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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   34788 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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The issue for visa and banks is that they are becoming activist against countries. Apparently a war is enough to deplattform Russia and Russian companies. There are many armed conflicts around the world and the US wasn't deplattformed for invadring Iraq. The number of sanctions the US is placing on countries has grown significantly and the sanction system is becoming less based on laws and rules and more simply tools for geopolitics. If the US doesn't like your government then all contracts are nullified over night with no real due process or formal rules regulating it.

Any businessman in Latinamerica, the middle east or Africa should have realized at this point that contracts with the US aren't binding agreements but can be cancled over night if the twitter mob decides it doesn't like your government.

We are probably going to see a major shift away from American banking and financial infrastructure to a system that is less feasible to deplattform from and it won't be Japanese porn or political dissidents leading the way. It is going to be countries moving away when they realize that their financial infrastructure is being built on a legal framework that is increasingly functioning like the youtube terms and services.

I suspect we will see increasing pushes towards technical sovereignty, open source and open standards, countries being hooked up to dual systems such as an Ericsson telecom system + a Huawei telecom system

Yes, I do kinda hope that we get the "nicer" version of "multipolarity" in the form of competing standards like you allude to.

Any businessman in Latinamerica, the middle east or Africa should have realized at this point that contracts with the US aren't binding agreements but can be cancled over night if the twitter mob decides it doesn't like your government.

The whole specter-of-Communism thing probably doesn't help either; LatAm countries have been ambivalent-to-hostile to the US for a variety of historical reasons, and pissing off African countries is maybe not the best thing to do when China is already throwing money at them. The Middle East is probably never going to have a very great relationship with us, but on the other hand, it's probably surprisingly good considering the Israel thing.

We are probably going to see a major shift away from American banking and financial infrastructure to a system that is less feasible to deplattform from and it won't be Japanese porn or political dissidents leading the way. It is going to be countries moving away when they realize that their financial infrastructure is being built on a legal framework that is increasingly functioning like the youtube terms and services.

The issue being that these other countries aren't going to be particularly concerned about the sacred inviolability of contracts, but will want to retain their own ability to deplatform/end contracts on their own terms, thus reducing their ability to function as a meaningful alternative.

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