“Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.” – Karl Marx
Corrado Gini
“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. [Wealth Gini Coefficent=.333] Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’
“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ [Wealth Gini Coefficent=.400]
“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.
“‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. [Wealth Gini Coefficent=.489] For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ — Matthew 25:14-30, New International Version, bolding and bracketed comments blasphemously added by robc
Jesus seems to go against Marx from the beginning, as the rich man gives his servants money to take care of according to their abilities. The inequalities start then, but are relatively low at a Gini Coefficient (GC) of .333. Due to the men’s work investing the money, the GC increases to .400 by the time the wealthy man returns from his journey. And when the one man fails to invest properly, the GC is increased by taking his gold away. And not only is it then given to someone wealthier, but to the wealthiest of the servants, increasing the GC up to .489.
While there was an increase in inequality due to the malinvestment by the last servant, there was an even larger change increase in inequality by the redistribution from the poorest to the wealthiest.
And people say that Jesus was a communist?
Another parable I like is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. At the end the Lord of the Vinyard pays everyone the same regardless of how long they were hired for. When the first workers complain the owner says, it’s none of your business what I pay these people, my deal was with then not you.
Yeah, I like that one too.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that time Jesus told the rich guy to give all his money to the poor and that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter paradise.
There’s a reason why Christian monks have a history of taking a vow of poverty.
But neither of those is pro-communism.
Also, as should always be pointed out — read further.
“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
I think the 3 verses need to be read together.
My point is it seems Jesus is vague on whether profit and greed are good. Sometimes, he says you should give alms and that the poor are noble. Elsewhere, he tells parables like the above, where the ones who earn the most are the most virtuous.
I suppose you could argue he wasn’t actually talking about money, just using it because it’s a concrete example.
The third servent wasn’t punished for earning the least, but for failing to even try and then denigrating his employer (ie, a poor work ethic).
See, proof positive that Jesus was a protestant.
A Calvinist protestant, at that.
I don’t think is was vague about greed at all.
But advising someone to be caritable unto personal privation is not the same thing as forcably taking the funds away.
Also, the interpretation of the parable in the article is wrong, because at the end the money is still the rich man’s, as it was at the start. How he allocates the shepherding of it among his employees has nothing to do with wealth equality. Now if there were some information on the remuneration of these servants, that would be different.
Insert (((commission))) joke here.
“But advising someone to be caritable unto personal privation is not the same thing as forcably taking the funds away.”
How else are you going to get the wreckers and kulaks to play nice, huh?
This is to deal with the rich man’s love of money rather than people.
Also, Jesus did not summon down a legion of angels and shake the dude down for all he is worth. Then proceed to tell the now poor man that he should feel good.
But when asked about paying taxes to the Romans, he said render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
Like I said, it’s hard to pin down his views.
Roman money versus sacred money. It was okay to pay roman taxes with roman money because there was nothing holy about it – and it kept the romans from getting all stabby.
And to God what is Gods.
But yes, his views are hard to pin down. I never claimed he was a libertarian, just that he wasn’t a communist.
To paraphrase CS Lewis, because I cant be bothered to look up the exact quote:
Anyone who ends there political views with “thus sayeth the Lord”, lies, and lies badly.
I would argue J is closer to libertarianism than the left or right. Of course his purpose was spirtual leadership and quite purposely not governmental rule and leadership.
I started an essay a few months ago along these lines but quit because
1 I am a poor writer
2 I thought it was becoming too wordy and preachy
Who was more NAP that Jesus? I mean, other than that time he snapped at the lady grabbing his robe and the time he hulked out and flipped over the money changer’s table, the guy was pretty pro-NAP.
Well, the robe thing was just the intro to a demonstration of his power and authority.
And as far as driving out the money changers, his father (whose house it was), had specifically given him authority to do it.
Agreed there.
So many of the parables and answers to questions are dealing with different topics. Just because two dealt with money I don’t think mean they are dealing with economics.
>The rich man’s love of money was preventing him from loving people as His second greatest commandment states.
