Chrystia Freeland writes in the Atlantic:
... But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.
... I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”
... Wilson’s distinction helps explain why many of America’s other business elites appear so removed from the continuing travails of the U.S. workforce and economy: the global “nation” in which they increasingly live and work is doing fine—indeed, it’s thriving.
For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard—especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers—can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others.
Unsurprisingly, Russian oligarchs have been among the most fearless in expressing this attitude. A little more than a decade ago, for instance, I spoke to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at that moment the richest man in Russia. “If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him,” Khodorkovsky told me. “Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.”
By the way, just because Khodorkovsky is an SOB doesn't mean that his jailer, Mr. Putin, isn't an SOB-squared.
Though typically more guarded in their choice of words, many American plutocrats suggest, as Khodorkovsky did, that the trials faced by the working and middle classes are generally their own fault. When I asked one of Wall Street’s most successful investment-bank CEOs if he felt guilty for his firm’s role in creating the financial crisis, he told me with evident sincerity that he did not. The real culprit, he explained, was his feckless cousin, who owned three cars and a home he could not afford. One of America’s top hedge-fund managers made a near-identical case to me—though this time the offenders were his in-laws and their subprime mortgage. And a private-equity baron who divides his time between New York and Palm Beach pinned blame for the collapse on a favorite golf caddy in Arizona, who had bought three condos as investment properties at the height of the bubble.
... The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth.
Not surprisingly, the word "immigration" never comes up in the article. Dissent suppression seems to be working fine.
I've argued for citizenism as an alternative to the reigning ideologies in part because globalism is so endlessly vulnerable to manipulation by clever elites.
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 250 of 250kurt9:
Yeah, that distinction is important. For all that the dot-com bubble had a lot of nonsense and a fair bit of fraud going on, it mainly involved paying really smart people to spend time inventing and building new stuff, working out new ways to do things whose existence broadly made the world a better place. A lot of wealth pumped into that bubble was lost, but there were big positive externalities.
By contrast, the financial side of the bubble seems to me to mostly have been about complicated zero-sum games, in which the world became no better off, but great effort and intelligence was expended deciding which clever group of people would get the biggest slice of the pie.
The housing bubble did involve building houses, which at least is real wealth. But it built a lot of them in places that few people really wanted to live, and the houses are largely tangled up in legal arrangements that make their owners poorer.
It's a vicious circle - immigration, even legal immigration of intelligent elites, has a corrosive effect on the national bonds that hold us together as a nation. On an individual level people of Jewish, Italian, Polish, German and English descent can all get along and live under the illusion that we live in a "melting pot", but taking a step back you can see the extent to which cliques based on shared ethnicity form, and the extent to which our hyphenated heritages undermines our special sense of what it means to be American. Russia is a disaster today partly because the Soviet Union did an effective job of destroying Russian traditions and promoting meritocratic principles (even if the regime didn't live up to them). The future may belong to countries like China and Korea where national pride and ethnic pride are synonymous.
It's quite possible to have transnational friendships, and even lead an international, expat life, while being firmly grounded in one's on culture and nation, and having deep affection and loyalty for "the fires of home". People have done it for centuries.
No foreign friend of mine ever claimed to belong to the tribe of Nowhere Men, membership in which, you seem to imply, is a prerequisite to a non-parochial existence. Of course I feel "more commonality" with them in some things than I do with my own countrymen, many of whom I dislike, hate, or who bore me silly. They wouldn't be my friends, otherwise. But they have cultures of their own, to which I do not belong, as they do not belong to mine. (I find it odd that one would travel the roads of the earth seeking nothing from other people but common technical interests or a "shared worldview", wanting nothing more than what one expected.)
To be a member of a culture, and to feel loyalty to one's countrymen, is a different thing than the bond one has with freely chosen friends. It's not an impediment to any of the things you claim to have, and a lack of it is just that, a lack, not an alternate or a substitution.
Goddamn Rohan, that is some good writing!
Asian society is also far more respectful towards its own nerds, other countries' nerds, and possibly everyone in general.
