(January 25, 2022 at 10:48 am)Brian37 Wrote: Unfortunately humans are tribal, and unfortunately we always will be.

I am no fan of authoritarianism which is what Putin is after. But I also don't want this mess to end up in WW3.

(Bold mine)

Everybody take a drink.

Boru

(January 25, 2022 at 11:12 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(January 25, 2022 at 10:48 am)Brian37 Wrote: Unfortunately humans are tribal, and unfortunately we always will be.

I am no fan of authoritarianism which is what Putin is after. But I also don't want this mess to end up in WW3.

(Bold mine)

Everybody take a drink.

Boru

I think I've got BINGO.

(January 25, 2022 at 11:24 am)Angrboda Wrote:

(January 25, 2022 at 11:12 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (Bold mine)

Everybody take a drink.

Boru

I think I've got BINGO.

I hate sounding fatalistic, I really do think there is still good in humanity. But it seems the assholes globally are bent on fucking things up. So yea, take a drink.

(January 25, 2022 at 11:26 am)Brian37 Wrote:

(January 25, 2022 at 11:24 am)Angrboda Wrote: I think I've got BINGO.

I hate sounding fatalistic, I really do think there is still good in humanity. But it seems the assholes globally are bent on fucking things up. So yea, take a drink.

Boru

(January 25, 2022 at 11:08 am)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(January 25, 2022 at 4:04 am)Jehanne Wrote: One could, in the same breath, say that there are no more capitalists, at least in the sense of Adam Smith.

there are plenty of capitalists, a large number of them in china and russia.  Unlike karl marx and communism,  Adam smith never prescribed any system of government under which capitalists is to operate.  he only described a economic mechanism which can operate under a large range governmental and societal forms.    if there are working capitalists, then there is capitalism.

I am not an expert. I have read both Marx/Engels and Smith; the former advocated an end to child labor and a national income tax, the latter laissez-faire economics, which no longer exists anywhere in today's World. In my opinion, the United States has moved closer to Marxism and away from Smithsonian over time and will continue to do so.

Also, in my opinion, Capitalism will continue to expand until it no longer can, and then our World will either perish or become even more communist.

laissez-faire economics certainly never prevailed in its logical extreme anywhere in the world.  but it exist in a considerably greater degree now than 40 years ago outside the former communist world, and with spectacularly greater degree now than 40 years ago inside the former communist world.

The two remaining greater powers of the former communist world are now both statist capitalist countries.

the fundamental reason is Karl marx was one of the most insightful political theorists in history, but his ego overreached his insight and he came to the wrong conclusion about the fundamental behavior mechanism that most effectively drives economic progress.

I suspect the world can never be communist because the enthusiasm of communists for incipient communist society will never be enough to overcome the capitalist system’s greater intrinsic ability to tap fundamental human behavior to drive faster progress at the cutting edge.    communism can make a decent show of allowing backward society gina great way towards catching up.  but it can not enable nearly caught up society to actually catch up.   And this comparative strengths and weakness of capitalism and communism happen to be the exact opposite of the presumed strengths and weaknesses Marx based his predictions on.

(January 26, 2022 at 11:44 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: laissez-faire economics certainly never prevailed in its logical extreme anywhere in the world.

We'll just have to disagree. In the early decades of the United States, the economy was very much laissez-faire. Only much later did government regulation and oversight, antitrust, etc., come into play. In fact, some United States historians have described the early US economy as a time when "hustlers hustled".

Putin just made his first misstep in the evolving Ukraine affair, in mine opinion.  

By recognizing the independence of the two breakaway regions of Ukraine, he antagonized China, his most important ally especially if Russia falls under strict western sanction.   China is hypersensitive to any hint of Taiwanese independence being encouraged by precedence set by foreign recognition of other breakaways regions.    As a result, I expect China will now distance herself from this Russian move, at least temporarily.

Did China move away during/after Crimea?

(February 21, 2022 at 7:55 pm)brewer Wrote: Did China move away during/after Crimea?

the original russian invasion of crimea did not involve the same formal recognition of the independence of a breakaway region.    There was no breakaway region, only ethnic russians agitating, until the Russians supported and organized the agitators.

For china the sensitivity is with a breakaway region given formal recognition of independence by an outside power.   China sees in Taiwan the moral equivalent of what russia is trying to do in the donbas.