Politics - Jason X

[Orogun01]

Is that supposed to mean isolationism? Because America would die.

What makes you think that America would die?

[injurai]

The economics of it.

[smjjames]

Libertarians are fine with trade I believe, they just want to emulate the pre-WWI (and WWII) 'let Europe have their squabbles, we're not getting involved' kind of non-interventionism/isolationism. But even THEN, we still did the imperialistic streak that never left us.

 

Not sure how far L(and l)ibertarians would want to take the diplomatic drawdown that Trump is doing though....

Edited September 14, 2017 by smjjames

[Eumaios]

I won't put words in injurai's mouth, but from my own perspective it's just as important for the United States to maintain the lines of communication as to protect any other vital national interest.  It's harder to do that if you're isolationist, but I'm not sure all libertarians are that extreme.  In light of that idea, I should extend to Guard Dog the same courtesy of letting him speak for himself.

[Orogun01]

The economics of it.

I don't claim to have an extensive knowledge of economics, but after reading up on the subject from an alternative point of view I can safely opine that the notion is ridiculous. Specially when these interventions serve the interests of the global banking elite and not the one's of nations. America benefits naught from interventionism and loses a lot.

[Fiach]

I don't think it hurts to keep in mind the ulterior motives. The video serves as a springboard for debate which Ben Number 3 carries out here. However, In many ways, his position reminds me of the scene from Life of Brian. What have the British ever done for us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo

I personally believe that the British empire was on the balance a force for good in the world and I've been hoping the population has started to have some pride in itself again. A little bounce in it's step and a move away from the hang-dog mope a dope attitude that it developed over the past couple of decades. "Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting."

 

​I hope no one points out the French connection of that quote.

I'm pretty sure the people of Ireland, The Raj etc. Would be inclined to disagree, British achievements were gained on the backs of slavery, genocide and economic rape .

[Eumaios]

To you, Fiach:

 

The world is as it is.  Some people want to strip the British empire of any good by diminishing every accomplishment and magnifying every sin.  To be clear, there were sins aplenty in the British empire.  What empire has ever existed with an unblemished record?  An even better question is, what nation existed with an unblemished record?  There's plenty to commend the British, but I won't blindly praise them.  It nevertheless strikes me that some people will blindly scorn them.

 

Look, this will probably be a useless post to make, regardless of the fact that I believe it to be true.  Nonetheless, I will make it.  Then I will stop posting regarding the British empire.

 

We live in a world where the powerful have held sway, but at some point our collective conscience began to demand more than ever could have been expected previously and that conscience worked retroactively.  Not that the ancients were bereft of conscience or that there weren't detractors in the Roman (or any other) empire.  I likely have more insight about ancient attitudes than many of the people here, but that's beside the point.  During that time, even as people became more conscientious than their predecessors, when some people saw the injustice of the strong having power over the weak, there was a certain inertia that prevented real change.  The eventual change we see in the world today.  The idea that everyone should have a say in his or her own affairs and that there was worth in aboriginal peoples who may have been overcome, overpowered, or even enslaved by their neighbors didn't appear whole cloth by enlightened people in the twentieth and twenty-first century.  It was a gradual occurrence brought on by people of good will.  Sadly, this well meaning ideal transcended from something wholesome and good into a sort of useless navel gazing that has been the basis of more 'enlightened' people patting themselves on the back because they had the leisure to relax and despise the world as it is, usually a kinder gentler world than any of their ancestors would ever have considered possible.  This world , like the attitudes it has fostered, grew over time and those attitudes reflect a certain advancement.  If it's counterfactual to suggest that any other empire of such breadth and width would have been equally brutal in its birth, it is also counterfactual to suggest that any other empire of such breadth and width would not have been equally brutal.  All such history is clever and entertaining, but it is not real.  We have one history.

