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Bedshaped posted:The only positive of the euro is having a dick and balls on all my coins While the main downside of the Pound is we have a oval office on ours. Well, the main downside is it's going to be worth roughly nothing before too long but that's less funny than calling the Queen a rude word.
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Aug 1, 2019 23:09
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Socialism. To be fair "socialism" is kind of vague. That can mean anything from Sweden to Cuba to a traditional capitalist state with tons of cooperatives. Nothingtoseehere posted:The point is that current widely used macroeconomic models are not fit for purpose because they omit vast important sectors of the 21st century economy and therefore predict known falsehoods. Therefore, we should stop using them as a basis of decisionmaking and research. We don't have more accurate models, and it should be the job of economists to try and develop those, but given we know the current ones are misleading they should be thrown out the window if economics is truly a scientific endeavour. Good point.
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Aug 1, 2019 23:24
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Not on a macro level, and their relationship to the real economy. I guess my contention with your statement was that assuming that "economic models" are macro models. There's a lot of people in the discipline that would say that given all difficulty and work on understanding smaller (micro) systems,, all those macro approaches are essentially reading tea leaves. That being said, since you said that you subscribe to socialist macroeconomic modeling, could you point me to the relevant papers detailing these? As a sidenote, I am personally happy that Steven Keen exists as an ideological entitity for several reasons. But knowing him, and having worked with his students on projects, I would be apprehensive to take his word as gospel- That guy is certainly one of the most opinionated, if not dogmatic, researchers. The saying "Steven has predicted 5 out of the last 2 crises" doesn't come from nowhere.
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Aug 2, 2019 01:41
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A question about marxism. One important concept of marxism in economics is the definition of value of labour per se. If I am not mistaken, that concept is outdated, and superseded by today's economics definition of value, which is what someone is willing to pay for something. Although the latter for sure does not cover many aspects, it seems to be much better than the former. In what it concerns history, marxism defends that history moves in the direction of full communism. I think that this is nonsense. Even if it is a possible outcome, why would it be the only possible outcome of history? The world seems to be more and more locked in a neo-liberal hellscape. It sounds more like a concept for rallying communists. So, the question is, with two of its core concepts being outdated or disprovable, why do people throw the word "marxism" around as if it is still fit to describe the current reality? Are there other important aspects of marxism that are still relevant? Or is it just a marker for "socialist, fair society that we would like to live in", and each person interprets it as they want?
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Aug 2, 2019 02:24
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AndreTheGiantBoned posted:A question about marxism. what are you on about the labour theory of value is trivially formalisable in modern economic theory, it's just that it's not very useful for the kind of things people are researching these days the second objection is more reasonable - there's a teleological bent, especially to more vulgar marxism, which warrants skepticism, but what marx means when he talks about historical inevitability is that the fundamental economic set-up of capitalism is unstable and destined to die at some point. in this, he seems to have been right (certainly there's no clear reason to believe that it will survive the climate crisis in any recognisable form), even if capitalism as a system has been marvellously adaptable to most of marx's specifics. you should probably read up at least a little on concepts, since they're very interesting critiques of modern society. I'm pretty sure that some of the old LF tutorial threads should be around somewhere
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Aug 2, 2019 02:45
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AndreTheGiantBoned posted:A question about marxism. Marx himself believed that democracy will win during that inevitable collapse, leading (eventually) to a non-capitalist democratic society. Modern history has indeed shown that a non-democratic capitalist society is actually more likely then Marx assumed. But that is far from a fundamental argument in Marxism. And unless you consider fascism a reasonable goal refuting it won't point me towards your own political goals. I don't actually know enough theory to argue for the LtV. But you can look at places where a simple application of LtV strongly disagrees with the current economic consensus. And you often find the LtV being closer to correct. Most blatant example is when in 2000-2008 the Market theorists predicted that everything is fine, while the LtV predicted that all those profits which are unconnected to labor are evidence for the existence of a bubble which will collapse soon.
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Aug 2, 2019 10:41
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VictualSquid posted:I believe that democracy an capitalism are incompatible in the long term. Yes. Democracy says that people are equal, capitalism says that the rich are superior to the poor. Capitalism also allows the rich to use their wealth to destroy democracy.