>Paying taxes to Caesar was the ruling elite trying to trick him into saying something they could bring before the Romans to have him strung up.
I dont think they were JUST dealing with economics. But just because there are layers doesn’t mean you should ignore the literal.
I do believe He was literally saying “pay your taxes.” Caesar is your earthly ruler and you are under his authority. But the second part is just as important to render to God what belongs to God, you.
It is probably more important.
Romans 13:1 reiterates that all political authority is ordained by God – it later served as the foundation for the divine right of kings.
If Jesus had pointed a weapon at the guy while his disciples robbed him of everything he owned it would be a perfect analogy.
Government?
It’s what Jesus and his homies do together.
Speaking of Jesus and his homies… I know for a fact that none of them where married. There is no chance in hell that they would have been married and been allowed to go out and hang out with the bros for a few months traveling the country side if there where any wives involved. Wives can’t stand homies hanging out…
Peter had a mother-in-law, but I assume he was widowed.
I think the vow of poverty and to remain chaste have more to do with the church ensuring that its own wealth is not pissed away to all of its employees. That has always been my understanding.
So much this… Give your wealth to the church and make no heirs that can contest it…
Oh yeah- and the part about how blessed are the poor, for they are rich in spirit.
The parable of the prodigal son goes against capitalism as well. The son who blew all his dad’s money gets a hero’s welcome and the son who was responsible gets an “eh, good for you.”
But he didnt take the responsible son’s inheritance away and share it with the first son.
The parable was about joy for someone returning to the fold. Rescuing a sinner is really important – nothing is taken away from the saint.
28 And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him.
29 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.
31 And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.
32 It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
It’s an awful lesson in my opinion.
Is a person who promises to do better after screwing up over and over better than someone who consistently does the right thing?
I mean, if you had a choice of hiring someone with a solid work history vs someone who had a long list of screw ups to his name, who would you pick?
But he wasn’t hiring. He was welcoming a son home.
The other son still had the job on the home farm.
And it was the father’s stuff to do with as he saw fit, it was none of the other son’s business what the Father did with it.
It’s just odd to see the contrast in the two parables. The servant who returns the money without increasing it is chastised, but the son who wastes all the money he was given is welcomed back. The servants who doubled their money are celebrated but the responsible son gets no reward.
It’s almost like neither parable is really about money at all.
Or both are AND about other things.
I think you are missing the point of the parable of the laborers mentioned in #1.
The responsible son gets his reward, he gets his inheritance.
The responsible son it turns out isn’t completely responsible, as he is covetous of his brother.
I think the responsible son is perfectly reasonable in viewing that situation, before his father explains things, and saying, “Aw, come on!”
The parable doesn’t relate the responsible son’s reaction to his father’s explanation.
He’s welcomed back, but he’s not getting anything else. Everything else is left to the other son. But the father has every right to be happy for his son going back.
The “title” historically given it “The prodigal son” could also be the parable of “The other son”. He’s really speaking to the pharisees there and their views about repenting sinners and not seeing the value of God’s grace.
I think the message there is everyone deserves a second (umpteenth?) chance. I agree with second, maybe even third. But after that I will point out I am not Jesus and you are out of luck.
I think Lt. Col. Jean V. DuBois (Ret) would like to have a word with you about that …
70 times 7 chance, if you will.
Which is a shorthand for infinity, I believe.
right
Thanks to the staff for the images.
The music link was all mine.
Gini coefficient of cemetery = 0.
Something for progressives to aspire to.
Nice. Possibly a division by zero error, but the limit as you approach the cemetary is 0.
What’s the I Dream of Jeannie Coefficient though?
Binormal distribution.
A *narrowed gaze*.
+1 nose wiggle
That was Samantha Stevens.
Would. Totally.
Well, back in the day.
OT
I wanted to chime in on the colonialism thing.
I lived in Tanzania for a few years and colonialism is a big part of the history curriculum there. The basic consensus is that yes, the Europeans brought some good things like medicine and literacy, but it came at steep cost. The Germans were the first to colonize East Africa and they were very cruel. Every major town in Tanzania has a German fort (boma) and a hanging tree. The British were nicer, but they still bossed people around and generally treated the locals like dirt.