If you consider slamming the door in the faces of the people who invited you into their homes respectful, then sure, that makes sense. Seriously - WTF? East Asian society reciprocate very little of what they get in western society. This is the model of respect?
Blacks, in a way, sort of get this. In California, after Pete Wilson ran all those anti-illegal ads, black support for Republicans doubled. Today, black Californians vote more Republican than blacks almost anywhere else in the U.S.
I had the whole conversation with a complete stranger, a nattily dressed older brotha at the gas station the other day. He was working some gas cans and I sympathized with his plight, having run out of gas on the way to the station a few months back. That was all it took to get the full court press from him over illegal immigration, Mexicans, and his newly-won job as a dishwasher.
Highlight quotes:
"I mean, this ain't about prejudice, it's about puttin' food on my table"
"I'm 57 years old, and I ain't never seen it this bad, never."
"I got 5 kids to feed."
Oh, almost forgot:
"I mean, we [whites and blacks] been here, you know?"
Asians tend to be more respectful of their nerds because their nerds have personality traits that sort of approximate the typical Asian personality type - quiet, diligent, shy, obediant, serious, low testosterone. Their culture also emphasizes professional and academic success, which nerds embody.
Globalization is inevitable, but I think of a few ways to counter it a little bit......
1.) More tarrifs and trade barriers. It'd force American companies to keep more work here, invest here, and have operations at home.
2.) Restrict American companies from sharing their technology with foreign subcontractors or workeres.
3.) Cut back on legal immigration and end these temporary work programs. Lots of immigrants and temporary workers, especially Chinese and Indians, are involved in the outsourcing back home.
4.) Give subsidies, cheap credit, tax breaks, and other forms of assistance to domestic companies.
5.) Cut back on our spending and balance the budget, decreasing the need for foreign borrowing. When you owe foreigners, they have the potential to buy your assets, which is bad.
It'd be an "economic nationalist" platform. It's not perfect, but it'd go a long way to stabilize our situation. Trade barriers, low immigration, domestically owning your debt, and pro-domestic business policies are what Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, and other East Asian countries are doing. Maybe we should follow suit.
Pat Buchanan, to his credit, has been advocating protectionism for years. It's amazing how right that guy is about everything - immigration, trade, foreign policy, everything..... Man, we really should've elected him in 92.... or 96..... or 2000....... Instead, we chose Clinton and Bush. I suppose we're now getting what we deserve. Damn.
"will go to support the leeches I escaped from.' They also think, 'if I started out poor as an immigrant but made it to middle class status, why can't those dysfunctioal native born Americans do the same?'"
What the commenter fails to realize is that the immigrant is actually getting a windfall gain by being able to move from a country with a very lower standard of living and per capita income to a country with a much higher standard of living and income. If an Indian moves from his native India with a per capita income of $1,000 to America with a per capita income of $36,000, that immigrant gets a windfall gain 36 times greater by the simple task of moving. That immigrant calculates his marginal productivity of labor in terms of American wages, but Indian prices. He works hard because the goals he wants (like a house and family back in India) are much easier to attain, whereas an American needs to stretch $36,000 a year on American prices.
So, the problem with Americans is that they do not have the option of moving to a country called Utopia where the per capita income is 36 times as large as America's. See, in Utopia, I would become an American millionaire if I just worked there for one year. With my million dollars, I can come back home and get that wife and house that I want. Even better, if I work longer and harder, I would really be able to up my status back in America. True, I'd have to pay Utopian prices for things, but I could also cut down on a lot of stuff without affecting my status back home.
Meanwhile, the Utopian elite was marveling at the hard-working Americans compared to the shiftless, lazy Utopians.
OK guys. You want to know what my culture and "nation" is? I will tell you. It is transhumanism. I am a transhumanist. I will never, ever be anything else.
I will also tell you that all of my friend who actually care about me (that I can actually trust with not only my money, but my life itself) are also transhumanists.
By transhumanism, I mean the whole life extension, cryonics, space, and libertarian milieus that I have been in my entire adult life. The core of transhumanism is the desirability and pursuit of radical life extension. Those that do not belief that radical life extension is possible, or worse, are opposed to its development, are called deathists.