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Aug 2, 2019 11:02
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all the LTV says is that under free-market conditions, buying a commodity equals buying the minimum necessary work-time to efficiently produce that commodity from scratch, so if you're buying a plank you're effectively hiring a fraction of a lumberjack, an axe-maker, a saw-maker, a lumbermill, a millworker etc etc etc, and the organisational apparatus to organise this stuff that gels trivially with contemporary theory of price formation under free market conditions, but isn't necessarily interesting to someone studying e.g. the effect of advertising or of political power on price. in these cases, it's usually practical to abstract all that work away as 'supply' and look at the departures from free-market conditions, e.g. demand manipulation etc. even Marx uses the LTV in a fairly boring way, mostly founding his theory of exploitation the labour theory of value is one of the least controversial parts of marx's economic theory, seen from the modern mainstream
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Aug 2, 2019 11:55
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Also abstracting away labour's role in production of value handily serves to distract from the issues of structural asymmetries in labour relations and negates that there is exploitation going on. It's not that you're paid a fraction of what your labour is worth, it's that that's what the market values it so you're getting exactly what it's worth. You're not getting hosed, if you want to earn more get yourself a better skillset.
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Aug 2, 2019 12:09
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caps on caps on caps posted:I guess my contention with your statement was that assuming that "economic models" are macro models. There's a lot of people in the discipline that would say that given all difficulty and work on understanding smaller (micro) systems,, all those macro approaches are essentially reading tea leaves. Yeah, I've never met the guy, but I've heard the same, and his math is sometimes uh, suspect.but it has a "brazen" quality to it, and the book is quite fun.tell him a dumb idiot in Portugal enjoyed it. I subscribe to a socialist economic model as in economic system. Though we have to incorporate some stuff from other schools, like the neo-marxians are doing. My criticism is that things like the DGSE have been used to inform and implement policy, and those have come up short. I quite like Paul romers take on it in the trouble with macroeconomics But also like Ricardo Reis view on it,where we should treat macroeconomic outlooks as probability and not facts In conclusion, Karl Marx is still the one guy that accurately predicts stuff in the future, suck it Nostradamus Antifa Poltergeist fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 13:50
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What do you think of MMT?
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Aug 2, 2019 16:29
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V. Illych L. posted:my point here is that there was one rather small loophole in the contract which allowed a wrecker to gain entry into a service they poorly understood; the shell babcock set up to run the aerial ambulance service is almost certainly going to go bankrupt. in the abstract, this is good! an incompetent actor is getting weeded out. market darwinism working as intended! unfortunately, it's going to literally kill people and damage trust in an important public service. oops. This is a thing liberals never consider, and invariably pops up when discussing libertarian wet dreams. Even if you have a market working 100% as advertised, getting rid of all the bad companies which invariably will keep popping up (because hey, there's money to be made!) will take a lot of time (I'd argue infinite time, but let's again assume markets working as advertised). So in the long run, a perfectly healthy market will weed out bad actors and possibly even provide the same service at lower cost than the government. The problem remains, as Keynes astutely noted: quote:The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 16:43
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https://twitter.com/pthibaut/status/1157184228511178752 We can see the Bojo effect on Grossbritannien here. Pretty fun to see that Russland, while falling, remains above USA, which are also falling anyway, perhaps a bit more slowly now that they don't have that much further to fall. Would be interesting to have other countries there though. Poland, Italy, Spain for the next few large EU countries, China, Japan, India and Brazil in the rest of the world.
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Aug 3, 2019 12:27
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Cat Mattress posted:https://twitter.com/pthibaut/status/1157184228511178752 
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Aug 3, 2019 12:30
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The German trust in / friendliness with Russia will never not be surprising to me.
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Aug 3, 2019 13:18
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Orange Devil posted:The German trust in / friendliness with Russia will never not be surprising to me. Stockholm Syndrome
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Aug 3, 2019 14:58
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I guess some key people got bribed early. And I assume it's the reason so much of Europe became dependent on Russian gas. Germany will be Germany.
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Aug 3, 2019 15:52
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Isnt Russia one of the main destinations for German exports?
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Aug 3, 2019 16:21
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Dawncloack posted:Isnt Russia one of the main destinations for German exports? Of adidas tracksuits, yes
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Aug 3, 2019 16:31
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Not really, at least not in the Top 10 (which are, in order: USA, France, China, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium).
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Aug 3, 2019 16:35
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Orange Devil posted:The German trust in / friendliness with Russia will never not be surprising to me. Well, according to American neo-con propaganda an axis of Paris-Berlin-Moscow would be the most threatening thing ever to happen to American Imperialism, so that's a decent motivation. 
