“Beijing has directed several key state-owned automakers, including VW partner FAW Group, to prioritize technology and market share over profitability. That’s hardly an option for Germany’s publicly-listed carmakers.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-14/bmw-mercedes-and-volkswagen-bmw-mbg-vow-evs-struggle-to-compete-in-china
// rents to shareholders are simply unaffordable under a dynamic, competitive capitalism
Text: “The mission of the Russian people is to realize social justice within human society, not just in Russia but in the entire world” (my translation). The salvation is accompanied by destruction. The two elements, as in John’s apocalyptic writings, go together. There can be no salvation without the destruction of all that is false, rotten and built on lies. Apocalyptic thinking is, Berdyaev writes, the most important part of the Russian idea. It is characterized by asceticism, dogmatism, and acceptance (or perhaps, search?) of suffering.
every plutocrat is a temporarily embarrassed alpha warlord.
[new draft post] A Westphalian order is project enough https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/10/15/a-westphalian-order-is-project-enough/index.html
a close run thing, this one. https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/113307160431520875
@John I think Netanyahu is deposed the second the United States makes clear our continuing special relationship depends on new leadership. Of course, that’d be “foreign meddling in Israeli politics”. Yes. It would be. Sometimes the superpower has to discipline the client, if it is to remain a superpower. I think we may have fatally sacrificed our capacity to act as a stabilizing global power, which has to rely on soft power backed by distant threats much more than by force.
@John The “we” here is not the electorate. It’s you and I, people who follow and intervene in politics and the shape of social institutions. The electorate has no view independent of the institutions by which we constitute it. If the way we constitute electorates is inconsistent with functional and virtuous choices, we have to reform those institutions. Holding institutions constant, political leaders and other intervenors are our locus of evaluation and accountability.
@John (the US guarantees the existence of most other countries, or it did during the period perhaps now ending. we guaranteed the existence of Kuwait. existence is not the issue with Israel policy. different choices by Israeli and American leadership would have left Israel’s existence far less imperiled than it is now.)
@John I guess I’ll reiterate, I think there’s pretty much never any point to attributing stuff to the electorate. An electorate can impose incentives and constraints that make good choices difficult for leaders. In fact, it always does. We judge leaders by virtue of how well they navigate these constraints, not defy them, but reconcile them with wise action.
@John Maybe. Polling elides preference intensity. A tiny fraction in the US is likely to vote on the basis of Israel/Palestine, and it’s not at all clear numerically, among that small population, that electoral incentives tilt toward Israel. Further, the choice is far from binary. No one expects the US to “choose” Palestinians over Israelis. But to use leverage to encourage Israel to exercise restraint is far from unprecedented.
@John Oh yes. But our willingness to tolerate settlements was not. You can argue that Trump polarized the issue, in that he acceded to Israeli asks no other President did or would have, raising the stakes for what being “pro-Israel” means.
Sure, US politicians are bound to open with generic expressions of support. But they have + can behaved quite differently. I have hopes, if Kamala is elected, there will be a sharp change, but for now all her communications are boilerplate.
@John I don’t buy it. Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan all drew hard lines against Israelis, under circumstances and asks much more benign that what Joe Biden has acceded to. “The American people” don’t and can’t own anything. We/they are not a meaningful locus of accountability. I don’t think it’s at all true “any US leader” would have behaved as Joe Biden has behaved.
@John this question isn’t about what Americans think. it’s not about the election. “a catastrophe for liberal internationalism and American soft-power hegemony” has to do with how non-Americans perceive America, its role in the world, and the legitimacy of that role.
@John but the United States has hardly been passive, has had and made a lot of choices in this conflict, has played militarily critical roles. and regardless of your view on all that, and whatever you might think fairly or unfairly attributed to US agency, ultimately the question posed is about effects.
“Joe Biden’s Israel/Palestine policy has been a catastrophe for liberal internationalism and American soft-power hegemony on par with George W. Bush’s Iraq War.”
before you posit NASA vs SpaceX as exemplary of public vs private sector performance, consider that the private sector has also given us Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Boeing.
a better model is that extraordinary achievement is hard, most organizations will fail, a stable is far better than a champion, whether public or private.
Called a Lyft, first time in more than a year. “Wait and save” feature added ~10 mins before trying to match a driver, an arbitrary delay to save $5. Then promised a driver in 20 mins. Driver got to my neighborhood, parked, evidently canceled. Without asking for confirmation, Lyft started searching for a new driver. Found one, another 20 mins. Assuming this one comes (not a safe assumption perhaps!), the hail-to-arrive delay will have been about an hour. Just like calling a cab, back in the day.
autumn is when we get kids all excited about a legume literally named after incest.
“When voters say they want more economic policy from Kamala Harris, I don’t think they mean they want to see white papers or hear about tax credits. They want a worldview. They want to know how she—and the Democratic Party—understand the rising cost of housing, health care, and groceries, the collapse of small businesses, and most importantly, the decline of good jobs and blue-collar careers over thirty years.” #ZephyrTeachout https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/10/13/harriss-chance-on-trade/
we are all Cassandra now.
