“Oh, certainly, you could produce quantities of infants although it would take enormous resources to do so. Highly trained techs, as well as equipment and supplies. But don’t you see, that’s just the beginning. It’s nothing, compared to what it takes to raise a child. Why, on Athos it absorbs most of the planet’s economic resources. Food of course housing, education, clothing, medical care it takes nearly all our efforts just to maintain population replacement, let alone to increase. No government could possibly afford to raise such a specialized, non-productive army.”
Elli Quinn quirked an eyebrow. “How odd. On other worlds, people seem to come in floods, and they’re not necessarily impoverished, either.”
Ethan, diverted, said, “Really? I don’t see how that can be. Why, the labor costs alone of bringing a child to maturity are astronomical. There must be something wrong with your accounting.”
Her eyes screwed up in an expression of sudden ironic insight. “Ah, but on other worlds the labor costs aren’t added in. They’re counted as free.”
Ethan stared. “What an absurd bit of double thinking! Athosians would never sit still for such a hidden labor tax! Don’t the primary nurturers even get social duty credits?”
“I believe,” her voice was edged with a peculiar dryness, “they call it women’s work.”
Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986.
June 9, 2021
QotD: Failing to account for mere “women’s work”
June 8, 2021
If you were trying to destroy American cities from within … what would you be doing differently?
Sarah Hoyt’s latest Libertarian Enterprise post considers the state of US urban areas after more than a year of Wuhan Coronavirus lockdowns, social controls, and medically “justified” repression:
“Homeless encampment above the 101 @ Spring” by Steve Devol is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Look, I’m sure this was suggested by China, and the dunderheads are totally buying it under their Compleate Illusions system.
Sure climate change. Climate change can justify anything. If we told them they needed to burn people alive to prevent climate change, they’d already been building the pyres.
But that’s just sort of a reflexive thing, like a Moslem saying “Insh Allah“. It’s not actually involved in their thinking as such. Or their thinking is not involved in it. whichever.
The truth is that they realized that the Covidiocy has destroyed the cities.
You see they had everything planned. They were going to force more and more of us into the city, because they were going to make running an internal combustion engine so hard. So if you had a job, you’d live in the city. Where you’re more easily controlled. And where they could make you believe bullshit like overpopulation and that — look at all the homeless — we needed more and more welfare. Their idea of their perfect world is the 1930s version of the future. Just megalopolisis, isolated, with people completely controlled. It has the bonus of leaving pristine wilderness outside that, for the elites to build their dachas.
And part of the problem is that they never understand other people have agency and respond to circumstances.
I don’t know what they expected when they went full fashboots and — in the case of Polis, and I bet not the only one — gave homeless the right to camp in every public land, and defecate in public as well as freeing a bunch of felons.
Did they expect this would just scare people more, and they’d lock themselves in, in fear and trembling, allowing the idiots to design society.
Instead, people left. Americans are on the move. I swear half of my friends are moving from more locked to less locked, from bluer to redder. Some demographers have caught on, seeing through the smoke and mirrors, and are confused — most of them being leftist — because Americans are in the middle of a full migration. As full and as all pervading as the movement west. Or after the civil war the movement of black people North.
Some of this must have penetrated the granite-like heads of the ruling left. Or at least the planning left.
They somehow didn’t expect—possibly because they don’t really get technology. I mean, I have my moments, but I swear most democrats were disappointed when laptops started being made with no “cup holders”. They’re at that level of stupid — that a tech that hasn’t been fully implemented, giving us the ability to work from home, would be kicked into high gear from the covidiocy.
I guess they expected people who work mostly from their computers to sit at home watching panic porn on TV and not work?
More importantly, I don’t think they expected people who have to work in person to follow that migration because, well … if you owned a restaurant that the covidiocy killed, you might, for instance, pay heed to the fact people are driving everywhere because, duh, masks on planes, and therefore build a roadside diner or perhaps find a small town that’s underserved and start anew there.
Oh … a lot of people are changing jobs too, and the jobs are no longer binding them to big cities.
Honestly, the only way for big cities to save themselves is to become touristic centers. NYC was halfway there when the covidiocy hit. Only not fully there because lefty governance sucks at making a city safe.
If I were a lefty governor or mayor right now, I’d aim the fashboots at crime and disorder, get rid of the homeless, spruce up the place, and go all out in courting tourism. Then people would move in to cater to the tourists, and eventually other businesses would move in, because that’s where people are.