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Aug 3, 2019 16:39
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I stand corrected, thanks.
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Aug 3, 2019 16:39
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Orange Devil posted:The German trust in / friendliness with Russia will never not be surprising to me. 72% of Germans are saying that Russia is an untrustworthy partner and that's what you take from that? I'm not surprised that the Trump government is below Putin. Putin has been a much more reliable partner than Trump. Pretty much everyone has been. It's just observable reality. Despite all that, the relationships are fundamentally different. The US is a close ally and economic partner. Russia is a hostile country to Germany and the EU. It's like you can say that both your mother and your butcher are trustworthy partners but I wouldn't conclude anything about your relationship from that alone.
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Aug 3, 2019 17:20
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Randler posted:Well, according to American neo-con propaganda an axis of Paris-Berlin-Moscow would be the most threatening thing ever to happen to American Imperialism, so that's a decent motivation. Considering our trading partners, it looks more like a Paris-Berlin-Beijing axis is forming
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Aug 3, 2019 18:09
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Russophobia is grounded more in Cold War attitudes than anything else and it's definitely a more American thing than a European thing. And honestly, outside of its "backyard" Russia isn't really hostile to any individual European country... ...but what they ARE hostile to is unity in the EU. They've been supporting Eurosceptic parties all over the place because they have correctly realised that a EU that decides to pull its weight would threaten their interests. When they have to deal with individual countries, like France and Germany, they have a more even playing field, a chessboard where they have room to manoeuvre. They are able to make friends, and make enemies, and gently caress with neighbouring countries because other countries have other things to worry about. And the reason, then, that Europeans do not perceive them as much of a threat, is because no real kind of "European identity" has taken hold yet. And so long as it doesn't, a guy that sees themselves as German rather than European doesn't really have much to worry about with Russia, because Russia isn't hostile to Germany. The ideological and diplomatic conflict is on a different level.
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Aug 3, 2019 20:34
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Day-to-day geopolitics aside, there's also the fact that a lot of European countries East of Berlin (including Germany) have a shared memory of being under (some form or another of) totalitarian rule. This has stuck in the collective memories. So while individuals in country A might not like what country B is doing, they may feel that they can relate to the struggles going on in country B.
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Aug 3, 2019 22:05
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Dijsselbloem didn't get the IMF job, thank gently caress for that.
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Aug 4, 2019 11:58
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It's bad enough he's chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, somehow.
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Aug 4, 2019 13:32
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YF-23 posted:Russophobia is grounded more in Cold War attitudes than anything else and it's definitely a more American thing than a European thing. And honestly, outside of its "backyard" Russia isn't really hostile to any individual European country... Ever been to the Baltics and Eastern Europe?
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Aug 4, 2019 17:01
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caps on caps on caps posted:Ever been to the Baltics and Eastern Europe? Agreed. All the Baltics and eastern EU countries and people I spoke to there, they're all terrified of a resurgent Russia. That's extremely real.
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Aug 4, 2019 17:04
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Junior G-man posted:Dijsselbloem didn't get the IMF job, thank gently caress for that. Amen.
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Aug 4, 2019 17:08
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caps on caps on caps posted:Ever been to the Baltics and Eastern Europe? Of course, I didn't mean to suggest that Estonia and Latvia wouldn't be on Russia's chopping block; the point stands that the only real thing preventing that is a united, centralised EU, and as a result that's what Russian diplomacy is focused on undermining. Good chance that without it Narva would have gotten the Crimea treatment by now.
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Aug 4, 2019 21:58
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And they've done a good job pulling on the strings of lots of people's anti-eastern racism, convincing them that these countries aren't real, and the people there don't have a real identity, so why does it matter if Russia gobbles them up. That's perhaps the most tangible Russian propaganda achievement along with "Ukraine is ruled by Nazis, Russia is just protecting people there from Nazi warlords"
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Aug 4, 2019 22:31
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Isn't the primarily Russian speaking part of Estonia just a very small area around Narva? Has anyone there ever considered just giving them a referendum on whether they want to join Russia or remain in Estonia, or have people there ever demanded that? This would seem like a decent solution to preventing any kind of Crimea style invasion (this time on EU/NATO territory), if the result of the referendum is negative, it would pre-empt any kind of legitimization on Russia's part for an invasion (part of the reason given for invading Crimea was that the people there really did want to join Russia), and if they want to join Russia, it seems kind of unethical to deny them that. Narva itself is like 95% Russian speaking after all. If the referendum is conducted on a per-municipality basis it would only result in a very small part of Estonian territory voting to become Russian, and maybe that's worth it for defusing any possible conflict in that area?
