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Thread: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

  1. #721

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    OMG, Love Mountain, aren't you concerned about ethics in video game journalism? And the latest Star Wars flick? And the latest Star Trek show?
    Optio, Legio I Latina

  2. #722
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by Love Mountain View Post
    aren't Nazis left wing?
    Well,as noted last year, Brazil's president resurrects the zombie claim that Nazism was a leftist movement
    And now, Israel invites, but Bolsonaro will not go to celebration against antisemitism
    So, the self-declared "great friend of the people of Israel" refused the invitation. Bolsonaro declared that "we can forgive the crimes of the Holocaust ". "We disagree with the Brazilian president's statement that the Holocaust can be forgiven.It is not anyone's right to determine whether heinous crimes from the Holocaust can be forgiven", the museum said in a statement.
    Damnit, Bolsonaro and Netanyahu are brothers.
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 23, 2020 at 11:32 AM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  3. #723

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by Gromovnik View Post
    OMG, Love Mountain, aren't you concerned about ethics in video game journalism? And the latest Star Wars flick? And the latest Star Trek show?
    Star Trek Picard was pretty good actually.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Well,as noted last year, Brazil's president resurrects the zombie claim that Nazism was a leftist movement
    And now, Israel invites, but Bolsonaro will not go to celebration against antisemitism
    So, the self-declared "great friend of the people of Israel" refused the invitation. Bolsonaro declared that "we can forgive the crimes of the Holocaust ". "We disagree with the Brazilian president's statement that the Holocaust can be forgiven.It is not anyone's right to determine whether heinous crimes from the Holocaust can be forgiven", the museum said in a statement.
    Damnit, Bolsonaro and Netanyahu are brothers.
    Unsurprising. These tactics are displayed regularly today, which is a little sad. A decade ago, such discussions were rare. Now? Well, it's not the "liberal left" that started this nonsense, let's put it that way. To be fair, some leftists are just as bad. As an immigrant from a post Soviet republic, I get downvoted and ignored regularly for daring to express an opinion on international relations or foreign policy.
    Last edited by chriscase; January 24, 2020 at 10:25 AM. Reason: Please do not promote piracy

  4. #724

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    A decade ago, such discussions were rare. Now? Well, it's not the "liberal left" that started this nonsense, let's put it that way.
    Hahaha, no. Globalist liberal left was perfectly fine with endless foreign wars and rampant "let them eat cake" neoliberalism, which only benefited elites at the expense of the rest of the population.
    Now that after decades of sticks and no carrots, liberal left is deservedly losing to "populism", sore leftist elitist losers are calling better side "fascists", because they literally have no arguments other then overused buzzowrds.

  5. #725
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Heathen Hammer, you can't just paint everything you disagree with as "left". By default stuff that benefits only the elite is rightwing.
    Words like "the elite benefits at the expense of the proletariat" are trademark leftwing words. You may agree or disagree with it, but most of what you described above can also be blamed on rightwings.

    For starters, the government of USA (Senate\House, PotUS-executive branch, Courts) were always rightwing. Bush 2 that started the Iraq war for the lulz? Rightwing. Clinton that bombed the Serbs? Rightwing. Obama that didn't start any wars but was drawn by the French into Libya? Rightwing.
    I am not saying that leftwings are innocent, I am saying USA never had leftwings in power.

    Please, use proper terminology so other people can understand what you're talking about. Accuse globalists, Soros, the free market (rightwing), multinationals (rightwing), the elite (Rightwing), Progressives (leftwing), Unions (leftwing) etc, but use the proper terms.
    At this time when HH says "leftwing" I have no idea whether you mean actually leftwings or "some ideology HHammer disagrees with, wherever it is in the left-right spectrum".
    Last edited by alhoon; January 26, 2020 at 12:01 PM.
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  6. #726

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    By default stuff that benefits only the elite is rightwing.
    According to... what? By that logic almost every leftist regime in history was "right wing". This is the "real socialism has never been tried" kind of argument.
    Champagne socialists (who claim to care about working class but only do so to get votes while their policies align with elite interests) were a thing for decades in pretty much every Western countries and they represented most of the left.
    Right/Left dichotomy has more to do with state authority (the more you wish for one them more left you are).

