AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[MacAnDàil]

it's common for people to think they're rulers are good: a lot of being a ruler is convincing the ruled that you're good, after all.

A multipolar world would be one with an increased amount of violence as the various poles jockey for position with one another. I really hope I don't have to convince you this would not be a good thing for anyone, especially smaller countries, regardless of how much you think America promotes fascists.

if we think the empire is good, then of course that's a valid reason not to want the us empire to lose power, but surely you see that at least sometimes "instability" is good, as it can lead to good changes: and look at the historical record: ever since unipolarity the world has gone to shit, wages have stagnated vis a vis inflation, young people are much much poorer than their parents, higher education, residential ownership and a halfway decent job have become unachievable, aspirational goals most won't get, the big mac's price in hours of work has skyrocketed, etcetera: other than fun little tech gadgets (which I like as much as the next guy) life is just worse under the market fundamentalism of the empire unopposed. if things keep going this way we're gonna be reminiscing, in 2060 or something, about "man, remember when we had labour laws? those were the days" as we toil until we're 96, doing 16 hour days to pay our six-square-meter flats that cost six million dollars a month or whatever.

Those are mostly neoliberal traits from the 80s after ww2 and before the collapse of the USSR so not necessarily relevant. The Big Mac itself is a symptom of some of the less savoury aspects of American domination. Likewise, the little gadgets are more annoying and symptoms of market fundamentalism than fun. If you work until you're 96, you'd be lucky to live that long giving life expentancy is reversing in some countries due to pollution for example. Those are bad parts and there good parts also, we must compare to other scenarios and China and Russia would be worse given the chance.

[Travis B.]

The big thing is this: would life be better with, say, China as global hegemon? I am pretty sure that the end of America's role as global hegemon would simply mean its being replaced by another global hegemon, and not some benevolent "multipolar" world that some might assume.

[Ares Land]

agreed on the more peaceful front: I don't know about "freer", but because I probably have a thicker concept of freedom here: since the start of the decline of the soviet union (let's say from andropov on) wages are stagnant vis a vis, inflation, productivity, and housing prices meaning a larger and larger share of the social product goes to a few ultrarich people through executive bonuses, higher and higher rent, capital gains (exploitation), etcetera: that's the opposite of freedom: wages are, remember, the way most people trade in freedom for access to survival goods: if they get less of the latter per unit of the former invested that makes them less free. also since the eighties the IMF has imposed various policies, privatization laissez faire economics etcetera, leading to artificial poverty in the world costing however many millions of life expectancy years lost, poverty, death from preventable disease etcetera. Africa seems to have caught up with the con, and is veering more and more towards other economic spheres, notably china. no i don't think I buy the us navy's "a global force for good" motto. the list of the us empire's evildoing is extensive, embargo of cuba blablablablablabla. also supporting genocide and authoritarianism has categorically not lost usefulness for the empire, e.g. the holy land.

Like, I get that people from the imperial core feel positive about the empire, as even the non-ultrarich ones benefit from it (and also, cultural hegemony etcetear) but you'll understand, I'm sure, if i'm not as positive. of course the soviet union was awful too, but the fact an alternative existed forced capitalist countries to be less predatory: you know, allow unions etcetera.

I both agree and disagree. I agree that the US's position has made it difficult or impossible to try anything else than capitalism (how difficult depending on where the country stands in the global balance of power).

The fall of the Soviet Union coincided with the rise of There Is No Alternative Thatcherism/Reaganism and it's pretty clear both events are connected. I think this has more to do with ideological competition than geopolitics -- people had to prove that capitalism cared about the workers too, hence Christian Democracy and Liberalism.

On the other hand:
The US were clearly at their worst during the Cold War. Think about 'interventions' in Latin America or the Vietnam war.
Another thing too: the world has steadily grown more multipolar over the last twenty five years or so. Did any alternatives to neo-liberalism/capitalism/plutocracy develop? No. Thing have in fact gotten way worse. It's pretty clear how: the other poles are both fascist oligarchies. The USSR used to fund communist parties; now it's funding fascist parties and spreading fascist propaganda.
Countries are vulnerable to soft power. In a world where the global superpowers are one centrist plutocracy and two fascist plutocracies, the only political option is plutocracy.

If Trump is reelected, well, it'll just be worse. When all three world powers are fascist plutocracies -- we'll all get fascism forced down our throats.

[Torco]

Those are mostly neoliberal traits from the 80s after ww2 and before the collapse of the USSR so not necessarily relevant.

notice how i said "since the start of the decline of the soviet union, say andropov on" instead of "since the official dissolution of the soviet union".