But leftists don’t think that way. Carrot and incentive is beneath them (of course.) Their idea is rather that they will force those unwashed peasants to do what they want.
June 7, 2021
Dude, where’s my (flying) car?
The latest of the reader-contributed book reviews at Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten looks at Where is my Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall:
What went wrong in the 1970s? Since then, growth and productivity have slowed, average wages are stagnant, visible progress in the world of “atoms” has practically stopped — the Great Stagnation. About the only thing that has gone well are computers. How is it that we went from the typewriter to the smartphone, but we’re still using practically the same cars and airplanes?
Where is my Flying Car? by J. Storrs Hall, is an attempt to answer that question. His answer is: the Great Stagnation was caused by energy usage flatlining, which was caused by our failure to switch to nuclear energy, which was caused by excessive regulation, which was caused by “green fundamentalism”.
Three hundred years ago, we burned wood for energy. Then there was coal and the steam engine, which gave us the Industrial Revolution. Then there was oil and gas, giving us cars and airplanes. Then there should have been nuclear fission and nanotech, letting you fit a lifetime’s worth of energy in your pocket. Instead, we still drive much the same cars and airplanes, and climate change threatens to boil the Earth.
I initially thought the title was a metaphor — the “flying car” as a standin for all the missing technological progress in the world of “atoms” — but in fact much of the book is devoted to the particular question of flying cars. So look at the issue from the lens of transportation:
Hans Rosling was a world health economist and an indefatigable campaigner for a deeper understanding of the world’s state of development. He is famous for his TED talks and the Gapminder web site. He classifies the wealthiness of the world’s population into four levels:
1. Barefoot. Unable even to afford shoes, they must walk everywhere they go. Income $1 per day. One billion people are at Level 1.
2. Bicycle (and shoes). The $4 per day they make doesn’t sound like much to you and me but it is a huge step up from Level 1. There are three billion people at level 2.
3. The two billion people at Level 3 make $16 a day; a motorbike is within their reach.
4. At $64 per day, the one billion people at Level 4 own a car.
The miracle of the Industrial Revolution is now easily stated: In 1800, 85% of the world’s population was at Level 1. Today, only 9% is. Over the past half century, the bulk of humanity moved up out of Level 1 to erase the rich-poor gap and make the world wealth distribution roughly bell-shaped. The average American moved from Level 2 in 1800, to level 3 in 1900, to Level 4 in 2000. We can state the Great Stagnation story nearly as simply: There is no level 5.
Level 5, in transportation, is a flying car. Flying cars are to airplanes as cars are to trains. Airplanes are fast, but getting to the airport, waiting for your flight, and getting to your final destination is a big hassle. Imagine if you had to bike to a train station to get anywhere (not such a leap of imagination for me in New York City! But it wouldn’t work in the suburbs). What if you had one vehicle that could drive on the road and fly in the sky at hundreds of miles an hour?
Before reading this book, I thought flying cars were just technologically infeasible, because flying takes too much energy. But Hall says we can and have built them ever since the 1930s. They got interrupted by the Great Depression (people were too poor to buy private airplanes), then WWII (airplanes were directed towards the war effort, not the market), then regulation mostly killed the private aviation industry. But technical feasibility was never the problem.
Hall spends a huge fraction of the book on pretty detailed technical discussion of flying cars. For example: the key technical issue is takeoff and landing, and there is a tough tradeoff between convenient takeoff/landing and airspeed (and cost, and ease of operation). It’s interesting reading. But let’s return to the larger issue of nuclear power.
June 1, 2021
Undoing Dr. Beeching’s cuts
In The Critic, Brice Stratford looks at the British government’s “nationalization if necessary, but not necessarily nationalization” scheme to once again reform Britain’s passenger railway network:
Astonishing scenes this week, whereby the Tory government announces a White Paper to re-nationalise the railways. The union bosses and Guardianistas who have called for such policy for decades immediately decided that actually it’s a terrible idea, or that this doesn’t count as re-nationalising because it’s the Conservatives doing it, or that calling the new entity “Great British Railways” just because it will run Great Britain’s railways is so offensive that the entire project should be called off. It’s all very tribal, and very silly, and very 2021, alas.