I think the bottom line is a lot of people think might makes right, and the only way they learn better as after they get their ass kicked.
In grad school, I translated German documents from SudWest Afrika – the dominant tribe in the area was not really cool with these Germans coming in and taking over. Germans said “meet Herr Spandau” They went from a large majority of the populace to about .8% in a short time.
“Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not. ”
-some fucking white male, 1898
The bottom line to the entire colonialism thing is this: colonialism, as a whole, is the only political system in human history that has a kill rate on par with fascism and communism (hell, if I crunch the numbers, it probably beats fascism, especially if you don’t count the Japanese). If millions of people died are justified by some increased literacy rates and ROADZ, we have no right to criticize communists when they feed us the same bullshit.
Except that for the most part, the perspective we gain from the historical record of colonialism has led people (like us) to reject it, yet supporters of those other ideologies and cultures of which you speak, have not.
Two reasons for that:
1. Colonialism was the face of capitalism in the developing world, whether we like it or not. Nothing has set capitalism back more internationally than this association. When colonialism directly validates Marxist criticisms of capitalism, it’s an ideological victory for them.
2. Decolonization basically occurred at the worst possible time for these countries to have a solid, Western educated elite class. If said elites had been educated in the West in the 1820s, they would have studied Adam Smith and the Enlightenment. In the 30s to 60s they were instead taught by Marxist professors. The results are not surprising.
1. Colonialism was the face of capitalism in the developing world, whether we like it or not. Nothing has set capitalism back more internationally than this association. When colonialism directly validates Marxist criticisms of capitalism, it’s an ideological victory for them.
You’ve got it precisely backwards. Colonialism long predates Marxism. The reason colonialism validates the Marxist critique of capitalism is because colonialism was the object of the Marxist critique of capitalism and deliberately conflates the two, despite colonial mercantilism having really fuck all to do with capitalism.
No, I don’t, I’m in fact directly recognizing the Marxist conflation. The problem it’s understandably hard to explain that to people who lived under the colonial systems of capitalist countries. It also doesn’t help when capitalists turn around and defend colonial regimes.
i think it makes it harder to explain to people if you concede that the Marxist critique is correct without challenging the conflation of colonialism and capitalism. It’s an especially absurd conflation when it’s arguable the extent to which any colonial empire was capitalist, even domestically, subsequent to their colonialism. Spain, France, Britain and the Ottomans didn’t exactly spring up laissez faire shoots from their colonialist roots, unless we define “capitalism” down to the meaninglessness where China and the Emirates qualify, which is the modern neo-Marxist position.
I think that conflation is also why you see modern “capitalists”, for some definition of the term, defend colonialism. It’s not so much on the merits of colonialism as a stand-alone system, but in light of the fact that the bulk of anti-colonial criticism is Marxist and revisionist. The Bill Buckley/National Review set would probably fall into that camp, for example.
i think it makes it harder to explain to people if you concede that the Marxist critique is correct without challenging the conflation of colonialism and capitalism.
Who’s doing that? The point is that, to them, colonialism is what capitalism represents, and it validates every Marxist criticism of capitalism. So in order to get them beyond that, one must take a deeply held and enforced belief and challenge it. Deeply held beliefs are fundamentally hard to change.
It’s not so much on the merits of colonialism as a stand-alone system, but in light of the fact that the bulk of anti-colonial criticism is Marxist and revisionist. The Bill Buckley/National Review set would probably fall into that camp, for example.
And that’s reflective of an ideological bankruptcy. If you’re willing to drop deeply held principles and defend something because your opponent criticizes it, you’ve lost the moral high ground. Which is my point. If you want to convince people don’t defend tyrants and murderers because the left doesn’t like them.
Wasn’t colonialism tied to mercantilism, or am i confusing my history?
“Wasn’t colonialism tied to mercantilism, or am i confusing my history?”
I would say the initial colonial waves, c. 1500-late 1700s would be mercantile.