  7. #727
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    By that logic almost every leftist regime in history was "right wing".
    Not really. USSR's commanding elite had much fewer privileges than western elite and they came up from the rank-and-file of the party, not inheriting wealth. As such, no, USSR was leftwing and hardcore on that.
    When corruption was rampart it was... corruption not the state of affairs and established system that promoted certain people. That's why today's Russia's oligarchs are hard right.

    China today is... peculiar as it starts having an established elite that passes wealth, privilege and power to their kids through the party and connections. But still, they are still leftwing as the state has most of the power, not the individual that benefits from that power.


    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    This is the "real socialism has never been tried" kind of argument.
    That argument is correct and will remain correct because people are buttholes. You cannot have real socialism as people wish it was possible.
    Leftwing states are inviting corruption because people want more than what is allotted to them. You can have purges, executions, Secret services spying on the population and there will still be corruption. It's inevitable.
    Not to mention that without any damn benefit, the majority of your law-abiding skilled people will slouch and be unmotivated (and the rest would become corrupt).

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Champagne socialists (who claim to care about working class but only do so to get votes while their policies align with elite interests) were a thing for decades in pretty much every Western countries and they represented most of the left.
    Nope, people like my blacksmith grandfather, may he rest in peace, a hardworking man that was always poor and never wanted too much for himself - he was not looking for luxuries, he didn't care for big houses, he never got a car- are the leftwings. He wanted a better society not so much for him but for his family and he thought high taxes, strong central government and a strong social network was the way to do it. He was a communist - but after the 70s in Greece he was at peace with where the society was more or less. He wasn't rebelling and he wasn't telling us crap about the proletariat fighting. I.e. while Greece has not turned all the way into what he wanted it to become and he would still vote for leftwings, he was... content.
    My sister's parents in law? The same. Poor people - they can barely afford to pay the bills and her father in law works in construction in his 60s despite health issues - that want much more equality between the haves and the haves-not, don't give a crap about luxuries (I doubt they even know what Champagne tastes like or that they would care to taste it) and a strong social network. Again, they are communists but they have once voted for a rightwing mayor because he was better than the commie union butthole the Communist party was pushing.

    Do I agree with them? No. Their ideas on how to support that social network are never going to work. And I don't want the government to control everything, I can do fine by myself, I don't want people elected by the majority tell me how to run my business. But these are the real leftwings.

    Most of the champagne leftwings that are around since the beginning of time, not the last decades are hypocrites or naïve. A few of them do actually believe the things they say. But many don't.
    However the champagne leftwings in the Western World are a fraction of the 5% at most. And they are the minority in most places.
    The "Globalist elite!" you decry are not leftwings. Free Market is rightwing policy. The globalists also have leftwing stuff in their agenda (like more lax borders) but it's not that they are leftwings.

    As for Left and Right:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics
    "Left-wing politics supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. It typically involves a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished."
    Does that seem like something the Champagne elite actually promote????
    Nope, it's something my grandfather and my sister's parents in law promote.

    "Right-wing politics holds that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be viewed as natural results of traditional social differences or the competition in market economies."
    In a "Good" Right wing society, you "earn" that privilege to be in the elite by hard work and merit and if you're not good enough, the free market pulls you down and someone worthier takes your place.


    The Right/Left dichotomy has more to do with state authority on the market-economic issues. Not bank authority, mind you, state authority. As such, most of the Goldman Sachs staff many of us decry and the influence the banks and multinationals have on the state are rightwing problems. In a leftwing state those banks and multinationals would be placed under state rule or supervision like in China.
    Last edited by alhoon; January 27, 2020 at 03:19 AM.
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  8. #728
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Different thing:
    In a victory of sanity over SJWs, the following happened in the appeal of Transgender individual in the 5th circuit:
    http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions...-40016-CR0.pdf

    "We understand Varner’s motion as seeking, at a minimum, to require the district court and the government to refer to Varner with female instead of male pronouns
    ...
    Varner’s reply brief elaborates that “[r]eferring to me simply as a male and with male pronouns based solely on my biological body makes me feel very uneasy and disrespected.” "

    Thankfully, the court's reply was:
    " We deny the motion for the following reasons.
    ...
    no authority supports the proposition that we may require litigants, judges, court personnel, or anyone else to refer to gender-dysphoric litigants with pronouns matching their subjective gender identity."
    In short, just because that person thinks he is a woman, the court doesn't have to reinforce his delusions.

