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Your actions are your thoughts. Me: I brushed my teeth, took a shower, went to work, had a date at the movies, went to a bar and got drunk, fell asleep - what did you do? Speculation is usually sign of a masturbatory fantasy. It’s a type of intellectual fetish.
so you dont have an answer?
what? I just mentioned that as something I would like to know about your grand naval blockade to bring china to her knees. Where do you get these crazy implications? I’m sooo arrogant because when you tell me a 7500 nm blockade is a strawman I want to know the real argument and how much it costs? How many tons of fuel per day do you suggest the navies of the world waste on a foolish errand to restrict chinese trade in order to cause internal social disorder for reasons you havent yet mentioned? War is economic, so surely you see the relevance. I hope.
While you are laughing, think about how much experience you have working for the government. I dont know what exactly you want me to cite, the burden of proof is on you. What facts are in doubt? Capabilities of the chinese army?
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=3978
http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/china/17068-pla-light-mechanized-infantry.html
I mean, I thought you did your own research? Are we havinf a citation war or are you asking me to prove that china is a world power when obama can ask them to form a g2 and they can reject his offer?
what a pointless ad hominem rant. I will leave it for the lurker to decide who makes a better case.
I’m pretty sure you ignored my answer.
The (by your standard) required naval blockade (of which the burden of proof is on you, my case is the same as Luminars in that China will have to deal with more internal strife than you are giving them credit for) would be a whole bunch of countries that aren’t going to want to side with China clamping down on war resources when/if the day comes.
How am I to know how much it is going to cost? You and I both know that type of questioning is nonesense. Krugman has already been out telling people that the war is productive, so my guess is that …their same strategy, that they use constantly, will be employed and it will be so with very levels of success and failures. I’ve heard people say if it comes down to it that the FED will seize the gold holdings of the Germans in event of financial catastrophe. Would you put that past them? I think we can all agree that something along those lines is certainly possible.
By the way, your tone in the above quote is at odds with the sentiment of the quote below.
I should not have to point out that the implications are not “crazy.”
'Twas not pointless. It was a clarification for your attributing my arrogant tone to my nonexistant proclivity for an “idealized american exceptionalism.” Don’t misattribute my sentiments and I won’t have to clarify…
Yes, plead with the crowd.
no, you never explained to me how to restrict chinese trade. You mentioned a bunch of other nations, which doesnt answer the question. How will the united states and her allies restrict chinese trade? With a 7500 nm blockade? Or some other way? And how much will it cost (specifically in tons of fuel per day)?
I am more than willing to listen while someone else explains to me how to restrict chinese trade without a blockade. You havent done so, neither has Luminar.
thats circular reasoning, as the only reason given for the internal strife in china was…the restrictions on trade. So you havent demonstrated either part of your case. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate why they would experience internal strife as well.
not sure what you mean by “clamping down” when we are talking about china buying petroleum and mineral products like they do every day, except potentially paying more for them. You havent explained how all these countries restrict chinese trade, nor have you estimated the cost. You dont seem to understand that war is costly. Who can afford to do this and for how long?
I dont know, how are you? Youre the one who acts like its even possible. So I am willing to learn, teach me. How much does it cost?
I know that asserting that the logistical cost of an act of war is nonsense reveals that your geopolitical analysis is mostly nonsense. The fuel has to come from somewhere.
so your argument is that the blockade might very well fail because of the enormous expense and very real technical difficulties?
its certainly possible but it doesnt explain how to restrict trade to china.
thanks for the observations relating to my tone, but you didnt answer my question either time I asked it so its still on you. I told you it would be difficult and impractical to restrict chinese trade. You said that was a strawman. I asked to see the real argument, you couldnt deliver so now its all about my tone. Precious. Are you done discussing geopolitics now or do we have to suffer through more of this balderdash?
Yes, its crazy to imply that because I asked how much fuel is required for an op, I must think that my knowledge is “so specific and breadthful that the only thing a person could possibly impart to [me]” is how many tons of fuel per day the mission would require, especially when the sentence immediately preceding that one was an imperative inquiry regarding the general aspects of such a mission. You have crossed over into intellectual dishonesty with this one, Aristophanes. I’m disappointed as I think this is a first for our discussions.
it was pointless for anyone who is trying to increase their understanding of the subject matter under discussion or the participants in the discussion. I fully recognize the obfuscatory effects you sought to gain through your rant, but I had been assuming good faith on your part.
the futility of appealing to your reason has been abundantly demonstrated.