It is impossible for me to feel any connection or loyalty to deathists, regardless of which country they happen to live in. Needless to say, I also reject any worldview (philosophy, religion, or ideology) that is hostile to the development of radical life extension.
In answer to your question, transhumanism is my culture or tribe and my friends who are in it with me are my "countrymen", as I know no other.
"Well, but the plantation owner, who owned that land and could have forced the slaves to grow that food and then give it to him to sell"
Sure: let the slaves starve. There's a brilliant business idea. I wonder why slave owners didn't think of that one.
Truth:
"So the guy who actually wrote The Communist Manifesto was not a communist? Semantics."
Distinguishing between the cultural Marxist New Left and the more Soviet-influenced classical Marxist Left is not semantics, although obviously there is overlap (and at my work the two groups get along well). As for Marx, he said "I am not a Marxist".
Obama is 'not a communist' in the sense that he's not interested in shutting down Wall Street or other plutocratic Democrat funders.
Truth:
"As for the silly 'black nationalist' thing, same question; how does getting one elected help a coterie of lilly white businessmen who love money and helped him get elected?"
They wouldn't have funded a more radical black nationalist, but more because Al Sharpton would not have got elected. Obama-level black nationalism doesn't hurt Wall Street. Obama favours unqualified blacks & (especially) mulattos, but GW Bush favoured unqualified Latinos and white sycophants, the two administrations seem a lot alike to me, with Obama marginally more competent. Obama in practice has done less to further black interests than did LBJ or Nixon.
And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush[...]
...You love your native-born thugs and celebrate them as great men. You are just a hyper-nationaliist fanatic who loves your country too much. In your eyes, the U.S.A can never do any wrong and is the greatest nation ever. American presidents are the greatest men to ever walk the Earth who go around crushing all the "evil" out there on behalf of the U.S.A...
Sailer, you deceptive neocon bastard. All these years I've been falling for your Straussian juju. I really need to work on becoming a more subtle reader.
England was mostly a place of drunkards and violence. Only during the Victorian era did a good dose of social repression "fix" this problem, lasting until the 1950's.
The only direct data we have on violence of which I am aware, which is the murder rate data agnostic frequently cites, tends to indicate that pre-Victorian violence levels were lower than, for example, Italy.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/08/what-does-decline-in-homicide-rates.php
Changes seem rather slight between the 1700s and the "Victorian" era contra 1600 to 1700.
It's entirely possible that there was much more violence up in pre-Victorian Britain but less murder than, for example, Italy, however. I would think it plausible that fistfights when drunk were higher in frequency, even if murder was lower. I guess if preventing fistfights between drunks at all costs is important, then maybe "Victorian repression" has its advantages...
Needless to say, I also reject any worldview (philosophy, religion, or ideology) that is hostile to the development of radical life extension.
Kurt, what about ideologies that treat it as detrimental to the productive and innovative capacity to try and lengthen or eliminate generational churn, or a waste of resources at best?
I ask because you seem like a big fan of productive and innovative capacity over everything else and I am sure you've come across these arguments.
Svigor,
"Capitalism sucks as an -ism. It should be subordinated to a higher social power, or it eats everything in sight. It's a tool, not a religion."
Great line. I really cannot understand the logic of the ultra-free marketeers. Do they really believe that some people really deserve billions of dollars? An absurd notion, I would say. A complete disgrace that CEOs earn much, much more than artistic and scientific geniuses, for example. The market may say otherwise, but real value is not just dollars and cents.
kurt9: OK guys. You want to know what my culture and "nation" is? I will tell you.
I don't think anybody asked. The discussion really wasn't about your interests, but about everybody's conflicts of interest. (That's the problem with those transhumanists. They think everything in the universe is about "me, me, me".)
It is transhumanism. I am a transhumanist. I will never, ever be anything else.