    And then, a call to sanity that I mentioned earlier:
    "If a court orders one litigant referred to as “her” (instead of “him”), then the court can hardly refuse when the next litigant moves to be referred to as “xemself” (instead of “himself”). Deploying such neologisms could hinder communication among the parties and the court. And presumably the court’s order, if disobeyed, would be enforceable through its contempt power. "
    I.e. if we play by that person's rules, then we will have to accommodate the rest of them.

    Good for the courts, bad for the SJWs = victory for everyone (including the SJWs that lost this one so they can do what they love to do most: Complain)
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
    "Angry Uncle Gordon" describes me well.
    _______________________________________________________
    Beta-tester for Darthmod Empire, the default modification for Empire Total War that does not ask for your money behind patreon.
    Developer of Causa Belli submod for Darthmod, headed by Hammeredalways and a ton of other people.
    Developer of LtC: Random maps submod for Lands to Conquer (that brings a multitude of random maps and other features).

  9. #729
    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by alhoon View Post
    people like my blacksmith grandfather, may he rest in peace, a hardworking man that was always poor and never wanted too much for himself - he was not looking for luxuries, he didn't care for big houses, he never got a car- are the leftwings. He wanted a better society ...My sister's parents in law? The same. Poor people - they can barely afford to pay the bills and her father in law works in construction in his 60s despite health issues - that want much more equality between the haves and the haves-My sister's parents in law? The same. Poor people
    This. Rep +
    Free Market is rightwing policy.
    A deregulated free market, yes. Than you agree with Piketty, see my signature.How long should a post be?

    I quote, 2014.Piketty. New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century

    I've been working on the history of income and wealth distribution for the past 15 years, and one of the interesting lessons coming from this historical evidence is indeed that, in the long run, there is a tendency for the rate of return of capital to exceed the economy's growth rate, and this tends to lead to high concentration of wealth high concentration of wealth.
    Not infinite concentration of wealth, but the higher the gap between R (return on capital) and G ( economic growth), the higher the level of inequality of wealth towards which society tends to converge.
    This is a key force that I'm going to talk about today, but let me say right away that this is not the only important force in the dynamics of income and wealth distribution, and there are many other forces that play an important role in the long-run dynamics of income and wealth distribution. Also there is a lot of data that still needs to be collected. We know a little bit more today than we used to know, but we still know too little, and certainly there are many different processes —economic, social, political —that need to be studied more. And so I'm going to focus today on this simple force, but that doesn't mean that other important forces do not exist.

    Most of the data I'm going to present comes from this database that's available online: the World Top Incomes Database. So this is the largest existing historical database on inequality, and this comes from the effort of over 30 scholars from several dozen countries. So let me show you a couple of facts coming from this database, and then we'll return to R bigger than G. So fact number one is that there has been a big reversal in the ordering of income inequality between the United States and Europe over the past century.

    Back in 1900, 1910, income inequality was actually much higher in Europe than in the United States, whereas today, it is a lot higher in the United States. So let me be very clear: The main explanation for this is not R bigger than G. It has more to do with changing supply and demand for skill, the race between education and technology, globalization, probably more unequal access to skills in the U.S., where you have very good, very top universities but where the bottom part of the educational system is not as good, so very unequal access to skills, and also an unprecedented rise of top managerial compensation of the United States, which is difficult to account for just on the basis of education.

    There is more going on here, but I'm not going to talk too much about this today, because I want to focus on wealth inequality. So let me just show you a very simple indicator about the income inequality part. Graphic,
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    This is the share of total income going to the top 10 percent. So you can see that one century ago, it was between 45 and 50 percent in Europe and a little bit above 40 percent in the U.S., so there was more inequality in Europe Then there was a sharp decline during the first half of the 20th century, and in the recent decade, you can see that the U.S. has become more unequal than Europe, and this is the first fact I just talked about.

