I agree that societal instability stem from problems within the elites, but not sure it's due to 'elite overproduction' necessarily. I think it has more to do with divergence of interests within the elites. Even without elite overproduction, if the interests of a significant segment of the elites diverged from the interests of the rest of the elites, then you will have societal breakdown, civil war, etc.
One example is the american revolution where the one group of elites in the british empire wanted good relations with the indians to protect their fur trade while another group of elites wanted to invade native areas and steal their land. Don't think there was an issue of elite overproduction in the british empire in the mid 1700s. But there was an issue of divergent interests and there was no room for compromise as these competing interests directly conflicted with each other.
Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets. Once again, I don't think there was an overproduction of elites in the north or the south in the 1850s.
But I guess if the elite overproduction was severe enough, it could structural conflict of interests. But my guess is that conflicts would naturally arise amongs the elites long before elite overproduction.
> Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets.
Of areas where the north and south’s interests conflicted in the civil war that’s not the one most people call out.
What you say is true but the poster didn’t really draw a connection to the main point that showed why this example was chosen so it’s a pretty random example to draw and kind of odd.
I like this analysis but am missing the next step. What material interests are in play today?
David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism.
(For someone as "far left" as Graeber, it sounded more apologetic for Trump than I expected.)
Now, I find this theory interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it.
I see a more meaningful split within the elites between industrial and post-industrial magnates. This maps better onto the positions and preferences of the two political parties.
I think ideology plays a strong role in addition to interests. In my mind (from reading about this a lot) there are roughly four political factions at the elite level (there's probably more variation at the grassroots level).
The most interesting is probably the Republican party establishment. I recently read books by two partisans on either side [1] (both prolific authors and MIT PhDs) and they were in almost total agreement historically on the people and timeline. The Republican party starting with Barry Goldwater underwent an internal revolution, and an upstart and more hard-line faction won, driving out the Eisenhowers and Rockefellers. The second author is a member of this group, and he believes strongly in very small government (for example, he is against the post-1950s government and believes America was last America in the 1930s).
The other Republican faction is roughly the Tea Party, which this [2] book goes into more detail. It started being a more major force in politics starting in 2010 after financial crisis. I think Boehner who was the speaker of the house at the time has talked more candidly about this period after leaving office. They are angry at the status quo and lean more to the conspiracy side of things.
On the Democratic side there are the left (Sanders, AOC, etc) and the center-left establishment. They both generally support social-democratic policies so can work together, but the center-left is more market-oriented (maybe you could also say capitalistic or neoliberal) and they also differ in political style. I think people are pretty familiar with Sanders etc but here's [3] an article by a center-left economist talking a little bit about how the nature of this coalition affects what policies are possible.
[1] Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal and Murray's By the People
Nice post and references. This is basically how I see it too. You could increase the symmetry a little by adding to the Democrats the ghost of an FDR/LBJ "New Dealer" faction, corresponding roughly to the displaced Eisenhower/Rockefeller faction of the Republicans. You'd have something like:
- "moderate Trumpists" (if there can be such a thing) : "Progressives" (who, I will add, are somewhat less "left" than Wokeists)
They form a 3x2 matrix. Each column represents a side, and each row the spirit of an age.
I guess you could call the rows: "Institutions", "Markets", "Movements".
Then, breaking the symmetry, the "Progressives" are moderated a little by the ghost of FDR/LBJ, while the ghost of Eisenhower lives on in the Never Trumpers, who... weirdly, might ally with what "respectable" Neocons remain, and turn into some kind of "establishment" figures aligned as much with the center-left market liberals as with anyone. Sort of a "deep state" faction without a party.
> David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism.
What does “into finance” even mean? And how can you be in real estate without being “into finance”? The real estate business is all financing.
I posted the interview in a sibling post to yours.
But yeah. What does Graeber mean?
The argument would go something like --
Many countries are in debt to the United States (immediate question: Isn't the US in huge debt to China?), which drives up demand for US dollars (since everyone needs to pay those back), which makes the dollar strong. As a result, if you have access to these dollars at low interest rates (i.e, are a bank), you can get lots of stuff from other countries "for free". But a strong dollar also has the effect of destroying domestic industry, because it makes exports too expensive for anyone to buy.
So he's saying "finance" is all these institutions with access to dollars, and "real estate" is a bunch of other institutions that are one more step removed from the Fed.
Something like that.
Like, are you a cloud provider, or do you run a lot of cloud jobs? Either way, you're "into the cloud", but you're on opposite sides.
