you know, sometimes i feel like a right illiterate rube on this website watching people go off on long threads about shit I have honestly no idea about
But man am I glad to not have whatever this guy has instead of a brain
I do wish I had this much confidence to broadcast my stupidity to the world
Posting on an electric mineral about how useless minerals are
amazingly even the vuvuzela but you have an iphone argument is projection
An example that the first step to understanding centrists is you have to assume the mindset of being really really fucking stupid.
Ugh lemme guess, he thinks wealth comes from “Innovation” or some similar fairy tale.
I’m certain he thinks that.
Imagine somebody replied to him with this link to a Wikipedia section and they gave him a ~200 word baby brain summary so he doesn’t have to strain his baby noggin with big words and context and too much information.
United Fruit Company lobbying
He couldn’t understand. There’s no way to get him to understand.
How can a fruit company be powerful? They just sell fruit!
He can’t fathom that countries like the US historically and still routinely bully weaker countries and powerful entities allied with US interests benefit greatly. Sometimes it’s fruit and other times it might even literally be “digging up minerals”.
actually sweaty bananas aren’t a mineral so i’m right
Back to the banana mines with you
Drat. It’s too late now but I all I need to do was mention two words “conflict minerals”.
aktshually bananas contain minerals such as potassium. I have pwned you with facts and logic
Good for preventing muscle cramps.
Libs, 15 years ago - “Yeah, neo-colonialism is bad. But hey, what can you do? Vote with your wallet.”
Libs today - “Neo-Colonialism is based actually.”
Libs today don’t think neocolonialism exists, that’s kinda OOP’s whole deal (although it’d be easy to miss as the only defense of this idea he gives us “it’s dumb if you think it’s real”). They think colonialism was bad but the Good Guys in the West ended it a hundred or so years ago and now the third world is poor because they have bad ideas/governments.
You have to remember that liberals are idealists. As in, they believe that material conditions are caused by ideology. The West has better ideas and better systems of governance, so it’s more prosperous. They can’t believe that wealth in the imperial core comes from extraction in the global south because that means that the liberal ideology stems from the material conditions of global dominance and hegemony and not the other way around.
“Neo-Colonialism is based” is what they’ll be saying after they’ve been scratched
Innovation that uses minerals and rare earth metals, i.e. computers and other electronics.
These people legitimately think that we are pulling innovation out of thin air without resources to support it.
I guess all those gold crucifixes in European churches just appeared out of thin air
Everything in the British Museum was bought and paid for in a totally consensual and mutually beneficial exchange
America became the richest country in human history because of the Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic is that others should work hard so I don’t have to. It’s slave driver ethic, management ethic, the ethic of bourgies who glorify the ideal of “hard work” as a reward in-and-of-itself (so compensation can be reduced)
I’ve legitimately had to deprogram the whole “protestant work ethic” from a couple of coworkers and you could fucking see the gears turn in their heads when I pointed out all the ways in which it was incredibly wrong. Also apparently a lot of people in Scandinavia sort of just assumes that France is protestant, since France is rich and works hard, therefore they must be protestant.
Liberals literally have no conception of the material world and its interconnections and frankly that’s hilarious, guarantees they’re gonna blow it up
To them the world is made out of vibes and secret race blood quanta
checkmark of the beast
they hath signed their name upon the devils blockchain
E
saulon is the end of the world
this man could read if he chose British liberal texts from 200 years ago that say “we have enriched ourselves by stealing all of the colonies stuff” at no point was this a secret
Macron: without Africa, there would be no France
Noah Bilitytoselfcrit: no, actually, I think France would do just fine since Africa’s all the way over there anyway. It would cost more to boat rocks here than the rocks would be worth, I’m pretty sure.
I want to know where he thinks the wealth of nations comes from and how it doesn’t involve extraction of minerals and other resources.
“Innovation”? A vast majority of innovations use metal in some form. Modern innovations are mostly digital, and computers use many metals.
A bigger army? That’s a lot of metal needed for those guns.
From their banking system? Money isn’t real, the only reason it works is because it’s backed with power. See above.
Trade? Trade of what, Noah, fucking aqua?
His take actually helps me understand why libs keep screeching for decoupling with China as if it wouldn’t crash the entire world economy. They don’t think that things are made out of raw materials and labor.
Beyond this dork, this is genuinely what modern economists claim to continue defending endless growth in the face of climate change: that growth itself will decouple from its environmental effects / from actual resources extraction and exploitation (and all that means for local ecosystems). As far as I can tell it is treated as absolute truth - almost as if it’s common sense - by these freaks.
Cutting off your face to spite your nose
wealth comes from the service industry duh
the wealth of nations comes from taking in each other’s washing
I have never seen this guy say anything that was not monumentally stupid and very easily disproven
His take on how to bring peace to Gaza was amazing. I assume he said to himself “I’ll figure out this Gaza thing. I don’t know anything about it but what’s to know! I’ll google and then write a few thousand words.” And he did. I only scanned it very quickly but his take was that after the war Gaza would be able to rebuild itself via tourism. I don’t think he googled very hard.
-–
Ninja edit
Shit. Neither archive.today nor achive.org have a full copy. That’s a shame. I, myself, should have put it into archive.today when I had the chance. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…
It’s behind a paywall - Economic possibilities for Gaza - by Noah Smith
does this guy think we’re paying a fair price for resources and labor?
Um akshully sweety a “fair” price is just what the Invisible Hand of the Free Market (Low Interest Rates Be Upon Him) sets as a price.
Paying the market rate for comprador bureacrats and politicians.
this guy thinks there’s no such thing as labor at all, and the extraction is just resources
Libs really do only have one functioning neuron
Yea and they have to share it between all of them
and it’s a merit-based sharing system, not equal turns, but they need the neuron to decide who deserves the neuron
The neuron I am using says that I should hold on to the neuron. Work harder and maybe one day you will be someone who should have it.
Except the market decides who gets the neuron.
They have to use it wisely between reading Harry Potter and starving a child
Complete mystification of the economy. Wealth comes from trading a briefcase back and forth.
How do metaphors work
I’m convinced that most libs just look at political cartoons and go “so true!” Without understanding the content. Their biggest fear is being perceived as anything but the adult in the room so they’ll just pretend that they understand or that the topic is so complex nobody can understand.
Therefore, there’s probably also a really big hidden market for a lib Ben Garrison that just spells shit out with labels.
My brain made a few quick thoughts here and my conclusion is that this is the sort of person who would say “ah, but have you considered that people = money?”
