Imo classical economists were generally more clear-sighted and honest than modern ones. Of course they had their biases and perspective based on their class (and their audience), but at that point economics was so poorly understood that theorists were legitimately trying to figure stuff out, moreso than trying to produce propaganda. Of course, the industrial proletariat and threat of socialism wasn’t really present yet either, so the class conflict was more about new money bourgeois vs old money aristocrats and landlords.

Marx and Smith are a lot more similar than most people think, because Marx was writing in the context of various economic assumptions that come from Smith, such as the labor theory of value, which is usually attributed to Marx but actually comes from Smith.

The thing about Smith though is that his writing style was very dry and repetitive so nobody actually reads him, at best, they might read abridged versions which cut out any inconvenient parts like that. So he just kinda became known as the capitalism guy and is thrown in the same category as Ayn Rand.

I have a BS in physics that I never used, I chose it because I had no idea what I was doing and discovered afterward that most jobs involving physics are less “figuring out how stars work, for the joy of discovery” and more, “figuring out new and exciting ways to kill brown people, for profit,” which I did not sign up for. So, I’ve wound up doing grunt work at warehouses instead. “Learn to wash your own vegetables and you won’t have to pay court to kings,” as the story goes.

A lot of people go into STEM because they just want to solve problems and the issue with that is that if you just solve any problem that’s put in front of you without regard for who’s problem it is and whether solving it will actually make the world a better place, then you belong in the same category as the guy who developed the Blitzkrieg doctrine, who claimed afterwards that he didn’t really care about “politics” and was just doing his job as best as he could. Just because you’re capable of solving a problem and someone’s asking you to doesn’t mean that you actually should.

The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems countries will slip through your fingers. Every year, more and more middle income countries that were unaligned are buddying up with China and the ones that were buddying up with the US are playing the field. China is keenly attentive to this global battle over hearts and minds while Americans are too preoccupied to even notice, and don’t care when they do.

It’s becoming more and more clear that all these conflicting announcements are to allow Trump and his cronies to profit off insider trading. Kind of insane how blatant it is, short the market, announce tariffs, sell the short, pause the tariffs (except for China), buy tech stock, announce tech will be exempt, they gotta be making crazy bank.

If you’re not in danger, “pacifism” is just a way to flaunt the privilege that you never have to get your own hands dirty. It’s very easy to be a “pacifist” in a gated community protected by cops, in the same way that Jeff Bezos would never find himself in a situation where he’d have to throw a punch.

What’s even worse is when libs call themselves “pacifists,” but make exceptions for nations fighting “defensive” wars, as if virtually ever side in every conflict ever does not justify the war by claiming the other side is the aggressor. If you can travel a thousand miles away to kill people and call yourself a “pacifist,” the term is completely meaningless.

Actual pacifists are fucking crazy, and I respect them for that. It takes either a lot of guts or a death wish to not defend yourself in the face of danger.

The American brain drain is gonna suck for people living here but is also very justified and deserved at this point.

The Americans have gotten so complacent about being on top of the world that lots of people don’t think there are any real consequences to anything and just wanna fuck around. We used to be at the forefront of research but now nobody with half a brain would want to come here. We’re heading full speed into a century of humiliation and people are just gonna keep doubling down on ignorance and bigotry as things get worse

When you try to use only sticks and no carrots, people don’t do what you want, they just avoid the crazy guy waving a stick around at everybody.

The thing to understand about Christianity is that it was originally a reaction against the Roman empire and then got co-opted and integrated into it. As a result, ever since like the 4th century Christianity has been about basically the opposite of what Jesus talked about. It turns out all that stuff about turning the other cheek stops being relevant if the emperor has his soldiers paint crosses on their shields while they’re out conquering and enslaving the Gauls. Of course, you can keep all the mythological stuff, who cares, but anything relevant to politics or the material world mysteriously seemed to reverse once they entered the halls of power.

The carrot of being accepted into the empire was matched with the stick that if you didn’t go along with the imperial-approved form of Christianity you’d be burned at the stake as a heretic. Any sects still clinging to anti-imperial sentiment get hunted down and exterminated just like when they were being fed to lions, but it’s the Christians doing it to each other now, so you don’t even have to get your own hands dirty. This approach worked way better at suppressing dissent than just trying to ban Christianity altogether.

Of course, a lot has changed over the centuries. And originally it wasn’t perfect or anything either. But imo, it was when Rome Christianized that Christianity Romanized, and ever since its real values have had more to do with Rome than with Jesus. The meme’s, “moneyless, classless, stateless” ideal of heaven is a relic of the original teachings that gets shunted off to the purely mythological side, where it not only doesn’t matter, but also occupies a place in their brain that could have otherwise been sympathetic to making good things happen in the material world. That’s already resolved, there’s no need to worry about it, there’ll be pie in sky when you die.