That's about as much sense as I can make of it.
Or maybe it's all bullshit. Which would be funny, given the other things Graeber has written. I don't know.
I do notice it's weirdly aligned with RT's narrative. Not that that means it can't also be true.
>Many countries are in debt to the United States (immediate question: Isn't the US in huge debt to China?),
The US is in huge debt to the rest of the work because that is how a reserve currency works. You issue currency, in this case USD can only be created through debt, when it leaves the country to enter the world economy there is not enough USD in the US so the government has to do deficit spending or tax cuts (i.e. never retrieve the money it created).
Let's see if I can expand and work through what you wrote. Someone else may need to correct parts.
So the Fed/Treasury passes over the void, and in this vacuum forms a dollar and a T-bill, a particle/antiparticle pair. In this transaction, the Treasury sells a debt obligation (the T-bill), which someone buys with dollars. Then again, and again: We now have a few T-bills and dollars.
There are a few purchasers involved -- a few places to which T-bills flow, and from which dollars flow.
One: A T-bill flows to China. A dollar flows in the opposite direction (they used it to purchase the T-bill).
Another: The Federal Reserve buys a T-bill. This is "quantitative easing", or colloquially "money printing" (as it can be done within the current system). The Federal Reserve gets the T-bill, and the Treasury gets dollars, which then fund US government spending.
The T-bill/dollar current to China is superposed with an opposite current: Simultaneously, a different stream of dollars impinges on China, prompting another current of cargo ships in the opposite direction. These carry iPhones, and flip-flops, and everything else sold at big-box stores.
Enter countries in the US / IMF / World Bank sphere. These have dollar denominated debts (they used the loans to build (hopefully useful) infrastructure). Now they do something to acquire dollars, like accept a stream of tourists, or export coltan or palm oil. In the case of the raw materials, some go to the US (palm oil to food processors), and others to China (coltan to whoever makes tantalum capacitors, which eventually end up in iPhones).
In a net sense, then, dollars flow into the "developing" world, and resources flow out to the West, with those needing industrial steps of the "value chain" traveling via China.
And each of those dollars has a corresponding T-bill "antiparticle", held either in China (or another country), or at the Fed. This prompts another flow of dollars to the holders of all those T-bills, which we call interest. Those dollars now, can come from the sale of yet more T-bills.
Now here I realize that my metaphor is wrong. T-bills and dollars only exist in "pairs" when they are created by a QE transaction. Other T-bills attract dollars from outside (e.g. those sold to China).
Finally, I have left out the commercial banks. I'll need to work fractional reserve banking into this somehow.
This is all becoming pretty complicated. But it still feels like a simplified stock-and-flow model is within reach...
A big part of the issue is because the US effectively controls the world's money printer due to the use of USD as a reserve currency. This necessitates a trade deficit so that other countries can actually have access to USD.
The solution to that problem would be the introduction of regional bancors. The EU needs one for internal use. Technically the euro is a very "shitty" bancor which rather than being used as a unit of account, was directly adopted as a currency in each member state. In theory each country should have had its own branch euro which are then exchanged via the bancor. i.e. regional currencies. The bancor is actually just a barter exchange for currency. I mean that is what it boils down to.
In this context putting money into Finance means investing it through Wall Street via a range of their products such as derivatives/options trading, currency trading, HFT what have you. You could say making money through speculative assets and you won't be far off.
In other words Finance here refers to investing money not directly in real economy, such as building factories, houses etc., but in speculative products such as I listed above. It is possible that the money so invested in Finance somehow eventually makes it to the real economy. But since late 20th century the size of Finance relative to Real Economy has exploded. Multiple trillions of dollars worth of products are traded each day in Financial markets but in real economy (i.e., people buying/selling goods/services) only a fraction of that amount changes hands. So there is a growing disconnect between Finance and Real economy; which is why Wallet Street (Finance) and Main Street (real economy) have grown so much apart.
Coming to Trump and Real Estate. For a real estate builder, their ___domain expertise is around forecasting future needs and invest in building houses/office spaces. They invest some of their own money, borrow some from banks, build houses, sell for profit, repay banks and pocket some of that profit. So this part is well understood.
