southwest, but slavery in Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas that mainly was concerned with providing new slaves for plantations in the west. Without the expansion of those plantations, slavery would be no longer be profitable for these states. And these were the states that most powerful and influential in congress: without Virginia and the Carolinas the Confederacy would have been short-lived indeed.
This is difficult to square with the fact that the most enthusiastic proponents of slavery were from the Deep South. The necessary/intractable evil view survived the longest in the Upper South and the only Southern Slave State to get even mildly close to abolishing on its own was Virginia. Publicola actually misses this, too: The reason Southern emancipationists wanted to 'spread out' slavery wasn't to dilute the possibility of post-emancipation genocide, but to draw as many slaveowners out of Virginia as possible so the emancipationists could have any shot at all at winning elections.
laxam
6mo ago
At the same time the boomer nostrum of "just go in and give them a firm handshake" might have worked for (white) men back in 1955, an age when people were happy to hand out junior executive positions to (white) dudes they just met, but it's just silly in this day and age.
Just for clarity, there were no boomers looking for work in 1955. A substantial balance of boomers were looking for their first job during the doldrums of the 1970s economy and a not insignificant portion during the early 80s recession.
laxam
6mo ago
Whether or not a successful Reconstruction where blacks enjoyed equal rights and Southern whites were reconciled to this and to the Union was ever really in the cards is a pretty deep historical question that would probably take a lifetime of historical research to opine on in an informed manner.
But not coming down hard on ex-rebs absolutely kiboshed any chance of serious armed insurgency and Ireland-style long term separatism. I'm of the opinion that a bit stiffer a spine from Congress in the 1880s could have preserved most of the civil rights against made but, as per above, that's not really something I can back up to an adequate degree.
laxam
6mo ago
I'm serious. The light hand used against the ex-rebels after the Civil War -- Reconstruction but not imprisonment or execution -- played an important role in reconciling the South to once-again membership in the Union.
laxam
6mo ago
This wisdom is why the South is currently the most patriotic part of the country instead of a hotbed of political terrorism and separatist ideology.
laxam
6mo ago
Yes. Multiple times in our history, our politics has chosen the openness of the electoral system over strict adherence to the law.
This kind of prosecutorial discretion used to be considered 'wisdom', the kind of compromise that keeps the system going at the expense of absolute legalism.
laxam
6mo ago
We've never had a major party candidate drop dead during an election season before
Well, depending on what you mean by 'major party' and 'election season'...
laxam
6mo ago
I'm more than happy to complain about Leftists and their 'liberal' fellow travelers and useful idiots, does that count?
The Tea Party wasn't coopted by the mainstream GOP, it became the mainstream GOP. When Ted Cruz could force a government shutdown and the Tea Party could force Boehner out of power, they're the ones with the whip hand.
Edit: Lest we forget, the big representative of the GOP 'Establishment' (a vacuous concept to be sure -- Trump is the establishment) this year, Nikki Haley, was elected as a Tea Party Republican, originally.
And, of course, Boehner himself was originally elected all the way back in 1990 as part of a micro-anti-establishment wave with particular bugaboos about corruption and the GOP Establishment being gentleman losers. But, of course of course, they actually were corrupt, gentleman losers when Boehner was elected, having not held Congress in 40 years, and there actually was genuine Congressional corruption he could attack, like the House Bank scandal. It's just an eternal cycle with the Republican Party.
laxam
6mo ago
It has been quite the journey over the last decade seeing this general space, in its various homes, drift from being a place for a variety of dissenters, idle imaginers, original thinkers, and malcontents to being just another space for Trumpers to get together and gripe about everyone but themselves.
laxam
6mo ago
But it's telling that the companies that exist right now that fit the bill are also in Texas and Massachusetts these days, that used to be more rare.
