Honestly, I haven't read the proposal in that much detail, but yeah, I am skeptical of the idea that the EU will take on joint debt to re-industrialise or invest in green energy.

One of the benefits of project was Ukraine (for ameeica) was thar it would criple Europe as a possible competitor to America. I don't think the Americans, nor Euro aristocrats (who keep desperately trying to raise the profit rate through austerity) will want this.

Just use Linux, it's not actually as difficult to get working out of the box as people make it out to be. I was a computer noob when I got my first Linux distribution (debian with plasma kde) and it took me an hour to do everything (including googling). Not much longer than the time it takes to install windows.

And once you install a distribution of Linux with a decent desktop environment, you are pretty much good to go. Any functionality, shortcuts, automation that you want to add can usually be added and removed as needed, for free and relatively easily.

It looks like a typo, because the sentence doesn't make sense. How can the afd be both left and right?

I want you to internalise something.

Your country is already Fascist (yes, capital F fascist) and was like that from day 1.

Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, they know they benefit from white supremacy and imperialism.

Most liberals know. America invading things for oil is a meme for a reason.

A few deeper reasons than what you have posted that I can tell from my lib days:

1. Trump is the first time for many liberals seeing state power being openly and proudly used. The state always acts violently, but usually dresses it up with ideology. Trump doesn't bother doing this.
2. Trump detests the "left" (liberals believing themselves to be left), which is true for most republicans, but Trump and his supporters revolve their politics around hatred of the Democrats. Liberals hated mitch McConnell for obstructing Obama, but that's abstract stuff. Trump makes politics personal
3. Trump breaks the illusion of the liberal world order (aka the fourth riech) being eternal. He is an visible symptom of liberal society's decay and a reminder of its mortality.

It is notable, for example, that Singapore’s signing of the enhanced ADESC with China comes just weeks after it also renewed a key military facilities agreement with the United States, which is far more wide-ranging and consequential

It is necessary for China to build ties with regional powers, but it kind of pisses me off to see Asian states cooperate so opportunistically with the US. They are playing a dangerous game with a dangerous player.

"Despite the fact that Putin was obviously extremely angry about the breakthrough in Kursk Oblast, he did not make emotional decisions, so we did not see the strategy of ‘quick, grab everyone and send them to retake Kursk’.”

I don't know if this is just propaganda, an idiot, or the actual thinking behind the operation. Because if it is, then hinging your plan on having the enemy make dumb decisions is itself rather stupid.

They have other means of retaliation, notably, arming western enemies. Although thisninstance was cancelled

3 day invasion

The idea that they planned for it to be 3 days was completely made up.

Let’s see if it pays off for them.

Quite the attitude to have when the west is losing wars on like 4 fronts (gaza, yemen, ukraine, and lebanon) simultaneously. That too while having shit military industrial capacity.

By capturing Russian territory Russia now has a reason to come to negotiations to just call everything off to get their land back.

Ukraine captured land in kursk and this did not cause the Russians to come to the negotiating table, nor signal that they will weaken their demands. In fact, they simply started taking land even faster in Ukraine because Ukraine had committed resources into kursk instead of the front lines.

All it goes to show is that westerners have a complete non-understanding of this war.

Well, at least Russia will further supply enemies of the west in retaliation.

Access costs €69 per month

Lmao

I once read a guy (CEO btw) say that in capitalism the business owner is the one who produces everything by his will and design, workers merely "polish and assemble widgets".

This is the kind of (literal) magical thinking prevalent in American society.

What's funnier than liberals knowingly/unknowgly sneaking in idealistic errors into their arguments are conservatives who go all out with idealism. Like the last tweet there is what I might have written as a parody of idealism.

I know that the bourgeoisie existed before the industrial revolution and had their own organizations. I would certainly call these proto-capitalistic. But I would not call the prevailing social order itself capitalism, much in the same way I wouldn't call the current social order socialism, even though proto-socialist elements exist today. Since the elements themselves also only exist as parts of a whole, I wouldn't call proto-capitalist elements as capitalistic, because the elements of a fully capitalist society are different from the elements that will later evolve into capitalism. For example, in regards to guilds, most guilds before capitalism proper did not rely on wage labor (as wage labor was heavily looked down upon before capitalism as being unfit for men). Wage labor could only explode with primitive accumulation, and only with the formation of reserve armies of labor does it take on the monstrous form that it has under capitalism.

