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the uzbekistani guy who boiled 2 journalists alive was pretty bad
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# ? May 17, 2017 14:38 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 16:14 |
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I think this has already happened but the Pope in Question was Clint Eastwood
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# ? May 17, 2017 14:58 |
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https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ogs®ion=Bodyquote:People inside the White House also called the new Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. Perdue had only been confirmed, like, a day or two earlier. And they called him in, [saying], “You need to come over here now! You need to! He’s about to withdraw from NAFTA.”
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# ? May 17, 2017 15:22 |
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Somehow I missed that Sonny "pray for rain" Perdue was the loving Ag Secretary.
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# ? May 17, 2017 15:46 |
Peanut President posted:Somehow I missed that Sonny "pray for rain" Perdue was the loving Ag Secretary. And he's still teaching Trump basic aspects of his job.
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# ? May 17, 2017 16:06 |
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There should be some differentiation between guys who were awful for their people but did well for themselves, like Stalin or Mao, and people who completely failed even at being competent ruthless autocrats. Now Francisco Solano Lopez, that's top tier awful by any metric.
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# ? May 17, 2017 16:07 |
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Helsing posted:Putin is a monster but if you take a completely nihilistic view of foreign and domestic politics then you can make the case that he has rebuilt a country that was on the verge of collapse when he took power. Trump by contrast is gonna leave America a lot worse for wear by the time he's done. What makes Erogodan as bad as Maduro? Also, would Chavez really be that much different than Maduro?
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# ? May 17, 2017 16:21 |
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Erdogan is rapidly turning his own country into an ultranationalist dictatorship which is very eager to do another Armenian genocide on the Kurds, which itself prevents us from forming a strong alliance with the Kurds in Syria, who are probably the only major rebel group that isn't a brutal salafist gang. because turkey is still in NATO you see
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# ? May 17, 2017 16:41 |
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punk rebel ecks posted:What makes Erogodan as bad as Maduro? Chavez had the Chavez cult of personality to cover up any radical shifts to cover his rear end. Maduro's stuck trying to live up to Chavez' example if he wants to hold onto power, something Chavez never had to bother doing
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# ? May 17, 2017 16:56 |
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P-Mack posted:There should be some differentiation between guys who were awful for their people but did well for themselves, like Stalin or Mao, and people who completely failed even at being competent ruthless autocrats. i dunno mao seemed pretty incompetent
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# ? May 17, 2017 17:10 |
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and i must meme posted:i dunno mao seemed pretty incompetent at running the country sure, at seizing and maintaining power no, that's the distinction I was trying to make
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# ? May 17, 2017 17:29 |
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P-Mack posted:at running the country sure, at seizing and maintaining power no, that's the distinction I was trying to make It's a good distinction to draw What with Trump I was thinking of "pig-fuckingly incompetent" simply because well that's the most entertaining one, but there's also leaders who "did lasting horrible poo poo to their country" or "morally bad".
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# ? May 17, 2017 17:49 |
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Ze Pollack posted:Chavez had the Chavez cult of personality to cover up any radical shifts to cover his rear end. Didn't Maduro just continue Chavez's policies?
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# ? May 17, 2017 18:55 |
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punk rebel ecks posted:Didn't Maduro just continue Chavez's policies? yes. continuing Chavez' policies is a thing Chavez never had to worry about. let me put it this way: Thomas Jefferson never had to give two shits about what the Founding Fathers would have done. the answer was "what I decided to do, bitch." doesn't matter if it was a total reversal of what he said yesterday. cult of personality papers over a lot of requests for consistency
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# ? May 17, 2017 19:05 |
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Ze Pollack posted:yes. continuing Chavez' policies is a thing Chavez never had to worry about. My point is that Venezuela wasn't as much of a shithole as it was under Chavez. Though it was clearly deteriorating. One could argue that Chavez merely didn't live long enough to see his nation crumble.
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# ? May 17, 2017 19:22 |
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punk rebel ecks posted:My point is that Venezuela wasn't as much of a shithole as it was under Chavez. Though it was clearly deteriorating. One could argue that Chavez merely didn't live long enough to see his nation crumble. "Full steam ahead" when you've basically made your economy dependent on oil was an obviously stupid move after Saudi Arabia decided to let loose to kill competition and it also killed the Harper administration in Canada. I doubt Chavez would have carried on with as much desperation.