I suspect most regular readers in these parts are aware of this. But the perennial large-scale schisms between ruler and ruled, money and power and want thereof, among ethnicities and classes, has very little to do with the singular interests of über-nerds running around using words like "deathist". I know you're working on hauling mankind to the sunlit uplands of affectless technotopia, but for my lifetime, at least, we're stuck with dealing with the behaviors and motivations of unperfected human apes.
I think other people understand your point of view just fine. They were trying to explain what you seem to be missing about other people's views, not elicit the details of your life-philosophy.
And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush
lol what?
Someone here asked me if the people I have relationships based on common interests and activities would help me if I got into any kind of trouble.
Well, there's only two kinds of problems I could have. One is medical and the other is financial. My transhumanist friend, several whom I know are doing biotechnology start-ups to not only cure aging, but also develop whole-body regeneration. So, it would appear that only my transhumanist friends offer a solution to any medical problem that I might have in the future.
As for financial, whatever limitations on my productivity as an engineer and technical sales person can only be overcome with a dynamic, globalized, growth-oriented economy.
To answer this question, yes I stand by my point that only the people who share my interests and goals in life could in anyway help me overcome any problem that I might have.
Indeed, it is the people who do not share my interests and goals in life who actually create problems for me and my friends. That is because some of these people oppose the development of effective anti-aging technology, which makes these people problem people.
That may have been true, but I wonder if the English social repressors attacked alcohol as an alien Mediterranean drug (which it was, and is) ...
Compare to:
Beer is one of the world's oldest prepared beverages, possibly dating back to the early Neolithic or 9500 BC, when cereal was first farmed,[9] and is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.[10] Archaeologists speculate that beer was instrumental in the formation of civilisations.[11]
...
Beer was spread through Europe by Germanic and Celtic tribes as far back as 3000 BC,[19] and it was mainly brewed on a domestic scale.[20] The product that the early Europeans drank might not be recognised as beer by most people today. Alongside the basic starch source, the early European beers might contain fruits, honey, numerous types of plants, spices and other substances such as narcotic herbs.[21] What they did not contain was hops, as that was a later addition first mentioned in Europe around 822 by a Carolingian Abbot[22] and again in 1067 by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen.[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer
////////////////////////////
"Truth, you say that America needs black Americans because America needs consumers and workers?"
Did I say that, or did the founding fathers? There is a reason we're here.
Truth, the reason why Africkan slaves were brought to the Americas way back when was to do hard manual labor and menial chores. That was slaves' role in society.
Slaves weren't allowed to consume much, and they had little money of their own.
Your mention of the original intent of slavery in the USA is not helpful rhetoric for advancing the cause of black Americans in the 21st century.
"Anonymous said...
"I am against murder."
And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush even though there was ample evidence that he was torturing people in Guantanamo and that his shadow Blackwater corporation was killing civilians in cold blood in Iraq. Hypocrisy at it's best."
Ah, the dangers of trolling. You obviously know nothing about this iSteve site, or you are just illiterate. I've been reading Steve since 2004, and in all that time, I don't think I've read one single thing he's written which was favorable toward G.W. Bush or his foreign wars. Perhaps you though you were trolling some other Steve's website?
"Whiskey said...
England was mostly a place of drunkards and violence. Only during the Victorian era did a good dose of social repression "fix" this problem, lasting until the 1950's.
See Hogarth, Gin Lane, etc."
Yeah, that's why England accomplished so little up until 1837 - why practically nothing at all.
You are an idiot, Whiskey, if you actually believe some of the idiot things you write. Aren't you even the least bit embarrassed at claiming that Georgian England was nothing but a nation of no-account yobs? Or does your claim extend to the Jacobite period too, before the introduction of gin?
Newton, Milton, Handel, the 13 colonies, the British Empire, the industrial revolution - all from a nation of nothing but hooligans in thier cups.
How can you possibly write such patently false drivel?
"kurt9 said...
In answer to your question, transhumanism is my culture or tribe and my friends who are in it with me are my "countrymen", as I know no other."
So, what do you transhumanist guys call yourselves?
Trannies?
I don't think anybody asked. The discussion really wasn't about your interests, but about everybody's conflicts of interest.