The big thing is this: would life be better with, say, China as global hegemon? I am pretty sure that the end of America's role as global hegemon would simply mean its being replaced by another global hegemon, and not some benevolent "multipolar" world that some might assume.

for americans? no, the states will loose a lot of wealth and privilege. possibly same with europe: but for the rest of the world? quite likely: china doesn't seem interested in telling every country under its aegis how to run itself or else you get contras, pinochet, or the mujahadeen. (as I keep saying, no chinese has put a fascist in la moneda). this means peoples faraway can exert self-determination, which is a good thing: trying out non-capitalist alternatives would be amazing, as Ares indicates, but hell, even good-old capitalism would be pretty sweet compared to the ancap hell the yanks are pushing the world into: a post imperial world might even be a chance for a real rules-based international system to emerge, which would be very good. the de jure situation -sovereign states making their own decisions within the framework of an internationally-agreed-upon set of laws could be a reality: imagine international law, but actually being law, instead of just the US saying what the law is based on what three swing states want and all of the rules-based institutions being like "welp, potus is bossman sooo"

[Ketsuban]

You seem to have a lot of trust that the rise of revisionist states would lead to less balancing against the US rather than more, because... China is less interested in imperialism for some reason than the United States? I imagine the people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and perhaps Manchuria would beg to differ.

[Travis B.]

You seem to have a lot of trust that the rise of revisionist states would lead to less balancing against the US rather than more, because... China is less interested in imperialism for some reason than the United States? I imagine the people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and perhaps Manchuria would beg to differ.

Exactly. Anyone who believes that China is somehow benevolent is sadly misguided.

[Torco]

China does seem to be less interested in imperialism than the states: it does not have a military base in every corner of the planet, nor does it seem interested in it, but even if China was exactly as interested in a globespanning empire as the US, it simply cannot have one: it's not that storng. see, when empires collapse *sometimes* the result is a bigger empire restoring it under new leadership (insert the beggining of romance of the three kingdoms here). But more often, what happens is that the empire does not exist, and now smaller polities exist in its stead. is our political analysis so simple that "us empire good cause china bad" ? like, no, what I want is for the planet not to be ruled by a globespanning kleptocratic empire, and yeah, especially one that is commited to pushing forwards all sorts of policies that benefit seven aristocrats at the expense of almost everyone, to anihilating unions, privatizing public services, imposing ancap ideology and making every triumph of the labour movement a thing of the past, fostering religious zealotry (insert picture of afghanistan before the mujahadeen)-

I can understand the argument for "actually trump would result in more fascism, not less", but this "it would be bad for the empire to fall" like, again, what's the alternative here: USA forever? ra ra ra? yu es ei! yu es ei! yu es ei! it's valid to be a supporter of the empire (and understandable too, especially when one lives in the core), but like... i'm not?

[Ketsuban]

like, again, what's the alternative here: USA forever? [...] it's valid to be a supporter of the empire (and understandable too, especially when one lives in the core), but like... i'm not?

As previously discussed (and on which we will apparently never agree) I don't think America constitutes an empire. It is a hegemon - its cultural output is for the most part considered more noteworthy than that of other countries even within those countries, for example - but it's possible for blocs like the European Union to form which can exert backpressure on the hegemon while remaining broadly aligned with its system of values (things like "creating new rich and free countries, or existing countries becoming rich and free, is a good thing"; China does not want rich and free countries, it wants captive markets for its huge manufacturing oversupply). The obvious solution would be for more of those to form; bodies like the African Union could perform a similar role in the future. (I thought UNASUR would be the same kind of thing for South America since it was linked on the same Wikipedia page as the African Union, but apparently everyone got worried about Maduro in 2019 and built a new clubhouse with blackjack! and hookers! called PROSUR, and that seems to be associated with Bolsonaro so I don't have an obvious example for South America. Sorry. I tried.)

[zompist]

You support a US fascist and you support a Russian fascist. You are a fascist.

and legally antisemitic too, I suppose. but seriously now, i support neither: i just care to a similar degree about americans and non-americans, and so if something is going to be bad for americans but good for the rest of the world, I will tend to prefer it: and it really looks like trump is more likely to loose the empire than biden. it's not clear that trump *will* be better for the rest of the world than biden, of course, as jcb points out, but if he were that also has to enter the equation: the rest of the world really ought to get a chance at self-government sometime this century. no russian or chinese has put a fascist in power in my country yet, and that's not nothing.