So, to return to topic.
Have debt problems ever resulted in government repudiation? Seems like no; not directly anyway. There’s only two means to change according to Rothbard, conquest from outside and revolution from inside.
Seems like most libertarians focus on internal change via the political process, Ron Paul and the libertarian party, mass education on liberty, etc. Personally I’ve given up on that aspect.
Would revolution be legitimate? That’s hard to say. If the government a criminal enterprise, and we think it is, it cannot be morally illegitimate to protect yourself against them. Yet society at large would view such a defense as illegitimate. Only mass movement against government power–an actual revolution–would contain possibility for change. Individual revolution just gets you jailed or killed 
The only effectual “individual revolution” is foot-voting out of the society. Which is largely constrained by the fact that there’s really nowhere to go. Thus, my efforts and energy are focused on creating a place for libertarians to go. That maximizes peace, minimizes strife, and sovles everyone’s problem. It also would cause the crash of the US sooner, by being a brain and talent drain, as well as a wealth drain.
Given that we’re keen on individualism, it seems fitting that a form of individual revolution be the primary means of change.
I tend to think that an ideological revolution is the way to go. The only thing that can defeat an idea is a superior idea, the same would apply to systems of ideas or ideologies. One’s ideology is more important than one’s capacity for violence, as the ideology has a determining effect on the propensity toward violence. An ideological revolution has the potential for profound change, whereas we already know the weaknesses inherent in a political revolution (people can choose to disobey laws, such a decision occurs in the realm of thought, and hence, ideas).
Citizens don’t revolt for no reason. It’s almost exclusively been because of economic strife that a country has a “revolution from inside”. Serious economic strife comes from a loose fiscal policy which is unable to fund some sort of major expense (usually war). The government then taxes to oblivion to pay for it, rations consumption, and enslaves their population (i.e. consignment). Eventually people get pissed off enough to do something about it. This scenario hasn’t evaded the “greatest” of states, and I see no reason, given the circumstances, why it should elude the US.
The ability of the US to “win” or “lose” a world war with China, Russia, Iran et al, doesn’t matter. We can’t afford it! Unlike Clayton, I don’t believe we’ll be auctioned off after our demise. 300 million people armed to the teeth aren’t just going to lay down to an outsider. Rothbard mentions in, I think it was Conceived in Liberty, that the American people have a certain mindset of liberty, whether they know it or not. I think this bodes well for our future.
After “collapse” (I don’t think there will be any one event that marks it), I could see the US breaking up like the Soviet Union did. Places like AZ, UT, NM and Texas have a similar demographic and mindset collectively. I could see that region seceding. CA, OR and WA much the same. And MT, WY and the Dakotas. Unlike in 1860s America, there will be no money to fund another “civil” war. Nor will there be much of a military after it’s depleted by world war to enforce our union of states.
I apologize for the bold font. I can’t seem to correct it.
I’m sorry, but doesn’t China have riots going on right now? They still have trade…so that means it is not circular and the domwestic strike is not necessarily related to trade. It could simply be the political management of their society. The Xinjiang province is basically populated by Arabs. If the U.S. networks can help radicalize them (as in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 80’s) they could be serious trouble for for the CPC.
No one knows how much it will cost. I’ve already explained that is a dumb fucking question to ask and you know it. As for the required naval blockade. I’m pretty sure that if the U.S. stopped buying things from them they would have trouble finding an export market (or several of them) that can make up the purchasing power of the U.S.
Stop pretending like you aren’t poisoning the well by making assumptions like that and ignoring the implications from my mentioning the dozen or so allied nations that will help prevent China from “clamping down on resources.” They will “clamp down” in the event that they cannot find export markets and none of the countries I mentioned will roll over and accept Chinese domination of their energy resources. The Indians alone could block the export path from the middle East to China…this is what half of China’s oil imports?
I’ve stated many times that Brzezinski has said as much; the point of blocking China’s energy independence is to push their energy concern onto Russia. They can actually use their army to invade Russia (if they need to) - although at that point I’d imagine that chemical and biological weapons will be on the table so this kind of thing is way down the line.