    Now, the second fact is more about wealth inequality, and here the central fact is that wealth inequality is always a lot higher than income inequality, and also that wealth inequality, although it has also increased in recent decades, is still less extreme today than what it was a century ago, although the total quantity of wealth relative to income has now recovered from the very large shocks caused by World War I, the Great Depression, World War II.
    Let me show you two graphs illustrating facts number two and fact number three
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 





    First, if you look at the level of wealth inequality, this is the share of total wealth going to the top 10 percent of wealth holders, so you can see the same kind of reversal between the U.S. and Europe that we had before for income inequality. So wealth concentration was higher in Europe than in the U.S. a century ago, and now it is the opposite. But you can also show two things: First, the general level of wealth inequality is always higher than income inequality.

    Remember, for income inequality, (first graph) the share going to the top 10 percent was between 30 and 50 percent of total income, whereas for wealth ( second graph) , the share is always between 60 and 90 percent. Okay, so that's fact number one, and that's very important for what follows. Wealth concentration is always a lot higher than income concentration. Fact number two is that the rise in wealth inequality in recent decades is is still not enough to get us back to 1910.
    So the big difference today, wealth inequality is still very large, with 60, 70 percent of total wealth for the top 10, but the good news is that it's actually better than one century ago, where you had 90 percent in Europe going to the top 10. Today what you have is what I call the middle 40 percent, the people who are not in the top 10 and who are not in the bottom 50, and what you can view as the wealth middle class that owns 20 to 30 percent of total wealth, national wealth whereas they used to be poor, a century ago, when there was basically no wealth middle class.

    This is an important change, and it's interesting to see that wealth inequality has not fully recovered to pre-World War I levels, although the total quantity of wealth has recovered. So this is the total value of wealth relative to income, and you can see that in particular in Europe, we are almost back to the pre-World War I level.

    There are really two different parts of the story here. One has to do with the total quantity of wealth that we accumulate, and there is nothing bad per se, of course, in accumulating a lot of wealth, and in particular if it is more diffuse and less concentrated.. So what we really want to focus on is the long-run evolution of wealth inequality, and what's going to happen in the future.
    Fact 3: Wealth inequality is less extreme today than a century ago, although the total quantity of wealth relative to income has now recovered from the 1914-45 shocks

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    How can we account for the fact that until World War I, wealth inequality was so high and, if anything, was rising to even higher levels, and how can we think about the future? So let me come to some of the explanations and speculations about the future. Let me first say that probably the best model to explain why wealth is so much more concentrated than income is a dynamic, dynastic model where individuals have a long horizon and accumulate wealth for all sorts of reasons.

    If people were accumulating wealth only for life cycle reasons, you know, to be able to consume when they are old, then the level of wealth inequality should be more or less in line with the level of income inequality. But it will be very difficult to explain why you have so much more wealth inequality than income inequality with a pure life cycle model, so you need a story where people also care about wealth accumulation for other reasons. So typically, they want to transmit wealth to the next generation, to their children, or sometimes they want to accumulate wealth because of the prestige, the power that goes with wealth.

    There must be other reasons for accumulating wealth than just life cycle to explain what we see in the data. Now, in a large class of dynamic models of wealth accumulation with such dynastic motive for accumulating wealth, you will have all sorts of random, multiplicative shocks. So for instance, some families have a very large number of children, so the wealth will be divided. Some families have fewer children. You also have shocks to rates of return. Some families make huge capital gains. Some made bad investments. So you will always have some mobility in the wealth process. Some people will move up, some people will move down.

    The important point is that, in any such model, for a given variance of such shocks, the equilibrium level of wealth inequality will be a steeply rising function of R minus G. And intuitively, the reason why the difference between the rate of return to wealth and the growth rate is important is that initial wealth inequalities will be amplified at a faster pace with a bigger r minus g. So take a simple example, with R equals five percent and G equals one percent, wealth holders only need to reinvest one fifth of their capital income to ensure that their wealth rises as fast as the size of the economy.

    So this makes it easier to build and perpetuate large fortunes because you can consume four fifths, assuming zero tax, and you can just reinvest one fifth. So of course some families will consume more than that, some will consume less, so there will be some mobility in the distribution, but on average, they only need to reinvest one fifth, so this allows high wealth inequalities to be sustained.