Supporting a fascist because <accelerationist nonsense> is also fascism. Supporting a fascist because <it's better for you personally> is also fascism.

The notion that fascism will be better for the world— besides being itself fascist— is also mind-bogglingly naive. Do you seriously think that Trump + GOP is less likely to go to war somewhere? They've been salivating to go to war with Mexico or Iran, and they are 110% for Israel rather than 80%. And if you think your man in Russia plans to stop after genociding Ukraine, you have simply not been keeping up. They're pretty blatant about it. There's also the little matter of China wanting to take over Taiwan. All these non-Americans don't count for you, I guess.

[Torco]

well yeah... if one saw the us as some benevolent hegemon instead of the evil empire i see it as then sure, we see the world differently enough that we're not likely to agree on any of the details: for example, the notion that the us empire wants other countries (with the likely exception of its core allies, france etcetera) to be rich and free is hard to take seriously: and anyway, who cares about *countries*, it's the people who i want to be free, chill, prosperous and all the rest of it.

just out of curiosity, what would it take for you to consider it an empire?

@zomp: this sort of commutative logic can also be applied to my position even more naturally: never mind the israeli example, the us supported and supports plenty of fascists all the time, both because of its own interest and also because, i suppose, they figure its better for the world: ergo the us is fascist. this fascist behavior is the policy of both the reps and the dems, ergo they are both fascists, ergo supporting biden is fash and supporting trump is fash: even if trump is more fash (which he certainly is) that just means that we're choosing between a fash alternative and a more fash alternative, making us either fash or more fash: i'm sure we can instances of biden supporting fash personally, if the "if you support fash you're fash" principle were not to be commutative: even so, it's a low bar for the 'support' part, since a vague preference in an election qualifies. let's see, can we find an instance of biden supporting fascists that isn't his current support for the currently occurring palestinian genocide, which is clearly here controversial... oh, yeah! alvaro uribe, hosni mubarak, the house of saud, erdogan, duterte....

so they're both fascists, and we're all fascists too if we prefer any of them wins (cause what you here mean by support is just that, a vague preference, at least on my part): our only option is jill stein, who I don't think is fash in this odd definition we've given the word... which yeah, tbh I'd love it if she won, I'd much much prefer it to trump, that's for sure: she's even liable to dismantle a lot of the more evil shit the empire does in a civilized matter rather than by incompetence (though the last president to try was JFK, and we know where that went).

We've arrived at the position of the abstainee anarchist here: they're all either fascists or totally inviable candidates, so i'm not supporting any of em... but since it's very hard to not to support anyone here (since we've given such semantic breadth to 'support' here)... anyway, sarcasm aside now: you aren't a fascist for supporting biden, and biden is not a fascist for preferring mubarak to the muslim brotherhood for whatever reasons he did, and we're not all fascists for preferring one fascist-supporter over the other fascist-supporters: we must have gone wrong somewhere in this logic.

___
and yeah they count, are you kidding me? it's all a shitshow: just because i don't have the same politician preferences as you doesn't mean I'm satan. but also, the untold millions in artificial poverty in the peripheral countries, their regimes kept horribly corrupt, their living conditions kept pretty horrible all because some CEO in some new york mansion wants cheap cobalt or whatever. the people in the banana republics kept under the boots so bananas can be cheap in american walmarts, the cubans who have to eat ration cards simply cause the Lords of Terra just want to punish them for having a different political system. this is geopolitics we're talking about.

[zompist]

so they're both fascists, and we're all fascists too if we prefer any of them wins (cause what you here mean by support is just that, a vague preference, at least on my part)

I don't get the word games... is this 1952? "Fascist" means anyone to the right of Fidel?

Again, we've been here before, communists pretending that they can't tell the difference between Léon Blum and Adolf Hitler. It doesn't mean you're cleverer or more proletarian, it means you don't give a fuck how bad the world gets, and you don't even have the excuse of needing to follow Stalin.

Also, wow, the US is responsible for Mubarak and Erdogan? I mean... what are we supposed to do? Bomb them? Of course, it's apparently also a crime when we don't support the dictatorships you happen to like. Why doesn't Erdogan make your list of approved fascists though?

[Travis B.]

Calling anyone who is right of social democrats "fascist" really dilutes the meaning of the word and renders it meaningless. Just because one does not agree with all of Biden's foreign policy positions does not make him a "fascist". Likewise, referring to both Biden and Trump as "fascist" is just yet another instance of both-sides-ism, and we know how that goes...