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# ? May 17, 2017 19:30 |
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The problem with Venezuela isn't oil dependence. It's the price controls and nationalizing of industries. It never works and never will. Legislating prices is like legislating the value of pi. It's like trying to make water flow uphill. As the oil industry crumbles we see the same thing happening there that happened in Zimbabwe when Mugabe repossessed the farms. He took the one cornerstone industry and handed it to political cronies. In reality it should have just been left in private hands where it was most productive. Surprise! Now they have unbelievable inflation. e: from the perspective of remaining in power, of course, nationalization is a totally sensible move. Free assets you can use to reward your allies. Mortabis has issued a correction as of 20:07 on May 17, 2017 |
# ? May 17, 2017 20:04 |
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Price controls can work as temporary emergency measures, or as part of a broader set of regulations and subsidies tailored to a specific industry for a specific purpose. As done in Venezuela on the other hand its an absurd libertarian strawman made real.
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# ? May 17, 2017 20:22 |
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P-Mack posted:Price controls can work as temporary emergency measures, or as part of a broader set of regulations and subsidies tailored to a specific industry for a specific purpose. There is never a good reason for price controls. There are better solutions to the problems you would try to solve with them. Mortabis has issued a correction as of 20:34 on May 17, 2017 |
# ? May 17, 2017 20:29 |
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punk rebel ecks posted:What makes Erogodan as bad as Maduro? Erdogan has systematically alienated every neighboring power as well as the United States. He also made some gambles in Syria that are now blowing up in his face. And while his short term grip on power seems absolute he is laying the conditions for long term instability and possibly even a civil war. He's very similar to Putin in some ways but whereas Putin found a weak and divided country and brought some stability while \raised its international profile it seems like Erdogan is leading his own nation in the opposite direction. Chavez was more charismatic than Maduro but yeah, too much cronyism and banking on the assumption that the oil boom would never end were decisions that would have come back to bite the Venezuelan government in the rear end no matter who was in power. Mortabis posted:The problem with Venezuela isn't oil dependence. It's the price controls and nationalizing of industries. It never works and never will. Legislating prices is like legislating the value of pi. It's like trying to make water flow uphill. As the oil industry crumbles we see the same thing happening there that happened in Zimbabwe when Mugabe repossessed the farms. He took the one cornerstone industry and handed it to political cronies. In reality it should have just been left in private hands where it was most productive. Surprise! Now they have unbelievable inflation. Yeah, remember what a disaster World War II was for the American economy?
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# ? May 17, 2017 20:53 |
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Yes. Real standard of living declined dramatically. (Also those industries weren't nationalized)
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# ? May 17, 2017 20:54 |
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lol
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:09 |
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When asked to consider the performance of the economy during the greatest war effort in history a neoliberal's first reaction is "durrrr rationing bad"
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:16 |
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Of course it's bad, that's why we don't do it in peacetime.
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:20 |
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Single product economies are garbage no matter the politics of the government
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:26 |
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Mortabis posted:There is never a good reason for price controls. There are better solutions to the problems you would try to solve with them. every single first world country's health system says what
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:31 |
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P-Mack posted:Of course it's bad, that's why we don't do it in peacetime. Of course rationing is bad when it isn't necessary, that's entirely beside the point and it's a dumb as gently caress follow up to the even dumber idea that it's literally impossible for the government to regulate prices because apparently prices are as immutably fixed as gravity or mathematical constants.