Of course, the Department for Transport (DfT) is still afraid of admitting that this is in fact renationalisation, as to do so would be to rile up certain elements of the Right, and to admit what we all know: that their generations-long experiment in railway privatisation has been a failure. Today we have a service which is overpriced, unreliable, and generally an unpleasant and ineffective experience from start to finish.
The postwar Labour government included railway nationalization in its many, many reforms to the economic life of Britain and in 1948 the remaining railway systems were unified as British Railways. By the 1960s, the system was losing money at a high rate of speed, so Dr. Beeching was called upon to recommend how to put the railway if not into profit then at least into a much more acceptable rate of loss:
Maps originally from Losing Track by Kerry Hamilton and Stephen Potter (1985), by way of Is Your Journey Really Necessary?, 2012-12-31.
https://isyourjourneyreallynecessary.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/nice-work-if-you-can-get-there/
Click map to enlarge.
The aim of the Beeching cuts, which followed on from a pair of reports written by Dr Richard Beeching in 1963 and 1965 for the British Railway Board (of which he was Chair), was to turn the loss-making British railways network into a profitable enterprise. Prioritising this profitability over all else, he proposed axing about a third of Britain’s then 7000 railway stations, removing passenger service from around 5000 route miles, and cutting 70,000 jobs over three years. The moves were highly controversial, and though they certainly saved money, the social consequences were extensive and the scars remain visible today.
As a consequence of the cuts, Britain became over-reliant on car travel, and over the 1970s and 80s town planners gutted the experientially human-scale city centres in service of this newly favoured road transport. We still very much feel the consequences of the Beeching axe today, whereby a rail journey between neighbouring cities is often only possible by zigzagging up to London and back down again, and public transport between rural communities is limited to one bus service every hour or two in the morning and mid-afternoon, which crawls along at a testudinian pace, further isolating and atrophying the scattered settlements that once were happy, thriving homes.
May 29, 2021
QotD: Academia and capitalism
One of the mistakes folks on the Left make about capitalism is to describe capitalism as mostly about competition. In fact, capitalism is mostly about cooperation, it’s a self-organizing process where people who don’t even know each other cooperate to deliver products and services, facilitated by markets and the magic of prices. Sure, competition exists but it is not the fundamental feature, but an enabler that makes sure the cooperation occurs as efficiently as possible. Capitalism in fact is about zillions of voluntary trades and transactions every day that each make both parties better off — or else both sides would not have agreed to it. Capitalism in fact is a giant positive sum game, a fact that many on the Left simply do not grasp.
Warren Meyer, “Does the Zero-Sum Nature of Academic Success Contribute to the Left-wards Bias of Academia?”, Coyote Blog, 2018-11-09.
May 23, 2021
Peter Zeihan’s geographic-based perspective on world history
In another of the reader-contributed book reviews for Scott Alexander’s Astral Codex Ten, a look at The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder by Peter Zeihan:
Zeihan’s primary models are influenced by his geographic-based perspective on how our world works. As he puts it in the introduction, “Geopolitics is the study of how place [rivers, mountains, etc.] impacts … everything.” Early chapters discuss what he calls the balance of transport, which is roughly easy transport within a country (for economic development and forming political and cultural ties) and hard transport from outside of it (for defense). These transport issues are inherently tied to geography. What’s the best way to move things? Water-based transportation is extremely cheap. Think 17 cents per container mile vs. $2.40 for semis on an American highway, with a more extreme disparity for other countries, trade between continents, and populations in hard-to-access places. On the defensive side of that equation, geographic features on borders such as deserts, mountains, and oceans get Zeihan’s attention.
He uses ancient Egypt to illustrate a great balance of transport. The reliable water and rich soil of the Nile’s floodplains created near-perfect farming conditions, and the Nile itself allowed easy travel and trade throughout the valley. Combined with impenetrable desert borders, this geography “was one of the few places in the world where there was enough water to survive, and enough security to thrive.” Because of that, the “geography nearly guaranteed that the Egyptians would be on the road to civilization.” He gives us a quick run through Egyptian history to tell a story of that road, beginning with the settlement of the area about eight thousand years ago, consolidation into a single kingdom more than five thousand years ago, and then stagnation as the increasingly centralized government devoted more labor to monument building rather than technological progress, eventually being conquered by seafaring people seeking to rule the Mediterranean.
