There is an excellent new paper by Dr. Alex Fornito, et.al., and here is the punchline:
How well our brain functions is largely based on our family’s genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study.
The study published in the international publication The Journal of Neuroscience provides the first evidence of a genetic effect on how ‘cost-efficient’ our brain network wiring is, shedding light on some of the brain’s make up.
Lead author Dr. Alex Fornito from the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases.
“The brain tries to maximize its bang-for-buck by striking a balance between making more connections to promote efficient communication and minimising the “cost” or amount of wiring required to make these connections. Our findings indicate that this balance, called ‘cost-efficiency’, has a strong genetic basis.”
“Ultimately, this research may help us uncover which specific genes are important in explaining differences in cognitive abilities, risk for mental illness and neurological diseases such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, leading to new gene-based therapies for these disorders.”
“We found that people differed greatly in terms of how cost-efficient the functioning of their brain networks were, and that over half of these differences could be explained by genes,” said Dr. Fornito.
Across the entire brain, more than half (60%) of the differences between people could be explained by genes. Some of the strongest effects were observed for regions of the prefrontal cortex which play a vital role in planning, strategic thinking, decision-making and memory.
Here is one popular summary of the results. I interpret the finding to suggest some mix of a) genetics is more important than we think (when we think we are measuring the importance of IQ), and b) there are some smart people, smarter than we often think they are, and they pick and choose their mates.
For the pointer I thank my clear-eyed powers of observation.
***
Maybe the Cheap Chalupas guy should read and post about these types of studies. He likes to posture as a well-read man, after all. Or would that be too emotionally painful?
Economists and liberatarians work to make economic theory fit human nature as they see it. What they fear most is that human nature will not bend to fit economic theory. And so they ignore human nature. Or whitewash it. Or demonize it. And they look sillier and sillier by the year…
first!
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Hmm… lets see who takes this bait?
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So that means if Planned Parenthood is de-funded along with the welfare state, that people might actually have to use their brains again?
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Kate is subtly mannish and has an overtly conceited demeanor. I believe I heard that they met when she went out of her way to aggressively pursue him (mannish alpha-gamesmanship). Prince William is a dunce caught in her game, with no game himself.
The western white female has been masculinized, and Kate is their mascot. A pall-bearer of mainstream femininity.
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This reader noticed that 1. Across the brain as a whole 60% of the difference appears to be due to inheritance. 2. A disporportionate contribution to the whole brain differences come from the differences seen in the fre-frontal cortext of their subjects.
What this means is that the differences seen between/among pre frontal cortices due to inheritance is vastly larger than 60%.
Oh by the way, the frontal lobes are where most of the hard work is done.
Luckily for these guys they live in Australia, although they might still be subject to extradiction to here to be put on trial for having thought crimes.
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wonder when you’ll finally learn the difference between liberals and libertarians.
how many people have commented on this and you still write as if the two were interchangeable?
[Editor: Holding my breath for when libertarians come out against open borders…]
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if you’e honest you can even see the results in your own family. my family has PhDs and alchoholics, depending on which kid or which side they came from and how they were raised determined the general success or failure of their marriages/children.
breastfeeding– how long were you breastfed? less than 12 months and you didn’t reach your entire IQ potential. if your woman doesn’t want to breastfeed, you’ll have stupid kids regardless.
i see almost a nature + what you do with nurture = new nature/evo quality to it = allows a diversity of results in close proximity very quickly.
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Its been pointed out time and time again, choices tax your brain, they cost mana similar to a video game. Your genetically predisposed to the amount of mana you can spend in a day, and how much you can get back similar to your genetic softcap on muscle growth and what kind of muscle.
While I agree this is a powerful study (annoying to me, as I tend to like to know the answers and not tell people) it doesn’t mean the game is over and sides have been chosen.
Yes attractive people sort out who they want through rigorous qualification, but thats rational reality. Dont go full retard with me and assume that people operate with reason when emotionally compromised. Which is what, within proximity your brain gets when you see a person of significance. So, game is vital to the initial stages of this interaction, and throughout the day to do, but the long term and metagame all come from natural powers that be. Your beauty for women, your willpower for men.
I see you falling more and more for the facts are god tangent of thinking and this is my caution for you: “As behavior as a whole becomes determinable and that information widely accessible, will you use this knowledge to know that you are a loser or winner?”
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If you’re a genuine alpha male with game, I’d really appreciate your advice…
[Editor: Excellent qualification.]
This is Joe – emailer #4 from this Roissy blog post: http://roissy.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/reader-mailbag-fast-times-edition/
Quick update: A few weeks ago, Sarah sent me a postcard from her holiday abroad… I responded by writing her a letter back (mistake # 1). In this letter I told her I was thinking of her and missed her (mistake # 2).
[Yes, this was a big mistake. Girls send me postcards from their trips abroad all the time, and never once do I write back to them in reply.]
This was BEFORE I emailed Roissy for advice (see link above).
Of course, I now realise it’s very beta behaviour (and will learn from these mistakes).
After reading Roissy’s advice to me, I stopped texting Sarah.
That said, she text me tonight. She thanked me for the letter (*cringe*) and said things feel a bit intense and that we should talk soon.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is bad.
[Depends what she means by ‘intense’. But over text, you can’t get that tonality.]
The situation is bleak, but saveable. (I know for a fact she is not seeing anyone else.)
[A woman’s sex life is never a fact.]
Having now learned some basics of game, my first decision was to NOT reply to her text. (Let’s get that hampster spinning.)
However, knowing Sarah, she will text me again to either a) ask for my thoughts or b) arrange a time to come over to mine and ‘talk’.
How should I respond when she re-initiates contact?
[If she asks for your thoughts, that’s your cue to amp up the cocky/funny. “well, i’m thinking about a juicy pot roast right now.” If she wants to come over and ‘talk’, postpone it. Tell her ‘sure, but not tonite. busy.’ You don’t want to seem available, and you don’t want to seem like you’re fretting what she thinks of you.]
I need to project enough alpha to re-build attraction that she lost due to my beta behaviour. Then, I’ll sleep with her and she’ll fall in love with me.
[This sentence reveals your inner game is weak.]
What do you think of this text?
“we dont need to ‘talk’ thats gay. whats happened is this… you sent me a postcard (which was probs too much too soon) and i sent you a stupid letter (which was too much too soon) and now it feels a bit intense. but chill. this is only casual dont mistake it for anything else”
It’s wordy, which I realise is best avoided, but it feels alpha to me.
[It’s not. Go with your gut. It’s too wordy and emotional. You sound like you’re trying too hard to convince yourself rather than her.]
Any helpful advice you can offer will be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Joe.
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For men who want to raise a family, then, having fun with the hottest women one can get is a fine idea … until one reproduces. Then one needs to look to brains.
[Ed: And character.]
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I could write when I was three. My kid can write and he is 3. Nobody taught him.
His mom was first in her class at school ( great for genes, bad for marriage).
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My father was reading at the age of 4. I could read at the age of 4. My children all read at the age of 4. They look like my side of the family much more than the other side, too.
Got to be nurture. Surely can’t be any genes involved, nope, nope, nope.
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i’d also like to take note that even if environment did shape IQ to the extent that liberals like to believe it does, how the fuck does one go about escaping a cycle of usually single-parent homes that don’t value education?
moreover, as found in freakonomics, children adopted into high IQ homes of good socioeconomic standing don’t fare as well if they were the genetic offspring.
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For marriage, look for a helper. Someone with a good temper and good disposition. In the long term, that’s what matters. Even good character , when mixed with neurosis (90% of women are neurotic) cant help much.
Complicated girls may be attractive and mysterious, but are a hell to live with. Soon she will blame you for all her problems.
Peter says:
May 1, 2011 at 3:57 pm
For men who want to raise a family, then, having fun with the hottest women one can get is a fine idea … until one reproduces. Then one needs to look to brains.
[Ed: And character.]
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Hard work, common sense wisdom and responsibility can take an average IQ person much further in life than a lazy genius. There is hope outside of genes, but the Marxists dont want people to realize that.
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@editor
“[Editor: Holding my breath for when libertarians come out against open borders…]”
I am not sure what you are driving at here. In any case,
self-identified libertarians (and I know tons of them)
are quite divided on this one.
Technically and ideologically, a strict libertarian
“should” be for open borders. But many, maybe
most, look at it from a practical viewpoint,
where there is a welfare state and a large and
growing class of people who have figured out
how to vote themselves lifetime support from
the government. And in that context, open borders
would be (in fact already is, the borders are leaky
enough) an utter disaster.
As you might guess from the above, I am
against open borders UNLESS you had
no welfare state, and an electoral process
built on “no representation without taxation”,
i.e. net tax eaters not having a vote. At a
minimum.
Thor
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Libertarians on open borders.
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>i.e. net tax eaters not having a vote. At a minimum.
Just how much more completely do you want to couple power with money? Democracy is the only extant force that (very weakly) balances wealth.
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A good woman is hard to find.
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Economists and liberatarians work to make economic theory fit human nature as they see it.
Roissey, you are ignorant in economics and libertarianism. You wouldn’t know the first thing about a legitimate law of economics if it bit you on the ass. The only legitimate approach to libertarianism is the Austrian school of economics. Austrian economics understands human nature better than any political theorists prior to them.
Forget “open borders”, that’s a derivative issue and not all libertarians are open borders just the naive one. But legitimate minarchism would
1. eliminate the welfare state
2. eliminate central banking and all fiat currency
3. eliminate the regulatory state meaning no preventative laws and no anti-discrimination laws
4. eliminate all labor protections (like pro-union laws and minimum wage laws)
5. eliminate the victimless crime laws
6. eliminate all corporate welfare and subsidies
7. eliminate all public education at every level
That’s just for starters. What type of people do you think would survive in such a society? The omegas would be culled out and you would have a vastly smarter population.
Show me any Conservative – paleo, neo, bio, social, etc – that comes anywhere near defending that type of “everyone takes there of themselves” system. Even your idol Steve Sailer believes in a welfare state – for blacks and American Indians.
Outside of game, you’re a nitwit Roissey. You wouldn’t last three seconds in a debate with an Austrian.
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I’ll take the bait. YOU started out with a more blank slate assumption than the cheap chalupas guy.
When he writes “there are some smart people, smarter than we often think they are” what he means by “we” is the typically smart readers of his blog who mostly don’t by into blank slate theory in the first place. Your we is a straw SWPL we.
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Technically and ideologically, a strict libertarian
“should” be for open borders.
No, really? Jesus, why are people so ignorant. Of course libertarianism will lead to open borders.
What is it with you retards and your libertarianism? You can’t save it with a million qualifications of the philosophy. Do that with an extreme ideology like libertarianism and the moment you do you guarantee the system will be gamed.
The USA and Canada both became first world countries with protectionism, one of the most hated policies of libertarians. Tariffs and the resulting rapid growth of local manufacturing is what created the productivity and real wealth our leaders now ship out and destroy.
You Americans are going to take one more giant step into being played by your corporate masters with your libtard worship.
Empiricism trumps theory. Isn’t that the whole underlying point of this blog? To ignore the dumbasses who promote their spacey notions and look at what actually works.
Grow the fuck up. Time is running short for this nonsense.
Roissy, you in particular should know better. White European-settled countries didn’t grow or thrive under libertarianism. You’re supposedly big on looking at what actually works. What’s wrong with you?
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Joe,
If Sarah says, “We have to talk.” Just reply, “About what?” in an only partially interested way. Let her come over and say what she has to say nodding occasionally. When she’s done say something along the lines of “okay cool” no matter what she said. If she doesn’t dump you and you still like her just change the subject and ask her if she wants to get a bite to eat. Don’t mention the conversation again.
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@ASPIRANT
“>i.e. net tax eaters not having a vote. At a minimum.
Just how much more completely do you want to couple power with money? Democracy is the only extant force that (very weakly) balances wealth.”
I don’t think you get it. It is not about “wealth”
Person Number of vote
Bill Gates 1
Me 1
You TBD
Welfare single mother 0
There are other ways of limiting franchise that might do the job. Heinlein in “Starship Troopers” has it that only
veterans (NOT active duty servicemen) have the vote.
Charles Stross has a similar take (author of
“Accelerando” and other books)
I am thinking of making up a T-shirt, something like
Front:
If the poor
don’t like it,
let’m leave!
Back:
I think we
can manage
without them.
Thor
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The USA and Canada both became first world countries with protectionism, one of the most hated policies of libertarians. Tariffs and the resulting rapid growth of local manufacturing is what created the productivity and real wealth our leaders now ship out and destroy.
If you think this is a devastating argument against libertarianism, you’re a moron. Protectionism did NOT contribute to the growth of America. It retarded its growth. All protectionism does is to make products MORE EXPENSIVE for the local citizenry. Protectionism is a subsidy for local businesses that can’t compete with more productive firms overseas. It SUBSIDIZES INCOMPETENT PRODUCERS.
There is more that can be said but just Google up the Law of Comparative Advantage to learn why protectionism is pure bullshit. Americans are suffering a lower standard of living because of the myriad protectionist measures that are already in place and you fucking idiot conservatives want more of them.
All conservatives – NeoCons, PaleoCons, BioCons are fucking morons when it comes to economics. The exception would be someone like Thomas Sowell; but he is more of a libertarian than a conservative (at least in economics).
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There are no protectionist measures in place except for our bankers and rulers. You are misguided.
If not for the protection and caretaking of our country in generations past, there would have been no golden age.
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@Lockford
“Tariffs and the resulting rapid growth of local manufacturing is what created the productivity and real wealth our leaders now ship out and destroy.”
Not really. If we had no welfare, no minimum wage
and not a pile of restrictive labor laws, the US
(and Canada and Western Europe) would be
a lot more competitive, and much fewer jobs
would be outsourced.