    Now, you should not be surprised by the statement that R can be bigger than G forever, because, in fact, this is what happened during most of the history of mankind. And this was in a way very obvious to everybody for a simple reason, which is that growth was close to zero percent during most of the history of mankind. during most of the history of mankind. Growth was maybe 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 percent, but very slow growth of population and output per capita, whereas the rate of return on capital of course was not zero percent. It was, for land assets, which was the traditional form of assets in preindustrial societies, it was typically five percent.

    Any reader of Jane Austen would know that. If you want an annual income of 1,000 pounds, you should have a capital value of 20,000 pounds so that five percent of 20,000 is 1,000. And in a way, this was the very foundation of society, because R bigger than G was what allowed holders of wealth and assets to live off their capital income and to do something else in life than just to care about their own survival. Now, one important conclusion of my historical research is that modern industrial growth did not change this basic fact as much as one might have expected. Of course, the growth rate following the Industrial Revolution rose, typically from zero to one to two percent, but at the same time, the rate of return to capital also rose so that the gap between the two so that the gap between the two.

    During the 20th century, you had a very unique combination of events. First, a very low rate of return due to the 1914 and 1945 war shocks, destruction of wealth, inflation, bankruptcy during the Great Depression, and all of this reduced the private rate of return to wealth to unusually low levels between 1914 and 1945. And then, in the postwar period, you had unusually high growth rate, partly due to the reconstruction. You know, in Germany, in France, in Japan, you had five percent growth rate between 1950 and 1980 largely due to reconstruction, and also due to very large demographic growth, the Baby Boom Cohort effect.

    Now, apparently that's not going to last for very long, or at least the population growth is supposed to decline in the future, and the best projections we have is that the long-run growth is going to be closer to one to two percent rather than four to five percent. So if you look at this, these are the best estimates we have of world GDP growth and rate of return on capital, so you can see that during most of the history of mankind, the growth rate was very small, much lower than the rate of return, and then during the 20th century, it is really the population growth, it is really the population growth, very high in the postwar period, and the reconstruction process that brought growth to a smaller gap with the rate of return.

    Here I use the United Nations population projections, so of course they are uncertain. It could be that we all start having a lot of children in the future, and the growth rates are going to be higher, but from now on, these are the best projections we have, and this will make global growth decline and the gap between the rate of return go up.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Now, the other unusual event during the 20th century was, as I said, destruction, taxation of capital, o this is the pre-tax rate of return. This is the after-tax rate of return, and after destruction, and this is what brought the average rate of return after tax, after destruction, below the growth rate during a long time period. But without the destruction, without the taxation, this would not have happened.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Let me say that the balance between Returns on capital and Growth depends on many different factors that are very difficult to predict: technology and the development of capital-intensive techniques. So right now, the most capital-intensive sectors in the economy are the real estate sector, housing, the energy sector, but it could be in the future that we have a lot more robots in a number of sectors and that this would be a bigger share f the total capital stock that it is today.
    Well, we are very far from this, and from now, what's going on in the real estate sector, the energy sector, is much more important for the total capital stock and capital share. The other important issue s that there are scale effects in portfolio management, together with financial complexity, financial deregulation, that make it easier to get higher rates of return for a large portfolio, and this seems to be particularly strong for billionaires, large capital endowments.

    Just to give you one example, this comes from the Forbes billionaire rankings over the 1987-2013 period, and you can see the very top wealth holders ha have been going up at six, seven percent per year have been going up at six, seven percent per year in real terms above inflation, whereas average income in the world, average wealth in the world, have increased at only two percent per year. And you find the same or large university endowments - the bigger the initial endowments, the bigger the rate of return.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