*****
To escape our pre-civilization/hunter-gatherer days – Zeihan refers to this as “when life sucked” – the mechanism that he identifies is basically a typical economist’s story. Sedentary agriculture as invented by the Egyptians and other ancient cultures became a transformative technology, letting populations grow and devote labor and resources to non-farming purposes. From this, we got specialization, increased production, trade (particularly where there was easy transportation – population centers were always near water) and capital formation in a self-reinforcing cycle. For thousands of years after this transformative technology was introduced, incremental improvements in agriculture and other areas followed, but “a robust, secure, and sustainable food supply” was the base of any civilization.
This cycle accelerated when we harnessed a couple of new packages of technologies over the last six-hundred years. He lumps the source of much progress together with the terms deepwater navigation and industrialization. The first is everything needed to sail the seas, from shipbuilding capabilities to compasses to weapons. Industrialization is exactly what you’re thinking of. He simplifies it as the combination of labor and capital with higher-output energy sources like oil and coal to put productivity on steroids.
Zeihan gives us a story of the Ottoman Empire entering a prolonged decline as deepwater navigation technologies took off in the fourteenth century. These technologies enabled the European powers (first Portugal and Spain, and then England) to capture increasing shares of trade with Asia, dropping prices in Europe and depriving the Ottomans of much of the income to which they had grown accustomed. Most significantly, they turned “the ocean from a death sentence to a sort of giant river.” Trade became global, but it was still mostly among people with nearby water-based transportation.
Industrialization technologies changed that. Steam and coal brought power to mining and transportation, and along with interchangeable parts, improved manufacturing. Chemical breakthroughs led to fertilizers (improving crop yields), and with more transportation options, more land was brought into cultivation. Improvements in cements in the 1820s enabled larger buildings and infrastructure. These technologies continually improved the productivity cycle that began with agriculture.
Zeihan concludes a chapter on America with the “nuts and bolts” of how countries rule the world. “The balance of transport determines wealth and security. Deepwater navigation determines reach. Industrialization determines economic muscle tone. And the three combined shape everything from exposure to durability to economic cycles to outlook.” As we’ll see shortly, he really likes America’s position on all of these factors. But first, we need to understand the other analytical tool that informs Zeihan’s model.
May 18, 2021
QotD: The imaginary problem of having “too much” choice
A famous scene in the film Moscow on the Hudson has Robin Williams as a Soviet immigrant collapsing at the sight of an American coffee aisle, circa 1984. Imagine what would happen in Starbucks.
A free economy multiplies variety, the better to serve buyers with different tastes and different needs and to give people the chance to experience different goods at different times. Arguing that this plenitude is inefficient went out decades ago. The problem with markets, the detractors now say, is that all these choices make us unhappy.
Virginia Postrel, “I’m Pro-Choice”, Forbes, 2005-03-28.
May 14, 2021
Recycling when it makes economic sense? Good. Recycling just because? Not good at all.
Tim Worstall explains why a new push to mandate recycling rare earth from consumer electronic devices will be a really, really bad idea … so bad that it’ll waste more resources than are recovered by the recycling effort:
[Indium is] the thing that makes touchscreens work. Lovely stuff. Normally extracted as a byproduct of getting zinc from spharelite. Usual concentrations in the original mineral are 45 to 500 parts per million.
Now, note something important about a by product material like this. If we recycle indium we don’t in fact save any indium from spharelite. Because we mine spharelite for the zinc, the indium is just a bonus when we do. So, we recycle the indium we’re already using. We don’t process out the indium in our spharelite. We just take the same amount of zinc we always did and dump what we don’t want into the gangue, the waste.
So, note what’s happened. We recycle indium and yet we dig up exactly the same amount of indium we always did. We just don’t use what we’ve dug up – we’re not in fact saving that vital resource of indium at all.
[…]
The number of waste fluorescent lamps arising has been declining since 2013. In 2025, it is estimated there will be 92 tonnes of CRMs in waste fluorescent lamps (Ce: 10 tonnes, Eu: 4 tonnes, La: 13 tonnes, Tb: 4 tonnes and Y: 61 tonnes).
That would be the recovery from all fluorescent lamps in Europe being recycled. In a few – there’s not that much material so therefore only a few plants are needed, meaning considerable geographic spread – plants dotted around.