And in the American heyday, when production
was king, those things were indeed not in place.
Yet.
By 1937, the depression was almost over, but
FDR brought in a bunch of labor-favoring laws
(strikes at GM, where the workers had jobs
others would kill for), etc, and FDR managed
to get about four more years out of a depression
that was otherwise almost over.
See Atlas Shrugged, the movie
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com
still in theaters in the US, see the link for locations
(Personal note, I am a reverse outsourcee, I live in
the US and I do some jobs – sitting at my computer
at home – for Indian companies. Go figure.)
Thor
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in a way perhaps the two types of runaway selection (for brain wiring) are occurring, one on an extreme iq vector (aspergers/autism) and one on a jersey shore (social dynamics – no matter how much you hate it, it’s probably true) vector. the jersey shore vector being much more practical in any environment.
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“i’d also like to take note that even if environment did shape IQ to the extent that liberals like to believe it does, how the fuck does one go about escaping a cycle of usually single-parent homes that don’t value education?”
Oh, you really don’t want to offer liberals that opening.
It’ll go something like “we need Head Start from age 6 months, fully funded!!!!11!!!!!”
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I’m in a similar position to Joe… a girl I’m dating wants to ‘talk’ after beta behaviour from me. Oddly she also used the word “intense”. My question is simple… when a girl comes round to ‘talk’, what’s the best way to act?
I’m thinking brief small talk when she arrives, mentioning that our dating is “casual”, and telling her to say what she came to say (polishing my shoes while she’s ‘talking’ to show indifference to her).
Do you think this is alpha or beta? Would explaining that she’s free to stop coming round if its too intense be too drastic?
Useful advice would be great
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Real libertarian economists do not ignore human nature.
The foundation of Mises’ entire economic framework is based on the pretty self-evident axiom that humans act, using scarce means to achieve their own ends.
Now, scarce means may be tools, women, a katana, blahblah, and the ends are pretty much infinite.
Can’t get more human naturey than that.
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Solid,
It is unnatural to show complete indifference to her (since you like her), she may also see through it and then you look like an angry beta. Show some interest, but make it clear that talking about you and her and your status is a little boring. You are with her because you enjoy her company, not to have endless workshops for your relationship.
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@ thor lockford simms
you guys would agree though that von mises, hayek, rothbard did not “make economic theory fit human nature as they see it…..bend it to fit economic theory” like this blog keeps arguing.
of all the economists out there it was these guys who aggressively rejected aggregates and mathematical modeling of human behavior.
the writer of this blog needs to do some reading, or just stick to game posts. he’s out of his fucking element
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@epiclotz
What is Jersey Shore? I know it is a TV program,
but I know nothing about it.
@Orignal JB
“…how the fuck does one go about escaping a cycle of usually single-parent homes…”
Easy. Abolish welfare. It is to society what crack
cocaine is to the individual.
Back in the 50s, pre federal welfare, single parent families
were rare (yes, among all races).
Thor
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Remember people:
Libertarianism = open borders.
Fuck Ron Paul.
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@Peter
Good looks go a lot further than high intelligence in the modern world. Best to have a kid with a hot woman.
There’s no point creating a high IQ, beta engineer virgin.
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I’m a libertarian in the sense that I want virtually no government intervention in the economy or in our personal lives. It doesn’t mean I endorse a libertine or socially liberal lifestyle. The two are completely different things but are often incorrectly intertwined with each other.
And I want a fence on the border. Ron Paul voted for the fence too, so there’s your libertarian against open-borders.
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@Leif
“I’m a libertarian in the sense that I want virtually no government intervention in the economy or in our personal lives. It doesn’t mean I endorse a libertine or socially liberal lifestyle. The two are completely different things but are often incorrectly intertwined with each other.
And I want a fence on the border. Ron Paul voted for the fence too, so there’s your libertarian against open-borders.”
Yup. Serious “Libertines” generally don’t like libertarianism;
they want “somebody else”, usually some level of government, to clean up the messes they make.
As to open borders, see my previous posts.
Thor
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Economic theory (particularly “Austrian”) is true regardless of what we may discover about human nature. There is no need to alter human nature to bring about a libertarian society (although some delusional factions of the libertarian movement think there is and others fall into human nature denialism). It is inaccurate to say that libertarianism means open borders, as a libertarian society would recognize the inviolability of property rights and thus would not allow any immigration without the consent of property owners (remember, the roads would be privately owned). Ron Paul is not actually a libertarian, but he is the closest thing in politics and he is against open borders and against amnesty.
I recommend reading real libertarians instead of those “left-libertarian” clowns or those “beltway libertarian” frauds. Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Murray Rothbard (one caveat: Rothbard had a leftist period in the 60s which he later regretted) are probably the most important libertarian intellectuals. Much of movement libertarianism has gone off the rails, but I was actually first exposed to the concept of hypergamy by Ayn Rand (Rand’s theory of sex basically took her uninhibited female desires and declared them as the moral ideal for both men and women; it was actually this theory that wrecked Rand’s movement because Rand found out that her younger lover, who was married to another member of Rand’s inner circle, was having an affair with a younger woman).
Yes, some forms of libertarianism are unworkable because they have false views of human nature. However, the authentic form of libertarianism (Paleo-Libertarianism) does not have that problem. It seems like many of the human nature realists, MRAs, and game bloggers are just as wrong about economics and libertarianism as many libertarians are about human nature.
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This has been your weekly dose of eugenics propaganda brought to you by the Chateau!
[Editor: Beats the alternative.]
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henry hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson is probably hte best and easiest start for austrian thought. only about a 100 pages. by the way he easily rips apart the idea that protectionism can advance a country economically.
someone should send a copy to the chateau.
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Funny how the SAT scores leveled off back in the 80’s. The test has been “reworked”, or “improved” a time or two since then, and yet the scores stubbornly won’t go up the way they did in the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s.
I’m sure there’s no correlation between letting millions of low-IQ grade school dropouts come to live here, but not adopt the culture, and the decline of SAT scores. It’s just coincidence.
It’s all nurture. It can’t be anything else…
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Thanks, Roissy and Lara – really helpful. I will follow your advice and also find an appropriate moment to mention that we’re only “casual” (my gut tells me it’s a smart move).
I will never mention that beta letter to her ever… but if she brings it up, what do you suggest?
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@Chaucer
At the end of the day open borders isn’t a Mexican problem, it’s an American Elite problem. I don’t blame the mexicans for wanting to come here, after all, who doesn’t want to live here.
At the same time, I’m not so naive that I think we can’t stop this problem. The people in charge in this country want them here to serve as an economic and political tool to transform the US in ways that benefit them.
If we can fight wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and now Syria….all at the same time. We can protect our southern borders. When there is a will there is a way.
Our politicians are much more afraid of the men in power than the peasantry that post on game message boards.
The men in power have money and all you have are “votes”. Even the past presidential election was basically rigged.
No matter who you voted you were getting the same thing. Obama has basically continued and expanded the policies of George W. Bush. When the people vote Obama out of office, the men in power will offer us more hand picked choices to vote for. Whoever we choose, they will continue where Obama left off….
Even now the elite are using their front man Donald Trump to divide up the right wing…which will basically give Obama another victory.
The reason people like Ron Paul, is because he gives you the sense that he might be ballsy enough to change things.
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Hans Herman Hoppe is the libertarian Roissy should check. All the open-borders, multiculti sludge the media and academia feed people is actually incompatible with true libertarianism: there’s nothing libertarian about forced integration through state-sponsored immigration.
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This article by Hoppe sums it up:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/16_1/16_1_5.pdf
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Of all social scientists, economists are the most happy to accept the idea that people have innate differences in ability. Some people are just more productive than others. Not sure what you’re talking about here.
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But can we really trust the science of a culture that not only entertains a phenomenon as comprehensively idiotic as feminism, but also allows it to infect politics and the legal system? Would you trust a thief with your wallet? Would you trust a pedophile with your child? I do not trust anything emanating from the Idiotsphere.
Here’s a question that can contradict the genes-is-everything myth. How do you distinguish between the effects of “initial conditions” (chaos theory – the idea that parents are most likely to have the greatest impact on brain wiring because they set the initial terms – the foundations – according to which the brain is “wired”) versus the genes-as-cause fiction? Not unlike how a newly hatched duck “imprints” itself onto whatever critter is present at the time of hatching.
So the second part of the title I do definitely get behind… parents do indeed matter. But it ain’t necessarily in the genes. Time to ditch that horse manure.
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It is likely true that genes account for as much as 60% of our differences; but 40% is still a very significant percentage.
Take taxes, for example. Forty percent of your income is significant.
If forty percent of your free time (ten hours a week, say) is spent at the gym, you’ll likely be fairly diesel. Another forty percent studying – math, computer science, practicing guitar, etc- and your knowledge base and skill sets will increase incrementally and significantly, so that the 10% of your free time opening sets or sarging will move like Patton through the Hurtgen forest, Alexander through Persia, Sherman through the southern US, et cetera.
I won’t ever be 6 ft 4, for example, nor were my parents multi-millionaires when I was a child, nor do I have a genius IQ.
But I do make good money, I do have muscles, and my game is tight as a war drum. For whatever portion of that is from my genes, I take little credit – the rest is all from my own willpower, discipline, and
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Joe,
If she mentions the letter don’t get embarrassed, just ask her if she liked it. Put it back on her, although her answer isn’t important. Keep any discussion of it light and don’t explain yourself. One beta letter is a dumb reason to break up with a guy, so if she does that you don’t want her anyway.
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@anonymous
(I have chopped his post into manageable pieces)
“I recommend reading real libertarians instead of those “left-libertarian” clowns or those “beltway libertarian” frauds.”
Could you give some names? In both directions?
” Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Murray Rothbard (one caveat: Rothbard had a leftist period in the 60s which he later regretted) are probably the most important libertarian intellectuals.”
Important, OK. But not head and shoulders over.
There is a line Böhm-Bawerk->Mises>Hayek>Friedman>
Friedman>Friedman .
And a whole bunch of others, Albert Jay Nock, Bastiat
(keeping within the last 200 years), Hazlitt (mentioned in
another post above), Nozick (sp?) and, despite her
protestations, Ayn Rand. And many others.
“Much of movement libertarianism has gone off the rails, but I was actually first exposed to the concept of hypergamy by Ayn Rand ”
Oh, yes, Dagny was seriously hypergamous. Textbook
case, in a pretty wrapping. (This is not a criticism;
when your progeny is severly limited, you are programmed
to go for high-quality, quantity is NOT an option.
How could it be otherwise?)
But could you elaborate on “off the rails”. Is it another
Taggart disaster?
“(Rand’s theory of sex basically took her uninhibited female desires and declared them as the moral ideal for both men and women; it was actually this theory that wrecked Rand’s movement because Rand found out that her younger lover, who was married to another member of Rand’s inner circle, was having an affair with a younger woman).”
Yup. Correct, Ayn Rand (née Rosenbaum), husband
Frank O’Connor, hangers on Nathaniel Branden
(né Nathan Blumenthal, still alive, at least through
last December), Barabara Branden née Weisman,
(also still alive, AFAIK),
and Patrecia Gulleson (or Scott, not sure which name
she was born with). Died in a crazy accident, had en
epileptic seizure and drowned in a swimming pool.
“Yes, some forms of libertarianism are unworkable because they have false views of human nature.”
Feel free to elaborate.
“However, the authentic form of libertarianism (Paleo-Libertarianism) does not have that problem.”
Feel free to elaborate.
“It seems like many of the human nature realists, MRAs, and game bloggers are just as wrong about economics and libertarianism as many libertarians are about human nature.”
Feel free to elaborate.
And what is MRA? Moral Re-Armament???
As to large-scale immigration, the hypergamy
has produced a birth dirth, so maybe we need
immigrants. The disaster was abolishing national
quotas in 1965. Hordes of poor people means cheap
labor for the wealthy (both lettuce pickers and domestic
help), and, in time, future voters for the Democrats.
So they turn the blind eye, or worse.
In the short term, it gives us cheap lettuce and
expensive emergency care.
Thor
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@codebuster.
“So the second part of the title I do definitely get behind… parents do indeed matter. But it ain’t necessarily in the genes. Time to ditch that horse manure.”
Wrong. Adoption studies prove this. Sorry.
Thor
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Off-topic, but found the perfect answer to “Dear Woman”…
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i ran across this with this research i did for my labor econ class… it was looking over divorce and labor supply… all of the economists tried to predict if there was a shift in hours leading up to and/or after divorce…
what was funny was that this blog made me hate the assignment because of the conclusions they ended up drawing… and i even talked to a few divorced women and got some interesting comments… one being “i started working more right before my divorce…not because i was preparing financially…but because i wanted to be anywhere but my home or around my (soon to be) ex”
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Libertarianism was explicitly founded to get America out of Vietnam and all other overseas military commitments. ( NATO on over )
All of the other planks in the Libertarian approach were laid on top of this fundamental foundation.
Yet, in the modern age this structure is not acknowledged, especially by Libertarians.
Libertarians also live in a dream space where no hostile party can game them. ( USSR? )
Their military non-philosophy is still expounded by Ron Paul. Weirdly, our Marxist president is going down the Libertarian road — on turning our critical defense secrets over to the enemy, and trusting to their good intent!
—-
Milton said it best: you can’t have a welfare society and open borders. Surveys indicate that most of the planet wants to come here and free-ride the American taxpayer.
—-
It’s a thought-crime: but White-America’s IQ norms to 101 ish which is a full standard deviation above the global norm of 85 ish.
It’s this huge IQ gap + first rank agricultural potential + best internal communications via rivers and rails that drives the American super-advantage.