 

For good or for ill, we live in the world with a set past that has already occurred.  Now, for my part, I don't believe time exists, at least not in the way people express it.  It's a peculiar thought in my head that time is simply a function of change and that our construct of time is simply a way of breaking things into categories.  Perhaps that idea is too clever by half.  Perhaps it's simply dumb.  However, time does serve one purpose, and that is to express one flow of change that cannot occur in any other direction.  The past, as they say, is the past.  There is no history in which the British empire didn't exist.  It happened the way it happened and nothing can change that.  Would we have all the good things we have without the British empire?  We can never know.  Would we have been bereft of some of the things that we enjoy and take for granted?  Likewise.

 

So, repudiate those things that were bad about the British empire.  Sure.  However, there were a lot of people in the fray, and pretty much all of them had the same motivations on a larger or smaller scale.  So, at some point, leave the righteous indignation in the past and think about the future.  ...And if you think the way to a peaceful and more enlightened future is to keep dredging up past sins and accusations, I'll contend you're wrong.  Human beings have been citing centuries old slights for thousands of years as the basis for making the world a worse place.  I'd say our time is better spent looking at the past critically, but not in judgment.

 

Having written all that, I will read any response, each and every word, but I won't reply to this specific subject.  ...Not because I can't see arguments coming to which I could respond, but at some point it becomes necessary to put out what you have to say and let someone get the last word.  Mostly because I lack time, but also out of fair play.  Someone will get the last word.  Since I've used so many now, I might as well give that honor to you.

[Malcador]

Libertarians see a huge chunk of Asia as their business?

[213374U]

Now, for my part, I don't believe time exists, at least not in the way people express it.  It's a peculiar thought in my head that time is simply a function of change and that our construct of time is simply a way of breaking things into categories.  Perhaps that idea is too clever by half.  Perhaps it's simply dumb.

Nope. Certainly not a dumb idea. Sadly not an original one either, however.

 

As for the rest of your post, I think you are simply arguing past one another. Nobody is disputing that history is what it is -- but the argument that events couldn't have occurred much differently is unfalsifiable, so not very useful. The fact that some good may have come out of <empire> does not invalidate the observation that empires, by their very nature, are sociopolitical constructs that are exploitive and predatory. You are no doubt going to find resistance trying to get some people to accept any particular view of what constitutes "good", as well.

[Ben No.3]

Ah good example might be China. By all means, they have archived much in terms of wealth and power, but that doesn't make me want to live there. Economic progress is important, but neither a guarantee for societal progress nor a guarantee for well being. One doesn't have to be a developed culture to be a happy one.

[Orogun01]

Ah good example might be China. By all means, they have archived much in terms of wealth and power, but that doesn't make me want to live there. Economic progress is important, but neither a guarantee for societal progress nor a guarantee for well being. One doesn't have to be a developed culture to be a happy one.

What do you use as that measure of happiness? Most of the developed world has run down and industrial areas that rival the worst of China. If it's such a miserable place were people are poor then how come is one of the biggest markets for movie and games, with companies going so far as to censor themselves to appeal to the Chinese standards.

[Ben No.3]

 

Ah good example might be China. By all means, they have archived much in terms of wealth and power, but that doesn't make me want to live there. Economic progress is important, but neither a guarantee for societal progress nor a guarantee for well being. One doesn't have to be a developed culture to be a happy one.

What do you use as that measure of happiness? Most of the developed world has run down and industrial areas that rival the worst of China. If it's such a miserable place were people are poor then how come is one of the biggest markets for movie and games, with companies going so far as to censor themselves to appeal to the Chinese standards.

I think suicide rates are a good objective measure of happiness

https://web.archive.org/web/20130926142518/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i1FL2q8ZO_Z93-mOqOx5eSYQW36Q?docId=CNG.fe11c1b55d60e484a37a458dccdd1b34.8f1&hl=en

 

"BEIJING — A person tries to kill themselves in China every two minutes, the government and state media said Thursday, giving the country one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

China's suicide rate is 22.23 people out of every 100,000, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website."