[MacAnDàil]

@Torco:
The main point is not whether the US is a hegemon or an empire, the main point is what are the policies and what are the consequences?

You mentioned trade unions. Biden supports trade unions more than any US president ever has while Trump opposes them. Those policies would influence those of other countries.

Likewise, Biden was VP under Obama who normalised more relations with Cuba while Trummp hardened them again. So, yet again, even on trade unions and international relations with Cuba for example, nobody's perfect but Biden is clearly better.

[MacAnDàil]

PS There are other explanations for preferring a fascist or similar: being misguided, misinformed, short-sighted, opportunistic among others.

[rotting bones]

China does seem to be less interested in imperialism than the states: it does not have a military base in every corner of the planet, nor does it seem interested in it, but even if China was exactly as interested in a globespanning empire as the US, it simply cannot have one: it's not that storng. see, when empires collapse *sometimes* the result is a bigger empire restoring it under new leadership (insert the beggining of romance of the three kingdoms here). But more often, what happens is that the empire does not exist, and now smaller polities exist in its stead. is our political analysis so simple that "us empire good cause china bad" ? like, no, what I want is for the planet not to be ruled by a globespanning kleptocratic empire, and yeah, especially one that is commited to pushing forwards all sorts of policies that benefit seven aristocrats at the expense of almost everyone, to anihilating unions, privatizing public services, imposing ancap ideology and making every triumph of the labour movement a thing of the past, fostering religious zealotry (insert picture of afghanistan before the mujahadeen)-

I can understand the argument for "actually trump would result in more fascism, not less", but this "it would be bad for the empire to fall" like, again, what's the alternative here: USA forever? ra ra ra? yu es ei! yu es ei! yu es ei! it's valid to be a supporter of the empire (and understandable too, especially when one lives in the core), but like... i'm not?

I'm not confident that Trump's bad policies will significantly weaken the empire. The empire can keep chugging along indefinitely with unboundedly bad policies. If you tell people their woes are caused by the empire, they will flat out refuse to believe you. IIRC a plurality of Republicans don't believe that the Republican Party has the platform that it in fact has!

We're dealing with a propagandized population with a fully aesthetized sense of what is or isn't factual. My interaction with people has been pretty much like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiwU5jPMnFw They think "leftism" is what the non-stop CIA psyop tells them it is.

I think international cooperation is a better strategy to end oppression because easing stress will make people less susceptible to the effects of Terror Management Theory. Giving people more free time will also give them leisure to research actual political facts.

Of course, international cooperation needs to be combined with defensive violence. You only get justice with zero violence when your proposal is already compatible with the short-term interests of the "experts". All I'm saying is: Don't support outcomes that will harm oppressed classes in other countries.

[Raphael]

Looking at the main zompist.com page, I just stumbled across this pretty old piece:

http://zompist.com/spoke.html

[zompist]

Looking at the main zompist.com page, I just stumbled across this pretty old piece:

http://zompist.com/spoke.html

Naturally Google Translate today is far better than Babelfish ever was. For fun I let Google at the text, and got this:

Full belly, happy face. It is likely that already Vm. compose some little speech in French. I mock them; my ship is armed in war, I have a vigilant and cheerful crew; and I have no shortage of ammunition. It's not their time yet; but the apricots will soon be ripe. This lake looks very fishy to me. Let's go fishing for fun. I no longer know how I am going to deal with this type of people. Let's go faster. I've never seen a worse beast. He doesn't want to walk, neither forward nor backward. Whoever asks for me, tell them I'm not at home. You don't look at the teeth of a gifted horse.

When Philippe, king of Macedonia, fell, and saw the extent of his body printed in the dust, he exclaimed: "Great gods! How small is the space we occupy in this universe!" A certain group of men in Madrid asking a guy for alms, he replied: "You're a young man, and it would be better if you worked rather than perform such a shameful task." "My lord," said the proud beggar; I ask you for money, I don't ask you for advice."

Which is, as should surprise no one, quite adequate. A little uncolloquial in spots, but it gets the gist, and even gets the fruit right. Only one line is actually bad ("fishy" for "full of fish").

Google Translate is pretty good with European languages. Researching my books, I found it mediocre for Hindi and Mandarin, and terrible at Old Chinese. I just tried it, and it hasn't got much better. E.g. it translates the beginning of the Dao De Jing thus:

Road to Road, very Avenue. Famous, very famous. The nameless beginning of heaven and earth; the named mother of all things.