China is gaming the entire planet. Even Putin is now shocked: he can’t sell any high tech military gear to Beijing”! They stole all of his best secrets.
It is inevitable that tariffs will come and that China gets kicked out of the WTO.
In other news: It appears that China’s wheels are coming off.
First an admission that she’s taken a pounding on her high speed rail projects.
Which caused a freeze in said projects.
Which is causing a collapse in metals demand.
Which is spooking the Australian Dollar and the silver market.
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“In other news: It appears that China’s wheels are coming off.”
China reminds me more and more of the former Soviet Union.
Obviously, there are major differences but central planning and state-owned business is still significant, as is the economic fakery to the rest of the world, not to mention industrial-military espionage.
Roubini thinks they hit a wall after 2013. Since the conventional wisdom among the American elites has been that “emerging economic superpower X (where X has at times been Nazi Germany, Khruschev’s USSR, Japan of 70s/80s and now China) will bury the US”, it is inevitable that China is doomed. Then we can restart again with India in the 2020s.
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You can’t keep smart (average IQ is 100 and is sure to be boosted by flynn up to the Asian average eventually) ruthless hard working people down forever.
Even if China collapses its economy, or the economy of one of its successor states will be larger than that of the US.
Korea did it, Taiwan did it, Japan did. With their huge population China would need to fuck up literally everything to not be able to pass the US in nominal GDP before midcentury.
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Most libertarian economists have an economic answer for everything. Pro-open borders because it increases growth, if you oppose it and do not refute their growth theory, you are wrong. They have non-economic pejoratives for their opponents, a big favorite is tribalism. If you are a normal human who sees yourself as part of a group, you are tribal. You will irrationally oppose good policies XYZ because of your tribalism. Well, substitute tribalism for selfish, and you have communism. If it wasn’t for all the selfish people unwilling to sacrifice for the common good, socialism would have worked much better.
Many libertarians and communists are atheist. Atheists of the Roissy stripe are a minority, many often fall into utopian thinking. I don’t think libertarians would rack up a 9-digit kill figure like the atheists of the 20th Century though. If they actually got their way, they’d be sadly disappointed at how Americans used their restored freedom to choose to live in more restrictive communities, both ethnically/class wise and also in terms of behavioral restrictions.
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@Thor
Could you give some names? In both directions?
Good Queen Nick is not amused.
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Thanks, Lara. You give unusually sound dating advice for a woman (unless you’re a man, in which case you still give sound dating advice).
Will play this out and then post how it goes…
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Russian dudes find aging, divorced, sex-positive feminist’s rationalization hamster…
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Yea I was reading at four too.
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osama bin laden just died, everyone.
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@blert
(sliced up)
“Libertarianism was explicitly founded to get America out of Vietnam and all other overseas military commitments. ( NATO on over )”
Not really. You describe ONE of the roots. ANOTHER root
was, loosely, the Rand root. (Yes, Rand was against
the Vietnam war, but that was not her main interest).
In other words, the root of removing the restraints
(and taxes) on entrepeneurship, and on people in
general.
Read Atlas Shrugged, or at least see the movie
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com
“All of the other planks in the Libertarian approach were laid on top of this fundamental foundation.”
Nonsense. If anything, it was the other way around.
I was part of the “movement”, even if from a distance,
at least since 1969.
“Yet, in the modern age this structure is not acknowledged, especially by Libertarians.”
Nonsense.
“Libertarians also live in a dream space where no hostile party can game them. ( USSR? )”
This is to some extent true, of some libertarians.
But there is a world of
difference between having a credible defense
and bombing Libya/Syria/Sudan/Serbia/whatever.
“Their military non-philosophy is still expounded by Ron Paul. Weirdly, our Marxist president is going down the Libertarian road — on turning our critical defense secrets over to the enemy, and trusting to their good intent!”
Or maybe he WANTS the US invaded???
“Milton said it best: you can’t have a welfare society and open borders. Surveys indicate that most of the planet wants to come here and free-ride the American taxpayer.”
Absolutely on the spot. See my previous posts.
“It’s a thought-crime: but White-America’s IQ norms to 101 ish which is a full standard deviation above the global norm of 85 ish.”
Not sure about “global”. A billion Chinese and billion
Indians bring the average up.
“It’s this huge IQ gap + first rank agricultural potential + best internal communications via rivers and rails that drives the American super-advantage.”
Partly. Also the culture of (relative) freedom of entrepeneurship. Mostly up to the time of FDR.
Since then, an absolute decline but still better
than Western Europe.
“China is gaming the entire planet. Even Putin is now shocked: he can’t sell any high tech military gear to Beijing”! They stole all of his best secrets.”
Sure. And Chinese factory workers make less than
a dollar an hour. Hard to compete with. Engineers
make about $1000 a month, compared to $5000 to
$10 000 (including payroll taxes but NOT overhead)
in the US, similar in W Europe (salaries lower, payroll
taxes through the roof). This is trickier, as GE found
out. Yes, they got their development on the cheap.
BUT a Chinese company started making a virtually
identical product.
“It is inevitable that tariffs will come and that China gets kicked out of the WTO.”
Not so sure. The US especially has to treat China with
kid gloves, or they might not renew the bonds.
“In other news: It appears that China’s wheels are coming off.”
Minor.
“First an admission that she’s taken a pounding on her high speed rail projects.”
With a few exceptions, high speed rail is a ripoff
of the tax payer. Who needs an 80 mile bullet
between Tampa and Orlando?
But to the Chinese economy as a whole, this
is pocket lint.
“Which caused a freeze in said projects.”
So what?
“Which is causing a collapse in metals demand.
Which is spooking the Australian Dollar and the silver market.”
Nonsense
Thor
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turn on CNN.
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Sofia, why should we care if /bin/Laden is dead or not? I mean, aside from the fact that his death probably lowered the mean IQ of the middle east slightly.
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I surpassed my adopted parents intellectually by the 4th grade. It certainly wasn’t my environment. I subjectively think that at least 80% of who/what I am is purely genetic.
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This just in… Apparently, Osama bin Laden is a dead motherf*cker.
Take that jihadists!
Dude cussin’ off muslims below worth a reprise…
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Mission Accomplished!
America, fuck yeah!
Fuck you Goldstein!
USA! USA! USA!
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@Thor
So do “twin studies”, alegedly (e.g., the famous one from Minessota). So we come back to the question… would you trust the Idiotsphere with the pursuit of Truth? Would you trust a thief with your wallet? Would you trust a pedophile with your child?
Sorry. 🙂
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Damn, I wish more blacks were like the that anti-muslim guy. That was good.
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dunno why you make that economics comment, in fact the entire direction in which economics is currently heading is to make more flexible models that better incorporate irregularities in human behavior
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OBL probably assumed room temperature 8 or 9 years ago.
The only important question is: Why tonight?
Why did the Big Boyz authorize Barry to tell the sheeple he is dead tonight? So they could make a quick buck shorting silver? Not likely.
What is so special about today, May Day?
This I know– symbolism is very important to da ‘boyz on the “inside.”
Maybe this will miraculously piss of some :cough: “Arabs” :cough: and they will attack another American city, making another adventure into MENA a “necessity.”
A great story, itz!
The point is, watch the magician’s OTHER hand, folks.
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Lots of interesting studies coming out in the last couple of years showing the impact of race on performance in a parade of standardized tests.
In particular they tend to show blacks tightly scoring in a grouping of 1.1 – 1.2 standard deviations below whites. Think what an honest conversation we could have about the way the world works if we acknowledged this difference and worked with it instead of denying it.
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Laden iced by spooks.
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We sit here blathering on about this or that.
China has indeed been gaming the planet. Come up with any economic policy you want:
it’s so utterly irrelevant it doesn’t matter. China’s regime is state-controlled capitalism at its most efficiently brutal. Labor unions won’t negotiate and drive up taxes; only public-sector unions do well because the private sector is going bankrupt; not the public sector is, inevitably, going bankrupt, being parasites on the real producers; and all the while, we sacrifice more and more market share to countries that don’t even begin to espouse the “fair market” principles we adhere to.
China has gamed us for the last 20 years. Our elites play into it. One of the reasons India is such a shithole – still – is because they can’t game the system as effectively.
You think the patent enforcement regime in China is weak accidentally? China could shut down infringers in a millisecond. They can spot dissidents in their bathrooms reading magazines. They have a lockdown on the internet twenty three hours out of twenty four.
Give me a break.
Without the west and its secrets to steal, and its factories to pack up and ship to China, and its investment cash and open markets – Chin would still be a total shithole.
They effectively gamed us.
Every single economic strategy that doesn’t address China’s wholly back-door predatory economic policies is a waste of time. Immigration, education, race relations – nothing in the end will make the slightest bit of difference.
Without coming up with a single new idea, China is effectively undoing 300 years of industrial development in the west by simply transferring it to China.
If you can’t see this and insist on squabbling over this ever-decreasing slice of pie, then you’re part of the problem.
Our economy is in the toilet because we can’t make anything. We can’t make anything because several other countries have come “online” and use every conceivable predatory mechanism to strip our country of jobs and ideas.
This isn’t exaggerated hype. There are whole departments in Chinese government and corporate circles whose whole purpose is to copy and upstage Western corporate achievements and advantages – and they use channels in the government to legitimize their actions.
Korean car companies (not exactly original thinkers there either) have had whole production lines copied almost bolt by bolt in China. China aims to have 70% of the entire world’s car production within 10 years.
They’ve targeted the car and all of its attendant industries. They’ve got a co-ordinated industrial strategy designed to simply denude the rest of the world of this industry and everything related to it.
Don’t think they can do it?
They went from 0% of the world’s housewares market to 100% in 12 years.
Their utter domination of the world electronics market – not a single component of which was invented or developed in China – is near-total. Many military manufacturers now have to source components in China. The entirety of this industry was developed outside of China.
This is laudable on their part: Smart bastards. Why do anything when you can just steal it?
Samsung, ironically a proponent and beneficiary of this tactic for 4 decades, has been suffering from this wholesale. The moment they make an innovation, it’s stolen – often before it even reaches their own production line. Copycat products, cheaper, less well-made, but more available – are literally everywhere within days of a release.
In other words, the entire development and production cycle is more or less infiltrated in China. You make a product there – you’re simply handing all of your technology and expertise over to the Chinese government.
Make no mistake about it: The government in China absolutely controls industrial development. Many companies have “political officers” and companies are often issued direct instructions – subtle suggestions as to what to do with profits, investments or corporate directions. Carrot and stick.
Up against this kind of competition, without being able to co-ordinate anything and falling into the same traps all the time – the west has no chance.
Screw the west. The former eastern block is in the same mess. So are places like Mexico. China is fucking them all.
You doubt it?
Even the Vietnamese and Cambodians, trying to attract investment, are encountering the predatory practices of the Chinese.
By fiat, on a single order, the Chinese government can construct an entire county or district from scratch, and order it to produce – electric motors. From nothing to more production than all of the Western world in a year.
How the living hell are we supposed to compete with that?
Unless the West gets smart and starts getting severely hard-assed, you can kiss this whole kaboodle goodbye.
China’s long-term strategy is simple and openly articulated in China: The effective transfer of financial, commercial and industrial decision-making to Chinese hands, and the gradual enfranchisement of China through the disenfranchisement of everywhere else.
This includes emasculating and stripping HK of its financial clout and moving it to Shanghai, and if HK refuses to die gracefully, then starving it to death; making sure the elite in Taiwan are properly bought off so the same happens there; cutting of Japan’s balls and preventing them from making any noise, using any method necessary, including false historical shaming and economic policy (and the fact that Japan’s government is worse than useless), and rendering US allies – like South Korea – irrelevant.
The Koreans are properly spooked by China. They’re hugely sensitive to the massive target they represent.
They know that even while they embrace China’s opportunities, China has only one thing on its mind: How best to neuter Korea and make it a mildly interesting economic satellite of China.
Make no bones about it – the CHinese government has a long-term plan. Indeed, they may encourage political reforms. But only once they’ve used their dictatorial regime to convert China into the world’s lone economic force.
Doubt it?
Have some chats with economists in China. They all know the deal.
And yet, we sit here blithely arguing about a few Mexicans moving in. I agree, it’s bad. In fact, I think it’s a top issue.
But by far, the #1 issue in America’s economic collapse is the predatory nature of CHina’s rise. This is as relevant for us as it is for places like Vietnam, Myanmar, South Africa or Bulgaria.
let China swindle its way into the future and we’ve done nothing but sell ourselves down the river.
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Good riddance to the unlovely Osama.
Nice thing about getting him now is that he looks less of a martyr since he spent the last 10 years skulking rather than facing the martyrdom he urged on so many misguided young men.
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@Gorby
You have lots of good points. The US – and the rest
of the West – needs to take action.
It can be done, and should be done sooner
rather than later.
In no particular order:
o Get rid of welfare. It is not only unaffordable,
it deprives the West of a pool of relatively
cheap labor. (Not as cheap as Chinese, but
the pool is co-located with the consumers.
Besides, welfare is crack cocaine to the
recipient groups.
o Drop taxes on production to a very low level. In
particular, get rid of corporate income taxes.
I would be OK with a VAT as long as it was
INSTEAD of all other federal taxes. Note that this,
not incidentally, would tax imports as well.
(Countries which already have VAT need to get
rid of all other taxes).
o Gradually get rid of Social Security and other safety
nets. The point – as with welfare – is not just
to save money, but to incentivize. In this case,
creating an incentive for personal and family
savings.
o Get rid of the budget deficit. This is highly toxic.
Ideally, create a surplus big enough to redeem
the gubbmint bonds as they mature, NOT
replacing them.
As to development, Western companies now KNOW
not to outsource development/engineering to
China. I believe the realization of the problems
of IP theft is spreading. This will help incentivize
companies to keep manufacturing in the US, but it
is a slow and painful learning process.