That’s $50k of cerium, about $100k of europium, $65k of lanthanum, $2.8 million of terbium and $2.2 million of yttrium. To all intents and purposes this is $5 million of material. For which we must have a Europe-wide collection system?
They do realise this is insane which is why they insist that this must be made law. Can’t have people not doing stupid things now, can we?
Just to give another example – not one they mention. As some will know I used to supply rare earths to the global lighting industry. One particular type uses scandium. In a quarter milligram quantity per bulb. Meaning that even with perfect recycling you need to collect 4 million bulbs to gain a kilo of scandium – worth $800.
May 13, 2021
Canada’s (subdued-but-real) class system
In The Line, Howard Anglin offers some observations on how Canada’s class system developed and how it can be very roughly delineated:
This comfortably flat image of our social hierarchy, however, belies a more complicated series of gradations that, while clearly marked, are rarely observed and almost never described accurately. Peter C. Newman mapped some of the terrain in his three volumes on The Canadian Establishment, but his account was already dated when he began it in 1975 and it was a work of history rather than social commentary by the time he finished in 1998. [Line editor Jen] Gerson’s own description of the Canadian class system explains why it can be hard for outsiders, and even insiders, to see it: “[W]e manage the cognitive dissonance presented by the haves and have-nots of housing,” she says, “by requiring our rich people to keep quiet. They should wear clothes that are well-cut and well-designed, but not flash. Buy the multi-millionaires car, but paint it in a sedate hue.”
Social sorting is intrinsic to human nature, perhaps even necessary — as the Bard has Ulysses remind us: “Take but degree away … and, hark, what discord follows!” — and it’s here in Canada too, if you look for it. Like the United States, Canadians early on replaced a class system based on titles with one based on the more easily-acquired currency of, well, currency. And, as in America, this immediately created a new opportunity for class to subtly reassert itself.
I used to joke that the only meaningful class division in Canada is whether you use “summer” as a noun or as a verb; lately I’ve developed the Starbucks test. In this analogy, Starbucks is Canada’s middle class, with Tim Hortons and fast food franchise coffee below, and specialty cafes and boutique chains (Matchstick, Phil & Sebastian, Bridgehead) above.
Unlike the crude measure of income, coffee choice better replicates a traditional class system because it carries an implicit sense of social solidarity, cultural assumptions and biases. During the days of the Harper government, Tim Hortons became a symbol to a certain sort of conservative as iconic as the Greek fisherman’s cap is to aging Marxists. The Maple Leaf red cup represented the honest values of rural and suburban working families, in contrast to the globalist elites with their overpriced green Starbucks. Starbucks was sipped at dog parks and served in board rooms; Tim Hortons got the job done on a cold winter morning: it was Don Cherry in a mug.
The Starbucks test is a silly heuristic, but it reveals something about the complex nature of class: an aristocrat may be penniless, and a billionaire may love his Tims. It also puts the middle class back in its traditional place as the uneasy middle-child of the social order.
In the old British system, there was pride in being working class. There was a bond of mutual support that grew out of the shared experience of hard labour and was reinforced by institutions like working men’s clubs, the British Legion, and the trade union movement. The middle-class striver with his airs and pretensions, his flash new car and his evolving accent, was a figure of general mockery, even more to the working men he left behind than to the upper classes he aspired to join. Class was about more than money; it was an identity. And there was nothing that gave you away as middle class more than worrying about being middle class — an anxiety exploited by Nancy Mitford in her tongue-in-cheek guide to “U” and “Non-U” language and behaviour. The Starbucks test reveals something similar, something more reflective of Canada’s reality than the Liberal vision of one big happy middle-class family.
Tim Worstall explained that the British middle class is still despised by the upper class and hated by the lower class. Not a model for encouraging aspirational working class folks to “move up”.
May 7, 2021
The Nazi Invasion of Canada?! – WW2 – On the Homefront 009
World War Two
Published 6 May 2021What would happen if Nazi Germany invaded Canada? You don’t need to imagine. In 1942, the government of Mackenzie King launched a propaganda effort that simulates Canada falling under Hitler’s yoke. Why? For the war economy of course!