    Now, what could be done? The first thing is that I think we need more financial transparency. We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information. We need a global registry of financial assets, more coordination on wealth taxation, and even wealth tax with a small tax rate will be a way to produce information so that then we can adapt our policies to whatever we observe.
    And to some extent, the fight against tax havens and automatic transmission of information is pushing us in this direction.
    Now, there are other ways to redistribute wealth, which it can be tempting to use. Inflation: it's much easier to print money than to write a tax code, so that's very tempting, but sometimes you don't know what you do with the money. This is a problem.
    Expropriation is very tempting. Just when you feel some people get too wealthy, you just expropriate them. But this is not a very efficient way to organize a regulation of wealth dynamics. So war is an even less efficient way, so I tend to prefer progressive taxation, but of course, history will invent its own best ways, and it will probably involve a combination of all of these.
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 28, 2020 at 12:28 PM.
    Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
    Charles Péguy

    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
    Thomas Piketty

  10. #730

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Alhoon, my point is that left-wing politicians are elitist - not the electorate, which simply fell for false promises of economic betterment. Also I wouldn't call Russian oligarch hard right - they promote same crap that neoliberals promote in the West - uncontrolled mass-immigration, pandering to ethnic minorities, high taxation and increasing role of public sector (mainly to favor assets of the oligarchy), etc. Government handing out boons to selected corporations isn't really capitalism. Globalism in its essence is against free market, since it can't be maintained without draconian government control and regulation.

  11. #731
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    They do not promote high taxation or leftwing government regulations. Government handouts to select businessmen is neither leftwing nor rightwing. It's ... bad policy and corruption.
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
    "Angry Uncle Gordon" describes me well.
    _______________________________________________________
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    Developer of LtC: Random maps submod for Lands to Conquer (that brings a multitude of random maps and other features).

  12. #732

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by alhoon View Post
    They do not promote high taxation or leftwing government regulations. Government handouts to select businessmen is neither leftwing nor rightwing. It's ... bad policy and corruption.
    Its been a consistent staple of cosmopolitan globalism (of both neoliberal and neoconservative kind). But I guess we can agree that government forcing "adjustments" on market to favor specific private entities is not capitalism.

  13. #733
    Tiro
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Perhaps Basil's trouble was that one needn't be anti-LEFTist, but only not LEFTist in order to confront civilizational entropy. The separation of powers of the current politics will be best, into nations and proposition-nations according to realism and ideology.

    Here are some "hate facts" that are sure to provide great distraction and shrieking from the LEFT while the American and European Right secure their futures. "Propertarianism" is something new to me, personally it's nothing new or interesting, but it has built itself up with a decent foundation to leave behind apologism and political theatre.

    https://propertarianism.com/

    https://moralfoundations.org/ -Jonathan Haidt and moral foundations. Much research into heritage of genetics and correlating politics of an individual has been eagerly studied elsewhere.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...111/ajps.12380 -Narcissism and Political Orientations (Peter K. Hatemi
    Zoltán Fazekas)

    https://www.pnas.org/content/112/27/8250 -The self-control consequences of political ideology (Joshua J. Clarkson, John R. Chambers, Edward R. Hirt, Ashley S. Otto, Frank R. Kardes, and Christopher Leone)

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ownplaying-co/ -Finishing off with a WT piece explaining that displays of being "nice" is actually different from simply being what you are and dispensing of yourself wholly to others.
    Last edited by Bob69Joe; February 01, 2020 at 10:48 AM.

  14. #734

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    The cult of "moderation" and centrism has also contributed to that. You know your democracy is in crisis when your choices are only middle-of-the-road boomers whose policies have only slight cosmetic differences.

  15. #735
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Actually, I strongly disagree. That's when your democracy is fine. If people want change, like with Trump and Sanders/Warren, they push for it.
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
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  16. #736

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by alhoon View Post
    Actually, I strongly disagree. That's when your democracy is fine. If people want change, like with Trump and Sanders/Warren, they push for it.
    No, that's when democracy is in crisis, since democracy can only exist when there is choice. not ot mention that candidates are also determined by rich donors...
    But I recall we have this discussion in another thread.