A builder can do well only when millions of people are earning well and are able to buy/rent their buildings. Falling wages is a really bad news for real estate firms. As Graeber says in that video, you can not export real estate buildings. So for them to do well the domestic real economy must do well. The Finance sector however has no such constraints. At the shortest of notice they can seamlessly move their money across the border chasing higher returns. There are times when Finance feels the effects of worsening real economy however as we saw in 2008 when falling housing prices (which were artificially inflated to being with, thanks to speculation) lead to Wall Street crisis.
I usually don't trust Wikipedia now a days but it does have good content in this case[1].
Owners ( of assets ) have been making a killing. Pretty much any kind of asset - stocks, real estate, collectibles, crypto, etc. Of course the more you own, the better you did. So the 0.01 did much better than the 0.1% who did much better than the 1%...
Still could be. Turn around and contact the relevant employers... "pay me $10k and I'll unmask your employee who installed fake malware with intent to extort you." Just... make sure the malware is perfectly harmless.
Then you should focus on the optimization phase. Where indexes, table statistics, etc are involved. The parsing and even translating sql from one dialect to another wouldn't give much for you to analyze.
I'm assuming you want to learn about query performance and execution plans?
Frankly, if you want to analyze queries, just install the rdbms, set up a data warehouse and use the tools available to analyze query plans/etc. There are so much that affects queries beyond the actual sql since the hardware and data load affects the queries. You could run the same sql query and end up with wildly different query/execution plans depending on how the data/tables/indexes are changed on your system.
Apple has to store data of chinese citizens in china? And Apple has to adhere to chinese laws in china? How insane.
It's crazy how deluded the "CCP crowd" are. Apparently, the "CCP crowd" thinks companies are allowed to do business in another country and not abide by their laws.
Are you going to go insane since the EU requires tech companies to store EU citizens data within the EU?
> By Lenin's definition the all those Democratic People's Republics really were democratic.
Not by lenin's definition. Just the definition of democracy and where it came from. We get democracy comes from the greeks - where only the wealthy slave owning elites could vote.
The founders also followed that model. Only wealthy landowning whites could vote. The first few elections only like 4 or 5% of the population voted.
Isn't it crazy how propaganda has shifted your understanding of democracy? Democracy was never "of the people, by the people, for the people ", it was always about the elite few.
> The founders also followed that model. Only wealthy landowning whites could vote. The first few elections only like 4 or 5% of the population voted.
The Founders did not write that into the Constitution.
> Isn't it crazy how propaganda has shifted your understanding of democracy? Democracy was never "of the people, by the people, for the people ", it was always about the elite few.
> The Founders did not write that into the Constitution.
Because the founders wanted voting to be controlled at the state level, not the federal level...
> Propaganda is what you're writing.
Historical facts is propaganda?
So what is propaganda? That only landowning whites could vote? Democracy came from the ancient greeks? That ancient greeks owned slaves and only allowed wealthy slave owners to vote?
> "Those words were spoken by a TJ father who immigrated to the United States from China after surviving the Cultural Revolution."
Hilarious. These propagandists really can't help themselves. "Survive the cultural revolution". Like a billion other chinese? It's funny how the same propaganda sweeps across the media at the same time. I've seen "Survived the cultural revolution" from fox news to the washingtonpost and everything in between.
> "School district officials announced that, as a result of their new admissions system, they slashed the percentage of Asian students admitted to TJ to 54 percent this year from 73 percent last year."
That is dramatic drop but what did they expect? The problem with chinese/asian american population is that they are too small a base to matter. And considering they marry out at extraordinary ( dare I say genocidal rates ), they'll matter even less in the future. In a democracy, numbers matter.
> The American Dream of equal treatment
Since when has equal treatment been part of america or the american dream? Maybe instead of mindlessly memorizing "facts and propaganda", these people should have learned critical thinking. Or the history of natives, africans, mexicans, etc in the US. Or their own history. The history of asian americans has never been that of equal treatment.
If these people are stupid enough to believe "The American Dream of equal treatment" then they deserve what they get. Hard to sympathize with such people.
One thing I do find odd is that the CRT advocates are so intent on increasing black enrollment at a school named after a slave owning white supremacist ( Thomas Jefferson ). Wonder how they square that circle.
Flamewar comments like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of what you're flaming for or against. Would you please review the rules and stick to them from now on? We'd appreciate it.
Edit: actually you've been breaking the rules so much that I've banned the account (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28254220). Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
That's a pretty straightforward circle to square - it's apparently a good school, or at least the parents think it is, and the name doesn't change how good the teachers are.
> I have to refer back to these long traditional rivals
Long traditional rivals? Iran and iraq are relatively new 20th century european colonial creations. Iran was carved out by the british/russians and Iraq was arbitrarily drawn out on a map by the british and french.