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesHosted by: Anna Deinhard
Written by: Fiona Rachel Fischer and Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Fiona Rachel Fischer
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Miki Cackowski and Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…
Daniel WeissSources:
IWM Art.IWM PST 18495, CH 27, CH 3231, CH 6831, HU 88386, HU 104482
nationaal archief
Photo Album of F.V. Light (1923-2000)Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “Prescient”
Max Anson – “Ancient Saga”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “Sailing for Gold”
Philip Ayers – “Please Hear Me Out”
Jo Wandrini – “Puzzle Of Complexity”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 4”
Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
1 day ago
As you can see in the video, the efforts to raise money to pay for the war were extremely high. But when we read about the stuff that was going on in Winnipeg on “If-Day”, we were really surprised — talk about “playing” war! Of course, this top-notch high-effort propaganda had quite the impact on the citizens of Winnipeg, because — let´s be honest — who wouldn´t be frightened by any kind of Nazi invasion? And they did not spare any effort to get the details right, too. What is your impression of If-Day? Have you heard of it before? Please let us know in the comments!Cheers, Fiona
P.S. If you want to watch the short film starring Donald Duck which Anna mentions in the video, click right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNMrMFuk-bo&ab_channel=8thManDVD.com%E2%84%A2CartoonChannel
Scott Alexander reviews David Harvey’s A Brief History Of Neoliberalism
[Update: In the comments, “gunker” explains that this is another of Scott’s reader-contributed book reviews, not one of his own work. My apologies for the mistake.] After a quick rundown of the conventional explanation for the decline and fall of the comfortable post-WW2 US economy in the 1970s, Scott gives an overall appreciation of Harvey’s arguments:
… This treatment is almost the opposite of the way ABHoN describes events. Telling the story this way makes me feel like Jacques Derrida deconstructing some text to undermine the author and prove that they were arguing against themselves all along.
Harvey is an extreme conflict theorist. The story he wants to tell is the story of bad people destroying the paradise of embedded liberalism in order to line their own pockets and crush their opponents. At his best, he treats this as a thesis to be defended: embedded liberalism switched to neoliberalism not primarily because of sound economic policy, but because rich people forced the switch to “reassert class power”. At his worst, he forgets to argue the point, feeling it so deeply in his bones that it’s hard for him to believe anyone could really disagree. When he’s like this, he doesn’t analyze any of the economics too deeply; sure, rich people said something something economics, to justify their plot to immiserate the working classes, but we don’t believe them and we’re under no obligation to tease apart exactly what economic stuff they were talking about.
In these parts, ABHoN‘s modus operandi is to give a vague summary of what happened, then overload it with emotional language. Nobody in ABHoN ever cuts a budget, they savagely slash the budget, or cruelly decimate the budget, or otherwise [dramatic adverb] [dramatic verb] it. Nobody is ever against neoliberal reform — they bravely stand up to neoliberal reform, or valiantly resist neoliberal reform, or whatever. Nobody ever “makes” money, they “extract” it. So you read a superficial narrative of some historical event, with all the adverbs changed to more dramatic adverbs, and then a not-very-convincing discussion of why this was all about re-establishing plutocratic power at the end of it. This is basically an entire literary genre by now, and ABHoN fits squarely within it.
Harvey’s theses, framed uncharitably, are:
1. Embedded liberalism was great and completely sustainable. The global economic system collapsing in 1971 was probably just coincidence or something, and has no relevance to any debate about the relative merit of different economic paradigms.
2. Sure, some people say that the endless recession/stagflation/unemployment/bankruptcy/strikes of the 1970s were bad, but those people are would-be plutocrats trying to seize power and destroy the working class.
3. When cities, countries, etc, ran huge deficits and then couldn’t pay any of the money back, sometimes the banks that loaned them that money were against this. Sometimes they even asked those places to stop running huge deficits as a precondition for getting bailed out. This proves that bankers were plotting against the public and trying to form a dystopian plutocracy.
4. Since we have proven that neoliberalism is a sham with no advantages, we should switch back to embedded liberalism.
Let’s go through these one by one and see whether I’m being unfair.
May 4, 2021
Preparing for the worst (and hoping it won’t happen)
I’m generally optimistic about the big picture in any given situation no matter how pessimistic I’m inclined to be on smaller matters and individual details. For this reason, I try not to think too much on just how bad things might get if too many current cultural trends continue as they are. Sarah Hoyt, on the other hand, has some suggestions for getting past any potential social upheavals we may face in the very near future:
If you’re in a major city and I like you, I beg you, with tears in my eyes to get out as soon as you can (and yes, we’re working on it.) Some neighborhoods and places will be safe-ish, but in the US the brunt of the horrific will be in big cities, because that’s what the left thinks MATTERS and where they’ll concentrate their effort.
