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>But 'how many Abrams has the Doge?' As many as you can control with signal chat. Besides, I'm not sure if tanks like the Abrams are as important anymore. Now

>But 'how many Abrams has the Doge?' As many as you can control with signal chat. Besides, I'm not sure if tanks like the Abrams are as important anymore. Nowadays, things like food and water really matter. For example, exporting corn is crucial. Also, having the soils needed to make modern tech, like chips and batteries, is super important. Therefore Greenland is.

throwanem 1y ago
Show me the war where resources weren't important. But you fail to take my meaning, which is that of the two, bureaucracy is far more robust than aristocracy, because power held by aristocracy succeeds by lineage where that by bureaucracy does so by role - that is, in a fashion far less constrained by the available resource of satisfactory personnel. Every billionaire in function constitutes an aristocracy of one. Meanwhile, states have armed forces. A billionaire, in relying on money for power, implicitly also depends on continued access to the global financial system which gives money meaning, in order to exercise that power. States are not obligated to allow such access, and may easily prevent it in the limiting case by ensuring such trade comes with a side of explosives delivered at speed, which broadly suffices to deter desirable counterparties. Think what anyone may of such a thing, the fact is having an army or navy or air force means you can do it. Which billionaire has one of those?
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > bureaucracy is far more robust than aristocracy, because power held by aristocracy succeeds by lineage where that by bureaucracy does so by role You are making an awful lot of assumptions there. There are plenty of real world examples where a single party having control over a process produces significantly better results (and plenty of counterexamples where it doesn't, of course). How do you justify the assumption that preparing the next generation of leadership is one or the other of those? > ... States are not obligated to allow such access, Sufficient influence can be used to ensure access until it is no longer necessary. After all the government is little more than the biggest thug in the room at the end of the day. > Which billionaire has one of those? Which billionaire has been incentivized to pursue such a goal? It's extremely expensive. Does the Saudi state count given that it's an absolute monarchy?
  - throwanem 1y ago
    Who's making value judgments here? I'm talking about what's easier or harder to destroy, and explaining what makes aristocracy so much more fragile than bureaucracy. But the idea that governments are "the biggest thug in the room" is in itself as flagrantly ideological in origin as deliberately propagandistic in the specific formulation you chose, so the answer to my question is not really in doubt. (You might also be equating bureaucracy and government, or assuming I am doing so. Neither would be sensible.) The Saudi monarchy I would characterize as a nation-state existentially dependent for that status upon its role as a valued¹ satrap, and regional linchpin, of US hegemony; after decades of wielding money and power with all the arrogant foolishness of any parvenu's fantasy, they have few obvious friends and many reliable enemies. Following the loss for any reason of that client status and the protective halo it confers, I would expect the remaining lifetime of the monarchy, and whichever of its members failed to flee in time, to be most conveniently measured in days. 1) Some might say, vastly overvalued given their longstanding unreliability and increasing irrelevance in a post-petroleum energy economy.

throwanem 1y ago

Show me the war where resources weren't important. But you fail to take my meaning, which is that of the two, bureaucracy is far more robust than aristocracy, because power held by aristocracy succeeds by lineage where that by bureaucracy does so by role - that is, in a fashion far less constrained by the available resource of satisfactory personnel. Every billionaire in function constitutes an aristocracy of one. Meanwhile, states have armed forces. A billionaire, in relying on money for power, implicitly also depends on continued access to the global financial system which gives money meaning, in order to exercise that power. States are not obligated to allow such access, and may easily prevent it in the limiting case by ensuring such trade comes with a side of explosives delivered at speed, which broadly suffices to deter desirable counterparties. Think what anyone may of such a thing, the fact is having an army or navy or air force means you can do it. Which billionaire has one of those?

fc417fc802 1y ago
> bureaucracy is far more robust than aristocracy, because power held by aristocracy succeeds by lineage where that by bureaucracy does so by role You are making an awful lot of assumptions there. There are plenty of real world examples where a single party having control over a process produces significantly better results (and plenty of counterexamples where it doesn't, of course). How do you justify the assumption that preparing the next generation of leadership is one or the other of those? > ... States are not obligated to allow such access, Sufficient influence can be used to ensure access until it is no longer necessary. After all the government is little more than the biggest thug in the room at the end of the day. > Which billionaire has one of those? Which billionaire has been incentivized to pursue such a goal? It's extremely expensive. Does the Saudi state count given that it's an absolute monarchy?
- throwanem 1y ago
  Who's making value judgments here? I'm talking about what's easier or harder to destroy, and explaining what makes aristocracy so much more fragile than bureaucracy. But the idea that governments are "the biggest thug in the room" is in itself as flagrantly ideological in origin as deliberately propagandistic in the specific formulation you chose, so the answer to my question is not really in doubt. (You might also be equating bureaucracy and government, or assuming I am doing so. Neither would be sensible.) The Saudi monarchy I would characterize as a nation-state existentially dependent for that status upon its role as a valued¹ satrap, and regional linchpin, of US hegemony; after decades of wielding money and power with all the arrogant foolishness of any parvenu's fantasy, they have few obvious friends and many reliable enemies. Following the loss for any reason of that client status and the protective halo it confers, I would expect the remaining lifetime of the monarchy, and whichever of its members failed to flee in time, to be most conveniently measured in days. 1) Some might say, vastly overvalued given their longstanding unreliability and increasing irrelevance in a post-petroleum energy economy.