If I come across as arguing over semantics, it's just that I find the way that the book uses the word "capitalism" confusing. I have pre-concieved notions of what the word means, and am not sure which ones I should drop or keep when reading a passage from the book.

a capitalist logic certainly dominated those select cities which allowed them to accumulate so much wealth

Yes, I do think this is a relevant dynamic.

I really haven't read much of the book, which I should finish ASAP, so I am not really criticizing it, just expressing preliminary concerns.

it says capitalism only becomes systemic to the entire mode of production under the British industrial expansion.

This is kind of my problem here. Capitalism or capitalists are not something that meaningfully exist before the industrial revolution [1]. However, the book talks a lot about capitalist logics of state building, capitalist agencies, capitalist power and so on that existed well before the industrial revolution. This is because capital is conceived of as money with the power of expansion, either through MCM' or MM'.

We also are introduced to Braudel's conception of an anti-market of predators which is "the real home of capitalism". This layer presides over a market layer of "horizontal communications" and "automatic coordination usually links supply, demand and prices". This model seems to contradict the logic of the book, as money has the power of expansion via the market (second layer), and the third layer only emerges after the industrial revolution.

In either case, I feel like the concept of capitalism is being used unclearly. Furthermore, despite quoting Marx quite a bit, the author never even mentions labor value (or exchange value). The amount of focus on wage-labor, agriculture and demographics is also low, which I also find strange given the centrality of these things to any materialist analysis of world-capitalism.

All in all, it seems to me as if this book is about the inter-state politics of capitalism (a fine topic of study, I'm not saying it isn't), but it seems one sided. Maybe reading further in the book will clear things up for me.

[1] Up until that point, almost all of the surplus of any society is the amount of food leftover after all of the peasants/agricultural slaves are fed. This can be used to maintain a buffer, and feed a military/non-food producing portion of the population, but the accumulation of labor value in large quantities over many years can only occur when most of the population is not producing a good which perishes quickly.

I am also reading the long 20th century. Haven't gotten that deep in it yet, but yeah, China does seem poised to become the new and final hegemon, given the historical trend of each capitalist hegemon being larger than the previous one.

I do kind of expect the book's analysis to be of limited quality, since they seem to be working off a bizarre and unmaterialistic definition of capitalism based on political power and commerce (a pre-marxist understanding). Maybe as I read along it will be cleared up.

I wouldn't compare china's railways to amazon or uber. They don't need to make a profit in the first place. Dumbass neoliberals, despite proclaiming themselves as the clerics of capitalism don't even seem to understand that the only bad kind of debt for a government is foreign debt. And china has a massive trade surplus. They don't need to give a shit that the railways are making a loss.

It's probably just a case of America's currency being overvalued, since china's gdp has only fallen wrt America. As for why America's currency is overvalued? Probably the result of the euro, the dollars main competitor, being shafted by the Ukraine war

To understand this a bit better, look at this chart comparing the dollar to rmb and this one against the euro showing the dollar's massive gain directly after the Ukraine war.

In fact, the dollar was in a big slump during covid times (likely because the americans increased their money supply the most, and also because the slowdown in global trade hurts the imperial hegemon the most), and recovered right in the early stages of the war.

In concequence, right now, nominally speaking, America underwent significant growth. More accurately, you could say that the Ukraine war restored America's power as the imperial hegemon after its corrosion during corona. This is also why liberal media and the DNC insit so much that the economy is doing great. From the perspective of the imperialists, it genuinely is.

No, it means that purchasing power in China rose more than in the US, which is literally what GDP PPP measures. A falling GDP but rising GDP PPP means that for some reason, your currency is being undervalued.

Nah, a good chunk of r/neoliberal is firmly in the labor aristocracy or petit bourgeoise. I think these guys did a survey at some point and the typical subscriber a 30 something tech worker on the east/west coast.

Changed it to real GDP for ya

And here is per capita

GDP is a ‘flow’, total value of final goods and services measured over a year. so if a country has a bridge worth $100b, that won’t be included in GDP since it already exists, it won’t be shown when its destroyed/depreciates either. it is only measured for the year its built, no other year.

Yeah, I don't know why I said that the destruction of the bridge would be counted. For GDP metrics, the product/service is assumed to have been consumed entirely in the year it was sold.

Some peak comments

The difference between democracy and dictatorship is like a ceiling light versus a flashlight. The ceiling light won't shine evenly everywhere in a crowded room, some places might get less light and some places might be too obstructed to get any light at all, but all in all the room is brighter. Whereas with a flashlight you can point it at any part of the room you want and illuminate it, but the room as a whole isn't as bright.