Forgive me for corporate speak from the nineties, but in this case it applies: their paradigm is broken and they can’t see it because they’ve done everything possible to insulate themselves from input coming from outside the paradigm.
When this happens and the people of the dead paradigm still have some power, the result is kind of like when you fill a container with gasoline, then drop a match in. It’s best to be in the places they think don’t matter.
Other than that: well, you don’t know how interconnected the world supply chains are, until they break. These last two years have been a lesson and no mistake. When I say we’ll unfuck ourselves relatively fast, it doesn’t mean we’ll reverse disastrous globalization in an eye blink. We won’t.
Try to have the things you think you’ll need for five-ten years. That includes newish computers (the silicon crisis is real) perhaps more expensive than you’re used to buying, and raw materials for what you’ll need, from fabric to … I don’t know. Probably not clay. But now might be a bad time to downsize and get rid of that “for company” dish set, depending on your rate of breakage of the everyday one. Lay by paper, too. If we start getting electricity brownouts and blackouts, having stuff you want to keep printed might help.
Food. I don’t need to say it. I think I have maybe enough for a year and a half, though at the end our diet would be mighty strange. But we’re already hearing screams of food supply failure. (I want to get us moved, and start laying in more food. The delays and set backs are driving me nuts.)
And what about the stupid laws proscribing wrong thinkers? For now? Nothing. If you’re hidden and submerged stay that way. Look at it this way: if the people who hid Jews in their attics had come out early to defend them, they too would be in the camps and unable to help. We’re already past the point where “a brave stand” will help. The left knows they’re losing. They can’t understand why, but they know they’re losing, and they’re angry and murderous because of it. And they won’t let go, until it all explodes in their faces. So if you are hidden, stay thus, and get ready to hide people in your metaphorical attic. Because those like me who are exposed, if they have a good bit of luck, just might manage to make it there.
Just prepare, prepare as hard as you can.
You’ll be blindsided. We all will be. Seriously. Books that go through this lie. It’s always more complex and more difficult than you can imagine, and you will be caught off guard.
If you’re lucky, the things you’re caught in won’t kill you.
If we’re all lucky we’ll come out the other side alive and well, most of us. Which is good, because we’ll be needed if we want future generations to grow up under a constitutional republic.
The rest of the world? Foggedaboutit. Not a chance. They’re going to try to crawl back to pre-English enlightenment. Some areas will manage it, too.
For us? I don’t know. There is a chance. Honestly. A chance is all we can ask for.
So, let’s survive and be ready to push the odds. Because the destruction will be everywhere. But the re-building must begin in America.
April 25, 2021
QotD: “The Great Satan”
Bob Tarantino, “LIB Review: It’s the Crude, Dude”, Let It Bleed, 2005-03-05.
April 21, 2021
Hitler’s Money and How He Stole It – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 20 Apr 2021On paper, Hitler never made a lot of money. Yet he became one of the wealthiest people of his time. This is how he stole his fortune.
Between 2 Wars: Zeitgeist!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KThHc…
Hitler Never Gave the Order – So Who Did? – WW2 Special
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQsGU…
The Nazis: Most Notorious Art Thieves in History – WW2 Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXvo-…
Why the Nazis Weren’t Socialists – “The Good Hitler Years” | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1937 Part 2 of 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHAN-…Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources
—
Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations by:
– Daniel Wiess
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– KlimbimSources:
Picture of building appartement on Prinzregentenplatz 16, Munich in 1910. courtesy of Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-FS-NL-PETT1-2847 https://stadtarchiv.muenchen.de/scope…
– Bundesarchiv
– National Archives NARA
– Imperial War Museum: IWM Art.IWM PST 4099
– United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Nationaal Archief
– The picture of the Eagle’s Nest in 2020 courtesy of Marcus Hebel from Wikimedia – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
– The picture of the Eagle’s Nest in 2014 courtesy of Nordenfan – from Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
– Icons from The Noun Project: barracks by Smalllike, Cook by Alice Design, Farm by Laymik, football field by Mavadee, House by Abhimanyu Bose, Kitchen by RD Design, Library by Adrien Coquet, Housekeeper by Richie Romero, Old Car by Halfazebra Studio, Pool by Loritas Medina, Projector by Ralf Schmitzer, Waiter by chris dawson, Woman by Deemak Daksina, Woman by Wilson Joseph, Woman hat by Xinh Studio, Woman With a Hat by Graphic EnginerSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Other Sides of Glory” – Fabien Tell
– “Rememberance” – Fabien Tell
– “Deviation In Time” – Johannes Bornlof
– “Break Free” – Fabien Tell
– “March Of The Brave 10” – Rannar Sillard – Test
– “Ominous” – Philip Ayers
– “Symphony of the Cold-Blooded” – Christian Andersen
– “Please Hear Me Out” – Philip AyersArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
“The error in Western thinking was to view CCP officials as civilised counterparts”
In Quillette, Aaron Sarin traces the last twenty years of successful diplomacy, industrial espionage, and ever-increasing CCP media influence in China’s relationships with western nations:
President Donald Trump and PRC President Xi Jinping at the G20 Japan Summit in Osaka, 29 June, 2019.