Actually you did. You asked me if I felt the need for cultural identity and bonding with members of that culture over others that I deal with in Asia, for example. I replied to this question. Its just that you don't like my answer.
..at least, we're stuck with dealing with the behaviors and motivations of unperfected human apes.
I know that. Tell me something I don't know.
They were trying to explain what you seem to be missing about other people's views, not elicit the details of your life-philosophy.
I agree with you. I respect the viewpoints of others. I don't have to agree with you to respect you. Some of you don't understand this.
I have been interested in radical life extension for a long time. I have not felt any commonality or loyalty to those who do not share this objective for an equally long time. I see no reason to change my views.
The transnationalist worldview is correct and the critics are just a bunch of losers. The fact that today's rich are mostly self-made, as opposed to the inherited rich of the past, suggests that upward mobility does indeed exist and that it should be possible to start a business and ultimate join them. That people would rather complain about them rather than start their own businesses suggests that such people are just sorry losers.
"Truth, the reason why Africkan slaves were brought to the Americas way back when was to do hard manual labor and menial chores. That was slaves' role in society."
That was the role of every large population group now in America who was not a Northern European Wasp. Only they originally got paid.
Mr. Sailer,
You write that you believe that Vladimir Putin has committed murder. I could find no support for that claim. Could you enlighten your readers?
"So, the problem with Americans is that they do not have the option of moving to a country called Utopia where the per capita income is 36 times as large as America's. See, in Utopia, I would become an American millionaire if I just worked there for one year."
A real advantage of Utopia, seldom mentioned, is that I could keep a wife very happy simply by virtue of moving there from here.
An American woman expects an American standard of living from the outset of a relationship, because she's used to it. An Indian woman brought here by her husband gets a dramatically increased standard of living just by virtue of moving here. This is why it's easier for immigrants to start families, save money, and even build a business even though their financial position, in absolute terms, may be no better than that of an American.
OK guys. You want to know what my culture and "nation" is? I will tell you. It is transhumanism. I am a transhumanist. I will never, ever be anything else.
Great. Guess what? I'm keeping an eye on transhumanism too.
Eggs & baskets - not a high-IQ concept.
CC-bLF said
Yup. That Kurt9's east Asian friends, in general, do not reciprocate his sentiments and loyalties is a given.
Sorry Kurt, not saying that to hurt your feelings or anything, but it's far more likely than not.
"And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush even though there was ample evidence that he was torturing people in Guantanamo and that his shadow Blackwater corporation was killing civilians in cold blood in Iraq. Hypocrisy at it's best."
This guy wins the award for most inept troll I've ever seen at iSteve.
When Israel, Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan accept globalization.......... then we'll talk. Until then, I want border walls, zero immigration, trade barriers, protectionism, and national sovreignty.
I just don't know who to vote for. I've tried voting Republican, but that doesn't always work out well for us.
"And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush even though there was ample evidence that he was torturing people in Guantanamo and that his shadow Blackwater corporation was killing civilians in cold blood in Iraq. Hypocrisy at it's best."
False. Steve did not praise Bush. Not only has he held him responsible for his invade the world/invite the world initiative, but he also blamed Bush for the mortgage meltdown and no profiling policy on airplanes which contributed to 9/11. Oh, and Steve was doing this before Bush became a lame duck.
As for Bush being a "murderer", well according to your logic, any sitting president during war time would be a murderer, including Obama. What? You don't think civilians are being killed in Afghanistan now that Obama is POTUS or that Muslims are being treated just swell in Gitmo? lol
But here's the difference between Bush & Obama versus Putin. Neither Bush nor Obama target their political rivals or political threats for murder like Putin does. Bush relinquished power once his term was up and Obama will do the same, whereas Putin is still the puppet master in Russia. Neither Bush nor Obama have committed genocide whereas Putin has in Chechnya.
"but he also blamed Bush for the mortgage meltdown"
Correction, Steve blamed NAMs for the mortgage meltdown; repeatedly. Bush was just a "naive dupe."
