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Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will fo

by 1980phipsi 3y ago

Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.

roenxi 3y ago
The US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess (as is whether they should survive).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the Industrial Revolution to make the “war a lot more destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare) while at the same time massively raising returns to capital investment in things like infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by force” [1]. Instead, “states no longer ask if they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if they’d spend less managing the disaster that a local failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the problem via aid or controlling refugee flows.” To the extent we engage in foreign wars, it’s in that failed-state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.) > lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it’s surprisingly balanced—the U.S. growing at 3% and China at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative economies. And since Xi, China’s relative economic growth has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c51a2 https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c5...
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). The Romans were primitives. Individually very impressive and for their time the society was incredible. But they didn't have access to the level of knowledge we do these days on how to create wealth and live comfortably. If they'd spent less time on pointless wars and more time on cheap energy, they too would have achieved better results. Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was killing people and breaking stuff the path to long, happy, comfortable and prosperous living. I can see why nobody figured it out before the 1800s, but the fact is we're looking back on the works of Adam Smith and modern US politicians should know better. They do know better, in fact. They persist with the waste, death and destruction despite knowing better. And that is likely a factor in the Trump phenomenon. The norms they've been championing have had terrible consequences. China has humiliated the west, an actual we-should-be-red-faced-with-shame humiliation, by thriving peacefully. Why can't the US manage that, hm? At least the Trump rhetoric is consistent with the idea than the current political norms.
    - antihipocrat 3y ago
      Isn't the USA being in the position it's in a counterpoint to your argument that: 'Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was killing people and breaking stuff the path to long, happy, comfortable and prosperous living.' Surely it can be argued that the USA choosing to enter WW2 when it did and help secure victory for the allies placed the US government in an incredibly powerful position when reconfiguring the global economy (in its favor). The US dollar is still the world's reserve currency and post war generations have lived incredibly prosperously compared to their peers before the war (perhaps this is now reversing).
      - roenxi 3y ago
        WWII was everyone destroying each other and the US came out on top because it still had an economy afterwards. That is a great example of the only winners being people who were an ocean away on a mostly peaceful continent. The US has spent the last 50 years fighting wars. China has not. China has grown by approximately 1 US economy (a bit less accounting for the fact that their figures are bogus). What was the point of the last 50 years of war? Where is the upside from all the US's killing? Because as far as I can see, most of the upside seems to have been in Asia.
- metabagel 3y ago
  > It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. It has more to do with the calcification of most of the electorate behind one or the other party.
  - baybal2 3y ago
    [dead]
- metabagel 3y ago
  > The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. There was far more opportunity for growth in China than in the U.S. Rather, compare the U.S. to Europe, Japan, and South Korea.
- adventured 3y ago
  > But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The US has created more wealth over the past 10 or 20 years than China has. US households have added roughly $72 trillion in net wealth over just ten years (and that's just counting households; excluding non-profits and corporations). It's the greatest net wealth creation in human history for one nation, surpassing anything China has done in a ten year span. Read that one more time. $72 trillion. Ten years. US household wealth is at an extraordinary level at present and holding despite very high interest rates. Meanwhile China's housing market is a disaster and their stock market hasn't net moved in 16 years (it's still stuck where it was in eg 2007 and 2009). Yeah but the US middle class is doing horribly and isn't getting a share of that $72 trillion. The US median individual wealth figure is now over $100,000. It's higher than either Germany or Sweden. That's the median, in a nation of 335 million people. China will continue to wilt under Xi and the US and its allies will continue to redirect their capital investment.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > The US median individual wealth figure is now over $100,000. It's higher than either Germany or Sweden To be fair you did pick some of the poorest "rich" West European countries. A median French person is about 25% richer than an America, a Briton by 40% and a Belgian by about 240%. Of course all of those wealth metrics come down to home-ownership and inequality. Sweden for instance has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world and even quite a bit higher than the US.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Obviously "wealth" went up by trillions of dollars. we flooded the system with said trillions of dollars But its all junk, fake wealth [1]. We cant even make artillery shells for f^*^'s sake. Interest rates are high, inflation is being tamed by selling the oil reserves and collapsing demand. [1] actually its not entirely fake. No matter how pathetic a currency is, it's the metric of wealth. When you pour printed banknotes onto a favored constituent said constituent gets proportionally more money than the rest of society.

