Quotulatiousness

May 25, 2019

History Summarized: Late Dynastic China

Filed under: Britain, China, Economics, History, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 24 May 2019

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In a shocking twist of fate, China stays in one piece for a majority of this video. The unfortunate side-effect is that when it does collapse, it collapses HARD. Find out how in this tour through the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties!

Further Reading: China, A History by John Keay

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India’s “Modi generation”

Filed under: China, Economics, India, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Mihir Swarup Sharma discusses the demographic, political, and social impact of India’s most influential generation:

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in Jerusalem, July 5, 2017.
Photo by Mark Neyman / GPO via Wikimedia Commons.

The Modi generation, which is and will be India’s most influential ever, will reshape this country the way that other demographic bulges — think of the US’ Baby Boomers — have done so elsewhere. Their India will be substantively different, in terms of domestic and global politics, than that which has come before.

What might this India look like? First, it will be impatient. Young people are less willing to wait for national glory. In the People’s Republic of China, the rule for the country, set by Deng Xiaoping, was to “bide your time and hide your strength”. Xi Jinping’s China, where the agenda is being set to appease a generation of young single men, has abandoned Deng’s maxim. This will be even more true for India, which is after all a democracy that must respond to the most powerful voting bloc in its history. It will be impatient about economics as well. Young Indians expect a better life soon. Today they are willing to give Modi some more time to achieve it. But, in the years to come, that patience will run out.

Second, it will be aggressive. India can no longer “hide its strength”. That was the lesson we must take from the political salience in this election of Balakot, of the promise by the ruling party to enter their houses and kill India’s enemies. A national machismo is the natural consequence of a bulge of young, unemployed and unemployable men. India is perhaps less able to sustain this aggressiveness than, say, China. But the times in which India would be able to absorb terrorist attacks, for example, without a major pushback have passed.

Third, it will be a risk-taker. Young people have a belief in their own invincibility, and Indian policy will be forced to reflect this. Others might argue demonetisation was a foolish mistake; but what matters to many voters is that Modi took a risk, and according to them in a good cause. The Balakot air strike on Pakistan may not have achieved a fundamental strategic transformation of the India-Pakistan relationship (though some experts disagree) but it played well politically because it was not just a demonstration of strength as a nation, but an example of a tolerance to risk. In this sense, the notion of Indian leadership has become one of risk-taking; Manmohan Singh was pilloried for caution and “silence”, Modi is considered an epochal leader because he takes risks.

107 Abandoned French Soldiers Killed for Propaganda – WW2 on Location – France 1940 – 02

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 23 May 2019

After the German army breaks through the French lines at Sedan, the left flank of the moving army has to be secured. The French Ouvrage la Ferté, part of the Maginot Line defense works, is subject to this consolidation. But the Germans move with ulterior motives, as them capturing a Maginot Line fort in the first week of the offensive has a huge propaganda value. Tour guide Richard Tucker shows Indy the grounds of a modern tragedy, where 107 French soldiers gave their lives.

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Zuby breaks the women’s deadlift record while (briefly) identifying as a woman

Filed under: Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Spiked talks to Zuby about his (her?) world-beating achievement:

Men’s and women’s sporting competitions have historically, with a few exceptions, been separate. But in recent years, it has become more common for trans women (biological males) to compete in women’s events. Trans women have competed against biological women in the top flights of several sports, including athletics, cycling, handball, volleyball and weightlifting. Most famously, Rachel McKinnon, born male, won gold in female track cycling at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships.

Many argue that male biology confers certain unavoidable advantages and so women could lose out if women’s categories are opened up to biological males. Zuby, a rapper, podcaster and fitness coach, set out to prove this. He has produced several viral videos in which he breaks British women’s weightlifting records while ‘identifying’ as a woman. spiked caught up with him for a chat.

spiked: Why did you decide to identify as a woman to break the women’s deadlift record?

Zuby: I already have a lot of footage of myself working out, including the video of me ‘breaking’ the women’s record. Around the time I posted the video, there were multiple news stories popping up about transgender athletes – technically biological men – competing against biological women. They were winning races and competitions in all kinds of sports. I’d seen this kind of thing springing up over the years, but in a very short period of time it seemed like there were lots of cases

Out of curiosity, I googled what the British women’s powerlifting records actually were and I saw that I could beat all of them. So that video I posted, that wasn’t me lifting my maximum – the women’s record is 215kg and my maximum is 275kg. It’s similar for the bench press. And the women’s squat record was roughly the same as my own personal best. So I tweeted the video:

I think that adding ‘PS I identified as a woman… Don’t be a bigot’ is what made it go viral. I just tweeted it out there. At the time I had about 19,000 followers. I knew it would resonate with my audience. I thought they would find it funny and that would be that. But within 10 minutes the video had over 10,000 views – by the time I went to bed, it had over 300,000.

Everything just blew up and I started getting contacted by news organisations across the globe. It was weird on all levels. I tripled my social-media following.

Most people understood the point and found it funny. A very small percentage got upset and angry at me – but none could articulate why. I stoked the fire a bit by then breaking the bench-press record and doing multiple reps.

Game of Theories: Real Business Cycle

Filed under: Economics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 21 Nov 2017

Many economic downturns throughout human history can be explained by real business cycle (RBC) theory. So what makes this theory “real” and what are its drawbacks? We’ll cover both in this five-minute tour of RBC.

QotD: Orwell reviews Hayek

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Taken together, these two books give grounds for dismay. The first of them is an eloquent defence of laissez-faire capitalism, the other is an even more vehement denunciation of it. They cover to some extent the same ground, they frequently quote the same authorities, and they even start out with the same premise, since each of them assumes that Western civilization depends on the sanctity of the individual. Yet each writer is convinced that the other’s policy leads directly to slavery, and the alarming thing is that they may both be right.

Of the two, Professor Hayek’s book is perhaps the more valuable, because the views it puts forward are less fashionable at the moment than those of Mr Zilliacus. Shortly, Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty. By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.In the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.

George Orwell, “The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek / The Mirror of the Past by K. Zilliacus”, Observer, 1944-04-09.

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