But, you refuse to acknowledge my answer for it…
You had one line with NO reasoning behind it…AND you keep refusing to recognize my responses. I think I made you mad by shitting on your boyfriends particularly absurd notions of U.S. weaknesses.
No, but it explains how the U.S. keps its war machine alive in the event that the petrodollar system collapses…Like I said before the Saudi Arabians and the Chinese are bound up with the U.S.
Explain to me what you think obfuscatory means. I ‘ranted’ as clarification for your misattribution of my own sentiment. The two are not the same. Admit that you were wrong in judging my sentiment and this point can be laid to rest.
Malachi:
There are major barriers to an ideological revolution–primarily the self-interest of opinion-crafters, the intellectuals, and their alliance with state power. I’ve only recently begun to realize their pernicious role in statism, having read Rothbard, and Sowell’s recent book “Intellectuals and Society” which I’ve only dipped into.
They serve as the intellectual bulwark against any ideological revolution. And state power reinforces their influence through things like compulsory schooling and licensing / certification of schools to keep out influences they don’t like.
This means anyone coming to a liberty philosophy will mainly do so through self-study. They can’t stop that, but they’ve limited it to the hardest path. No one’s learning a liberty philosophy in any institutional school in the country. There’s hardly even a single college that even mentions Austrian economics for someone pursuing an econ degree, much less makes it the focus of study.
In short, an ideological revolution lacks leverage. At the current rate, it will either take hundreds of years to achieve mass ideological conversion, or it may never happen at all. They’ve arrayed millions of people and billions of dollars to propagandize against anything even close to a freedom philosophy, and embedded statist philosophies with the highest prestige in society through such mechanisms as the Ivy League system.
They intend to simply ignore us to death.
Maynard:
The US may be uniquely able to absorb fiscal strife due to its reserve currency status. The only thing that threatens that status right now is Bitcoin, and it’s a remote threat at that. But it is a new system that has the potential to become the new default currency, even if none of us are sure how likely that may be at any point.
There’s also repudiation and limited defaults, such as the EU is going through now. If you ask me, it seems like debt problems actually end up being used as crises to create political will. Politicians get giddy when something goes wrong, because then they can force their own agenda on any solutions.
Greece and others have given up some national sovereignty due to their debt issues and the EU fanatics are champing at the bit to take even more and become a true united europe with the federal level having the same power over EU states that the US fed does over our states.
You’re right that debt problems could create enough turmoil to create some kind of change. But without a broad-based libertarian movement already pushing for change across the US, the change will likely be towards more statism. The intellectuals stand in the way of that ocurring. If the libertarians can take over the republican party, there’s a small chance of that happening. I doubt we will be able to however.
Which isn’t to say that I’m long term a pessimist. I think a free society is an inevitability, and all of history has been a march away from the various forms of communalism and towards individual freedom. Let’s keep in mind that we alone advocate the sole moral way of ordering a society, one that would be more prosperous and fulfilling than what we have now, one that would be of ultimate fairness and rewarding of true talent, allowing true individual expression.
We cannot be contained forever.
Um, the Chinese, Russians, and Brazilians are all trying to put together petrocurrencies…
Yeah.
They refuse to even consider the concept of unlimited credit expansion as being a problem when it comes to “too much debt.” Simply limit the fucking central banks and the state, banks, and regular people cannot go into such heavy amounts of debt.
Statism is the likely outcome.
History has also shown that States grow. From the city states of Athens to Romanism to the USA, USSR, and the EU. The logical long term outcome of this is a world government. This mentaility that I see so many libertarians with, that, “freedom is an inevitablity” is literally akin to the Marxian view that “socialism is inevitable.” It is a delusion of ideology; be careful with your optimism.
Point taken. However I still think there’s room for optimism. The larger the state becomes the more untenable it becomes. This exact thing happened to Greece, with something like 25% of all workers working for the government at taxpayer expense.
There’s a tipping point. And Greece is just the tip of the spear. Greece was able to be bailed out, mostly, because a lot of other countries allied with them weren’t quite as far down the garden path. What happens later on when they too don’t have the fiscal breathing room to spare due to advancing state size and power?
Marx did not have good reason for his conclusion of inevitable socialism. We, I think, do. With advancing tech and wealth the power of any individual person advances rapidly, in direct contravention to communal or state power. The power of the community is increasingly being set against the power of an individual.