Cropped from an official White House photo by Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons.
By the end of 2020, China’s relationships with the US and Australia had reached their lowest point in living memory, while Sino-British relations weren’t far behind. Yet the European Commission chose this moment to sign a major new investment treaty with Beijing. The deal appeared to have been rushed to completion just before Joe Biden’s inauguration, as if to avoid the fuss that a new American administration would be sure to make. Indeed, incoming National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan felt sore enough to send a pointed tweet: “The Biden-Harris administration would welcome early consultations with our European partners on our common concerns about China’s economic practices.”
The truth is that Brussels has been drifting further and further from Washington ever since the election of Donald Trump, and there are few signs the winds will change now that Biden has taken office. In 2017, Merkel said that Europe could no longer rely on America. By 2020, it seemed truer to say that Europe would rely on China from now on. Indeed, diplomats like Emmanuel Bonne (Macron’s foreign policy adviser) have been most enthusiastic about “France’s readiness to step up strategic communication with China.” In his gushing deference, Bonne can sometimes sound like a man with a gun to his head: “France respects China’s sovereignty, appreciates the sensitivity of Hong Kong-related issues, and has no intention of interfering in Hong Kong affairs.” There are times when the language of neutrality reveals with painful clarity that a side has been chosen.
Brussels officials talk of “strategic autonomy,” of course. They hope to carve out a path to self-sufficiency while at the same time enjoying mutually beneficial relationships with partners like Beijing. The problem is that mutually beneficial relationships are not possible with predators. As successive American administrations have found, those who maintain close connections with the Communist Party will eventually suffer large-scale intellectual property theft and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs.
Brussels can hardly expect that Beijing will respect this new agreement. Recall the various promises that were made regarding Hong Kong: all of them were broken. Party officials may have signed a legal document recognising the city’s special administrative status, but this was purely for show. In 2017, having apparently now ascended to a position above the law, they declared that the document had “no practical significance.” Remember how Barack Obama was given firm assurance that Beijing would never militarize the South China Sea? There were handshakes and smiles all round, and then Beijing proceeded to militarize the South China Sea.
Indeed, some of the commitments included as part of the new deal echo those made 20 years ago, when China first joined the World Trade Organisation. It was agreed in 2001 that prices in every sector would be determined by market forces; that state-owned enterprises would begin operating free of state influence; that international norms regarding intellectual property would be respected; and so on. After two decades, we can see that the Communist Party has kept not one of its promises.
The error in Western thinking was to view CCP officials as civilised counterparts. We failed to see that we were dealing with a pack of thugs and grifters — men for whom the rule of law is neither reality nor ideal, but façade. This lesson has now been learned in some quarters, but clearly not in the upper echelons of the European Union. This new investment deal even includes a reference to “commitments on forced labour,” which is little short of an insult when we consider the hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs who have been made to toil all day till dusk in the cotton fields of Xinjiang. The truth is that the EU has been fooled. There will be no “win-win situation.” Not when dealing with the Communist Party, which has always viewed geopolitics as a zero-sum game. In the words of Bilahari Kausikan, once Singapore’s top diplomat, “only the irredeemably corrupt or the terminally naïve take seriously Beijing’s rhetoric about a ‘community of common destiny.'”