No, this won’t solve all the West’s problems,
but it would be a damned good start.
Thor
P.S. And insist on no representation without taxation.
P.P.S. See Atlas Shrugged, the movie, check out
http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com
Now showing in the US, soon to come to a
movie theater in your country.
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@thor
Jersey Shore is the greatest window into the heart of american culture (that you probably don’t see as often) that middle class americans assume is just a microcosm. A harbinger of things to come.
http://www.mtv.com/shows/jersey_shore/season_1/series.jhtml
They also are purveyors of working out, tanning, and laundry.
Which when you think about it…. are not exactly bad activities to do often.
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High IQ nerds have no concept of game, and heritability can be epigenetic, not purely genetic. Both/All “sides” in IQ debates are obnoxious.
Genius is not IQ. IQ is rational, logical, pattern recognition. Genius is creativity. The difference is hard to see within a culture, but it’s immediately apparent if you’ve ever worked with high IQ Asians. Or beta engineer nerds of any race.
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ok well maybe except for the tanning part
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@Thor,
I agree.
1) Unions and Wages
And I think the brain-dead unions have to take a few notes.
– Your competition isn’t well-fed unionized laborers in Germany.
Your actual competition are wage-slaves in China with no rights of any kind.
Don’t like it? Suck eggs.
You can scream and bitch and whine about the loss of good union jobs, but face it: You can either adjust *NOW* or wait until your society is totally bankrupt.
China is destroying every semblance of economic vitality you sponge from.
No longer compare yourself to fat-cats in Switzerland. Compare yourselves to factory-line workers in Shenzhen. These are the only comparisons it’s sane to make.
Can’t compete with them? Then start lining up for the welfare that won’t exist because your governments will be bankrupt.
2) Free Trade
Enforce the terms of free trade deals scrupulously. China dumps products on the market? Tie them up for decades in the international courts. China steals IP? Then sue their asses in every jurisdiction they sell their products. Create a special government-industry partnership to hunt down and massacre fraudulent users in courts. China selling knockoffs in Portugal? Sue them in Portuguese courts. Did they buy a car and reverse-engineer it in every detail? bar its sale in every jurisdiction you have influence over and then blacklist the company – anyone associated with it can’t travel to your country, their company’s assets are frozen, etc.
These pirates observe no part of any law unless it’s imposed on them by force. I’ve seen it in action.
Unless you’re willing to be utterly hard-assed about it, then just go back to the farm and learn Chinese so your kids have a future.
3) IP: Any infringement of IP, including design and industrial design theft, has to be punished relentlessly. Mercilessly.
4) Espionage:
China and Chinese nationals are active and rabid security threats. Every secret service agency on Earth knows that graduate students, foreign workers and expatriates from China are the keystones in China’s industrial and scientific espionage.
They need to be tracked, followed, and prevented from accessing anything. I spoke to one security official who said, basically, every Chinese graduate student is a potential risk.
And don;t listen to the PC Pro-China lobby. There are no end of shills who will stand up and say how this is racist and prejudiced.
It is, is it?
I’ve lived in China and heard Chinese speak about the amazing intelligence network that their expatriate communities represent. The CHINESE have created this stereotype. They created it by BEING IT.
It disgusts me when I hear these anti-racist activists here spout bullshit when I’ve seen the results of hard-core industrial espionage in China.
Every single Chinese person in the West has been given a black eye by China. Not a single one can be trusted. Most of them are probably fine; but an indeterminate but massive number are in the West only to get training or learn technologies or advances and return them to China. It’s an OFFICIAL POLICY the Chinese government has always openly articulated.
So Chinese American Student Unions can shut the fuck up. Your game operates only because liberal leftards with megaphones are too stupid to realize you’re destroying their societies.
5) We need to fortify these kinds of policies and co-ordinate them with friendly regimes that are useful: Japan, even Korea (though they do the same thing – the scale is on a different level, and they’ve been playing ball for a while), Taiwan (who should be our best friend in Asia; we’ve been remiss) and anyone else in Asia who can be made to play ball.
China is half the source of American economic stagnation and decline. And they didn’t get it through being clever and innovating. It was wholly predatory. No part of it followed the most basic of rules. They’re going to claim Superpower status on the basis of stolen money, intellectual capital and influence.
I can imagine their history books 100 years from now, talking about how they single-handedly rose up from the ashes of 500 years of decline and irrelevance.
You think racism is a problem in the West? The Chinese 100 years from now will be titans of oppression and selective memory recall. Whole periods of history and maybe even ethnic groups will simple be erased from history.
This is the nature of China. Every other country in Asia understands this: Japan and Korea absolutely get it; SE Asia, especially Vietnam, have visceral and long-standing distrust of China, and know virtually everything said by a Chinese diplomat or activist is a lie; …
In fact, Vietnam would like nothing more than to be an ally of the US in Asia – communist or not – and their hatred of the Americans is a more or less vanished artifact of history. The distrust of China in Vietnam is so deep, so culturally ingrained and so intensely bitter that the Chinese forget about the war Vietnam fought with them in 1979; the Vietnamese remember it with crystal clarity.
They know China is nobody’s friend.
A powerful China would make the Soviet Union (communist or not) seem benevolent.
Just wait.
We sit and argue about shit and piss, while China cleans up.
The last thing we need to worry about now is what to do with our domestic parasites. What we need to do is stop kowtowing to the paper tigers in China and tell them to fuck off.
First thing would be to default on all of the debt held in bonds. In fact, devalue the dollar – let it crash.
At the very least, it’ll take 40 years of Chinese savings with it. Introduce a new currency. Let the rich start over. Obliterate China’s economic savings overnight. bar them from buying anything American and bringing the debt home.
We can do it if we enforce the rules as they should be:
– free unions or penalties; floating currency or penalties; no slave or criminal labor, under penalty of massive economic sanctions (bye bye Myanmar junta, now just a Chinese puppet state), and if you do shit like support North Korea —
Then construct a few dozen military bases in Taiwan and recognize its independence.
The Chinese wail?
Tell them to fuck off or let lose with nuclear weapons.
This is the same country that had soldiers shoot unarmed, fleeing Tibetans on mountain passes when they’d almost reached India. The same country that denies there was any “unelective forced transplants” that had Falun Gong prisoners kept alive and imprisoned for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs; this is a country that jailed AIDS activists trying to save lives instead of praising them.
Unless you’re the meanest, most double-crossing piece of shit, you can’t go anywhere in China. Ethics are irrelevant. Values are: Get rich, claw your way to the top, fuck everyone. Every single person of power in China is an asshole of terrifying proportions. They’d knife your grandmother for an extra penny even if they were billionaires.
Every deal cut with these rabid pirates needs to be monitored and supervised. Products made there should be of the lowest order – nothing remotely new. Every shipment should be inspected just to harass importers.
Seriously. The shiny new glitterati in Shanghai are angling to be rulers of the world. They make no bones about it. They’ll come right out and tell you. They view the West as easy marks for pillage and markets for plunder.
In a way, the average Chinese economic titan views the West the same way Hitler did: Aging lions with no bite.
We’d better bite back sooner. Obama and his lefty minions worship China, leftist capital it seems to be, when in fact they should be protecting us from their ceaseless lies, trickery and deceit.
China is adding nothing to the modern world. It’s doing nothing but stealing.
Until it agrees to play fair: We need to thoroughly fuck with them. And we’re not doing it.
Next time you go to a store and buy any shit made in China, think twice.
(I was all pro-China when I first went there. Getting to know the elite, in government or industry, cured me of that quick).
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As a person with mental illness, whenever I read something like this, my immediate thought is that the idea is correct until you start trying to draw concrete inferences about what is inherently a “good” or a “bad” brain.
A woman has been in the news who wrote a book about how Chinese parents have superior parenting strategies to Americans. Well, from a certain standpoint, it was true, because entrenching discipline into kids’ brains while they are still forming makes them more efficient, which results in better students. But the price of that efficiency is an undeveloped sense of creativity and personality. It’s the same thing as in this case. A person with an efficient brain, who doesn’t have to work to find those correct pathways, will almost invariably have a boring personality. Women prefer men with a strong, independent personality (don’t take my word for it), which is what a man with mild to moderate mental illness needs to develop to become successful.
Remember the post from a while back linking creativity with male sex drive? Some types of creativity have been linked to Schizophrenia, which is essentially, by definition, the opposite of an organized brain.
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“Economists and liberatarians work to make economic theory fit human nature as they see it. What they fear most is that human nature will not bend to fit economic theory. And so they ignore human nature. Or whitewash it. Or demonize it. And they look sillier and sillier by the year…”
Oh bullshit. Libertarians are first and foremost consequentialists and always would advise against interference due to the complexity of human nature warning the raod to hell is paved with good intentions.
Read Hayek before you making this astonishing claim.
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Libertarianism is perfectly compatible with nationalism. It’s called, unsurprisingly, libertarian nationalism.
In fact, free association and competing law courts is the only governance system that let’s people seperate while making sure the government doesn’t turn bad.
In other words, groups that have better eugenic policies will outcompete groups that don’t in a free market.
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Alliteration notwithstanding, “cheap chalupas” is a lame insult.
He has plenty of nerdy characteristics that you can make fun of.
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This just in, groundbreaking news, scientists confirm that all people are different!
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Intense means he’s moving wayyyy too fast, obviously. Slow your role.
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The woman’s mood is the number 1 important factor for living together. Also required are that she is happy to be tamed and owned by you, and that the two of you have strong sexual chemistry.
If the woman has mood problems, it’s an unstable and unhappy situation.
Feminists and those enculterated as betas will have you believe that an equality of intellectual abilities and shared life goals are the most important attributes. The motivation behind that thought is being satisfied with a Matron as your mate. The better option is to instead have a helper companion who is your social inferior, who is much younger than you, and for whom you maintain a strong physical attraction as your mate.
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Your best attitude to take here is defeatist.
Ideally you’d want to have a 2nd girl you were involved with, so that you would come across as pre-selected and having options, and give off the vibe that the girl is at risk of losing you, and that you have little investment in her.
Since you don’t, you’ll have to fake it. This is extremely difficult if not impossible for most of us to do. Fact is we want to get down on our knees and beg. It takes a stern will to give off a more beneficial vibe – and even with that stern will, we can’t quite pull off the vibe we want.
So go with the defeatist attitude.
Assume that it’s already done and done. Really and truly give up. Start hunting other girls. Give the girl barely any feedback, and don’t chase her.
She knows you want her, so there is no need to go repeating it a million times, as if if she REALLY heard you and understood, that would change her feelings.
Just give up, and hunt.
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“[Editor: Holding my breath for when libertarians come out against open borders…]”
Been there, done that. Even Ron Paul has indicated that he’s not an open border fanatic when I asked him about the subject.
VD: Do you believe in open borders? That’s the Libertarian position, after all.
RP: Some libertarians believe in totally open borders. I don’t. Remember, I was the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president in 1988 and I ran as a Right-to-Life Libertarian. I don’t support totally open borders, because although I think the federal government should be small, protecting borders and providing national defense – which excludes occupying other countries – are two of its legitimate functions. I would beef up the borders and not worry about the Korean and Iraqi borders. It’s ironic that we’re taking border guards off our borders and paying them to go and train border guards over there.
Speaking as a reasonably well-known libertarian, I think the Libertarian Party position is deeply mistaken and represents a serious misapplication of libertarian principles. I wrote a column about this, entitled Closing the Open Door, in 2004.
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@Thor
All that stuff you just mentioned getting rid of is a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared to the Military spending and Banker Bailout money. For you to mention all of that stuff and not mention the Federal Reserve and the fact that we’re in FIVE WARS at the SAME….just the war in Libya alone costs 1 billion dollars at day.
Seems like a lot of Americans want to go after the little stuff and not see the big picture. Welfare spending isn’t even 1 trillion dollars.
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A little off topic, but did anyone else notice that “stagger-lean” when Barack Obama walked away from the podium after the Osama announcement?
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Xsplat, thanks for your comments.
I agree with what you wrote about not chasing.
When she first texts me to arrange her coming round, I’ll follow Roissy’s advice (‘sure, but not tonite. busy’).
When she does eventually come over, I’ll banter with her like normal – when we’re at a high point in the interaction, I will make the transition, ‘… So what did you want to talk about then? It sounded serious, but I hope you realise we’re only casual…’
Then it could go two ways…
A) She could simply say, ‘it felt a bit intense blah blah blah’ with no mention of a break-up – in which case I’ll go with Lara’s ‘okay cool’ and carry on as normal.
B) She could end it – in which case I will also go with Lara’s ‘okay cool’ and have a buddy call me to invite me to a house party. (*After hanging up the phone* ‘… That was Dom, they’re having a house party. Sounds like fun, so I’m gonna go. See you around.’ *Then show her out ASAP so she doesn’t get ‘closure’*.)
In the meantime, I’ve started talking to other girls. My first ‘day two’ from daygame is this weekend, looking forward to it, she’s cute.
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P.S. Roissy’s right: I should work on my inner-game. I’ll invest in David D’s inner game stuff this month.
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All this anti-immigrant bullshit pisses me off. The locals have been living off my taxes long before I got my US citizenship and they have the arrogance to tell me I don’t belong here ’cause I was born on the wrong side of the river. Fuck that. A libertarian society that would not support losers, local or immigrant, is all you need for success. Just allow low IQ types to remove themselves from the game by their own stupid actions, no xenophobia needed.
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Lovely;
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/us-should-send-new-immigrants-to-detroit-nyc-mayor-bloomberg-says-20110501-apx
Jew encourages migration of low IQ immigrants. Shocking.
