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Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

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Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#181

Post by kamaal »

rchaud wrote: post #133
jnmandal wrote: post #19

Without entering (and winning) some kind of major conflict, this was always going to happen. Two things are important to think about. 1. Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute. (For a good treatise on this, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ). The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position. 2. Great nations/empires ge…

There is an unspoken alternative for dealing with being out-populated by rival states. That is to reduce their populations through sanctions, blockades, starvation and outright war. These methods have been used by the Soviet Union in Ukraine, Germany/USSR in Poland, Imperial Japan in China, Belgium in the Congo. It continues to happen today, most openly in Palestine.

>>That is to reduce their populations through sanctions, blockades, starvation and outright war.

Speaking as Indian, Our population growth happened when we were poor, and masses were uneducated/illiterate.

I have one more theory that- Population growth happens when poor people have access to lots of carbohydrates. Plus having lots of children is somewhat akin to having meat robot automatons whom you can send for physical work and make money.

If you want to use sanctions to do reduce population it doesn't work in the modern era. Poor people eat well and make babies.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#182

Post by SanjayMehta »

giardini wrote: post #154
SanjayMehta wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pointless trying to educate the wilfully ignorant.

We gave up on you guys a long time ago: told your Dad to leave you behind a bush but he was a good Dad so, lucky you! Our bad.

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#183

Post by mcphage »

rayiner wrote: post #172
5upplied_demand wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His thesis is that American success is due to Americans and what is distinctive about them Can you please link to when and where he said this? Because it raises a question of when someone becomes "American." Trump's grandfather was born in Germany, so when did the Trumps become American? > all concrete policies consistent with that thesis Those were concrete policies from Project 2025, which Trump directly said was…

A thesis doesn't have to be published in some academic paper. It's just a basic set of ideas or assumptions underlying a worldview. Trump has a very distinctive set of beliefs underlying his policies, and he talks about them at length if you listen to his speeches, his interviews, etc. Just because he expresses them at a 6th grade level doesn't mean that there aren't ideas. > Those were concrete policies from Project…

> Trump has a very distinctive set of beliefs underlying his policies

Trump has things that he says—many things that he says. How many of them are beliefs, and how many of them are his normal verbal diarrhea, and how many of them are just the words of the last person who spoke to him?

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#184

Post by rayiner »

apawloski wrote: post #179
rayiner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were my ancient legal texts incorporated? Were yours? If you are British American, then yes. Otherwise, no. > If you are born here, what does it matter? Empirically, yes it does! https://www.rorotoko.com/11/20230913-jones-garett-on-book-cu... (“The Culture Transplant debunks the view that immigrants fully assimilate in a generation or two. This is something my fellow economists know—we have vast empirical literatur…

> You can look at the data and see that about 50% of the difference in levels of social trust between people in Italy and Scandinavia [...] You can then use your eyes to look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see more social trust and less corruption in the former than the latter. You can even tie cultural background back to concrete social indicators! For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nake…

> For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nakedly corrupt administration in our lifetimes.

The fact that I think Trump is the lesser of two evils doesn't change the fact that New Jersey has higher corruption levels than Minnesota. Is it really your contention that communities settled by Italian immigrants are as well governed as those that were settled by Scandinavian immigrants?

Ironically, Trump himself reflects the third-worldization of the American body politic. Our first-past-the-post system guarantees two parties, but cultural change alters what platforms can win a majority. Immigration has killed small-government conservatism--a concept that exists almost nowhere outside the Anglosphere--but a third-world strongman populist can still win the popular vote: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... ("Our best estimate is that immigrant voters swung from a Biden+27 voting bloc in 2020 to a Trump+1 group in 2024."). Little Bangladesh swung a net 50+ points to Trump in 2024.

> That does not include me, so if I were an immigrant today you would not let me in. If you were an immigrant today, would you let yourself in?

