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International Events VII- Afghan Catastrophe


DireWolfSpirit

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Why not give Amazon and Facebook seats in national legislatures while we're at it?

Corporations need to be subject to the legislation of governmental entities, not seated voting members. Give the UN some actual transnational regulating powers over multi-national corporations, don't give the multi-nationals a seat at the decision-making table.

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The idea of giving Facebook, Amazon or whatever big corporation a seat at the UN is ridiculous and whoever wrote that article should be shamed for even thinking about it. Corporations do not represent anybody, except their stakeholders, who will nevertheless move as soon as they see better oportunities. No corporation is fundamental for our lives. Yesterday there was a massive outage of Facebook services, within few hours my contacts in Telegram and Signal doubled, and two of the five groups I participate in WhatsApp migrated to Telegram. If Facebook had somehow completely disappeared, I'd have lost only the contact of the few people I communicate sporadically, but so it's life.  On the other hand, if a country goes tits up, the life of millions is under threat. Just ask the Venezuelans.

Since we are on the Facebook. There is this video about the Facebook whistleblower. Good watch.

 

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On 10/3/2021 at 2:36 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

One thing I will observe is that democracy is not really making a good example of itself right now. So it's not providing a decent argument to China for why it should move in that direction

Let's be honest. China's success is having actually the opposite influence in our countries. They have shown our politicians and others in high positions  that freedom and respect for human rights are not necessary for economic development and democracy can actually hinder the changes that some consider necessary to face the challenges of the XXI century.

EDIT: it may be of interest

https://www.justsecurity.org/75741/chinas-dystopian-new-ip-plan-shows-need-for-renewed-us-commitment-to-internet-governance/

 

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It's almost like you could say that democracy (functioning properly) makes capitalism more socialist, and authoritarianism (done "right") makes communism capitalist.

Capitalism and democracy are not very compatible, but authoritarianism and capitalism are made for each other.

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2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's almost like you could say that democracy (functioning properly) makes capitalism more socialist, and authoritarianism (done "right") makes communism capitalist.

Capitalism and democracy are not very compatible, but authoritarianism and capitalism are made for each other.

Actually I agree. The capture of the political system by economic interests is a big problem for democracy and adds to the general feeling that democracy isn't actually working.

There is more however and it's even more widespread across the political spectrum, it's what I'd call "elitism" in the decisions about our societies (for the people but without the people!). A lot of policies are being drafted by technocrats behind closed doors without taking into account their impact on the people's daily lives. This has happened during the pandemic and it's happening with the policies intended to fight climate change as well as other big problems that trouble our societies. This is happening in a manner that is very reminiscent of the China's elites behavior.

The question is how to reconcile democracy and participation with the implementation of crucial and probably difficult policies.

If that cannot be achieved, alienation of large sectors of the society is inevitable and the results of that alienation can only be combated through repression.

 

 

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4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's almost like you could say that democracy (functioning properly) makes capitalism more socialist, and authoritarianism (done "right") makes communism capitalist.

Capitalism and democracy are not very compatible, but authoritarianism and capitalism are made for each other.

You're wrong. There's a reason why China is now curb-stomping  the owners of Ali Baba and other big corporations, and nearly every major 20th century dictatorship, even the US supported ones, did it's best to control the most important sectors of the economy (Chile under Pinochet and Singapore being exceptions)- sooner or later, the interests of the State and of the people with money diverge, because the State doesn't like change in general, and people who weren't part of the ruling class get rich and want political power to match it. Hell, one can go back to the French Revolution to see that pattern.

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On 10/1/2021 at 3:43 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

Because every other option is unsustainable in the long term, so democracy will have its turn.


What does unsustainable mean? Like, is China unstable right now? Even if it is, I see no particular reason to believe that democracy will be what replaces the current regime if and when it falls. 

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49 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Trigger warning that this story is every bit as bad as the headline suggests.

https://news.yahoo.com/hung-uyghurs-ceilings-ordered-rape-153619590.html

Systemic abuse and ethnic cleansing being testified to by Chinese whistleblowers.

But doesn't the West does the same thing? Both sides are equally as bad, you know. :rolleyes:

 

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:


What does unsustainable mean? Like, is China unstable right now? Even if it is, I see no particular reason to believe that democracy will be what replaces the current regime if and when it falls. 

I doubt even if the current regime falls, it will be replaced by a democracy. Probably another dictatorship, just a slightly less repressive one.

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6 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

A lot of policies are being drafted by technocrats behind closed doors without taking into account their impact on the people's daily lives.

To echo what Rippounent said, is this what the people with money want you to think?  "Behind closed doors" sounds so ominous but all policies are generated behind closed doors.

The technocrats are often the medical experts, scientists etc. who are dismissed because certain monied interests find their views detrimental to their interests, and develop the narrative accordingly.  "Doing my own research" becomes as valued as "expert opinion".

And sure, scientists/technocrats can also be co-opted by people with money but that isn't the main challenge around climate change or COVID (for example).  Its complicated...

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Well, Facebook still being shit wrt protecting democracy, count me surprised.

They were doing micro targeting for political campaigns for the last federal election in Germany, and that their promise of storing and displaying all their ads, was as hollow as Paul Ryan's head.

