2rafa
1hr ago
I don’t think it looks like this. I think it looks like Graeber’s fake jobs.
If the PMC succeeds in perpetuating itself / ourselves, then life in 10 years will look like millions of email job workers with fancy titles whose real job is getting AI to make PowerPoints to present to other ‘employees’ to discuss what the AI is doing. Perhaps other people will spend decades ‘studying’ the AI in case it magically stops working. They will all believe they are necessary.
2rafa
1hr ago
Self-serving, petulant, handwavy, shallowly aesthetic notions of virtue are cheap and easy to brandish in defense of one's animalistic impulses; any kind of impulsive retardation can be dressed up as a calling of aristocratic, virile masculine nature, there's a whole genre of extremely popular Western music about it, authored by the impromptu warrior aristocracy of the streets. Your own elite has been wiped out to such a degree that this whole discourse is vacuous, we can't consult with a living bearer of a tradition, only speculate. It is plausible that I am wrong and there's just never been any substance to the whole fraud.
Missed your writing. Glad you’ve rejoined us briefly in this transitional period while we no doubt wait for ASI to materialize and save/destroy us.
2rafa
2hr ago
At least the Chinese managed to overthrow the Manchu
An intellectual like yourself is no doubt familiar with the extensive Chinese online theories that they secretly control the CCP.
2rafa
11hr ago
Funnily enough, if the US is forced to fully reindustrialize, one of the biggest winners will be Germany, which has thousands of medium sized businesses that produce a lot of the specialized industrial equipment used to make products. The Chinese have bought enough now, and are slowly figuring out how to make their own, but the US would take a long time to figure it out.
2rafa
1d ago
They did very well. Many founders, people who work for Thiel, some VCs. But he wasn’t picking the median college student, he was picking very intelligent kids who were skipping Stanford or MIT comp sci. They would have done well regardless.
2rafa
1d ago
I would say that the more realistic version of this argument is that a lot of Russian speakers dramatically overestimate the power and influence of the British government and in particular the British upper class (which Boris himself is arguably not necessarily part of, but to a Ukrainian / Russian clearly is). Ilforte / Dase wrote about this a number of times but it really is true and explains the unusual level of hostility toward Britain by many of the more ideological Putin supporters and Russian nationalists in general. Many believe earnestly that America is just a puppet of Britain.
In this context one can see why Boris’ bloviating posturing and general bluster (which everyone in Britain mostly tuned out while he was mayor) might make a different impression on Zelensky, especially when it came to his Churchill LARP and telling Ukraine to fight on until the end. For example, maybe Zelensky genuinely got the impression that Johnson would ensure the US spent whatever it took to defend Ukraine and that the ‘official’ position from the masters of the world order was that they should fight on.
Depends on where you live to some extent though. Baden Württemberg and Bavaria are full of guys in their late 20s and 30s making €75,000 a year as machine operators in factories producing some kind of industrial equipment who live in places where rent is relatively low and they can spend their weekends (and their million sick days) growing and smoking weed and a month a year in winter in Thailand with their Serbian girlfriends. Certainly a much better material condition than the Italian or Greek or British working class.
But why? Why did 80% of Americans decide that they needed to spend $60,000 to get a degree?
Because easy universal loans make it ‘free’ at the point of use and decades of culture make clear that college is (and let’s face it, it often is) 4 years of zero responsibility partying for free!
Even if you had a nice entry level manufacturing job in your small town paying $65k out of high school, what sounds more fun to a 17 year old: partying and getting laid and playing sports and hanging out with the boys all day at college for 4 years, or going to work in a factory?
America is so rich we basically pay for young people to party for four years. I’m not even ideologically opposed to it, but I think it’s a mistake not to admit that this is what it is.
2rafa
1d ago
The first point is exactly it. Why is any company going to invest tens of billions in reshoring manufacturing during a global recession, when debt is expensive when it will all end in a maximum of 2-4 years? As I understand it congress can also reverse the tariffs because they’re merely delegated to the President, which means it could be sooner if GOP reps realize they could be annihilated.