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@ Nicole
Joe –
I suggest you not do this. Don’t bring it up with her. Pretend she never said it. If she brings it up, the previous advice by Lara applies. Don’t be the one to initiate talks about the relationship.
You need to follow Commandment V: Adhere to the golden ratio. You give way too much.
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I wouldn’t bother with guessing her intentions, or even bringing anything up.
Let her bring up whatever she needs to talk about. Act as if you have not been thinking about it. Don’t try to head off her concerns.
And if she does bring up concerns, just nod, and say very little. Then try to fuck her.
The less you say, the better. Let her do all the talking. Reply hardly at all, if at all. Act as if you heard what she said, but at the same time act as if she never said anything. “uh huh. I see”. Then grab for her tits, or whatever.
Let her mouth mouth – and whatever you do DON’T engage her mouth. Talk to her body.
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Damn Gorbachev you can really spin a convincing yarn. So the west creates, China takes. How do you expect this to pan out, combined with your earlier posts on the cultural and social self-annihilation of China?
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Joe,
I agree with Flahute and xsplat, don’t bring the “talk” up. If she wants to, fine, but if you bring it up it looks like you care more than she does. The best way to let her know the relationship is casual at this point is to have a lot going on in your life that doesn’t involve her. If she is being really nice and you really start to really like her then you can gradually include her in more social events and activities and introduce her to your friends and family. There is no reason to rush things, enjoy the moment.
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Brains are genetic? Who knew. I thought it was pure chance that we don’t all have the brains of a fish.
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IQ tests measure intelligence. Intelligence is “speed of thinking”, and it is inherited and fixed. (You achieve the intel you inherited upon achieving adulthood, just like height.)
MOST men are better at MOST jobs than MOST women. MOST whites have more intelligence, self-discipline, and morals than MOST blacks. It does not require or excuse discrimination; we – as a country – just need to stop taking unequal results as evidence of racism or sexism. The truth is the antidote to the poison that the lie is. So, if one set of standards is applied to all, white males and north asians will be over-represented in good jobs and positions of power… much to the benefit of most people.
Re: Illegal immigration
CAPITALISM wants a constant supply of cheap labor; that is why “our” gov refuses to defend the national borders. Every time you advocate capitalism, you support more illegal immigration. It is inevitable.
Re: legitimate gov
There have to be laws and regulations; there has to be funding of the enforcement of laws and regs; there have to be taxes. Don’t like it? Too fucking bad.
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@TG
“All that stuff you just mentioned getting rid of is a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared to the Military spending and Banker Bailout money. For you to mention all of that stuff and not mention the Federal Reserve and the fact that we’re in FIVE WARS at the SAME….just the war in Libya alone costs 1 billion dollars at day.
Seems like a lot of Americans want to go after the little stuff and not see the big picture. Welfare spending isn’t even 1 trillion dollars.”
Don’t make me laugh. Social Security and Federal Medical
Care (Medicare, Medicaid, Obasmotroncare, whatever)
are monster-sized programs.
And then there is collateral damage beyond the
immediate costs. What you subsidize, you get
more of. Such as single -parent (read single
mother > 90%) families. A culture of dependency.
And this culture is not just the welfare class,
it is most of the working and middle class, who
plan on being “bailed out” by the government
if something goes wrong instead of having
personal savings.
“not even a 1 trillion dollars”. ROTFLMAO.
A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty
soon we are talking real money.
But you are right about the folly about fighting
five wars and a banker bailout – they don’t come
cheap either.
Thor
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@RVT,
It may sound like ranting, but you need to actually interact with mainland Chinese elites to see the shitstorm coming our way.
There are some good things. If we stop fueling this runaway pirate invasion, and save the entire planet from these rank predators, then the following things will happen:
1) The Chinese banking system is so far beyond bankruptcy it’s mortifying for Chinese economists. Coming back to a position like Brazil’s before its crash in the middle of the 20th century would be a herculean task. The sheer level of overleveraged bankruptcy requires a redefinition of banking terminology.
The government hides this because it’s spending its foreign currency reserves propping up the world’s least efficient and most grossly mismanaged banking sector. You think Lehmann was bad? At their most exposed they were far healthier than the best Chinese bank.
Banks there have triple books: Books outsiders and auditors see; books the government sees; and the real books. The bankers who see the real books know that the banks are banks in face only: they’re just government policy counters where fat communist party apparatchiks and connected businessmen sidle up and open mouths to feed at a public trough.
If the government wasn’t iron-fisted, the entire banking and financial system would disappear overnight. In fact, every penny plus many times more of peoples’ savings is spoken for.
The government has been adding fuel to the fire for decades. If they stop the shell game, this massive ponzi scheme collapses.
The entire Chinese financial network is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. If the outside world, for even a moment, stops feeding it – it will be a gargantuan job to keep it from imploding.
The advantage is that the government rules by fiat and can impose policy without debate. They’re hoping to paper over the rot until it’s actually gone. If the West is obliging, it might work.
If, for example, the US dollar collapsed, it would devalue the Chinese government’s holdings, crush Chinese exports and thus send millions of people out of work, and then the financial ponzi pyramid would collapse in a tidal wave of proportions the modern world has never seen.
There are vast cities, empty and waiting for people, built with all that cash; empty apartments all linked up to unused power grids. They could house 80 million people in them. There are
NO BUYERS.
The new cities would have to be given away – and still, barely anybody could be enticed to move in.
The government considers discussions about the real office and apartment vacancy rate “sensitive”. The reason? It’s privately estimated that 70% of China’s office space is unused. And yet, the prices keep going up.
Smell a rat?
That shiny new subway line in Shanghai may *never* be paid for.
The airport infrastructure is impressive, but behind it is a byzantine, bureaucratic monolith so sluggish and intricate it takes teams of graduate students just to understand it.
Like some kind of drunken elephant, China lumbers from one problem to another. Its government is so corrupt, it’s a government of corruption – not a corrupt government. Estimates of misallocated state funds (not stolen funds – that’s another issue) are in numbers so high that, if you include the misallocated bank loans, are higher than the combined economies of much of the rest of Asia.
All that surplus wealth China is generating is being concentrated into about 500 families. A big doggie bone trickles down to the servile minions, the lawyers, technicians and social climbers in Shanghai and Beijing and Nanjing and the elite schools. Almost every major company is majority owned and run by those connected to the big Communist party families.
Chinese people know it. They know their society is going progressively into the shithole.
It’s a profoundly low-trust society. You can’t trust relatives and neighbors; theft is everywhere; crimes go unreported; police in all kinds of places, at many levels, are regularly implicated in crime rings; organized crime is deep into the workings of local government in every county in the country.
We Westerners go there and interact with apparently well-to-do apparatchiks and financial winners in Shanghai. We fuck super-hot girls in Shanghai and cute Suzhou ladies and think we understand the country. I know no end of foreigners so bullish about China you’d think every toilet was gold-plated.
When you actually start to interact with those in the know, you realize–
Their money is in foreign banks.
Their money is in easily removable goods.
They all have foreign passports. Their kids have solid international educations and foreign residency.
They know the party is a wild ride. They also know it’s going to end if the world wises up. They have exit strategies.
And they’re going to let China burn when they bail.
Half the taxi drivers will tell you what shitty rulers China has. They know the well-to-do are busy fucking everyone up the ass. They know that one of two things will happen:
– The rest of the world will wise up, there’ll be a crisis, and China will implode.
– The rest of the world won’t wise up, and China – with its racist, self-absorbed narcissism and opportunistic amoral greed – will become the next Global Empire. We just need to keep sleeping.
Guess which option they want most? Believe it or not, it’s not #2. Most of the people on the ground I interviewed who looked up at the shiny towers from their grimy lives want the Rich to eat it. Resentment everywhere but the big 5 cities (throw Chungching into it, too) is so deep not even the Chinese in the big cities know about it.
When you ask Chinese, it’s obvious they’re so blinded by Ra Ra China Fever they’re incapable of sound judgment. For them, China’s conquest of the world is already a fait accompli.
It’s not. It COULD be.
We just need to stop kowtowing. Let the Chinese economic ball roll to a halt for a bit (even bankrupting ourselves to stop us buying their shit is a plus). Once it stops rolling on its own, it’ll start rolling backwards – and when it does, like I said, the tidal waves it’ll generate will be beyond calculation.
Without 10-15% growth a year, China’s social infrastructure will collapse. They need to do this to stay in power. Lost two or three years in a row, and the game is over.
And the communists have said openly:
If China is not communist, or ruled by “us” (ie, maybe 20,000 people in total), then as far as we’re concerned, the Chinese can all die. It’s our kingdom:
Apres moi, le deluge.
We can worry about spics moving into Socal or blacks getting uppity at McDonalds or feminists tying men in knots while they suck their blood out of men’s nostrils through straws, and we can build whatever industry we want to–
But the Chinese will just steal it. Look at solar panels. Or wind generators. Or anything. All of these – stolen. The Chinese haven’t had to invent so much as a thumbtack. They simply lifted whole industries and undercut them as part of directed strategies.
Stop buying anything from China. If you work for a company, deliberately make higher-quality products like Germany does with non-Chinese parts. Do it just to spite China. Advertise your products as “not made in Chinese labor camps”.
Treat your Chinese graduate students in tech sectors with what they deserve: suspicion. Don’t ever partner with Chinese companies. NEVER transfer any technology.
You’ll see in every business deal, the thing Chinese companies want most of all is always technology and investment transfer – and just try getting that money back out. A surprisingly large number of business deals fail once technology has been fully transferred.
Wake up people. Libertarians and Conservatives and Feminists and Unionists are arguing about who gets to eat at the first-class buffet, but the ship has hit an iceberg.
You want jobs? Wake up tomorrow and stop sending them to China. You get no gratitude there. You get no responsibility. You get no recognition.
They have infinite amounts of contempt for the rest of the world: They’re making China the Middle Kingdom again. Our fate in their world-view is to be a tributary state.
They know it. Those with power know it.
If Obama and his blind ilk are too puffed up or proud to see it, then somehow has to get rid of them and put an American with balls in power.
First thing to do: cement our alliance with Taiwan. It’ll piss the Chinese off so much, they’ll fuck up their foreign relations and spill their own milk. Give the Taiwanese president – even that dough-headed pro-China traitor Ma – an Award for Democratic Development and offer to help build monuments to democracy all over Taiwan. Sign defense pacts to help shore up Democracy at all costs.
Get those high-powered jets and military hardware onto bases there. Send over more military personnel. Station the fleet in the Philippines and inject some cash into Okinawa – make them happy this time. Stop letting servicemen rape Okinawan women. Give the locals good jobs. I’ll bet the Japanese will pay for it, even.
This is what we should be doing. Guaranteed: China will grossly overreact. They you quadruple the number of American troops in South Korea and dare the Chinese to do anything.
They smell weakness from Obama and his losers. These people see GATT and WTA rules and they smell fear. They’re thieves and scoundrels; their whole economic order is based on legitimized theft and ritual abuse.
You can be morally upright and in the clear and still be hard-assed. This is the stance we need.
Not cowboy diplomacy. What we need is an economy Patton or Macarthur: someone who can say, well, wth all due respect, Fuck You, These Are The Rules, Here’s a 900% import tax on X goods in retaliation for Y policy. You complain? For bitching, you get another 600% tax on this and we’re suing you in world court. Complain again? Coincidentally we just sold 50 super fighter jets to Taiwan and opened a new naval base in Luzon.
Oh, you don’t like that? Hey, South Korea – let’s have some joint military manouevers with Japan. A simulated “invasion” of the Peninsula.
Didn’t like that? Sign an Free Trade Deal with Vietnam. Offer development aid. Call it the New America-Vietnam Peace Deal. We’re not anti-China. We’re just pro-Vietnam, we feel guilty about the Vietnam war and shit.
Stop dancing with China. China offers nothing but poison pills.
When I went to China, I thought it was great. The people are great. The country is amazing.
The government is frankly horrifying because they’re the world’s most benevolent-looking but vicious-minded plutocrats. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller had nothing on these vipers. Poisonous snakes the lot.
The rich elite are the most racist, most elitist, most ethnically chauvinistic people to have ever lived. They place zero value on the lives of their fellow citizens. They’d throw hundreds of millions into the fire if it made them 10 rmb on any given Wednesday.
Stop kowtowing to these evil bastards. Stop buying anything made in China. Deliberately go without before you give them half a penny.
Until they play like good little boys like the rest of us – consider them what they are: enemies.
It’s time to realize that our natural allies in this ideological spat are places like Russia. Already, the Russians are getting worried about China. At some point, China is just going to buy Siberia outright. North Korea may get absorbed (the Chinese would absorb it or neuter South Korea by giving it to them). The Taiwanese are being taught to become good little servant dogs.
Seriously: China is a paper tiger – *today*. It may not always be.
The time to economically and politically confront it is right now. No delays. Every day sinks the west deeper into hock.
Labor unions who ally with leftists who love China are shipping their own jobs overseas. Forget India; they follow basic rules. Forget places like Cambodia or Vietnam. Let South Korea have its unfair free trade. They’re eating American beef and oranges here, anyway.
China is the one stealing the West’s steam. They’re doing it because we’re letting them. We have no balls.
They want to enter the 21st century?
Make them do it on their own steam. Don’t just give it to them. Unless they actually work for it, reform for it, socially plan and develop for it, politically revolutionize for it – then like spoiled children who never had to work a day or think a day but got handed everything, they’ll become tyrants.
They want trade? It took the west 300 years to develop the political, social, economic and cultural capital and stabilize societies worth living in. China hasn’t earned this. China hasn’t earned any of it. Its elites are irresponsible, its political philosophy barely out of the middle ages, and its social structures archaic and largely crumbling.