Which is awful. I'm a bit surprised, since there must be hundreds of translations of this text online. A better translation: "The Way which can be explained is not the eternal Way. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. Nameless, it is the beginning of heaven and earth. Named, it is the mother of the 10,000 things."

[Torco]

I'm not confident that Trump's bad policies will significantly weaken the empire. The empire can keep chugging along indefinitely with unboundedly bad policies.

total agree on the rest of it, but on this not so much. sure, the cultural hegemony is pretty airtight right now but look at, say, de-dolarization: apparently these days only half of global central bank reserves are -notionally- greenbacks, whereas it was three quarters back in '02, and loads of countries are getting agreements a la "you know what, let's trade in rubles, or renminbi, or whatever". sure, part of it is cause russia is under sanctions, but that's kind of the point: and the more wacky the US is perceived to be by aristocrats throughout the world, the more sense it makes to get out of the dollar's aegis. the less relevant the dollar become the less power the us can exert abroad. the dollar will never be irrelevant, of course, but it can go down from being the world coin to being pretty relevant, which is a big fall. even the biden administration is worried that the current genocide might alienate the us and israel from the, as they say, international community. ultimately the position of global hegemon is a bit like the position of a mafia boss: a good mafia boss can stay in power for decades, but a bad one... if you're perceived as incompetent or cause your underlings too much trouble they may pick a different one, or go their own way: this sort of obedient in good times but suddenly rebellious sort of behaviour has been typical aristocrat behaviour throughout history, at least in historical hindsight.

@Mac:

I think good analysis needs to go beyond "which policies I prefer". At a policy level, especially at the explicit policy level (i.e. what policies a politician says they support) of course I prefer Biden: there's not even a contest. but aren't outcomes what matters? Even if we take an imaginary totally honest politician, such that we know what policies they will support etcetera, it could still be the case, at least in principle, that bad politician one might disagree with on 98% leads to preferrable outcomes than politician one might disagree with on 77% (and let's not forget, at the level of explicit policy Biden is totally for US imperialism: he's not about to, for example, bring home any of the boys in any of the however many military bases throughout the world etcetera). Unwise is the gaul who wishes for a good caesar, unwise the xiongnu who wishes for a good huangdi.

[rotting bones]

total agree on the rest of it, but on this not so much. sure, the cultural hegemony is pretty airtight right now but look at, say, de-dolarization: apparently these days only half of global central bank reserves are -notionally- greenbacks, whereas it was three quarters back in '02, and loads of countries are getting agreements a la "you know what, let's trade in rubles, or renminbi, or whatever".

The Empire is not the US if you are going by Hardt and Negri.

sure, part of it is cause russia is under sanctions, but that's kind of the point: and the more wacky the US is perceived to be by aristocrats throughout the world, the more sense it makes to get out of the dollar's aegis. the less relevant the dollar become the less power the us can exert abroad. the dollar will never be irrelevant, of course, but it can go down from being the world coin to being pretty relevant, which is a big fall. even the biden administration is worried that the current genocide might alienate the us and israel from the, as they say, international community. ultimately the position of global hegemon is a bit like the position of a mafia boss: a good mafia boss can stay in power for decades, but a bad one... if you're perceived as incompetent or cause your underlings too much trouble they may pick a different one, or go their own way: this sort of obedient in good times but suddenly rebellious sort of behaviour has been typical aristocrat behaviour throughout history, at least in historical hindsight.

Aristocrats are vulnerable to regime change. Dictatorships can survive indefinitely by paying the police and the military. The only way to defeat that is coordinated mass action so all-encompassing that the police and the military side with the people against the regime.

In my opinion, the most optimistic outcome is that scam artists suck an entire generation dry so they stop believing in the possibility of striking it rich.

[Ketsuban]

Which is awful. I'm a bit surprised, since there must be hundreds of translations of this text online. A better translation: "The Way which can be explained is not the eternal Way. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. Nameless, it is the beginning of heaven and earth. Named, it is the mother of the 10,000 things."

To be fair, translating the Tao te Ching into English is nightmare mode even for humans, so it's hardly surprising it completely flubs it even if it didn't have the handicap that you're using a translation tool for modern standard Mandarin Chinese on Classical Chinese. (I'm a fan of something like "the walk that can be walked is not the eternal walk" for the first line to replicate the effect of using 道 both as a noun "path, road" and a verb "go, travel".)

One thing the machine did better than the human here is the handling of 萬物, although Wikisource's translation opts for "myriad" which is even better.