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:31 |
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I would love to see what a neoliberal approach to a total war economy would look like
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# ? May 17, 2017 21:32 |
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When you say "awful," do you mean in terms of their agenda or their effectiveness? There are world leaders alive today, like Putin, whom I would consider worse than Trump because they are masters at manipulating the levers of power to promote abhorrent policies. I can also think of a number of historical leaders who were well-intentioned, but possessed an even worse understanding of the limitations of their power than Trump. The former option is going to get you answers like Andrew Jackson who committed genocide against the natives but managed to completely remake the American political system in his image. The latter option is going to get you answers like James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison, the former of whom accelerated the United States' path towards civil war and the latter of whom obviously died before he could pursue an agenda. If we can agree on some metrics, I think this could be an interesting conversation. QuoProQuid has issued a correction as of 21:55 on May 17, 2017 |
# ? May 17, 2017 21:44 |
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Helsing posted:I would love to see what a neoliberal approach to a total war economy would look like Ironically the german economy during ww2 might be close to that minus, hopefully, genocide. They were so afraid of raising taxes on the herrenvolk that they waited until halfway through to go to full war production and much of the recovery was fueled by looting imperial conquests.
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# ? May 17, 2017 22:07 |
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Bad leader- Hitler
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# ? May 17, 2017 22:14 |
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Mortabis posted:The problem with Venezuela isn't oil dependence. It's the price controls and nationalizing of industries. It never works and never will. Legislating prices is like legislating the value of pi. It's like trying to make water flow uphill. As the oil industry crumbles we see the same thing happening there that happened in Zimbabwe when Mugabe repossessed the farms. He took the one cornerstone industry and handed it to political cronies. In reality it should have just been left in private hands where it was most productive. Surprise! Now they have unbelievable inflation. Norway has the same percentage of their workers working in nationalized industries as Venezuela does. It's all about what gets nationalized and how it is designed to function.
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# ? May 17, 2017 22:27 |
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P-Mack posted:Bad leader- Hitler gonna need you to expand on this
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# ? May 17, 2017 22:40 |
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QuoProQuid posted:When you say "awful," do you mean in terms of their agenda or their effectiveness? There are world leaders alive today, like Putin, whom I would consider worse than Trump because they are masters at manipulating the levers of power to promote abhorrent policies. I can also think of a number of historical leaders who were well-intentioned, but possessed an even worse understanding of the limitations of their power than Trump. IMO I think we should go with the latter, since the former I actually think it's a bit unfair to have Harrison in, as he was a guy who gave his inauguration speech in the pouring rain, got pneumonia, and died. It's a bit like making GBS threads on James A. Garfield or something I am grimly intrigued when you say that there were leaders who understood less about the limitations of their power because my reaction is "isn't that literally impossible?" P-Mack posted:Now Francisco Solano Lopez, that's top tier awful by any metric. lol agreed
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# ? May 17, 2017 22:51 |
Nebakenezzer posted:I actually think it's a bit unfair to have Harrison in, as he was a guy who gave his inauguration speech in the pouring rain, got pneumonia, and died. It's a bit like making GBS threads on James A. Garfield or something Harrison also ran on a platform of being a simple man's man who ate raw beef and biscuits all the time, while his opponent Van Buren was a dainty rich boy who supped on veal fricassee and fine wines. If that's true, I don't think his diet did his constitution any favors.
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# ? May 18, 2017 00:35 |
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James Buchanan is still the gold standard for bad Presidencies, but Trump might actually be worse at simply being the President.
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# ? May 18, 2017 03:51 |
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Garrosh Hellscream and Slyvanas Windrunner are both shittier than Trump. Kendel Ozzel, though he was a military leader. Umm, Terrence Stamp in Episode I? He was p. lovely. Queen Natalie Portman and Frog King Brian Blessed too. Jar Jar a general? What the gently caress were you thinking?
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# ? May 18, 2017 07:12 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Harrison also ran on a platform of being a simple man's man who ate raw beef and biscuits all the time, while his opponent Van Buren was a dainty rich boy who supped on veal fricassee and fine wines. If that's true, I don't think his diet did his constitution any favors. Harrison was the guy who's campaign promise was "log cabins and hard cider" right? He coulda beat Hillary, anyway
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# ? May 19, 2017 23:01 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:Harrison was the guy who's campaign promise was "log cabins and hard cider" right? It was his opponents that tried the log cabin and cider line, which backfired spectacularly. Harrison's slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
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# ? May 20, 2017 21:37 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2024 16:14 |
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P-Mack posted:It was his opponents that tried the log cabin and cider line, which backfired spectacularly. Do tell.
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# ? May 20, 2017 21:45 |