But here's the difference between Bush & Obama versus Putin. Neither Bush nor Obama target their political rivals or political threats for murder like Putin does. Bush relinquished power once his term was up and Obama will do the same, whereas Putin is still the puppet master in Russia. Neither Bush nor Obama have committed genocide whereas Putin has in Chechnya.
Ha, ha---looks like Steve is still attracting his fair share of "Evil Neocon" commenters these days...
"but he also blamed Bush for the mortgage meltdown"
Correction, Steve blamed NAMs for the mortgage meltdown; repeatedly. Bush was just a "naive dupe."
The subtleties were a bit much for Truth to follow, so I'll explain: Steve blamed the mortgage meltdown in part on the militantly-enforced uncritical acceptance of Political Correctness.
Neither Bush nor Obama have committed genocide whereas Putin has in Chechnya.
I found this Cablegate missive interesting:
Chechnya: The Once and Future War
2. (C) President Putin has pursued a two-pronged strategy to extricate Russia from the war in Chechnya and establish a viable long-term modus vivendi preserving Moscow’s role as the ultimate arbiter of Chechen affairs. The first prong was to gain control of the Russian military deployed there, which had long operated without real central control and was intent on staying as long as its officers could profit from the war.
6. (C) We would propose an additional factor [explaining the desire to leave bases in these areas, the way we still have bases in Germany and Japan]: the determination of Russia’s senior officer corps to remain deployed in those countries to engage in lucrative activity outside their official military tasks. Sometimes that activity has been as mercenaries — for instance, Russian active-duty soldiers fought on both sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from 1991-92. Sometimes it has involved narcotics smuggling, as in Tajikistan. Selling arms to all sides has been a long-standing tradition. And sometimes it has meant collaborating with the mafias of both sides in conflict to facilitate contraband trade across the lines, as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The officers and their generals formed a powerful bloc in favor of all the deployments, especially under Yeltsin.
7. (C) This “military-entrepreneurial” bloc soon formed an autonomous institution, in some respects outside the government’s control. There are many illustrations of its autonomy. For instance, in 1993 Yeltsin reached an agreement with Georgia on peacekeeping in Abkhazia. When the Georgian delegation arrived in Sochi in September of that year to hammer out the details with Russia’s generals, they found the deal had changed. When they protested that Yeltsin had agreed to other terms, a Russian general replied, “Let the President sit in Moscow, drink vodka, and chase women. That’s his business. We are here, and we have our work to do.”
8. (C) The lack of central control over the military, as well as officers’ cupidity, may have been a prime cause of the first Chechnya War. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, energy prices in the “ruble zone” were 3 percent of world market prices. Government officials and their partners bought oil at ruble prices, diverted it abroad, and sold it on the world market. The military joined in this arbitrage. Pavel Grachev, then Defense Minister, reportedly diverted oil to Western Group of Forces commander Burlakov, who sold it in Germany.
9. (C) Chechnya was a major entrepot for laundering oil for this arbitrage.
The note in brackets is mine, btw.
"And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush..."
No, he didn't. Are you a real person or some sort of liberal spambot?
"Truth, the reason why African slaves were brought to the Americas way back when was to do hard manual labor and menial chores. That was slaves' role in society."
That was the role of every large population group now in America who was not a Northern European Wasp. Only they originally got paid.
So Truth, you're saying that before the 1860's or maybe after there really wasn't much difference between the, uh, lifestyles of Catholic European immigrants to the USA and persons of African descent in America?
Once again, that is not a helpful line of talk if one wants his audience to sympathize with the plight of black people in American history.
Are you really the Truth, Truth? Is some impersonator posting under your name? If so, you need to work up to a better punch line, Mr. False Truth.
"Whiskey said...
England was mostly a place of drunkards and violence. Only during the Victorian era did a good dose of social repression "fix" this problem, lasting until the 1950's.
See Hogarth, Gin Lane, etc."
It is statements like this, Whiskey, which lead many people here to think of you as a callow light-weight who says any stupid thing that pops into mind.
So England accomplished NOTHING prior to 1837? It was just a wasteland of gin-soaked degenerates vomiting in gutters? The whole country?
