Since the commitment in question didn't obligate further offensive movements, whereas breaking it involved giving the green-light for a massacre to take place, yes.
You don't decide your country's policy
- Thread starter Agema
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Interesting article and it's refreshing to read someone trying to address why so many Americans have lost faith in democracy and it's institutions. It challenges the traditional assumption that public opinion shapes policy when in actuality it are corporate interests. Ofcourse that isn't new but the scale of it is. No longer is democracy representative of the people but rather of the corporate lobby.
''Americans are likely to find expression in the political system – as the battles over health care in recent years illustrates vividly. In money-driven elections and policymaking, you will have candidates, elections, real competition that is not collusion, and all kinds of noise, but when the smoke clears – and there will be lots of handsomely subsidized smoke – average (“median”) voters will not determine where policy settles. This doesn’t mean that elections do not present real choices: divisions among oligarchs can really matter. But if you want to tax the rich or pass Medicare for all, you will need a real mass movement not dependent on the good will of the superrich.''
This is where the two biggest problems come together. First there is the international capital that supersedes nation states and have the politicians in their pocket and you have the society; deeply divided and alienated. David Rothkopf wrote a really interesting book about it, Superclass, published in 2008.
''Americans are likely to find expression in the political system – as the battles over health care in recent years illustrates vividly. In money-driven elections and policymaking, you will have candidates, elections, real competition that is not collusion, and all kinds of noise, but when the smoke clears – and there will be lots of handsomely subsidized smoke – average (“median”) voters will not determine where policy settles. This doesn’t mean that elections do not present real choices: divisions among oligarchs can really matter. But if you want to tax the rich or pass Medicare for all, you will need a real mass movement not dependent on the good will of the superrich.''
This is where the two biggest problems come together. First there is the international capital that supersedes nation states and have the politicians in their pocket and you have the society; deeply divided and alienated. David Rothkopf wrote a really interesting book about it, Superclass, published in 2008.
Budapest Memorandum - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
wtf happened in 1971
WTF Happened In 1971?
"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984
wtfhappenedin1971.com
So... because we've acted in a shitty way in the past, we may as well do it again? That's the extent of the argument?
The argument is that you've (the UK gov, in this example) never acted "not shitty" in the past.
That's such an interesting piece. It's just a shame it's implicitly directing us to the end of Bretton Woods, which is gold standard crank territory.wtf happened in 1971
WTF Happened In 1971?
"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984
As even many of the graphs indicate, the really major stuff is actually occurring after 1980, which indicates a rather different cause. Some of things in the graphs are of course completely unconnected.
Yes. The conclusion for Bretton Woods seems very simplistic. Yet the graphs do show this shift in the early 70s, which created a truly superior upper class of people that we can never reach or touch.
There's a specific problem that confounds, however: the oil crash and stagflation of the 1970s; this could be expected to cause wage stagnation, and median wages are still within the general bounds of the preceding decades' variability. It really is the 1980s where the GDP/capita and median wage decisively uncouple - a sustained period of good and stable economic growth where, for the first time in decades, the median wage goes nowhere at all. And yet the rich in that decade and through into the 90s became enormously rich.
Another major factor that occurs in the 1970s (re the trade deficit) is that was the decade that the USA opened up to a lot of international trade - like Japanese cars, and manufacturing being outsourced to countries like China. That also will likely have placed a negative trend on US worker wages, as labour now had to de facto compete with often cheaper labour overseas.
Of course, offsetting this, is that effectively the price of most goods has actually declined in real terms, so the median wage might be little different in real terms as 1970, but it buys a whole lot more. It might not of course feel like it, because there's far more to want to buy. As an example, in the 1970s, you had one phone in your house. That phone and line rental might be laughably cheap today compared to 1970, but now everyone in your houshold expects to have a smartphone: the comparative cost of 4 smartphones to a 2020 household income will vastly exceed that of a 1970 landline to 1970 household income.
The price for electronics and entertainment dropped, while everything else rose. I don't know if the graph is there, but it pretty much shook me. Literally bread and circuses.
Check it out - I think the US crashed the Japanese economy in the 80s.
I don't want to be reductionist but I think that this is a result of hyper-inflation.
It's utterly ludicrous to suggest that the UK has never not reneged on its commitments or betrayed its allies. If that were the case, nobody would ever make commitments with us.