One glance at recent news shows as much–one guy makes a dumb film ridiculing Islam and the entire world is on edge. It used to take actions by entire nation-states to achieve similar levels of outrage and mass action.
What we need is the sort of equivalent action a libertarian could take. And my answer, at least, is to form a libertarian seastead.
yes, they have chinese rioting because they want china to take a harder line on japan. So I still need for you to suggest how that wold weaken china in a conflict with the us, it sounds like nationalist sentiment that would help them. Your suggestion to sow unrest in xinjiang is actually a decent course of action, but I want to hear the context in which this helps the united states.
you didnt explain it, you asserted it. And I rejected that bare assertion because, hey guess what, its not stupid to evaluate the potential cost of an operation before you undertake it, its actually part of planning. And if you think a plan for a multi-national armada to restrict trade to china isnt going to have a log plan with estimates, well, youre wrong.
I have already addressed that, fundamental economics says they wont.
why will they? Whats the benefit to them bearing some of the cost of this war? Why why why? Theres no reasoning here, its just deus ex machina “the world rescues the united states from evil china, the predatory lender and maker of cheap consumer goods” Luminar wanted to talk about xenophobia…
They wont sell those resources at high prices? Why not? Why are they forgoing profits?
Supposing they could, why specifically do they do this, and how does it help the united states?
you dont have answers so much as suggested courses of action that dont appear to answer the fundamental inquiry, and that employ unspoken assumptions. Usgov larcenously appropriates internationally owned gold and buys oil from mexico in order to fund an economic blockade of china…and then what? Just hangs a “mission accomplished” banner?
my reasoning behind is that people are going to trade unless you make it prohibitively expensive for them by physically obstructing their trade. I am willing to learn another way, the problem is that you want me to pretend there is some other way without having to plausibly suggest one. I’m not playing pretend.
turn 15 already
Yes I can honestly say I would rather see you read and respond critically rather than shit all over the forums.
keeps the war machine alive for how long? If the us violates international property holdings to that extent, why do you think that the coalition would still carry their water? Also, please stop conflating your bare assertions with explanations.
contrived for the purpose of obfuscation.
youre begging the question. I was correct and your rant was obfuscatory.
to their folly, for an idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any means.
Gaining at the expense of China is what they stand to benefit. Most of those nations do not sell oil to China and any oil that China buys up at a higher price is oil that costs more for Japan to acquire. So, keeping prices lower, securing acquisition markets, benefitting at the expense of China, and pressure from the U.S. would all have to do with it.
As if anything I am saying relates to being scared of or hating foreigners…you accuse me of ad hominem?
Well, the idea being that China won’t have the money to buy them because the US has fallen through as a consumer market and their oil supply is disrupted from the middle east.
Becuase they have always had antipathy to China and they are fearful of Chinese expansion into their resources markets…The same as every other country when we concern geopolitics. Any enemy of our enemy is a friend of mine. You are now questioning the worth of blocking oil export to China in the Indian Ocean’s benefit to the U.S.? You are talking in circles…first it is necessary and I need to go down to the funding detail and now its worth is questionable?
Dude, why don’t you go back and read my posts and their conclusions. I’m sick of your fucking bullshit implications about what I am thinking. Clayton stepped way out there to say the the U.S. is a sitting duck and I am saying he is wrong. I did provide reasoning for my statements. You took my tone, which is in your head, as me “shitting on the forums.” You are talking in circles because you only have one point and that is “force him to admit my point (block china) then get him to explain its funding structure. otherwise I win.”
Specualting on what imperial maneuvering the US will do is not the same subject as the ethics of property rights and how they are respected around the world. Get real. There isn’t a place on the Earth that reason about these subjects like the authority grubbing anarchists here. China, Russia, Germany, EU, the US, none of them are going to consider the obscurant arguments for nonaction concerning state power. It is not worth it to add that into speculation.
hahahaha
So, you don’t actually know. You cannot use the word you are trying to define in the definition of that word. You could have just googled it.
No. You are bitching about nothing. I would also be curious as to what exactly I said that is begging the question. Begging the question of what? You said I had an “idealized american superiority” complex and I said that is not the case. China simply isn’t the threat Clayton painted it as. Go read my posts again, and why don’t you respond critically instead of shitting all over the other members.