Newton, Milton, Gibbon, Darwin, the Pitts, Wellington..... just a bunch of soccer hooligans? Ever heard of the British Empire? D'ya think it was founded by yobbos?
Actually you did. You asked me if I felt the need for cultural identity and bonding with members of that culture over others that I deal with in Asia, for example.
Maybe somebody else did and I missed it. I sure didn't.
I have been interested in radical life extension for a long time.
Q: "I wonder how the growing forces of transnationalism will play out against the older, strong forces of ethnic affinity and continuing parlous economic conditions".
kurt: "Enough about you, let's talk about me."
The transnationalist worldview is correct and the critics are just a bunch of losers. The fact that today's rich are mostly self-made [...]suggests that such people are just sorry losers.
As some loser over at Mangan's said recently, "[t]he flaw of Western liber[tarians] is not that they are wrong, per se. It is their insistence that their worldview is correct for all other people and that all other worldviews are wrong." C'mon, kurt, you're being painfully lame here. And I mean that aside from the point that the rich being self-made, or the non-rich having no particular desire (or ability) to join them, doesn't begin to undermine objections to transnationalism. (But hey, at least you didn't write "bunch of sorry loosers". I'll give you that.)
Other Cablegate tidbits:
Medvedyev (sp?) went around telling CIS satellite governments that they will not recognize/crow about the Holodomor, or else.
Russia is better-liked in central Asia than China is.
Central Asian states prefer to do crooked business with Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc., than spend the time, money, and effort to clean up their acts to qualify for American or western European investment. Chinese are/were bribing central Asian oil contracts out from under us. We're too dumb to do as the Romans do I guess.
Russians are a bit nuts. There is such a thing as an honest Russian. There's just no money in it. That Russian oil guy in Kazakhstan is a hoot.
Brits still have the inferiority/superiority complex vis-a-vis the U.S., right up to and including the royal family. They still hate the French.
American diplomats are very grey compared to Europeans. PC-unisex-pantsuit-bureaucrats. Well, that broad, the ambassador, who met with the prince and the Duke of York, anyway. Some of them can be pretty funny, or at least, relate funny stories. Like a joke about the Forbes-list billionaire in Kazakhstan who served crappy local ethnic food to the U.S. ambassador.
Lots of juicy "front lines of the Great Game" stuff in those cables. They spell out all the power players, rumors, etc.
@Truth
"Why would the brilliant, high-achiever, "doer" type oligarchs...give hundreds of millions of their dollars to a "communist" who "hates business" to be president of the United States?"
Corporatism.
Corporatism is an aliiance of big government with big business where the state protects corporations from competition in return for cash. This was originally a Fascist (Italian version) idea although most western governments
have been drifting into it since WWII as politicians have become more corrupt (simply because post-war prosperity caused too many citizens to stop paying attention to what the politicians were doing).
It's a privatize the profits, socialize the losses type deal or socialism for the rich and powerful, capitalism for everyone else.
The cultural marxist left that developed after WWII puts economic marxism on the back burner. Instead of waiting for capitalism to collapse like good little Leninists their aim is to collapse it from inside by destroying the cultural foundations. In the mean time they are quite happy to play the big state role in a corporatist system.
If and when they get America to a point where they have 60%+ poor people then the economic marxist side will come out again, the means of production will be siezed and the capitalists all shot.
(In theory. In practise they didn't take account of ethnic tribalism so what will actually happen is some kind of balkanization.)
(The reason they wanted a black President is to use his skin color as a weapon and shout racism at anyone who opposed Obamacare. When that didn't work they pretty much lost interest in him.)
So yes, i think people like Obama and Rahm are technically marxists - or would be at the drop of a hat if the time was right - but the economic side of it is currently irrelevant. It's the cultural side that matters to them.
"occam's razar suggest that the anti-pathy towards high performing Jews is based on ENVY."
Occam's razor suggests that jews will have done something bad at some point in their history.
At least once.
Even if it's only teeny weeny.
"Globalization is mainly about investing your resources overseas, rather than home."
Keyword "your" and "home"
"Globalization is inevitable"
Globalization *was* inevitable.