 

If I remember correctly (I think I heard something about these rates some months ago), those numbers have been dropping; but that is because more and more people live in the cities. If we compare China to the British empire, the colonies equate the rural areas, where 75% of suicides happen, and the cities Britain.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Ben No.3

[injurai]

I think suicide rates are an objective measure on the socio-economic immobility and livelihood pressures of the lower and working class. If those rates are seen in white collar jobs, that just is indicative that intellectual workers are not operating out of lower and lower socio-economic levels. But often high suicide rates seem to be correlated with either rural isolation, or a highly well off strata that has bootstrapped itself off the lower rungs of society. I'd tend to expect high suicide rates in areas that also rate high in happiness, given we're not talking about a place like Nepal.

[Eumaios]

 

Libertarians see a huge chunk of Asia as their business?

Seems more like they just didn't bother to put Asia on their map.  <.<

[Gfted1]

List of countries by suicide rate.

 

[Malcador]

Incidence of suicide tends to be under-reported due to both cultural and social pressures,[citation needed] and possibly completely unreported in some areas. Since the data might be skewed, comparing suicide rates between nations is statistically unsound

Scrolled down right to that, hah.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Malcador

[Ben No.3]

List of countries by suicide rate.

 

Fake news

[Gfted1]

What the hell, Germany? Why are they such a dump that people are killing themselves at a higher rate than China?

[Eumaios]

What the hell, Germany? Why are they such a dump that people are killing themselves at a higher rate than China?

 

List of countries by suicide rate.

 

Fake news

 

Well... Ben might be joking, but I would say that Germany, being a representative democracy with more public oversight into the accumulation of statistics, is more reliable than China in terms of things like suicide rates. It's like the article you posted said, it's tough to compare suicide rates when you can't trust all of the information, sometimes due to deceit, sometimes due to bad design, and even other times on account simple lack of reporting or care.

[Ben No.3]

 

What the hell, Germany? Why are they such a dump that people are killing themselves at a higher rate than China?

 

List of countries by suicide rate.

 

Fake news

Well... Ben might be joking, but I would say that Germany, being a representative democracy with more public oversight into the accumulation of statistics, is more reliable than China in terms of things like suicide rates. It's like the article you posted said, it's tough to compare suicide rates when you can't trust all of the information, sometimes due to deceit, sometimes due to bad design, and even other times on account simple lack of reporting or care.

I was semi joking. According to the "more info" link, the new number are due to one study by a Hong Kong Uni. I guess if they were reliable enough, the government would use them...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_China

Edited September 14, 2017 by Ben No.3

[Eumaios]

"Statistics are somewhat controversial in that independent studies often produce estimates that are greatly at odds with official statistics provided by the country's government. On the basis of data gathered in 1999, the government estimated an overall rate of 13.9 per 100,000 people,[4] much lower than in the total rate in other East Asian countries: Japan (18.5) and South Korea (28.9)."

 

Even if we go by independent studies, we can't trust the government to provide adequate access for research. Governments everywhere try to do their best to influence these sorts of things, but China in particular likes to massage data. I'm not saying that the independent studies are bad, merely that it's not cut and dried. Then again, I'm not sure if we're arguing the fine points or merely violently agreeing with one another.

[Gfted1]

"Numbers I disagree with MUST be falsified."   *nods sagely*

 

What I want to know is whats eating Belgium? Socialist paradise with free everything for everyone and they are offing themselves more frequently than India!

 

Even though Ben#3 just brought it up, and the stats are for 2015, it has already been conclusively proven that the US rate of 12.6 is due to Trump travelling back in time and making everyone upset.  

[Chilloutman]

 

“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself”

 

[Ben No.3]

My point is that is seems weird the Chinese government would support the higher numbers

[HoonDing]

India is #7 in female suicide. Makes a lot of sense.