But the second phase, the “new imperialism” was more associated with capitalism (allowing for JT’s caveats). For example, the British government argued that the Opium War was necessary since the Qing refusal to allow trade was against the normal practices of mankind.
In similar fashion, the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt and the French invasion of part of North Africa (I forget which part now) were justified by the refusal of the local governments to repay loans and allow European traders to operate freely.
You & I may not see this as free markets but that was the justification used at the time.
Deeply held beliefs are fundamentally hard to change.
You have to first acknowledge that they’re wrong, which you seem very reluctant to do in the case of anti-colonialists who scapegoat capitalism for 200 year old wrongs that had little or no basis even in modern “state capitalism”, let alone the purist variety. That was my point to begin with. Anti-colonialism has its origins in Marxism, and consequently a lot of anti-colonial criticism is actually Marxist revisionism and outright lies. The fact that colonialists fit the Marxist villain narrative isn’t the happy coincidence you make it out to be, it’s by design. Marx scapegoated the merchant class by appealing to the oppression of colonialism. That the proles bought the lie doesn’t validate the Marxist critique, and they shouldn’t have their delusion indulged because colonialism is bad, which you appear quite willing and happy to do for them.
If you’re willing to drop deeply held principles and defend something because your opponent criticizes it, you’ve lost the moral high ground.
There’s a difference between that and “Hey, this narrative spun by revisionist academic Marxists about capitalist resource exploitation is actually a gigantic crock of shit.” I think you’ll find very few people of any political stripe willing to defend colonialism outright, but a few who reject the mainstream historical interpretation, based on neo-Marxist critical theory, that scapegoats based on race and wealth. Challenging that narrative often means defending a speculative alternative one that might paint colonialism in a less-bad light than the revisionists, and then the revisionists call you an apologist for colonialism. That happened a lot during the cold war period in particular, because anti-colonialism had no intellectual foundation outside of Marx, so any rejection of communism could be construed as defense of colonialism.
There’s also those who speculate that colonized populations would have ended up as bad or worse in the absence of colonialism, which of course is pure historical speculation and impossible to evaluate objectively. Those seem to be the people you actually have the most quarrel with. The problem is you’re arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and you’re absolutely convinced that your count is more accurate than any other.
The problem with this way of thinking is that I find fault in the assertion that had there been no colonization, that the death toll would have been lower. Could very well be so, but in general my experience has been that that was not the case. Maybe people are more inclined to accept the local strong man offing his own people than some yokel from elsewhere doing the killing, but these places had plenty of killing and brutality going on without the white man coming to do his thing.
Could very well be so, but in general my experience has been that that was not the case.
What’s your ‘general experience’? Because the historical record does not support this at all.
India basically had one major famine ever century under the Mughals. Not great, but not engineered as a result. The British take over India, covert large amounts of their agriculture to cash crops, and they have a famine every decade instead. Over fifty million people died as a result. The British in India were worse than Stalin. You can’t tell me that the Mughals would have resulted in the same loss of life, that’s entirely unsupported by the realities of their reign. And that’s not to frame the Mughals as wonderful people either, but the reality is that, no, it’s actually very unlikely that death counts would be anywhere near as high.
bloody ungrateful wogs, the lot of them
Diets of cotton and opium will to strange things to a man.
Gentleman, you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention
“What’s your ‘general experience’? Because the historical record does not support this at all.”
I was quoting historical records and my personal experience living in over 25 countries across the globe.
For example, Native American cultures are romanticized, IMO to create a belief they were peaceful Gaia worshipers that would make hippies look like barbarians. They might have been far better at the whole being one with Gaia thing, but they certainly were not peaceful. At least not all the time. War was a constant thing amongst most of those nations. Shift to Asia, and it is obvious that there have been tons of despots ranging from regional warlords in places like Afghanistan and so on to empires where the aristocracy used the commoner as fodder, all jockying for power in one form or another. Africa was worse. People act as if the genocidal events we have seen even in recent history are an anomaly when they were part and parcel of culture there since forever.
