81–90 of 154 posts
[flagged]
Parent is what we call a cyber soldier in Iran. They probably were on the streets in the past weeks shooting at protesters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neoclassical economics is quite clear that targeted protectionism is desirable under certain exceptions. As for China, they would be more wealthy without the meddling of their government. There's no reason they couldn't be like Taiwan, but bigger. The Chinese people got to where they are in spite of their anchor.
I remember half of the neoclassical economics focused articles about China from the late 90s and early 00s predicting that by not following ricardian comparative advantage China was shooting itself in the foot. They kept predicting collapse, too. Nobody talks much about the ricardian theory of static comparative advantage today. China's rise kind of invalidated it. America was taken by surprise by its rise because of…
Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :) https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...
There has been much prognostication about the internet blackout but it misses the real issue. The internet blackout only works perfectly when there are no media backed journalists on the ground. The absolute absence of any reporting from foreign journalists on the ground anywhere in Iran is striking. There was even some reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989, and from Baghdad in 1991. News media has ceased to be a m…
There are plenty of Western journalists in Iran, but they are subject to the same internet blackout as everyone else. Embassies can use satellite communications due to diplomatic immunity, while journalists are just average nobodies who face extra scrutiny due to their jobs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take a look at a plot of China's gdp per year since 1980. A curve can only get so exponential.
Japan was leveled to the ground by 1945. What’s the excuse for not having the same GDP per capita 80 years later? The curve became exponential way too late. And only after they (partially) opened up.
> To mitigate the costs of its shutdown, the Iranian government has created an internal national internet and appears to be in the process of building a “whitelisting” system to allow certain individuals and services internet access while blocking the rest. If these measures successfully enable an unpopular Iranian government to remain in power, we can expect to see them replicated elsewhere. Another emerging country…
Hearing about this and calls about imminent genocide from the last 10 years. India never had free speech. There is plenty of propaganda on the other side too. YouTube is full of anti-govt. propagandists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japan was leveled to the ground by 1945. What’s the excuse for not having the same GDP per capita 80 years later? The curve became exponential way too late. And only after they (partially) opened up.
They went from 100% communism to 90% capitalism, then had exponential growth, and we are supposed to believe the growth was because of the residual 10% communism.
Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0]. Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], Sou…
This is the issue for any US/western regime change operation in Iran (whatever one may think of its moral merits or lack thereof). Iran is not Syria, there's a lot of wily people in the leadership and they won't be rolled over so easily
So actually.. getting the nukes was the right play for them because eventually they would get sold out by China or Russia. Having nukes gets you to shake hands and send love letters to Trump. Frankly Trump sees Europeans as total cucks and has more respect for Kim Jong-un
If Iran actually had nukes, the Israeli lead bullying would immediately halt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.
Not sure tbh. China could have been like Japan per capita. Protectionism puts a big cap on economic growth potential.