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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    No, that's when democracy is in crisis, since democracy can only exist when there is choice. not ot mention that candidates are also determined by rich donors...
    But I recall we have this discussion in another thread.
    This is the academy, so that's the better choice.
    Regardless, I would say that parties not offering choices you would like but the 90% does like, doesn't mean democracy is in crisis. It could be that it is complacent public or it could be that the suggested choices (or single choice with a different coat of paint over it if you want) are the best ones for the vast majority, whether you agree or disagree with them.
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
    "Angry Uncle Gordon" describes me well.
    _______________________________________________________
    Beta-tester for Darthmod Empire, the default modification for Empire Total War that does not ask for your money behind patreon.
    Developer of Causa Belli submod for Darthmod, headed by Hammeredalways and a ton of other people.
    Developer of LtC: Random maps submod for Lands to Conquer (that brings a multitude of random maps and other features).

  18. #738
    Himster's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    The cult of "moderation" and centrism has also contributed to that. You know your democracy is in crisis when your choices are only middle-of-the-road boomers whose policies have only slight cosmetic differences.
    I think that it is quite plain that there is no cult of moderation, quite the opposite. There is the superficial spewing of moderate or reaonable sounding talking points, quite at odds with the intent of political parties, who are hell-bent on establishing their own cults of left or right over the other, an activity replete with cultic chanting, wearing matching outfits, hoarding guns and all the other affectations that cults adorn themselves with.
    The unattainable ideal essence of good politics is, always has been and always will be: moderation. How could it be any other way?
    Would you rather some kind of radical came along, like Hitler, Lenin, Sulla, Caesar or Che Guevara?

    If only there were a cult of moderation, the world might be a paradise, a boring paradise, a paradise still. But moderation goes against the nature of man and so, here we are. Greed, selfishness, plutocracy, clumsy/misguided altruism and fame seeking are the strings by which our political puppets dance.

    No, that's when democracy is in crisis, since democracy can only exist when there is choice.
    This seems to be a symptom of having fallen into the two party partisan trap, rather than an indictment against moderation.
    My country just had an election today and, like most countries, there was a huge spectrum of choices and we also have proportional representation, rather than the Electoral College system, so every politician has a chance to be elected and then form a part of the government. Even so, it is the moderates who tend to win and it should be so. Perhaps if the whole nation were to go mad overnight and elect a party of unapologetic terrorists or ineffectual hippies. I would argue that that would be an example of democracy failing.

    Moderation is the key to all things: Icing a cake, drinking beer, selecting the colour of a tie, getting plastic surgery, mixing paints, performing cunnilingus, plastering a wall, exercising justice upon the intransigent, fencing, removing a tumour, adding spice to a dish, etc. Why would politics be a magical exception to this sound universal principle? I have been to America and having seen the nature of that country, perhaps I understand that moderation could be an alien concept. Is that the explanation for your aberrant declaration?
    The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
    -Betrand Russell

  19. #739

    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Quote Originally Posted by alhoon View Post
    This is the academy, so that's the better choice.
    Regardless, I would say that parties not offering choices you would like but the 90% does like, doesn't mean democracy is in crisis. It could be that it is complacent public or it could be that the suggested choices (or single choice with a different coat of paint over it if you want) are the best ones for the vast majority, whether you agree or disagree with them.
    Again, this more in commonality with an oligarchy, rather then with a democracy. The faultiness of the current system is very visible just by looking at DNC primaries.
    Quote Originally Posted by Himster View Post
    I think that it is quite plain that there is no cult of moderation, quite the opposite. There is the superficial spewing of moderate or reaonable sounding talking points, quite at odds with the intent of political parties, who are hell-bent on establishing their own cults of left or right over the other, an activity replete with cultic chanting, wearing matching outfits, hoarding guns and all the other affectations that cults adorn themselves with.
    The unattainable ideal essence of good politics is, always has been and always will be: moderation. How could it be any other way?
    Would you rather some kind of radical came along, like Hitler, Lenin, Sulla, Caesar or Che Guevara?

    If only there were a cult of moderation, the world might be a paradise, a boring paradise, a paradise still. But moderation goes against the nature of man and so, here we are. Greed, selfishness, plutocracy, clumsy/misguided altruism and fame seeking are the strings by which our political puppets dance.
    I think "radicalism" can be good if it radicalism against something bad. When your democracy is dying and country is descending into oligarchy, radicalism is something aimed to get you far away from that. Moderation in context of North America, is simply a conglomerate of neoliberal/neoconservative ideas and interests, something that caused the nation to stagnate for decades, but is now thankfully in decline.