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The American working class is materially richer than the working class in every other developed country bar a handful of microstates (many of them beneficiaries of extreme commodity wealth coupled with a low population). Even those countries often have lower consumption per capita than the US. America is not poor, the average working American is not poor. The things that are expensive in America, like healthcare and education, are in substantial part expensive because of protectionism, regulation or extremely high domestic salaries.
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The problems America faces compared to those countries - a feral, mentally ill violent homeless population, disgusting and unusable public transport, high crime rates, a ridiculously inefficient and expensive healthcare system, mass illegal immigration across the southern border, and an inability to build almost anything - are not the consequence of a free-trade-based economic policy. Many countries trade relatively freely (certainly with lower tariffs on the entire world than those just implemented) without them. Many are very civilized places and have service-based economies.
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Downtown Philadelphia isn’t a dump because of trade policy. The Tenderloin in SF isn’t a dump because of trade policy. People don’t choose to avoid the LA subway because of trade policy. (In fact big coastal American cities are some of the most prosperous places in the entire world). New railroads aren’t not being built because of trade policy. Wokeness wasn’t imported to America but exported by it. The problem isn’t the policy, but the people and their incentives. People don’t overdose in tiny midwestern towns because the factory jobs went (in fact, speak to many factory owners still there and they’ll tell you they struggle to find workers who will show up, pass a drug test and work a normal 8 hour shift even for wages that are the envy of the world).
Let’s just be honest. This is happening because Donald Trump read or learned about trade deficits sometime in the 1970s and decided, personally, that any imbalance is a “bad deal”, and this is a man who sees everything in life in terms of deals. Over the last 8 years he went from outsider to king of the GOP and is now surrounded by advisors who know that the only consequence of disagreeing with him on this is getting replaced by someone who knows when to stay quiet. On abortion, on immigration, on tax, on trans rights, Trump is malleable. On trade, he’s not. This is what he really believes, and he will stake his presidency on it.
There is likely some level of economic damage that would cause Trump to rethink this, but it’s much worse than a lot of people think.
2rafa
2d ago
Core things like that in Quebec many things must be in French, from store signs to school classes.
2rafa
2d ago
Since 2000 the Democrats and Republicans have been in power for the same amount of time.
2rafa
2d ago
We are in the present situation because the system was not working well, even relatively. Likewise, the previous system was absolutely chockablock with liars, morons, grifters and cranks of all stripes.
It provided a better quality of life for the median American than for almost anyone else on earth, so yeah, it was working objectively pretty well.
2rafa
3d ago
Why are we going to fight a war with China? I don’t want to get nuked over Taiwan. I don’t consider this inevitable or desirable.
2rafa
3d ago
Yeah, certainly in large wealthy cities most illegal migrants make much, much more than the federal minimum wage.
2rafa
3d ago
I’m not a doomer. I don’t even think Scott’s piece is doomerish. But yeah, I’m trying to enjoy the strange world we live in now, because I don’t think it’s going to last much longer.
2rafa
3d ago
The reigns of Chavez and Maduro have been characterized by concentrated support for the government among the poor, as was that of Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose program appealed disproportionately to rural indigenous communities.
It is important to remember that both Chavez and Morales did deliver substantial bennies to their voters in the early years of their time in power, before they ran out of other people’s money.
Three years into power, hordes of natives streamed down from the mountains into the settler city of Caracas to defeat the CIA coup attempt against Chavez in 2002. He really did build schools, social housing for people who had previously lived in shanty towns, handed out countless jobs for the poor. Was it unsustainable? Sure, but it happened.
The consequence of Trump's current economic policy will be not be that. The uncertainty it creates will slow or freeze corporate hiring and investment; inflation will make it harder for the fed to cut when it needs to. If Trump wanted to build a large working class of people who owe him economically, it may have been possible, but I doubt it’s this.