The problem is, that genie is not gonna go back into its bottle. If you want to horrorifying look into the future I have four words for you India [1] and [2] Arvind [3] Gupta [4].

That dude is basically the Indian version of Steve Bannon, without the alcoholic look and a functioning brain. If you want a blue print of the future GOP campaign strategy in the US, it's terrifying. Wihtout spoiling too much, you can look forward to an de-centralized army of trolls, and possibly an independent social media platform.

Also on a general note. Fuck Mark Zuckerberg.

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3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Only if the people with money don't find a way to coopt the state, which is the rule throughout the world.

The rule in the majority of the world is, sadly, whoever controls the state makes the money from said control (which can be obtained by votes, money, force, or any combination of those), not the other way around, and free enterprise is just whoever has the money to bribe whether is the local administrations (in case of small business) or the national government (in case of larger ones).

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41 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

free enterprise is just whoever has the money to bribe whether is the local administrations (in case of small business) or the national government (in case of larger ones).

You're overestimating the size of the bribes. There are famous counter-examples, but as a rule the people collecting the bribes don't get wealthier than the ones doing the bribing.

 

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13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

You're overestimating the size of the bribes. There are famous counter-examples, but as a rule the people collecting the bribes don't get wealthier than the ones doing the bribing.

 

That was the big lesson from Abscam. $100 buck bought you a congressman. 

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This is not a conversation for the Covid thread, but I have directly asked you this question before and you have pointedly ignored it. How much cheese and dairy does New Zealand import? Canada is now at the point where we are forced to import almost 20%. The US imports 1%. The US state of Wisconsin has more cattle than the entire country of Canada, and it’s not even number 1 in the US, at a time when Americans don’t even want to drink milk. Instead the US wants to force other countries to buy food their country doesn’t want, and the politicians wail about cruelty to their farmers. My opinion of Wisconsin dairy farmers is they can go drown themselves in a vat of milk.

Moving out of the COVID thread.

@Fragile Bird My apologies, I don't recall you asking this question in the past. How much dairy we import depends on what you mean by that. Do you mean for retail or for manufacture? For cheese specifically we import cheese from about 40 countries I can't give you a precise figure on the proportion of cheese imported vs consumed but based on an average price of $15/kg the imported cheese would be 15% of our total cheese consumption.

Total dairy imports is ~$320 million, but that is a mix of ingredients for manufacture and products for retail, and I don't know the breakdown.

The WTO allows the use of tools to counteract subsidies and dumping, but that is not what you are doing, hence the WTO imposing limits on what dairy products you can export. You can target foriegn subsidies and dumping to level the playing field, but instead you tip the playing field in the totally opposite direction.

Quote

"A decent climate"? It hits -40 celsius here and everything that isn't plowed is under 2 meters of snow. Not having the expense of making sure your livestock don't freeze or starve for 6 months of the year is a little more than "a decent climate". 

@Deadlines? What Deadlines? That just raises the sustainability question. If we accept that it is possible, under suitable conditions, to farm cows for milk that is both environmentally and economically sustainable, then there will be conditions under which farming cows for milk is environmentally and / or economically sustainable. Arguably in most places in Canada farming cows for milk is either environmentally or economically unsustainable or both. So, why should the rest of the country prop up something that is unsustainable? There are lots of things that can be done sustainably in Canada, including potentially a niche diary industry. Arguably the Canadian govt should be helping most dairy farmers to transition to something other than dairy, and not continuing to prop up a sector that is unsustainable.

Wool became economically unsustainable here to support our past levels of production, so thousands of farmers transitioned to dairy with basically no help from the government. Consequently our national sheep numbers were cut by ~65% over a period of about 20 years, and what sustains that sector is now meat, which previously was more of a by-product (to the extent way back in the past about 15% of the lamb production in at least one year was rendered into meat and bone meal because there was nowhere to sell it). Part of the reason is because the govt removed all farm subsidies in the early 80s. Farmers had to adapt and become more efficient, they hated it and kicked and screamed, but they were forced to suck it up and adapt or find something else to do. Some adapted, some found something else to do, for some it was dairy, for others it was something other than farming.

Our agriculture sector has seen a massive transformation (some would argue not for the better with a substantial move to dairying) which includes some diversification despite a lot of land moving from sheep production to dairy.

There is no reason other than sentimentality to preserve the current Canada dairy status quo.

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8 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

You're wrong. There's a reason why China is now curb-stomping  the owners of Ali Baba and other big corporations, and nearly every major 20th century dictatorship, even the US supported ones, did it's best to control the most important sectors of the economy (Chile under Pinochet and Singapore being exceptions)- sooner or later, the interests of the State and of the people with money diverge, because the State doesn't like change in general, and people who weren't part of the ruling class get rich and want political power to match it. Hell, one can go back to the French Revolution to see that pattern.

That's not about capitalism though. And the captains of industry don't need democracy to get political power. In fact the captains of industry don't really want political power to extend beyond themselves, so they mostly don't want actual democracy interfering with their interests. Hence, most captains of industry being on the political right, and the political right being a lot more motivated to suppress voting. The rich mostly want an oligarchy, which is really on the authoritarian spectrum rather than the democracy spectrum.

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