I’ll put my money on this: We confront China now, and it’ll have to own up to its internal and external responsibilities. It’ll have to start placing actual value on human life. It’ll have to culturally join the modern world.
If we just sit back and let them steal it all – give it to them – then they’ll have culturally learned nothing. It will be a massive step backwards for human civilization.
We did shit because we learned painful lessons. China thinks it’s the king of the walk – but it’s learned all the wrong lessons. It only knows how to copy the bullies and assholes it remembers from its past.
Don’t vote for liberals. They’re the same ilk that would have signed peace deals and handed Czechosolvakia over to Hitler. Chamberlain – Obama – these dicks are the ones who eventually cause wars.
Want to make a statement?
Allow TAiwan to vote on independence. Military guarantee the result. No more waffling. No more prevarication.
China will–
Back down. The government will likely fall or change internally. Legitimacy will be lost.
Hitler gets uppity- then the Allies occupy the Rhineland and arrest the German police who arrived in the morning. It impounds the German fleet. It seizes German assets. Watch Hitler back down. He knew if he lost there he was out of power– and likely beaten by his own brownshirts. He said that was the day the Western powers arranged their own downfall.
Learn from that. Smack China now, not when it has Ambitions.
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@Flahute
Thankyou. I’ll take your advice and never mention that text to her again. Same goes for relationship talk – unless she initiates a conversation about the relationship, I won’t discuss it.
(Also, you wrote, “you give way too much.” Your spot-on. I will adhere to the golden ratio.)
@Xsplat
Good advice.
You wrote, “… if she does bring up concerns, just nod, and say very little. Then try to fuck her.”
I will try – particularly if we’re on my bed (like normal) and having fun. I’m wary of escalating too early in case she has come to end things, but that thought-process is probably coming from the beta in me (the beta that I need to erradicate from my behaviour).
Cheers.
@Lara
I like your advice and will take it onboard.
Your help is much appreciated, Lara.
—–
What Sarah doesn’t know is that I’ve gained 6lbs of muscle over the holiday, while trimming down to 12% body fat. She’ll be surprised when she sees me. Maybe that will work in my favor. Either way, I’m being outcome-independent and treating this as a learning experience.
Thanks again for your guys’ assistance – might take some time/learning, but I’m determined to become increasingly more alpha.
– Joe.
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Gorbachev,
I wasn’t being facetious when I said you could spin a yarn. What you’re saying sounded very accurate. And fucking scary. You’ve certainly talked me out of buying Chinese or voting leftist. And into learning Mandarin.
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@RVT,
No end of China praisers and drunken overseas Chinese will shout down basic truths – they went to Shanghai for a week, look how shiny and nice it is – and the liberals will tell you how important it is to be just and moral.
Well, China is not just or moral. They think justice is for simple-minded fools. Morality is just a tool to be manipulated. They sell liberals in the West on this or that, and before they’ve even turned their backs they’re plotting where to put the knife.
They break every deal; if you look at every liberal dealing with China, it’s a humiliating embarrasment for every Western company or government.
China is not special. China deserves no special rights. China deserves no special consideration – except as a target because it’s got predatory designs.
The American left should loathe, abhor and hate China. Renewable energy tech was supposed to save us. China deliberately targeted American companies for economic assault: each one was profiled and their products in the marketplace nailed. The utter demolition of the solar-cell industry was a cold, calculated plan concocted in Shanghai and managed to first eliminate all competition and specific rivals by dropping products in marketplaces, and then – to add insult to injury – to purchase local companies and literally ship technology to China.
END OF SOLAR TECH IN AMERICA.
Invented, marketed, developed and tested in America. China invented nothing; it stole it all. It started out with that explicit goal. It aimed to obliterate the industry in target sectors. It financed it with massive cash, likely unrepaid loans. Its companies had preferred access to resources and lower rates for purchases. It used blatantly unfair methods.
Upshot: Rest of the world screwed.
What self-respecting country allows this? There’s no way the Chinese would allow it. They track their own companies like hawks. They micro-manage everything.
We’re proving ourselves dickless. The Obamas and economic traitors are dickless. The Chinese get away with command-economy pillage and we sit back and wonder where the fuck our jobs are.
They have Strategies. No players are allowed to break ranks.
We get all Libertarian or Liberal or blind-conservative about our economy – and we can kiss anything worth having goodbye.
I’ve been all over China; I’ve filmed it and reported from there. I’ve lived there (I was deluded, too). I’ve written off some of the shit as normal shit you get anywhere. But the Kings of China really DO have megalomaniac dreams of grandeur. They really DO have nothing but complete contempt for human life – even other Chinese. Most middle-class Chinese really DO have no idea what the fuck is going on.
There are some cogent economic analysts who have been predicting a hard-ball wall-splattering in China for a decade. The signs they point to have been coming up.
Like bacteria that breed uncontrollably and then there’s a population crash when all seems to be going best – China will implode when investors are swooning. One bank will go down, the Chinese government will cover it up, there will be questions, some loose cannon will mouth off to the foreign press, a whistle-blower will jump ship and from the relative safety of Singapore or HK they’ll tell all, it’ll get back to the Chinese through the grapevine and the public will get angsty, other investors will bail, a few foreign companies will pull out, the rental market will collapse, the housing market will start to buckle, another bank will go under —
And then Taiwanese investors will get hurt, and the money will start to come home; China will try to stop it, there’ll be a kerfuffle, the Japanese will do something stupid (they always do) and some third-rate blowhard from a never-heard-of-it party will say something and a Chinese general will threaten Japan with war, the Japanese will impound yet another ship fishing illegally in its waters and two of the crewmen will die, China will almost be up in arms over it, Korea will mobilize its troops in an exercise, …
Then some politician in Taiwan will win an election and call for a vote on independence. It’ll come out of the blue. Some ambitious guy with ideals but more ambition than brains. Chinese say it’ll never happen because the Taiwanese are too smart (scared) to do anything, but then they lambaste the independence-minded Taiwanese independence politicians as crazy criminals who’ll do anything – so which is it? They’ll never do anything, or they’re likely to?
truth is, they’re likely to, if the shit hits the fan.
And then the shit will hit the fan like never before. China will start arresting Taiwanese in China who speak out against the Chinese regime, and there will be a few; the FIRST arrest will cause everyone in Taiwan to become instant Independence Now Or Death! patriots. But the Chinese governments, especially the local levels, will be filled with idiots and losers who can’t follow orders from the top and whose britches are too big.
Then the Taiwanese will call in the world’s support for Democracy. And with the Chinese the big bogeymen and their regime under domestic criticism, the rest of the world will oblige.
A faction of the Chinese military won’t allow Taiwan to declare total independence. They’ll push the government to do something. ANother faction will be at internal war with the hawks. WHo wins will be decided by politics. Watch some politicians try to intervene and get demoted, exiled or disappear. All of a sudden, targeted arrests for “corruption” will become common.
This is China. I guarantee you, some freak will decide to get the people behind him and create a Strong Government. There’s your moment. China will have to be smacked down like a petulant child then – or it’ll become a monster.
It’s as likely to tear itself apart, as well. And this threat, hanging over China like Damocles’ sword, that China would literally rend itself to pieces, is the only thing that keeps the people loyal. They may detest the Emperor – but they love China. They may hate their ideology or just what they stand for or their corruption – but they know that the powers that be will sacrifice anything – anything at all in the world – to hold on to power. Including China’s future.
We need to cut China’s rulers down to size. Public and private rulers. All of them. They want noting less than to be Emperors of Earth. And they’ll steal, trick, deceive or beg their way there.
Each and ever one is a lying piece of shit. They talk nice – and secretly, turn around and talk about how weak and gullible the West is.
they’re fucking us up the ass. They’re fucking India and Mexico up the ass. They’re got major plans to fuck Russia right up its back end. And they want to make Japan squeal and whine like a little stuck pig.
Korea they’ll make an honorary province.
Two and a half years working filming and recording in China has utterly changed my view of the place. The people are fine – the powers that be are unadorned, pure and unadulterated poison.
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[…] Roissy: "Economists and liberatarians work to make economic theory fit human nature as they see it. What they fear most is that human nature will not bend to fit economic theory. And so they ignore human nature. Or whitewash it. Or demonize it. And they look sillier and sillier by the year…" He has more on stupid people here. […]
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Gorby,
Great insights. Just one thing. Feminism is doing far more to destroy America than China could ever dream. Please recall another empire had rotted so much from the inside the barbarians only had to kick it over.
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@intp,
get rid of feminism and we still have no jobs, our industries will still be poached and removed wholesale and another country – that doesn’t even begin to observe anything like the rules of laissez-faire economics, and co-ordinates everything with targets in mind, will still steamroll us.
If you refuse to erect trade barriers and refuse to develop coherent industrial policies, with co-ordinated focus and intent – anathema to almost all American economic thought – then places that co-ordinate and mix government/private interests, like Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and especially and most importantly China — will simple steal the best industries from you.
You think they did it because they’re smart? They have little weenie hands and can put electronics together well?
It’s because they ignored American economics and government and industry essentially conspired together in co-ordinated plans.
In China, these have reached insane scales. Whole provinces produce one thing – with economies of scale beyond anything ever seen in history. And some sweatshops in NYC or Cali are going to compete with a Textile Province?
Fuck that.
They took the electronics industry because it was targeted. Korea assumed complete control of the world ship building industry without any resources by targeting it and just pouring every last penny of government cash and influence into it.
China can pull South Korea’s takeover of ship building off once a week.
It’s not an accident about China and cars: They plan to own the global car industry. Korea, Japan, Europe – are all concerned. China’s been signing trade deals with the express goal of clearing the path for a new global export explosion – in cars.
Cars at 1/6th the price, and 80% of the quality. All subsidized by artificially low salaries, kept down by guns and “unions” controlled by the state. Artificially devalued currency. Subsidized raw materials.
Once they’ve put most of the decent rivals out of business or absorbed them, they’ll just write off the costs.
Just smoke and mirrors?
They did it with everything else they produce. It’s HOW THEY DO IT.
Korean car companies are shitting bricks. They’re looking for any excuse, any loophole, to prevent Chinese cars from eventually getting exported to Korea. The Chinese are targeting the same market segments as the Koreans, and with greater potential to crush the Korean companies.
We play by rules. They use state capitalism and global exports.
There’s no competition. It’s like arguing at the beginning of a war: We’ve put down our weapons, and opened our borders; they’ve effectively increased the size of their army. Now we want to talk peace. They say: You loser. Too bad.
The Asians are not “superior”. The laissez-faire model only works when everyone uses it.
One cheater can just rob everyone.
The Japs and Koreans did it for a while. The Taiwanese, too. Now, in a major act of Comeuppance, the Chinese are going to just bury them.
We can argue about feminism all we want. But you want to know where the jobs are?
Don’t blame Japan. That was a blip. Don’t think about Korea or Taiwan or HK or Singapore.
They’re also blips.
China has a hundred Taiwans waiting. I’ve seen endless villages that edge off into the horizon, each one producing the same product until some manager decides it’s done and now they need to produce a new one.
ring jobs back?
It’s a behemoth designed for one purpose: To obliterate competition.
They have spies everywhere. Not cloak and dagger: regular people who go back home and work. Who transfer technology and expertise. Skills. Their culture didn’t produce it, but believe me when I say they’ll take credit for everything the modern world has ever produced.
You want your Manly Manufacturing Jobs back?
Whiny unions voting for Obama?
Check out what his stance is on China.
He could put half the men in prison to guard against rape and the other half made into work slaves – and still, there’ll be no jobs.
The whole manufacturing job loss disaster has been China’s co-ordinated smashing of industries.
And if you think America has it bad, it’s going to sink its teeth so deep into Japan (already), Korea and places like Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand (which never got much chance to benefit from it, aside from a few hard drive factories in Thailand and some wafer board and IC factories in Malaysia) are utterly screwed.
There are a few saving graces.
China’s disastrous demographics among them.
But the ability to force people to do what you want means these people can effectively build Pyramids every year while we’re still arguing about what we should do with all this rock.
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@gorbachev
i think you make some good points. i don’t know much about this topic but i find it interesting. do you have linkage i could explore?
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A big problem indeed. But probably one that will become obvious even to politicians several years before it’s too late. While America might pussyfoot around the issue and lose even more footing, you can bet that no one else shares our delusions. The rest of the world will act.
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@Mucius Scaevola,
Just google “empty cities” and “China”.
There’s a ton more. Read up about the history of the solar panel industry in the US.
try the loss of flatscreen production from Taiwan and S Korea to China.
Or anything about China and cars.
Look, I produced some of the stuff you’re likely to read. it’s all out there. There’s no conspiracy or hidden secrets. Just pay attention.
State-level co-ordinated economic policy designed specifically to predate on target industries.
I’m a libertarian (nationalist) at heart. But even I recoil from espousing libertarian values when others espouse super-organization.
I’m not joking. Civilization-building projects that take a western country decades to even plan go into production phases every year in China, and people do it because they’re pushed to do it through carrots and sticks. There are no civil rights or debates. it’s just done.
Not to say that China’s rise is inevitable. Their method is great at stealing other countries’ industries. But as far as keeping it going without corruption and chaos, … not so damned good. The whole transparency thing.
But by the time this disease brings China’s political-economic regime crumbling down, they’ll have raped every economy on Earth.
From Laos to Italy.
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@Gorbachev
“You think they did it because they’re smart? They have little weenie hands and can put electronics together well?”
An a paean to central planning.
No, central planning does not, by itself, work all that well, vide the unlamented Soviet Union.