Vietnam. Decent enough government and standard of living, and they whooped America’s ass so bad that it’d be political suicide to go back there. I mean, what kind of timeline would we have to be on for someone to be stupid enough to… hmm.

Considering that fucking Greenland is caught up in it now, idk that anywhere is safe.

Yes.

That’s why it’s in quotes. Things are treated as conspiracy theories and you often sound like a crazy person bringing them up, even if what you’re saying is 100% factual.

Yeah, or like they do in China.

Unfortunately for many parts of the world, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to go full socialist or not, if you get in the way of multinational exploitation and neocolonialism, you’re gonna get couped. There’s no shortage of left-leaning non-socialists who have also been targeted by the CIA. Like Guatemala, where they just wanted to do basic land reform so farmers could work their own land, but Chiquita didn’t like that so it became the origin of the term “Banana Republic.”

Yeah, nobody at that time knew slavery was wrong. Well, I mean, except for all the slaves, obviously, they knew, but there was no way for them to get their perspective heard because they were cut out of the political process. Who cut them out of the process? Well, uh, well you see…

I was raised Catholic but rejected it pretty much immediately when I reached the age of reason (~13 or so).

So all I have to do is listen to and obey everything my parents, teachers, and religious leaders tell me and I’ll go to heaven, but, if I had been born into a Muslim family in one of the countries we were bombing, doing that would get me sent to Hell and I need to reject everything I was taught, get on a plane, randomly walk into the right church, and believe everything they tell me. Oh, and if I was like some random Chinese farmer a thousand years before planes were invented, I guess I’m just fucked. Yeah somehow I don’t believe that an all-good perfectly-just god would have every soul play fucking roulette to determine what their chances in life will be of getting into heaven.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned about the history of this contradiction, which goes back to a 400’s debate between Augustine and Pelagius regarding original sin. Pelagius argued that it was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult, to live a life free of sin and therefore not need Jesus’ forgiveness. He was also critical of the way Christians were integrating with the Roman empire, with all the same practices but now the social climbers called themselves Christian to win the emperor’s favor while otherwise doing all the same shit they would otherwise. Augustine rejected this, arguing that the Father would not sacrifice the Son unless it was strictly necessary, furthermore, Pelagius’ arguments would undermine the authority of the church (this was stated explicitly). Augustine invented the concept of original sin as something passed down through generations (despite this making zero sense), cited a mistranslated passage from scripture to support it, and used that to explain how even someone who lived a perfectly innocent life deserved to go to hell. This included, of course, fetuses. It was the Church’s position for a very long time that if you have an abortion, or even a miscarriage, then your baby’s soul is burning in hell.

What’s particularly funny to me about this is that, after Pelagius was denounced as a heretic for saying people needed to actually live virtuously instead of just relying on Jesus to forgive them, he became so reviled that people were often accused of “semi-Pelagianism.” All through the Reformation, everyone was accusing each other of being “semi-Pelagians” and trying to position themselves as the true inheritors of the Augustinian tradition. It wasn’t until relatively recently that anyone started saying, “Hey, maybe the Augustinian position is actually kinda fucked up.”

I gotta organize them to make them more singable sometime.

When did 'Murica, land of the free, abandon freedom for madness?

Oh, I got this one! Pick me, pick me!

Mexico, Samoa, Hawaii, Philippeans, Columbia, Hondurus, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico (again), Haiti, Dominican Republic, Russia, Greece, Costa Rica, Albania, Syria, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Syria (again), Indonesia, Iraq, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba (again), Congo, Dominican Republic (again), Iraq (again), Guyana, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Angola, East Timor, Argentina, Afghanistan, Nicaragua (again), Granada, Panama, the USSR, Iraq (again again), Haiti (again), Yugoslavia, Afghanistan (again), Venezuela, Iraq (again again again), Haiti (again again), Palestine (continuously), Syria (again again), Libya, Bolivia (again), Venezuela (again)

RFK Jr in the HHS be like

Yeah, this is preventable as fuck

Drop it

All I can do is joke about it because my feelings about it are too angry to express.

Congresswoman Sarah McBride is the one that really hurts for me. First trans member of congress at a time when that kind of representation is desperately needed. She would be a ray of hope and a rare bit of uplifting news, but she has to be a fucking Zionist. Many trans spaces I’m in want nothing to do with her over it.