The UK is a very good example of what I'm talking about, actually. The UK government had signed up to the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement in January, and then broke it in September.
Now, why should potential trade partners trust the UK in any future trade negotiations, after we've shown ourselves willing to renege on our legal obligations? Ditto, why should potential partner forces trust the US, if it doesn't keep the commitments it makes? This kind of thing shreds trust. Countries don't tend to want to form treaties, agreements or partnerships with flagrantly untrustworthy governments.
There was a famous debate between Julian Simon and Paul Erlich in the 1980s, upon which they made a bet. Erlich was a proponent that the world was heading for overpopulation, resource scarcity and increased costs. Simon argued the opposite, that prices would decrease. Ten years later, they looked at the figures, and Simon was right. Erlich accepted defeat and paid up.
In the 1970s, food was about 20% of the average British household's disposable income. Now it's about 10%. Some of that is wage growth, but go and check the prices back then and now, factor in inflation and crunch the numbers, food is real terms cheaper. Almost everything is.
Petrol is an exception: in the UK in 1970, it cost ~80p (in 2020 money) per litre to fill your car. At the pumps now it's ~110p. But there are now higher taxes on fuel than 1970, and take a look at the massive increase in the price of oil since the 1990s: it's astonishing it costs so little more. BUT... if you then factor in fuel efficiency, even though the price of petrol has increased, going the same distance is cheaper because the average car is using less than two-thirds the amount of fuel for the same journey!
I don't think it did so intentionally - Japan along with other major economies agreed to help the USA deal with a recession, and it was merely unfortunate that it led to a massive crash in the Japanese banking system.
There hasn't been any hyperinflation. Not in the West, anyway.
The hyper-inflation is hidden within all of these graphs, is the conclusion I came to myself.
That's an interesting story, Agema.
Regarding Japan - I believe that the people responsible for creating the bubble, and then popping it - were working with the US. This one over here:
Yasushi Mieno - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
No the worst plan is anything that entails us not leaving. Anything that entails us leaving is much better than that.
And hell no, a lot of our commitments are BS. We should stop giving war money to Israel, selling weapons to Saudis so they can siege Yemen, tons of stuff that we're committed to do is against an anti war stance, made by warmongers. We should not be married to any commitments made while Bolton was in power, that's just insane. If you think that way then you will just always lose to the republicans who have no compunction about reneging on deals like with Iran's nuclear program.
Screw the strategies and screw the allies, just get the hell out of there and let them sort their own mess. It's not our job to be the world police.
In this example (of Syria), I've stated before that the US allies were unreliable, and attempting to abandon it. This was a pre-emptive move (allowing Turkey to wreck shit in Syria). The clarifications from Agema about the order of events made me doubt myself afterwards...
- Feb 7, 2011
- 8,802
- 3,383
- 118
- Country
- 'Merica
- Gender
- 3 children in a trench coat
I've been saying for years that everyone who serves in state or federal government should, every year, have their pay and benefits set to match those of a randomly-selected constituent. If they don't want to be stuck at minimum wage with zero benefits, then they had best do their damnedest to ensure that none of the people they serve are stuck with that.
Firstly, we'd need to ask what hyperinflation is. As I understand it, it's hundreds of percent per year, which clearly cannot have happened. I think inflation in the UK hasn't exceeded about 15% p.a. since 1970 (and that was a result of the oil shock).
It's not a situation I know enough about. I just find it hard to believe it was a deliberate takedown of Japan which its banks and government bureaucrats somehow failed to notice, let alone assist with. I suspect they just flubbed their policy.Regarding Japan - I believe that the people responsible for creating the bubble, and then popping it - were working with the US. This one over here:
notice he moved on to BiS after he crashed the Japanese economy. He was deputy-direction 5 years before that as well, which means he was well aware of the bubble the bank was creating. In essence, the US bankers took Japan behind the shed and shot it. After the crash the Japanese central bank was no longer subservient to the Ministry of Finance - it was fully independent.Yasushi Mieno - Wikipedia
If we take as a basic standpoint that sometimes we need to fight, we fight better with allies, and allies need to know they can trust us. You can decide to keep out of things, but existing commitments still need to be honoured.
That said, I don't think the USA has any commitments it can't step away from currently, as long as it warns its allies what's coming in decent time.