I made an argument based on evidence, so why are you responding with personal feelings? Whether any particular immigration policy would have allowed me or you to immigrate is totally irrelevant. Immigration is about the mass movement of people, who bring their culture with them and reshape the parts of America where they move. It's stupid to talk about it in terms of individuals.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#185

Post by r00fus »

23434dsf wrote: post #30

Americans cant have their cake and eat it too. The allies are quietly leaving the room and forming alliances without Americans.

They should but they're not. They are also controlled by the interests that control the US.

Europe could be relevant again if it only embraced China and gave NATO the finger.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#186

Post by tim333 »

ericmay wrote: post #169
tim333 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Russ...

That's not an alliance, nor is it seeking to be one.

The wikipedia has "Building upon these bilateral discussions aiming at creating a hard core of allies in Europe focused on Ukraine and wider European security..."

I guess it depends how you define things.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#187

Post by tmountain »

watwut wrote: post #136
tmountain wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism is historically loaded and collapses debate. It's a binary label. Speaking in absolutes makes it harder to have productive conversations.

It is no more historically loaded them any other name for a movement or a political philosophy. The debate collapses because people refuse to name things what they actually are. Not just with refusal to engage with the word fascism. There is this persistent tendency to euphemism away everything going on the right, to sane wash, to make it sounds nicer. > Speaking in absolutes makes it harder to have productive conver…

I guess it depends on your objectives when engaging with others on these topics. If you're just trying to foment unhappiness in an echo chamber, then you can use whatever vocabulary feels accurate, but people tend to shutdown when they hear trigger words like fascism. If you actually want to talk to someone that may not have the same viewpoint as you and have a chance of a productive conversation, it's better to use less loaded language.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#188

Post by watwut »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #74
watwut wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think every incremental ratchet step on the gear of Germany rearming in the last three years has been taken as serious headline news by so many? Cause they started two world wars previously. The second one coupled with genocide, actually multiple separate genocides going on at the same time.

Germany only started the second and all parties in the first had some prior experience with conducting a genocide.

They started the first one too. They just did. Their politics was split roughly into two camps - war hawks wanting to start the war now and moderates wanting to wait for a year and then start a war.

It is not that other countries were full of saints ... but Germany did started both those wars.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#189

Post by graemep »

watwut wrote: post #73
tmountain wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the current admin, but I think the word "fascism" should be avoided in these types of discussions, as it's such a loaded term that it's hard to know exactly what's implied. The main risks I see are the erosion of democratic norms (weakening of core institutions) and a reduced access to due process, particularly for non-citizens. You see this in ICE deportations to…

How are they NOT fascists? They match pretty much any definition of that word. It is easy to know what is implied. Issue is emotional - people do not want to admit that yes, these are fascists.

Given the difficulties in defining fascism I very much doubt anyone matches "any definition". Fascism is not a coherent ideology, and there are no common beliefs that can be used to define fascism that do not also apply to people who are definitely not fascists - e.g. dictatorship,cult of personality, etc. also apply to lots of communist movements.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#190

Post by apawloski »

rayiner wrote: post #184
apawloski wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can look at the data and see that about 50% of the difference in levels of social trust between people in Italy and Scandinavia [...] You can then use your eyes to look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see more social trust and less corruption in the former than the latter. You can even tie cultural background back to concrete social indicators! For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nake…

> For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nakedly corrupt administration in our lifetimes. The fact that I think Trump is the lesser of two evils doesn't change the fact that New Jersey has higher corruption levels than Minnesota. Is it really your contention that communities settled by Italian immigrants are as well governed as those that were settled by Scandinavian immigrants? Ironically, Trump…

I guess I just fundamentally disagree that Trump’s the lesser of two evils, if you truly care about American values and culture. How could you want our children behaving like the example he sets? Can you justify his Rob Reiner tweet (for an immediately recent example) to me in a way that persuades me it’s how Americans should behave culturally?

I would love for you to answer the question about whether you’d let us in today, but I suspect you won’t because you’d have to also admit that your stance is hypocritical.

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