That's like, emphatically not true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Route_128#%22America's_Technology_Highway%22
Silicon Valley may be flashier and, at times in the last few decades, may have been 'bigger' or 'denser' when it comes to its tech startup scene, but the Boston Tech Corridor is old and still producing (and more diversified -- biotech and other startup intensive fields have more of a presence in Boston than in the Bay Area). This kind of thing follows prestigious universities. Even Texas used to be a big spot for this kind of thing in the meat of the 20th century for that reason, although I think it dropped out of the startup mushroom scene for a while.
laxam
6mo ago
'Moving on' is how you deal with trauma and distracting yourself helps with that.
My wife just had an uncle she was close with die suddenly and this is really the first big family death she's experienced. I and her took some time off, she's playing lots of a game she likes, I'm taking her out to eat. She's still dealing with moments of intense sadness but, in general, is dealing with it really well, essentially entirely because I'm not letting her dwell on it.
I've had an inordinate number of deaths in my family, starting from pretty young, and the hard truth is that you never really 'get over it' but you absolutely move on. I still have moments of sadness to do with my mother's death decades ago but they're few and far between and it otherwise doesn't effect my life. Picking up and keeping going is how to deal with hard spots in your life. Real mental illness is different but, to be honest, most people going to therapists don't have real mental illnesses.
laxam
6mo ago
The bear is the option of someone who knows they'll never have to make this choice.
laxam
6mo ago
You'd have to be pretty simple to think that most of the political stuff you read on Reddit or Hacker News isn't deeply manipulated.
You ever notice how political arguments usually have the same arguments, even the same sources? Plenty spreads through the networks of social media, I'm sure, but the idea that they're working from the same songbook because it's been provided to them by an organization is pretty credible. There's a LOT of money floating around, ready to chase after social influence.
laxam
6mo ago
Continental Philosophy is, to a great extent, un-rigorous sociology and social psychology. Talking about social science in the same breath is just accepting that fact.
laxam
6mo ago
All the “right side of history” framing boils down to is a prediction that future popular consensus will judge Political Group X favourably. I think this argument would be profoundly weak and fallacious coming from any political faction: how arrogant of anyone to think they can accurately predict what the people two generations from now will believe, when they can’t even reliably predict where they’re going to go for lunch tomorrow.
It's not an absolutely terrible argument when used to warn others to really attend to the possible risks they're taking. Patrick Henry had an absolutely powerful speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention against the ratification of the Constitution:
In his final speech at the ratifying convention, Henry extended the stakes beyond America to the world; indeed, the heavens: He [Madison] tells you of important blessings which he imagines will result to us and mankind in general, from the adoption of this system—I see the awful immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant.—I see it—I feel it.—I see beings of a higher order, anxious concerning our decision. When I see beyond the horizon that binds human eyes, and look at the final consummation of all human things, and see those intelligent beings which inhabit the ethereal mansions, reviewing the political decisions and revolutions which in the progress of time will happen in America, and the consequent happiness or misery of mankind—I am led to believe that much of the account on one side or the other will depend on what we now decide.
At about this point, the stenographer noted, "a violent storm arose, which put the house in such disorder, that Mr. Henry was obliged to conclude." Archibald Stuart, a delegate to the ratifying convention, described Henry as "rising on the wings of the tempest, to seize upon the artillery of heaven, and direct its fiercest thunders against the heads of his adversaries."
Of course, maybe you are right, because:
The artillery of heaven was not enough. The next day, June 25, the convention voted 89-79 to ratify the Constitution.
There's always been an authoritarian streak to leftism going back to Marx
And, you know, that other guy.
I think listening to a bunch of Marxists about Kant is an exercise in futility. Everything is ego defense of Granddaddy Hegel, all the way down.
EDIT:
But something about this explanation rubs me the wrong way. It paints a purely structural view of the formation of ideologies, and ignores the role of the individual completely
This is Marxism in a nutshell. The ideological superstructure is determined by the material substrate, not the other way around. If you find this disturbing....well, now you know why they find it so important to try to blame Kant for Naziism (you know, that famously individualist creed).
American society used to have a much larger distaste for money being wasted in this kind of corrupt way. However, as taxes increased and government grew, the focus on economy fell by the wayside and it became a lot easier for these sorts of cash flows to just disappear in the torrent of Federal spending.
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