2rafa
3d ago
It’s down for a couple of reasons:
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Between approximately the early 90s and early 2010s it was by far the favorite place for the global rich to park money in residential property, with insane appreciation that drove more inflows (like US tech stocks over the last decade) and a reputation for looking the other way when it came to the source of the money. Over the last 10 years Dubai has increasingly taken that role; it’s closer to Asia for the Indians, the Russians were forced there by sanctions, and the Arabs are from there (or the Gulf, at least). The Chinese are also increasingly more wary of the West and like Vancouver and Australia (closer to China) more anyway. A combination of Sterling’s decline versus the dollar and the outperformance of US equities has made London property less attractive. Consider that if you bought London property in 2008 you might have made a solid return in sterling terms, but lost money in dollars because the pound declined from $1.95 to $1.27 in that time. Plus the UK government yielded to American pressure and started confiscating property from corrupt foreigners.
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A stagnated UK economy with high taxes on high earners has kept domestic demand low (by 2009 central London property had reached the point where even the most successful echelons of the domestic PMC couldn’t really afford it anymore with some exceptions). In addition, increases on property purchase taxes, long-rumored (and now finally happening) changes to taxation for international rich people who make most of their money outside of Britain, Brexit and the resulting economic uncertainty all put a cap on prices and then led to a slow decline. Higher interest rates have also made it much less attractive because even though rental yields were very low, so were returns elsewhere and so was inflation, increasing the impetus to sell now that inflation is higher and the rental market can only bear limited increases. Then there are some short term policy things around Labour coming to power and making things more expensive for rich people.
Could America replicate it? Not really. Outside of the very top end of the market in Manhattan, Miami and to some extent certain fashionable parts of Los Angeles (and even then…) the US market is driven almost entirely by domestic demand, the great majority of buyers of high end property are US citizens and always have been. You could crash the American economy, of course…
2rafa
3d ago
In terms of disposable income / consumption, certainly. I would consider Switzerland and Norway more civilized, in that I think someone in the 50th percentile of the income distribution does have higher QOL there.
2rafa
3d ago
The right can either reopen the German constitution (which they don’t have a majority for on this topic, even if it exists for other things) or use this approach to deport people they don’t like.
2rafa
4d ago
The issue is that poorer people don’t benefit much from this “print money for overseas goods system” and it increases wealth inequality over time.
This is the bullshit allegation though.
Working class Americans have higher material quality of life than their peers in every other rich country, barring a handful of microstates like Luxembourg, or small countries blessed by geography, resources and good government like Norway and Switzerland.
The problems America has - with crime, drugs, homelessness - are political choices. American plumbers aren’t being financially screwed over.
Prime Central London housing is down at absolute most maybe 20% (10-15% is a more realistic number) in nominal (sterling) terms since 2014, more in dollars although with the strengthening now that’s starting to change. A poor investment especially compared to US equities over the last decade, and a loss in real terms, but if her father lived in a house that was worth, say, £3m in 2015, she’s still doing pretty well today.
If you bought a house in central London any time before 2012 or so, you’ve made good money. If you bought before 2004/2005 you’ve made a lot of money. If you bought before 1998 or so you’ve made insane amounts of money. That’s all still true.
2rafa
4d ago
Without denying that (a) there is obviously a strong philosemitic streak on the German and American center-right and that (b) Israeli and Zionist lobbyists are obviously pleased with this kind of thing, it is also a convenient excuse to get rid of people both of these movements vehemently disagree with anyway.
Essentially nobody on the right is caught up in this (even comparatively fringe right-wing antisemites have essentially zero involvement in mainstream pro-Palestinian / anti-Zionist movements and would be immediately kicked out if their dissident right views on various other topics like immigration and race were known). By contrast, pretty much every leftist radical (even, increasingly, in Germany, where there was long an unusual minor group of leftist pro-Israel sympathizers) and all Islamists are pro-Palestinian. Given both groups are broadly opposed by everyone on the right, this is a convenient excuse.
My own impression (and you are likely more familiar than I) is that most Chinese never think about the Jews, a smaller group of boomers and people interested in international politics are vaguely or in rare cases substantially philosemitic, and then young very right wing men online are antisemitic in a vintage /pol/ type way, hate Israel etc.
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