> when I read people waxing poetic about the prospect of erasing international borders and becoming a brotherhood of man and then at the same time rejecting homogenization of culture
Even with homogenous cultures, no guarantee of "brotherhood of man". Look at north and south korea. The elites will always find something to fight over.
> Maybe with the right governments they can work out deals like we work out with Canada and Mexico with regard to shared resources
It's not the "right" governments. It's called an insurmountable power differential. Canada and mexico simple have to do what they are told. We've fought wars against canada( british empire ) and mexico and taken significant amount of territory from both to ensure that these countries "share their resources" as told. The only way this power dynamic would change if an outside force with enough power helps either canada or mexico challenge the US. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
> but I’m not holding my breath on this given the Kurds are kind of the out group within the Iraqi family and probably won’t get full support from the central govt.
The kurds are the outgroup everywhere - turkey, iraq, iran, etc. The kurds have been used by the US/Europe as a separatist thorn in the side of many middle east nations to keep them unstable. Similar to what we are trying to do with the uyghurs in china, rohingya in myanmar, the balochs in pakistan, india, africa, etc. One of the benefits of having drawn out nations in africa is that the nations are full of different ethnic groups that can be pit against each other making these african nations easier to control. Not sure it was the original intent, but that's where we are right now.
> Long traditional rivals? Iran and iraq are relatively new 20th century european colonial creations. Iran was carved out by the british/russians and Iraq was arbitrarily drawn out on a map by the british and french.
This is completely false when you're talking about Iran. An Iranian state has existed in more or less continuous form as an independent polity since the breakup of the Timurid Empire in ~1500. The three-way contest between the Ottomans, Safavid Persia, and Russia is a staple of the region's politics for virtually the entirety of the Early Modern period.
> This is completely false when you're talking about Iran.
I wouldn't say completely false.
> An Iranian state has existed in more or less continuous form as an independent polity since the breakup of the Timurid Empire in ~1500.
More or less? Independent polity? You are independent or you are not independent. You can't be "more or less" independent than you can be "more or less" pregnant.
It certainly wasn't independent after it was invaded and conquered by the british and soviets? It certainly wasn't independent after the british and soviets installed their own puppet to rule over iran.
Iran, china, india, etc all love to claim thousand years whatever. Perhaps culturally, historically, etc they have a point but neither iran, china, india, etc are old states.
The "more or less" applied to "continuous", not "independent." But if you really want to argue that independence is a simple binary decision... you're just flat out wrong. No, seriously.
Let's take what should be a simple example: Canada. When did Canada become independent? Well... Wikipedia lists no fewer than three separate dates, and that's really understating the matter.
The Canadian Confederation was proclaimed on July 1, 1867 (and this is the date that Canada celebrates as its main independence day, FWIW). This created the basic structure of the Canadian government, but all changes to it required approval by Westminster, and Canada was not allowed autonomy in several areas of law, most notably foreign policy. This changed after the Canadian dissatisfaction with British negotiation of the US-Canada border dispute in the Alaska panhandle, and Canada started entering into international agreements and treaties in its own right in the early 1900s. The Statute of Westminster in 1931 dropped all legislative oversight over Canada, except for constitutional changes which came about in 1982.
So I ask you again, when did Canada become independent? Now, for bonus points, take the same criteria and ask if places such as Greenland, Bermuda, Taiwan, Palestine, Abu Dhabi, or Federated States of Micronesia are independent or not.
Even though the Queen is in many ways only a symbolic head of state, the Commonwealth countries in some important ways are not fully independent today. It varies country to country in which ways specifically. In Jamaica for example laws on the books still grant beaches to the Crown and public lands are still known as "Crown land".
> The "more or less" applied to "continuous", not "independent."
Does that make a difference? You are either continuously independent or not continuously independent.
> But if you really want to argue that independence is a simple binary decision... you're just flat out wrong. No, seriously.
No. You either are independent or not independent. It's basic logic.
> Let's take what should be a simple example: Canada. When did Canada become independent? Well... Wikipedia lists no fewer than three separate dates, and that's really understating the matter.
Should be a clue to you that canada isn't independent. No country that worships the queen of another country is. I never considered canada an independent country.
> Now, for bonus points, take the same criteria and ask if places such as Greenland, Bermuda, Taiwan, Palestine, Abu Dhabi, or Federated States of Micronesia are independent or not.