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Aug 5, 2019 10:20
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LMAO how many states do you know that voluntarily gave out a secession referendum? How would you even draw the boundaries? 50%+1 'Russian descent'? Also, much loathe as I genuinely am to claim RUSSIAN LEET HAXXORS, the chances of non-interference in any such referendum would be very, very low.
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Aug 5, 2019 11:11
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I think choosing borders based on language spoken is a bit of a losing argument, don't basically every border town end up being able to speak both languages and/or a mixture?
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Aug 5, 2019 11:22
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I'm still in no way whatsoever convinced that if Russia decided to do some Georgia/Ukraine armed shenanigans in the Baltics that it would actually cause NATO Art. 5 to trigger and for the UK, France and the US to rush in. I think they'd be left to perish.
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Aug 5, 2019 11:24
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Junior G-man posted:I'm still in no way whatsoever convinced that if Russia decided to do some Georgia/Ukraine armed shenanigans in the Baltics that it would actually cause NATO Art. 5 to trigger and for the UK, France and the US to rush in. I think they'd be left to perish. Trump: "just got off the phone to president putin who assures me he did NOT annex half of Estonia, fake news, no need for NATO to get involved, especially when they haven't paid their fair share in those countries!"
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Aug 5, 2019 11:27
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And then presumably something offensive about the appearance of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
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Aug 5, 2019 11:28
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YF-23 posted:Of course, I didn't mean to suggest that Estonia and Latvia wouldn't be on Russia's chopping block; the point stands that the only real thing preventing that is a united, centralised EU, and as a result that's what Russian diplomacy is focused on undermining. Good chance that without it Narva would have gotten the Crimea treatment by now. Federalised Europe with an unified army is terrible for these smaller countries, because it strips each of their individual neighbors of their autonomous defense capabilities. Then if Merkel's successor single-handedly decides that Russian gas is more important than Eastern Europe, then that's just that, nothing anybody can do about it. The proven deterrent against Russia capturing these parts of Europe, or all of it for that matter, are US nukes under the NATO umbrella, which federalising EU only hurts. Shibawanko posted:Isn't the primarily Russian speaking part of Estonia just a very small area around Narva? Firstly, that's just appeasement that doesn't work. Secondly, it's wrong and actually offensive because these areas are as Estonian as any other, merely purposefully ethnically cleansed / colonised with Russians at the time. E.g. Narva was destroyed in WW2 (by the Soviets themselves), and when it came to rebuilding, they simply didn't allow any of the original inhabitants back in. Thirdly, Russia already occupies areas east of Narva river and southeast up to Pechory that should legally belong to Estonia. Not holding my breath about getting these back, but there's such case to be made. Fourthly, Russia plays fast and loose with faux referendums to justify their conquests. The faux referendum under gun barrels in Crimea was merely a continuation of the exact same tactics and "referendums" that were used to justify the occupation of the Baltic states in 1939-40, as well as current century incursions into Georgia, and so forth. That's not going to fool anyone in this part of the world. Fifthly, Russia isn't really interested in local Russians and Russian people. It's merely an excuse. The true goal, which is much more strategically advantageous, is to capture all of the Baltic states. Giving away pieces of land would not be enough to appease them anyhow. For what it's worth, there were small attempts of such referendum and a Transdnestria style situation in the early 90ies, but the authorities stamped that poo poo out quick. As for now, if there were a fair referendum, then most would certainly vote to remain. Unlike in Crimea, life even in the Estonian northeast is much better than in Russia. Regardless, there is one rather serious growing threat for the region, which frankly looms from the EU. A very significant share of the economy in the region is engaged in oil share energetics, which due to EU CO2 regulations has now turned nigh unprofitable to run. This means a good 10-15% people in the area, with specialised industrial skills, might soon be out of work. That's potentially something Russia could leverage. There are programs ongoing to build plants which could turn oil shale into petroleum products, but those still wouldn't employ quite as many people, and are of likewise dubious as far as profitability under EU regulations. pigdog fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 11:29
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