How bad are things for the oligarchs in Russia or the ruling elite in Latin America?
More importantly, who is going to stop the GOP once they go full autocratic dictatorship? Because civilians with guns aren’t going to do shit.
1 Like
A million? Try like 20+ million.
1 Like
Having markets is not sufficient to have capitalism. Markets certainly pre-date written history and modern capitalism arose in the 16th century.
Yeah I was trying to not be alarmist. A million is kind of the floor.
One side will be in control of the US military, they might have a slight advantage.
The US military cannot subdue Afghanistan. This isn’t the kind of war they are designed to fight or even particularly good at. Counter insurgency is a losers game.
Capitalism the way you’re using it is the idea that things will get better economically so it makes sense to lend money at interest rates that are potentially +EV for the borrower. The thing that really changed in the 16th century is that the credit markets went from charging 10% a week to charging 10% a year… and people started borrowing money to build stuff.
Obviously I don’t think that’s going anywhere. If anything it’s accelerating as the human race collectively realizes that we have vastly more supply capacity than we’re actually using/consuming. This is the right moment to do something huge like completely change how we get power.
What passes for the left in this country (and on this forum) have already made it plainly clear that the military won’t be necessary. The surrender already happened.
1 Like
No, we’re all still hoping that we can just roflstomp them in 2020 and do this peacefully without having millions of people die. We’re probably right too. The last time push came to shove the ruling class blinked. Seeing how well it worked out for them last time I have a hard time believing this time they choose bloodshed.
Do what peacefully? What bloodshed? It’s already over.
2 Likes
Bloodshed is what happens when it’s truly over and they think they can just completely ignore the people. We’re miles from that yet because by and large a large segment of the population still wants this.
Wait till the automation really speeds up and the waves of climate migrants arrive. There are a bunch of really big events in the pipeline that if not mitigated in advance will have huge impacts on economics and as a result politics.
Right now most of the people being really ground into hamburger are minorities, mentally ill (drug addicts are mentally ill), or have been extremely poor for a very long time. Every additional marginal person ground up increases the public discontent. Automation is going to fuck up a lot of middle class + people. It’s not just going to hit poors, a lot of good white collar work can be automated. Those people are not going to be pleased.
That would be great. But what I’m seeing is Trump’s approval rating still in the 40s, Democrats lost 2 senate seats last year, might not gain any next year, and Joe Goddamn Biden might get the Democratic nomination.
Biden winning the nomination and losing the general is still very much drawing live yeah. It sucks.
Him winning the general is also live and also sucks. It might even accelerate the path to Trump 2.0 in 2024.
When the POTUS bridges the small gap between what a US President is normally like and Putin, they will be wildly popular, just like Putin.
3 Likes
I like to call that scenario ‘the rise of Hitler Hitler’ (as opposed to where we are now which is ‘the rise and fall of stupid Hitler’). Very much drawing live to that. The more unstable it gets the more vulnerable we are to a talented strongman type. Gotta hope they aren’t too evil.
@microbet yup that’s the rise of Hitler Hitler alright. The GOP candidate in 2024 is going to be full bore nationalist and much more gifted at all of this than Trump. Very scary indeed. One of the many reasons we need a historical figure for our candidate this cycle.
I don’t think so. I will try to look some up stuff up for this later but interest rates I think were quite low in antiquity. The development of full-blown capitalism had more to do with legal structures that allow the formation of fictitious businesses, like the East India Company.
Trump looks more and more like a favorite to win in 2020, against any of the Dems. People should be preparing appropriately.
I’m going to think about this more later as well, but before capitalism nobility owned lots of stuff. Capitalism is when a full-blown market for the buying and selling of power emerged.