None of these are independent countries. Not sure about abu dhabi as I don't know about about it.
Nice little distraction you took us on. Funny how you completely ignored the part about iran being invaded and conquered. Instead of accepting that you were wrong, you decided to double down and take us on a tangent. Nice. I can see where this is going.
That iran has not been "more or less" continuously independent nation isn't a matter of debate. It's a matter of historical and political and military fact.
How is the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran--that resulted in the removal of one monarch in favor of the next-in-line, the continuation of the territorial integrity of Iran, and did not result in any significant changes in the internal political structure of Iran--a complete break in the general continuity of Iran's political existence that renders Iran nothing more than a 20th century Russian/British creation, whereas the 1979 Iranian Revolution--which did many of those things (except for effecting the borders)--is not?
The historical fact is that an Iranian state composed predominantly of Iranian peoples and ruled by Iranians has existed for 2 and a half millennia. And honestly, rather like China, even when Iranians are being ruled by non-Iranians, Iranian culture is still a prestige culture, especially in the Abbasid caliphate. The Iranian nation-state cannot be a mere product of British/Russian influence when it predates the existence of either of those nations (not even countries, nations), and the British and the Russians played no part in effecting the creation of said nation-state, at best merely temporarily disestablishing it.
And this is why I said "more or less continuously." I'm not denying that there are disruptions to continuity--were I to do so, I would not need to modify "continuous." Instead, I'm denying that those disruptions actually matter for the political analysis.
You claimed that the iranian state existed independently since 1500s. I proved you wrong.
> the continuation of the territorial integrity of Iran
"The treaty confirmed the ceding and inclusion of what is now Dagestan, eastern Georgia, most of the Republic of Azerbaijan and parts of northern Armenia from Iran into the Russian Empire."
You can find the others. I won't bother with the sphere of influences carved out by russia and britain within iran itself where iran had to grant privileges to russia and britain over a few provinces. If you look at the map, almost 2/3rd of iran proper was under russian or british "influence".
If it is easier for you to see rather than read...
> The historical fact is that an Iranian state composed predominantly of Iranian peoples and ruled by Iranians has existed for 2 and a half millennia.
Other than when the arabs and the mongols took charge for a bit. Right? Pretty major events in iranian and world history you completely forgot about.
> The Iranian nation-state cannot be a mere product of British/Russian influence
Sure it can because iran lost a significant portion of its territory to russia/britain in the past few hundred years. Modern iran exists as it is today because of britain and russia. Iran was much bigger before the rise of the west. Nation-state is a modern european concept. Iran's landmass looks the way it does because of all the wars lost to britain and russia.
> I'm not denying that there are disruptions to continuity
Then why are you arguing with me?
> Instead, I'm denying that those disruptions actually matter for the political analysis.
What? That's as ridiculous as saying the opium wars and the european colonization of china doesn't matter for political analysis. That the colonization of india doesn't matter. The partitioning of india doesn't matter? Since the chinese, indians, turks, etc all rule their own countries, european colonization doesn't matter?
What you wrote is so absurd that it's the political/historical equivalent of saying the earth is flat. Modern iran looks the way it does, geographically and politically, because of western expansion/invasion. It's a nation-state and not a empire because of the west.
This will be my last response as I know you'll just find another topic to argue about. To claim that iran had political/state/government, territorial, etc continuity since the 1500s when iran lost tons of land to russia/britain, it collapsed from an empire to a western forced 'nation-state' and had huge swathes of territory cordoned off in sphere of influence is absurd.
> Since the chinese, indians, turks, etc all rule their own countries, european colonization doesn't matter?
That is absolutely not what I said. But I'm not going to elaborate any further since apparently you believe that trying to explain why your responses are somewhere between misreading my statements and an outright strawman argument is just "finding another topic to argue about." If you're ever willing to actually engage my arguments in good faith, then perhaps I might revisit that decision.
One example is the american revolution where the one group of elites in the british empire wanted good relations with the indians to protect their fur trade while another group of elites wanted to invade native areas and steal their land. Don't think there was an issue of elite overproduction in the british empire in the mid 1700s. But there was an issue of divergent interests and there was no room for compromise as these competing interests directly conflicted with each other.
Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets. Once again, I don't think there was an overproduction of elites in the north or the south in the 1850s.
But I guess if the elite overproduction was severe enough, it could structural conflict of interests. But my guess is that conflicts would naturally arise amongs the elites long before elite overproduction.