    This seems to be a symptom of having fallen into the two party partisan trap, rather than an indictment against moderation.
    My country just had an election today and, like most countries, there was a huge spectrum of choices and we also have proportional representation, rather than the Electoral College system, so every politician has a chance to be elected and then form a part of the government. Even so, it is the moderates who tend to win and it should be so. Perhaps if the whole nation were to go mad overnight and elect a party of unapologetic terrorists or ineffectual hippies. I would argue that that would be an example of democracy failing.

    Moderation is the key to all things: Icing a cake, drinking beer, selecting the colour of a tie, getting plastic surgery, mixing paints, performing cunnilingus, plastering a wall, exercising justice upon the intransigent, fencing, removing a tumour, adding spice to a dish, etc. Why would politics be a magical exception to this sound universal principle? I have been to America and having seen the nature of that country, perhaps I understand that moderation could be an alien concept. Is that the explanation for your aberrant declaration?
    Like I said, the problem of moderation is that there is no choice - in reality it is simply collectivism, under an illusion of self-proclaimed "rationality". Partisanship, if anything, saved US from falling into oligarchy trap and created a rift between political thoughts.

  20. #740
    alhoon's Avatar Comes Rei Militaris
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    Default Re: The latest anti-liberal rant thread (get your daily dose here)

    Perhaps this shouldn't be here as it is more of an observation and less a rant, but I will rant never the less, so...

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.12516.pdf

    Two parts that have to be discussed independently:
    - A scientific study finds that AI classifiers in Universities that look for hatespeech, racism and sexism in forums etc etc catch those poor, marginalized minorities posting things that the classifiers consider racist or sexist far more often than for those racist, evil, white males.
    - In the face of this, the researchers try to spin it in a way to avoid saying "and we conclude that minorities are much more racist and sexist than those evil white males" by hinting that part of the problem (not the whole thing, see below) is ... that the AI is racist! Then, they conclude that such racist programs should be used with caution (or not at all) because they disproportionally affect the minorities that are often the target of this hatespeech ( mostly by other minorities ).



    About the racist AI:
    To the defense of those idiots that bent backwards to avoid saying that minorities are more racist despite the overwhelming evidence in their own study, some of the reasons they present for why the AI is racist make sense, including how much more often black people call each other the N-word. I.e. that some words are not racist when used by minorities.
    I.e. the progressives, even with tears in their eyes, have to admit that context matters in their attempt to absolve the minorities of any blame.

    That is not wrong: Yes, minorities are more likely to be offended when racial slurs are used by others against them, and yes context matters.
    I met a person in a conference, a white guy from Germany that his name was a composite of the N-word and ending with -mann. A friend of mine in USA told me that if I saw him in New York and greeted him with "Hi, -man!" people would call me racist because they ignore that context matters.

    About the actual increased chance of racism or sexism between minorities:
    But it is also undeniable that many religious minorities (Muslims, Hindus etc) are more sexist than WASP people. And let's not forget that many Asians are also very sexist compared to USA's standards.
    And aside of "common sense", now there's a scientific report that showcases it, even if the progressives bent backwards to avoid saying it.


    And to conclude:
    "While these datasets are still valuable for academic research, we caution against using them in the field to detect and particularly to take enforcement action against different types of abusive language. If they are used in this way we expect that they will systematically penalize African-Americans more than whites, resulting in racial discrimination. " <=== Sorry buddy, But they deserve it. You cannot ask universities, "please ignore the undeniable results of this study that prove black people are more racist and sexist than whites, let's focus on persecuting whites instead of looking to suppress hatespeech in general."
    alhoon is not a member of the infamous Hoons: a (fictional) nazi-sympathizer KKK clan. Of course, no Hoon would openly admit affiliation to the uninitiated.
    "Angry Uncle Gordon" describes me well.
    _______________________________________________________
    Beta-tester for Darthmod Empire, the default modification for Empire Total War that does not ask for your money behind patreon.
    Developer of Causa Belli submod for Darthmod, headed by Hammeredalways and a ton of other people.
    Developer of LtC: Random maps submod for Lands to Conquer (that brings a multitude of random maps and other features).

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