I hope you’ll excuse me if I dont see anything in there that contributes to the discussion at hand, and therefore decline to respond.
hahah, what a cop out.
My first and fourth are relevant to the thread as well as your inquiries..
And you must admit, they are all responses to things you said. So, saying that they are off topic is absurd…they are your topics.
Is it ironic that you had to have clicked a button called “reply” in order to say that you were declining to ‘respond’? Or did you reply, but with nothing relevant to the discussion at hand?
Hmmm…
@Aristophanes: You need to take it down a notch.
My approach rejects standard Foreign Affairs style analysis where countries are automatically treated as telic beings, regardless of how utterly absurd it is to do so. Rothbard remarks on this in one of his many essays - France, still smarting from its lose of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, demanded restoration of the disputed territory. Such language imbues atelic populations with telos.
Even more than this, I don’t believe that there is any clear-cut correlation between territory and the battle-lines between the Power Elite themselves - even the national borders of very powerful nations. This goes back to my theory that the Power Elite see the social order as a collection of “Hilltops”, ie. valuable entities that can be captured and occupied. Only some Hilltops are literal, geographic localities… ports, mountain ranges, oil fields, etc. Most of them are much more complex… ownership of certain corporations, bureaucratic control of certain organs within a national government (e.g. the CIA or the FBI), or control of the government itself (e.g. owning/controlling the President), influence within religious organizations (the Vatican, Anglicans, even some Protestant organizations), academic institutions, financial regulators, and so on. Then there is the submerged portion of the iceberg… control of the black markets… drugs, guns, human trafficking, and so on. People imagine that the drug cartels, for example, are “wild west” operations, answerable to nobody but themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are each property of somebody or other in the Power Elite.
Hence, national boundaries, foreign policy and dimplomacy, etc. are just the curtain behind which stands the “Wizard”, that is, the Power Elite. The CFR types are analyzing the superficial, visible mechanisms of power… the waving of the curtain back and forth as the Wizard jumps up and down. But what they are missing are causality and telos. But since the Wizard is behind a curtain (not just anybody can walk into a Bilderberg meeting, you know), we have no choice but to engage in speculation if we intend to analyze what is really going on in the halls of power. I’m far more interested in the aims and goals of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha than I am in the aims and goals of “China”. At the end of the day, “China” (like “America” or “Russia”) is a relatively arbitrary political grouping of a population for purposes that suit the regional Power Elite who are connected to the capital. I’m more interested in what is going on behind closed doors, under the surface and out of view of even the people at the pinnacle of visible power within the country.
Clayton -
And there is only speculation as you can’t possibly know what avenues of power it has. My comparison to Icke still stands, my friend…
You see, Foreign Affairs will get research papers that are conducted at Carnegie Mellon and Univeristy of Maryland paid for by the Crown Institute and published through the Saban Center at Brookings Institute. All you have to do is look for authors and you can find where the money for the policy comes from. The speculation is then limited to the why because they publish the how. In the case mentioned above the families that donate money to the Crown Institute are there. You can take their names and find where they are in the caste of elites.
You don’t even know what it is…Your “approach” is to read infowars and global research and to think about things just like the rest of us. It is your source material that I am contending here. You refuse to start where it is obvious and instead chose to begin speculation at the get go.
“What do you think they found on the moon that they aren’t telling us.” Pfft, if we even went." har har haw.
And things like this. You are interested in day dreaming. Put it this way, people are ambitious, and even if your boss and their boss and their boss has always been lying about their true goals while issuing orders down the chain, one of them is going to take power and make it obvious. How will you know? You have an unfalsifiable “approach” to “analysis.” It is more “fiction” than “analysis” because there are no truth values that can be presented anywhere. You can’t prove it, but no one can prove it wrong either…ancient aliens.
Also, off subject, you are aware of Aliester Crowley, no doubt, what do you make of him in his part of influencing Western culture? It was he who was spiritual adviser to FDR’s Treasury secretary (who designed the dollar), one of his mistresses was Barbara Bush’s mom, he is on the cover of Sgt. Peppers, Goats Head Soup is a refernce to him, Zeppelin IV was recorded in one of his mansions…? Could he be partially responsible for the consciouness of the West being so decadent?