The magic sauce that makes the Chinese juggernaut so powerful is something else, without which their far-flung plans would not work at all. THE CHINESE ARE WILLING (OR ARE BEING DE FACTO FORCED) TO WORK FOR LESS THAN 10% OF WESTERN SALARIES, OFTEN MUCH LESS. Factory work in the US: Car workers USD 70/h including benefits. Light – and scattered – manufacture, think textiles, electronics (what’s left in the US) about USD 10/h.
China, less than USD 1.00 , often much less. This is true of factory workers. For engineers etc, the differential is less, a factor of somewhere around 5 or so. (Incidentally, this means that the internal differential between engineers and factory workers is much larger in China than in the West. )
Add to that the tremendous overhead that Western companies have, in the form of labor legislation, lawsuits, heavy payroll taxes, union contracts etc.
Also note that one of the reasons, including in Western countries without any formal minimum wage law (such as the UK), there is a de facto minimum wage set by what you make on welfare without working. (“Welfare” here is not just the much-overrated formal “welfare check” but the concomitant benefit package – it varies by country but think things like free or subsidized day care, food stamps, free or subsidized medical care, WIC [Women, Infants and
children, extra food benefits], etc etc. )
At Western salaries, the Chinese would not be anywhere near competitive, central planning is not that hot.
So what do we do?
Thor
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@RVT,
Really?
You think other countries will do anything? They can’t kiss China’s ass fast enough.
Australia is almost a Chinese colony, economically; their PM bends over on a regular basis and lets the Chinese ambassador rip him a new hole. Australia should be poking China’s eye with hot pokers. Instead, they’re smoochy-smoochy. They’re practically Communo-Sinophiles. They’ve been lecturing Taiwan about not rocking the boat. it’s not Taiwan with missiles pointed; It’s China.
Singapore kowtows to anyone with power. They’re the world’s most inveterate ass-kissers. Some guy shows up with a gun and claims power, they bend low. Not one testicle in the entire country.
Taiwan: They’re in an opinion civil-war. Taiwan is internally crippled.
Japan: Fucked up so badly it’s almost impossible to relate. As with everything in Japan, fucked up in that peculiarly Japanese way that makes it impossible for anyone to understand – even the Japanese. If they ever decide to have a government, maybe they’ll get something done.
Korea: In a stage of brutal social turmoil. Social evolution not proceeding fast enough to avoid the economic disaster approaching. No babies; not enough jobs; too many people; no tax base. Key industries they stole from the West (and that was outright theft, by the way) are so concentrated, they make the perfect target for China: Korea is supremely easy to economically and politically neuter. And then there’s the gift of North Korea: The Chinese could promote “unification”, which ironically would likely fuck Korea completely. It would be an unmitigated economic disaster.
US: Its open, undefended economy makes it the best target for selective poaching. Next targets will be the car and aviation industries.
Aviation has proven more difficult. But plans are underway.
Europe: Squabbling children. Besotten with social problems; weighed down by slow-moving labor laws. Like anchors.
Anyway, only Germany matters; even the UK and France are irrelevant in a global sense.
Germany: Immune. Why? They don’t address China’s markets. They have…
wait for it…
An Industrial Policy.
Not necessarily the best one.
But By Gum, They HAVE ONE.
Forget every single debate in this country, including immigration and education. And race. And feminism.
The single best thing anyone could do for this country would be to institute a comprehensive INDUSTRIAL POLICY. Link it to a comprehensive FINANCIAL POLICY.
Tell the economic idealogues on theleft and right to fuck off and stuff their theories up their asses. Jail them if necessary.
We need a damned industrial policy. Even a half-baked industrial policy and some government focus and co-ordinated trade policies would be enough. We don’t need the Perfect Plan.
Just some damned plan. Our addiction to “Let The market Sort It Out” is nice
UNLESS SOMEONE ELSE IS CHEATING.
Which China is doing.
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Gorbachev,
OK. Fair points. But roll the U.S. trade and manufacturing policy back to 1955, while keeping feminism, and we would still be rotting from the inside. When men stop caring about and investing in a country (that craps on them) its days are numbered. If Jersey Shore is our future the U.S. is destined to become a backwater. China or not.
But about China, assuming the U.S. stops its social suicide, I would up the ante. They are using slave and near-slave labor to produce cheap goods? Fine. We will use science and engineering to produce FREE goods. Employ advanced robotic technology to create beautiful free homes, free cars, abundant free food, etc for everyone. All powered by clean energy. Free beats cheap any day. Unleash technology to eliminate scarcity and the entire scam called economics (the science of rationing scarce resources) collapses. To unleash human creativity to eliminate the scarcity of any good or service would destroy existing power structures everywhere. These power structures are the same ones that implemented feminism and the current international economy. So expect a fight to the death from them.
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Well, fuck. I didn’t know it was that bad. Let’s just hope China devours itself.
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@Thor,
You have a point, but the wage gap is just part of the advantage.
South Korea was able to finagle most of the world’s shoipbuilding industries by co-ordinating a number of policies together.
Same went for electronics.
or cars (Japan and Korea).
Taiwan didn’t go after cars; they’re irrelevant to the industry. They DID go after consumer electronics. Everyone wanted those industries.
China went after housewares. Their products aren’t radically cheaper than other countries: about 1/2 the price of Korea, but about 1/2 the quality, for example.
And yet: Their sheer overwhelming co-ordination, domination and export volume just floods the market here in Korea. In 5 years, it’s gone from almost no non-Korean housewares to it being hard to find any Korean housewares.
Korean products are literally disappearing from the shelves. And it’s *NOT* because of price.
With fewer companies, when one korean company goes under, it radically impacts the domestic supply chain.
One Chinese company goes under? They can apply for a “loan” and not go under. or they go under, and who cares? For every Korean company, there are 700 Chinese companies.
The US could have 20 large manufacturers that can make washing machines, say. China can have 10,000.
The US loses 3 companies in a downturn. China loses 60.
And China provides cheaper raw materials; subsidized labor; interest-free “loans” (effectively bankrupting the banking system to give grants).
They pay for this bankrupt banking system by systematically de-industrializing the West with floods of imports.
Of course this isn’t economical. In the long-term, it’s insane on the Chinese part.
The point is to simply transfer the social and industrial capital to China.
We don’t get it. They’re ripping and clawing their way up to become what the West was. If they leave nothing but rust belts everywhere else–
then this isn’t just collateral damage. it’s a massive boon.
They get to humble their rivals and steal their industries.
They plan this shit out in detail. The solar cell companies were all individually profiled and some were targeted for specific acquisitions. They paid stupid sums of money for key technologies.
It made no economic sense. they absorbed huge losses.
So now: Their stupid policy…
Has China being the only major producer of solar cell technology on Earth. It’s also the center for its development.
Not so stupid so long as your rivals are blind, dumb and deaf, is it?
The excuse of cheap labor is an excuse to wip away the stain of economic retardedness in the West.
When other countries don’t play by the rules, playing by the rules gets you shafted. Simple.
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INTP,
You build an economy based on giving away free stuff, I’ll sign up. After I stop taking my meds.
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Gorby for US Trade Representative!
It seems to me that it’s a US strategic imperative to build up nations like China and Iran, disrupt the Arab world, and allow mutations of capitalism to spread through the Caucasus. Nothing else seems to explain why we allow everyone to, as Trump would say, fuck us so hard without a kiss or even a sardonic wink.
American quality of life goes down and China’s goes up. Because we need a strong rival.
Obama let the Chinese be the bad cop for him on so-called Green reforms. He seemed so sincere on wanting to regulate American business into aggressive changes to clean up emissions and protect the environment. He took that agenda internationally, and then allowed himself to be embarassed when China refused to get on board. This let Obama say to the domestic liberal base, and sincerely, that he really would like to do this but China won’t allow it. To me this is pretty obvious, but to spell it out: he knew China would never go for it, and they have veto power, so he lost very little by attempting it in public.
My point being that we live in a multi-polar world. We are too interconnected to fail or succeed. Instead we have a reinforced status quo.
Gorbachev, I love your posts, be they about Korean women or Chinese economics and geopolitics. In my view, we’d all benefit if you would analyze for us the bigger picture of globalism and how that relates to the basic problem you describe here.
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Gorby,
End of scarcity = End of economics
The multi-thousand year scam comes to an end.
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Gorbachev,
I have just one line of inquiry. I’m a young east coaster, fresh out of college and studying to be an actuary. I’ll do what little I can to help the west, but I have to think of the worst case scenario. Where can I go that will be at least somewhat insulated from China’s economic parasitism? Germany sounds like one option. Is Canada good too? Where else? What can I do to protect myself and my family?
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@Chrysalis,
Nothing else seems to explain why we allow everyone to, as Trump would say, fuck us so hard without a kiss or even a sardonic wink.
Ideology. Our elites are retarded. The Asian elites have no marriage to ideology. They do what gives their people jobs. If it defies ideology – who the fuck cares. Our politicians debate Left and Right. The differences between them are nearly irrelevant as industries splutter out. Even tax policy is less relevant: Germany has crushing corporate taxes.
Imagine if we could co-ordinate tax policy, worker incentives, resource prices, financial policy and banking incentives, directed investment and transportation and fuel policy – and then isolate and target foreign export markets with trade policies designed to isolate and hammer specific industries in foreign countries?
Wait. That’s what China does.
Here, we say: But Laissez-Faire says do this! But Big Banking Conglomerates say Do This! Just sit back andf the Market will fix it all magically!
Yes, it’ll fix it, unless some other Big Power is laughing at us and not following the most basic “rule” we observe.
If we’re going to have corruption, I’d take Korean corruption (that provides jobs as a side benefit) over American corruption (that just fucks companies over for paper profits).
Why? Because the government can step in and say: Screw you Samsung, you make that damned factory profitable and make it work somehow (here’s a labor law reduction for you to make a good go at it) or you’re all in jail or we’ll strip you of your corporate goodies through legal harassment.
Unshockingly, Samsung … innovates and makes a profit. of course, they have near-total co-ordination from a dozen industries.
China does the same on a much more vast scale, from the tiniest newspaper delivery old-man to the CEO of Beijing People’s Privatized Textile, Lightbulb and Aerospace Import Export Management Corporation.
My point being that we live in a multi-polar world. We are too interconnected to fail or succeed. Instead we have a reinforced status quo.
Gorbachev, I love your posts, be they about Korean women or Chinese economics and geopolitics. In my view, we’d all benefit if you would analyze for us the bigger picture of globalism and how that relates to the basic problem you describe here.
Well, I’m glad someone appreciates my rants. They do get me going. That old blood boiling.
The truth is the US and China are in a death spiral, and someone has to get off this toilet bowl to nowhere.
If we go Keynesian and spend out way out, the money flows straight to the makers of products: China. Keynesian economics guarantees American bankruptcy. We’re no longer makers of anything. We make shit-fuck-all.
We go hard-assed and cut people off, we’re likely to get a revolution.
We have to start weaning people off of regulations and benefits.
They built a subway line through the richest areas of Seoul in two years. Two fucking years. There are more stops on it than in three lines of the NYC system. *TWO YEARS*.
China does this shit faster. of course, it collapses in five years, but they’ll get it right eventually.
In my city, debates about urban renewal go on for decades and nothing ever gets done. Assholes sit around debating racism and access to schools while thousands of kids go uneducated.
Whit nationalists bemoan the presence of blacks and nobody does anything about the invasion of millions of non-English Latin Americans who bring *nothing* and add *nothing* to the US.
Look folks, blacks were here in Mass back when there were 50 white people in the whole country. 10% of the population of Virginia was free Blacks 5 years after it was settled.
We’ve got the people we’ve got. Freaking deal with it. Don’t like it? Please move to Ukraine or Estonia. Just go.
Black nationalists bitching and whining about slavery? Get a fucking grip. If you can’t haul your sorry asses out of penury after 7 generations of post-slavery when every single other ethnic group can claw its way out of poverty in the face of Nazi-like resistance – then there’s something seriously wrong with you. Solve your own damned problems and call us when you grow up.
And all of us: We have serious competition now. Either we’re American and we give a shit and we’re ready to pretend that there’s a world beyond the East and West Coast or we’re a bunch of sackless wonders.
Fuck me. Every time I go to Canada or Australia I have to stop in wonder and amazement: So tidy. Well-run. A nicely eugenic immigration policy on both places (with holes, albeit: Thanks, Tim).
Neither of these places have answers we need. Neither does Europe.
if blacks have low IQs, then we have all kinds of shit jobs that could get them good money if they’d do them. Try cutting off the welfare and AA spigot. I’ll bet you these so-called retarded blacks will start performing if they’re forced to.
Anti-intellectual blacks? Stop mollycoddling this sick culture and maybe all American proles can stop pretending like they’re owed shit.
Maybe they’ll be glad to work for $2 an hour or die starving. The time for luxuries is way gone.
get an education or be happy with your lot in life. Spend 12 hours a day in school and studying or fuck off. If you didn’t go home and study for 5 hours after school, you deserve not one second of bitching and whining when Asians get into your universities. No more welfare or handouts. They’re poisoned our people.
Work, God Damn It.
We’re anti-intellectual lazy asses over here. Our elites are hidebound ideologues.
We sit here and think US this and US that and blah blah blah – I’ve never seen efficiency like I’ve seen it in Korea. I swear, we should just hire them to run our transit systems. They could turn around the NYC subway system in 5 years and make it a model of cleanliness and efficiency. Maybe even make it make a profit.
I don’t want them running our banks – Asians seem to be singularly bad at that, unless it’s just slushing funds into industries willy-nilly – but we’ve got to stop being such navel-gazing assholes and actually get out of our back yards to see what the hell is going on elsewhere.
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*one more line of inquiry
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I can’t disagree with much about China. One problem I see differently is that a lot of manufacturing is almost zero profit. There are some companies operating at 0% profit, simply to keep people employed. A lot of factories now earn money in real estate speculation and high interest loans…what we see at the end stage of most inflation cycles.