I can feel my political understanding get better already. In taking this analogy seriously, I have come to understand that democracies ... uh ... huh. What is even the point here?

In particular, democratic republics are more stable due to having transitions of power happen peacefully, regularly, and frequently, which helps reduce corruption and, ideally, prevents leaders from being too disconnected from the people they govern.

Bro you live in the United States.

Yes, but a lot of China's troubles were going to happen. China stressed short-term GDP gains as opposed to playing the long game following 2008's crash. This was while Hu Jintao was in charge. So, while a ton of funds got thrown at infrastructure projects, a lot of them were for little more than vanity, if even that. China built an extensive high-speed rail network. But it consistently loses money.

Divine comedy.

I presume that whoever owns the infrastructure will be able to report the losses and so reduce the GDP calculations. Damage to homes will probably also play a part in the calculations as their values are tracked by banks and the government. For smaller personal assets, I don't think the value would be tracked. Also, the 200B damages counting towards GDP could have been spent elsewhere, so the storm wouldn't really increase GDP. It would also reduce personal incomes of city dwellers.

As much as we like to shit on bourgeois economists, I think even they at least know better than to pull a broken window fallacy with GDP calculations, since that is something you are taught even in econ 101.

The real thing that (nominal) GDP measures is purchasing power of countries relative to other countries on the international markets at current prices (assuming frictionless trade). I do think it is a useful number to denote a few things, like, 1. is the country in a recession, 2. where does this country stand wrt imperialism, 3. how developed the country is.

Thank you bot

link to the post

Europe escaped the immediate energy shock that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine better than expected. Prices shot up, but reserves didn’t run out. Countries found new fuel sources. Households, on the whole, kept the heating on, helped by selective industry shutdowns.

No it did not. Europe just straight up running out of energy was never going to happen. But I fucking hate these shits who pretend as if inflation didn't go crazy in front of my eyes. These guys get to set their own goals at standards too low to fail.

Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, called Draghi’s pitch to accelerate Europe’s green industry “basically the same idea we’re pushing forward.”

Literally 6 months ago we had an article. This is what it had to say

Even more of a problem for Europe is that its countries have been cutting back on climate-related investments and increasing defense-related investments. The European Investment Bank (set up in 2019) is, as the Financial Times reported, “under pressure to fund more projects in the arms industry,” while the European Sovereignty Fund—set up in 2022 to promote industrialization in Europe—is going to pivot toward support for military industries. **Military spending, in other words, will overwhelm the commitments to climate investments **

and she has the gall to pretend as if she is pushing for green investment?

Well, that is also true, but Ukraine has clearly suffered in its use of tanks if they are just being blown up when being taken out on the road. Both the tank species mentioned in the article (abrams and leopards) have been taken out of the picture mostly, either through underutilisation, or destruction.

This talk about timing is really strange. There is always a back and forth in wars. That doesn'tchange anything about the trends and fundamentals. What does it matter that the letter came out at a time when Ukraine had a push? Even one of my lib friends who loves Ukraine understood that Ukraine had a tough path ahead.

Very

We know that tanks still work well when properly supported by other parts of he military so they don't get instantly blown up. This just means that Ukraine is not using the tanks they have with proper support. I wouldn't be surprised, after all, they have a severe manpower shortage.

Lmao, my autocorrect. I meant athenian

Would be based as hell if almo brought back attendance democracy (without thr slaves)

Abusing a position of power for personal gain or nepotism. There are many actions that count as "abusing a position of pwer".

Even though we live under capitalist hegemony, there are many things like embezzlement, favoritism, negligence and so on that a business owner could do that is frowned upon and/or illegal.

Even a sole trader who embezzles money from himself is committing a crime, as they are hiding their taxable income from the government. And even for favoritism, which is hard to prove, if you are being too blatant, others in the business will look down upon you. Because your decisions are not good for the firm.

To be fair, infinite monkeys would produce a coherent ideology very fast

Corruption is an abuse of trust.

You've just redefined corruption

by allowing a business owner to operate a business

There is no "allow". The state's protection is absolutely vital to the function of capitalism much in the same way that your skin is vital to your body.

Copying tech is not so easy, especially when much of high technology is designed with preventing such copying in mind (thanks capitalism for spending effort on important matters such as slowing down technological adoption).