Caesar was mostly following through with prior norm breaking. That's why it is important to rebuke politicians in the mold of Trump. You don't know who will follow him.

roenxi 3y ago

The US has been gently crumbling under its own weight since approximately 1970. You'd get more out of rebuking the politicians who took the wealth of a pre-eminent superpower then flubbed it. You might not like Trump. But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. It is easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars and with limited results to show for it. It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. My read is almost anyone with a record in office is unelectable. How norms will survive that sort of failure is anyone's guess (as is whether they should survive).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> easier to follow "norms" when they don't involve blowing a lot of money on foreign wars Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). Conquest is the history of civilisation. It took the Industrial Revolution to make the “war a lot more destructive (thus lowering returns to successful warfare) while at the same time massively raising returns to capital investment in things like infrastructure, factories and tractors. It suddenly made more sense, if you coveted your neighbors resources, to build more factories and buy those resources than to try to seize them by force” [1]. Instead, “states no longer ask if they can profit through a war of conquest, but rather if they’d spend less managing the disaster that a local failed state is by invading versus trying to manage the problem via aid or controlling refugee flows.” To the extent we engage in foreign wars, it’s in that failed-state management mode. (Iraq, what would have been the geopolitical blunder of the century were it not for Ukraine and Brexit, is the notable exception.) > lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia In relative terms, yes. In aggregate terms, it’s surprisingly balanced—the U.S. growing at 3% and China at 10% in 1990 roughly maintained their relative economies. And since Xi, China’s relative economic growth has stalled (assuming official data are true) [2]. [1] https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ https://acoup.blog/2023/06/09/fireside-friday-june-9-2023/ [2] https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c51a2 https://www.ft.com/content/c10bd71b-e418-48d7-ad89-74c5783c5...
- roenxi 3y ago
  > Ironic complaint on a Rome thread :). The Romans were primitives. Individually very impressive and for their time the society was incredible. But they didn't have access to the level of knowledge we do these days on how to create wealth and live comfortably. If they'd spent less time on pointless wars and more time on cheap energy, they too would have achieved better results. Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was killing people and breaking stuff the path to long, happy, comfortable and prosperous living. I can see why nobody figured it out before the 1800s, but the fact is we're looking back on the works of Adam Smith and modern US politicians should know better. They do know better, in fact. They persist with the waste, death and destruction despite knowing better. And that is likely a factor in the Trump phenomenon. The norms they've been championing have had terrible consequences. China has humiliated the west, an actual we-should-be-red-faced-with-shame humiliation, by thriving peacefully. Why can't the US manage that, hm? At least the Trump rhetoric is consistent with the idea than the current political norms.
  - antihipocrat 3y ago
    Isn't the USA being in the position it's in a counterpoint to your argument that: 'Turns out, amazingly, that at no point in history was killing people and breaking stuff the path to long, happy, comfortable and prosperous living.' Surely it can be argued that the USA choosing to enter WW2 when it did and help secure victory for the allies placed the US government in an incredibly powerful position when reconfiguring the global economy (in its favor). The US dollar is still the world's reserve currency and post war generations have lived incredibly prosperously compared to their peers before the war (perhaps this is now reversing).
    - roenxi 3y ago
      WWII was everyone destroying each other and the US came out on top because it still had an economy afterwards. That is a great example of the only winners being people who were an ocean away on a mostly peaceful continent. The US has spent the last 50 years fighting wars. China has not. China has grown by approximately 1 US economy (a bit less accounting for the fact that their figures are bogus). What was the point of the last 50 years of war? Where is the upside from all the US's killing? Because as far as I can see, most of the upside seems to have been in Asia.
metabagel 3y ago
> It says a lot about how people rate the last few decades that figureheads of that generation of political leadership like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden are struggling mightily to outpoll Donald Trump. It has more to do with the calcification of most of the electorate behind one or the other party.
- baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
metabagel 3y ago
> The lion's share of real growth from the last 30 years seems to have been in Asia. There was far more opportunity for growth in China than in the U.S. Rather, compare the U.S. to Europe, Japan, and South Korea.
adventured 3y ago
> But the generation of politicians that are being rebuked by the voters who gave Trump power were outdone by literal communists when it comes to creating wealth. The US has created more wealth over the past 10 or 20 years than China has. US households have added roughly $72 trillion in net wealth over just ten years (and that's just counting households; excluding non-profits and corporations). It's the greatest net wealth creation in human history for one nation, surpassing anything China has done in a ten year span. Read that one more time. $72 trillion. Ten years. US household wealth is at an extraordinary level at present and holding despite very high interest rates. Meanwhile China's housing market is a disaster and their stock market hasn't net moved in 16 years (it's still stuck where it was in eg 2007 and 2009). Yeah but the US middle class is doing horribly and isn't getting a share of that $72 trillion. The US median individual wealth figure is now over $100,000. It's higher than either Germany or Sweden. That's the median, in a nation of 335 million people. China will continue to wilt under Xi and the US and its allies will continue to redirect their capital investment.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > The US median individual wealth figure is now over $100,000. It's higher than either Germany or Sweden To be fair you did pick some of the poorest "rich" West European countries. A median French person is about 25% richer than an America, a Briton by 40% and a Belgian by about 240%. Of course all of those wealth metrics come down to home-ownership and inequality. Sweden for instance has one of the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world and even quite a bit higher than the US.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Obviously "wealth" went up by trillions of dollars. we flooded the system with said trillions of dollars But its all junk, fake wealth [1]. We cant even make artillery shells for f^*^'s sake. Interest rates are high, inflation is being tamed by selling the oil reserves and collapsing demand. [1] actually its not entirely fake. No matter how pathetic a currency is, it's the metric of wealth. When you pour printed banknotes onto a favored constituent said constituent gets proportionally more money than the rest of society.