Yeah, China has 100,000 people or whatever making iPads, but their salaries are close to zero and the factories are running at single digit profit margins. They are hiring illegals from Vietnam and Laos (yes, just like U.S. business!) to keep the factories filled and hold down costs. A lot of manufacturing is becoming pure commodity business and the profit is in the intellectual use of the commodity. Building an iPad is easy, designing it isn’t. In some places China is taking out whole industries (autos, solar), but in others China itself is losing out to Vietnam and cheaper locations. Some jobs the U.S. can take back (solar), but many are gone due to technological progress. The only reason people are doing these jobs in Asia is because they work cheap, if the “jobs” come home, they will go to a small number of robot designers and maintenance workers.
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@Gorbachev.
(This is a LONG discussion, but bear with us, the issues are important.)
“No longer compare yourself to fat-cats in Switzerland. Compare yourselves to factory-line workers in Shenzhen. These are the only comparisons it’s sane to make.”
Yup.
“Can’t compete with them? Then start lining up for the welfare that won’t exist because your governments will be bankrupt.”
Yup.
“2) Free Trade
Enforce the terms of free trade deals scrupulously. China dumps products on the market? Tie them up for decades in the international courts. China steals IP? Then sue their asses in every jurisdiction they sell
their products. Create a special government-industry partnership to hunt down and massacre fraudulent users
In courts. China selling knockoffs in Portugal? Sue them in Portuguese courts. Did they buy a car and reverse-engineer it in every detail? bar its sale in every jurisdiction you have influence over and then blacklist the company – anyone associated with it can’t travel to your country, their company’s assets are frozen, etc.”
Right on.
In fact, vigorously defending IP is a great tool, one of the few that will work, and are in every way moral and legal.
“These pirates observe no part of any law unless it’s imposed on them by force. I’ve seen it in action.
Unless you’re willing to be utterly hard-assed about it, then just go back to the farm and learn Chinese so your kids have a future.”
Yes, Future, serving umbrella drinks. To the Chinese tourists.
“3) IP: Any infringement of IP, including design and industrial design theft, has to be punished relentlessly. Mercilessly.”
Yup, as above.
“4) Espionage:
China and Chinese nationals are active and rabid security threats. Every secret service agency on Earth knows that graduate students, foreign workers and expatriates from China are the keystones in China’s industrial
and scientific espionage.”
Funny thing is, this is deaj vu all over again. The Japanese did this right after WWII.
“They need to be tracked, followed, and prevented from accessing anything. I spoke to one security official who said, basically, every Chinese graduate student is a potential risk.”
Yup
“And don;t listen to the PC Pro-China lobby. There are no end of shills who will stand up and say how this is racist and prejudiced.”
Funny what a bag of freshly laundered RMB will do. Except some will do this for free, for ideological reasons, whether from the right or the left.
“I’ve lived in China and heard Chinese speak about the amazing intelligence network that their expatriate communities represent. The CHINESE have created this stereotype. They created it by BEING IT.”
Makes sense.
“It disgusts me when I hear these anti-racist activists here spout bullshit when I’ve seen the results of hard-core industrial espionage in China.
Every single Chinese person in the West has been given a black eye by China. Not a single one can be trusted.
Most of them are probably fine; but an indeterminate but massive number are in the West only to get training or learn technologies or advances and return them to China. It’s an OFFICIAL POLICY the Chinese government has always openly articulated.”
I would have to say that some of this is legitimate. earning basic technologies, business methods etc – you would expect that from anybody. (I don’t consider business models to be valid candidates to be regarded as IP.) But specific designs, processes, patents etc, are not OK to steal. (Lots of it is proprieteray information – or patents – by definition using them is theft. Yes, patents are published, but in reality, building something from a published patent is hard, there is usually – intentionally or not – some aspects NOT documented in the patent application. So it is easier to work for the company and stealing not just the patent, but the surrounding know-how.
“So Chinese American Student Unions can shut the fuck up. Your game operates only because liberal leftards with megaphones are too stupid to realize you’re destroying their societies.”
Seems likely.
“5) We need to fortify these kinds of policies and co-ordinate them with friendly regimes that are useful:
Japan, even Korea (though they do the same thing – the scale is on a different level, and they’ve been playing ball for a while), Taiwan (who should be our best friend in Asia; we’ve been remiss) and anyone else in Asia who can be made to play ball.”
Roger!
“China is half the source of American economic stagnation and decline. And they didn’t get it through being clever and innovating. It was wholly predatory. No part of it followed the most basic of rules. They’re going to claim Superpower status on the basis of stolen money, intellectual capital and influence.”
Yup. There has been much written on Chinese IQ being high. Franly, I doubt it
1) Some of the statistics are based on Chinese people IN THE WEST. They are about as unrepresentative a sample as you can get.
2) When not, and even if in a narrow sense true by any chance, the Chinese (and Japanese for that matter) educational system, while excellent (at least for an elite) in some ways, is so regimented that it mostly smothers any nascent creativity. They are great at shaving 50c off a design, but poor at coming up with something truly new.
“I can imagine their history books 100 years from now, talking about how they single-handedly rose up from the ashes of 500 years of decline and irrelevance.”
Yup. The decline and irrelevance was self-imposed. Around the 1400s, they were on the verge of becoming a world power, very possibly THE world power. But the ruling elite figured that this could be destabilizing (ruling elites of any kind just LOVE stability, wonder why?). So they shut down
external communication and trade and looked inward. IT WORKED, for the elite, for 400 years.
Then the British (and other Europeans) showed up. Unsurprisingly, “the Chinese” told the British that “China has anything it needs and wants, you have nothing to offer us”. This was true in the limited sense that the elite did not need industry; who needs machinery when you
can put 100 coolies to work. (Yes, I know, it is an Indian term but it serves.)
Then they were seriously kicked around by the British and Japanese (who had followed a similar pattern, but fortunately – for the Japanese – they had had their asses kicked and the doors kicked open circa 1850 by the US). End result: 400 years of blissful (for a small elite) stability, ended by first being kicked by foreigners, than the bloodiest civil war ever seen before or since.
“You think racism is a problem in the West? The Chinese 100 years from now will be titans of oppression and selective memory recall. Whole periods of history and maybe even ethnic groups will simple be erased from history.”
Likely.
“This is the nature of China. Every other country in Asia understands this: Japan and Korea absolutely get it; SE Asia, especially Vietnam, have visceral and long-standing distrust of China, and know virtually everything said by a Chinese diplomat or activist is a lie;
In fact, Vietnam would like nothing more than to be an ally of the US in Asia – communist or not – and their hatred of the Americans is a more or less vanished artifact of history. The distrust of China in Vietnam is so deep, so culturally ingrained and so intensely bitter that the Chinese forget about the war Vietnam fought with them in 1979; the Vietnamese remember it with crystal clarity.”
I am sure they do remember.
“They know China is nobody’s friend.
A powerful China would make the Soviet Union (communist or not) seem benevolent.
Just wait.”
Not a smart policy. To wait.
“We sit and argue about shit and piss, while China cleans up.
The last thing we need to worry about now is what to do with our domestic parasites. What we need to do is stop kowtowing to the paper tigers in China and tell them to fuck off.
First thing would be to default on all of the debt held in bonds. In fact, devalue the dollar – let it crash.”
It will crash in any case. But actually defaulting is not smart. But, the saving grace is the US has been borrowing in its own currency. Or the US would be toast.
“At the very least, it’ll take 40 years of Chinese savings with it. Introduce a new currency. Let the rich start over. Obliterate China’s economic savings overnight. bar them from buying anything American and bringing the debt home.”
Actually, if they buy stuff from the US, that would be a good thing.
“We can do it if we enforce the rules as they should be: – free unions or penalties”
Alternatively, withdraw federal and state support for unions in the West. Probably a better idea.
“Then construct a few dozen military bases in Taiwan and recognize its independence.
This is the same country that had soldiers shoot unarmed, fleeing Tibetans on mountain passes when they’d almost reached India. The same country that denies there was any “unelective forced transplants” that had Falun Gong prisoners kept alive and imprisoned for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs; this is a country that jailed AIDS activists trying to save lives instead of praising them.”
Yup.
“We’d better bite back sooner. Obama and his lefty minions worship China, leftist capital it seems to be, when in fact they should be protecting us from their ceaseless lies, trickery and deceit.”
Agreed. But the Republicans are only marginally better.
In general, the West has lost its balls. This can be fatal.
“Forget every single debate in this country, including immigration and education. And race. And feminism.”
No. Chinese or no Chinese, we need to get our own house in order.
Thor
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Google “Chanos” “China”
and watch this closely:
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@RVT:
the very best place in Europe to live and work is Switzerland. You even have good employment prospects there in your field, I would guess. Germany isn’t bad but its tougher to get work there.
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@Gorbachev:
Good posts. What you describe is actually China’s traditional trade practice. The current party bureaucracy is simply the modern version of the Mandarin bureaucracy with the Politburo as the emperor. This is how the Opium war got started- in response to Chinese protectionism. The British were justified to wage it, IMHO. We will see another war over their trade practices before long. China has lots of serious internal problems too. I see them brewing up over the next 20 years as well. They make the best scale model kits though. Good training for engineers, especially in reverse engineering.
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@Tyrone,
I’m kind-of extreme, but in some ways not enough.
China has monumental problems (literally). But before it devours itself, it can just devour whole sectors of other countries’ industries.
Laissez-faire economics, adhered to when one of the parties doesn’t even remotely believe in it, guarantees economic collapse on the part of the victimized economy (in theis case, the US).
And few in the US realize the true scope of the economic sabotage China represents. We’d still have problems without China – but they’d not be anything nearly as bad.
Almost the whole reason we’re barely an industrial economy any more is China.
Virtually every low-level manufacturing job that used to employ men has gone to China.
They might not be good jobs – but they were bread and butter for tens of millions in the US.
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It seems that the Chinese juggernaut is built on the backs of its people, in several different ways. Not only are they paid slave wages, going as low as USD 20/MONTH! (That’s about
15 c an hour). BTW, Gorbachev, do you really think China could compete making cars – or anything else – paying USD 70/h?
But then the population is raped a second time. They put much of their meager earnings in the BANKS! And the banks lend it very low interest and no security to politically favored industries du jour. And the industries make hardly any profit, but who cares, when the money is borrowed and free!
Of course, this means the banks are built on a bubble, and the depositors are screwed if they try to cash in significant amounts. They have in effect given away their very hard-earned savings to the banks.
If anything at all shakes up this, the Chinese population is double-screwed. (Of course, the elites keep their money in relatively safe places.)
Thor
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@Thor,
I didn’t say the Chinese would run a clean, efficient, maximally productive car industry. Just that they’d use the same tactics they’ve used for everything else and burn down the industries everywhere else – copying and pillaging without remorse – thus denuding other countries of their own productive capacity.
What happens after that is irrelevant to the leadership in China. China is an internal mess of inoperable contradictions.
But that mess has completely obliterated the housewares industries of every country on Earth. This was an official and directed policy.
Next, they want to control all electronics development and manufacturing. They specifically targeted the replication and displacement of Taiwan’s, Korea’s and Japan’s industrial development – and have largely succeeded; a few remaining holdouts are still in the hands of elite industrial circles, but even these are bleeding jobs and resources to China.
When Taiwan allowed the last wafer board manufacturer to relocate to China, it was done.
I never said these things would make China all-powerful. Just that it would make China economically dominant without being healthy itself.
If you damage the productive capacity of the world in insane fits of greed, but everyone else is poorer or less powerful than you – then you win.
Either raise yourself up or drag everyone else down – the important thing is to be on top.
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A little bit off topic but I wonder what you would say about this?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827893.200-the-danger-of-unreliable-paternity-tests.html
[Editor: That article is about one — ONE — lab in Toronto which was producing flawed test results.
That is, there’s nothing much to say. The article has no effect on the validity or morality of mandatory paternity testing as advocated on this blog.]
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@Anonymous
We seem to have changed the topic. No matter.
Can you spell S – L – U – T?
Now, it does indeed appear that the lab has problems.
But there is an agenda here to try to make paternity testing “regulated”, i.e. hard to get.
And no, submitting a sample from a woman not pregnant and getting funky results is not nearly as damning as it would appear. The test was NOT designed to deal women who are not pregnant.
A long time ago, a newspaper did two pregnancy tests, for a man (came back pregnant) and for a woman in her ninth month, which came back “not pregnant”. Does this invalidate the test? NO! The test was designed to sort out the two cases a) Women in very early pregnancy and b) women not pregnant. Results from people not fitting either category are irrelevant. More analysis would obviously have caught these pranksters, but at additional cost.
Thor
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Excellent, Gorbachev. Overall I believe that what you’re arguing is a strong case for a return of American nationalism. That’s the key, it seems, to understanding the predatory nature of China. As Kissinger said, nations don’t have morals, they have *interests*. German corporations don’t leave Germany because they are German and they, and I say this for brevity’s sake, love Germany.
It appears we need to game China as if it were a selfish, money-grubbing, predatory female. Instead of coddling and sucking up to China, a Trump style trade policy would be about alpha dominance. Which boils down simply to a revival of American nationalism.
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@anomymous
Again. The New Scientist article i laughable in another respect.
“Her boyfriend didn’t want to contribute a sample” (or something very similar).
ROTFLMAO!
How about “she did not want to alert her boyfriend to the fact she had been two-timing him”?
There is no plausible way she could have asked him to give a sample without him figuring that out.
Thor
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Thank you for comments, it was very entertaining. As usual.
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it’s fascinating, isn’t it, how self-deception is more powerful than even iq.
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Joe,
I am curious about how it went with Sarah. Did she ever tell you what she meant?
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