It's already doomed.
Globalization is the looting of America. Once America is fully looted globalization ends as the only people who want it are people without a country and they've spent the last 30 years destroying the only bargaining chip they had to entice other elites into their game.
The Chinese equivalent of globalization will be an empire centred on their own terriotory like every other nation in history that becomes powerful. Brazil, Russia, India will be the same. Why would they want globalization when they have a country of their own?
The explosive growth of the BRIC countries has been fuelled by the transfer of western technology and the looting and transfer of hundreds of years of accumulated capital from the western countries generally but especially US/UK but it can't carry on forever for the simple reason there isn't an unlimited amount of technology or accumulated capital.
So the US/UK will drop like a victim of a gang vampire attack and the transfer to the BRIC countries will cease. The globalists will find the other nations aren't interested now the globalist's only bargaining chip has been drained dry and will head off to create their own regional superpower. I assume you know who will gradually fly off to plague the east Asians.
The only big question is whether the growth of the BRIC countries will be self-sustaining after the massive infusion of US blood stops?
HBDers may get to find out if creativity is really a western thing or if that idea was just vanity and wishful thinking.
"So Truth, you're saying that before the 1860's or maybe after there really wasn't much difference between the, uh, lifestyles of Catholic European immigrants to the USA and persons of African descent in America?"
Of course there was a difference; one was brought over and forced into lifetime labor, had his children forced into lifetime labor, with practically no chance of change. The other was brought over to work a dangerous and demanding job in a factory, or shipping port or as a sharecropper, but could hope for better for his children and could leave the job anytime he wanted.
The point is that both sets of people were brought over to benefit the WASP elite, and for no other reason.
"This was originally a Fascist (Italian version)"
You are correct sir, but facist is not communist and that is what people do not understand.
"If and when they get America to a point where they have 60%+ poor people then the economic marxist side will come out again, the means of production will be siezed and the capitalists all shot."
The "capitalists" will not be shot, the capitalists, the government officials, military, and media are all one and the same; it is a rigged game and the outcome is to bleed the USA dry, and leave like a giant strip mine. All of the above people are figuratively, and often literally related (look up illuminati bloodlines sometime on youtube.)
"The reason they wanted a black President is to use his skin color as a weapon and shout racism at anyone who opposed Obamacare."
That is a very small peice of the conspiracy, the reason that they "wanted a black president" is because he creates instant strife between the US rank and file. On sites like this there was almost immeasurable hand-wringing over Obama being a puppet, a plant, a communist, a black nationalist, a marxist, etc., etc.
You may not have been impressed with the last 3 or 4 puppets we have had as president, but they did not cause you to foolishly feel less competent, angrier at your neighbors or cheated in some way.
Obama (who is a cousin of Bush, Cheney and Clinton by the way) does what he is hired to do, makes you 150 IQ national merit scholars spend your time thinking about blacks rahter than the globalist elites who rob you on a daily basis...and laugh about it.
The people that want to remain peoples have a shot at succeeding. Those that do not, don't. Over time, the trend will be toward whites (for example) either deciding to remain white, or becoming something else by mixing with other peoples. In short, all the Euros, Indians, Chinese, etc., left will be "racists," or have "racist" government. The rest will become something else.
Personally, I look forward to that day. I'd rather have my group pared down to a smaller population that wants to be who it is, than have the mass of driftwood drag those of us with a sense of identity over the waterfall with them. It's this choice, and its consequences, that cause so many ethnopatriots so much angst; they don't want to face the coming bottleneck.
"Russia is a disaster today partly because the Soviet Union did an effective job of destroying Russian traditions and promoting meritocratic principles (even if the regime didn't live up to them)."
Commmunism is meritocratic?
"Anonymous said...
"I am against murder."
And yet, from 2004 to 2008 you waxed poetically about the greatness of George W.Bush even though there was ample evidence that he was torturing people in Guantanamo and that his shadow Blackwater corporation was killing civilians in cold blood in Iraq. Hypocrisy at it's best."
Warder isn't murder... though I don't recall Steve supporting the Iraq War.
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