Acting as if the killing and brutality didn’t exist before or without the white man is kind of idiotic. Man by his very nature is violent, and the more primitive and fragile the society, the more prone it is to violence to keep the status quo.
Acting as if the killing and brutality didn’t exist before or without the white man is kind of idiotic. Man by his very nature is violent, and the more primitive and fragile the society, the more prone it is to violence to keep the status quo.
No one is doing that, and this is a lame strawman that entirely ignores the actual agreements presented. The point is that the colonial systems that were installed were highly effective at mass murder. Rants about perceptions of how Indians are viewed is irrelevant to the basic historical fact that colonial systems overwhelmingly killed more people in the regions they took over than the people who existed there before, in lieu of both their technology and central planning models. You suggested that the death toll would be lower, and that is entirely unsupported by every piece of historical evidence we have.
Here’s another way to put it: would you prefer to live in the system you live in now, or a communist regime? This system certainly isn’t wonderful, and it kills its fair share of people, but it’s existence doesn’t justify a regime that’s far worse.
Erm, I think what was there before was just as bad if not worse than what came after.
So the Mughals are worse than the British, despite not murdering fifty million of them?
How about the Soviet Union and the Tsar?
All cultures have been at war with each other since the dawn of time. Separating the winners out as being especially evil is silly. Just because the tribe from the Iberian peninsula was able to cross a thousand miles of ocean and conquer the Carribean does not make them more evil than the tribe that had just come a couple of hundred miles and was already eating their way through the Antilles.
I think we all agree that by our standards today nearly all of history is filled with evil and horror. I am not willing to say that some cultures that prevailed in wide conflicts were especially evil. That ridiculous notion is fueled by resentment of losers guilt of the descendants of the winners and greed from thieves looking for reparations.
Well said Suthen.
No one is asking you to recognize cultures as evil, what they’re asking you to recognize is that a monstrous system killed millions of people. Which you’re willing to do with communist and fascism, but not colonialism
Again, these qualifiers are garbage I expect from Maoists, not libertarians.
You misunderstand John, or I did not make myself clear. The system was monstrous, but it was the same system that existed everywhere since the dawn of time with all peoples. And I recognize those systems as evil. I do call them evil. I am certainly not defending them.
Originally I pointed out that colonialism at least produced some good things, something that nearly no other conquering cultures have done.
We in the west do recognize that evil. We refrain from it now. As you pointed out, largely from exposure to marxism, many if not most of the cultures that were colonized do not recognize that and still subscribe to the looting warrior culture.
The India example you are using is too broad, as you are conflating multiple issues together. True, the Bengal famine of the late 18th century is exactly as you describe: the British East India Company won a firman from the Mughal Emperor to collect taxes in Bengal and immediately reorganized the economy in such a way that it was unprepared for a famine that struck, making the famine much more severe and resulting in the deaths of millions. But later famines were less the result of colonial meddling and more the result of government inaction: the government refused to feed the people who had no jobs, so they died. Considering that many of the Princely States at the times of these famines contributed even less government money to famine relief than the British did, to the point that in one of the famines Indians were fleeing to British lands, I can’t see how these later famines were worse under British rule than they would have been under Indian rule. Which is not to excuse the British actions (there is a case for government welfare in extreme circumstances), but simply to say you are laying too much at the feet of this specific instance of colonialism.
The overwhelming point is that major famines skyrocket when the British are in control specifically because of their push for a greater cash crop economy. These famines weren’t just sudden bad luck that just happened to start in the late 18th century and suddenly significantly declined after independence. It’s a classic example of centralized planning resulting in horrific outcomes.
The point is fair, it’s just the example is overbroad. The famines in the 18th century fit perfectly with your point. The famines in the 19th century are a mixed bag, as some of them were exacerbated by economic meddling, some were exacerbated by lack of economic meddling, and some went fine (in the rare instance the British felt sorry about their previous response and so actually decided to feed the poor). The famines of the 20th century don’t fit your point, as there was only one (not one per decade) and it happened to coincide with World War 2, when resources were scarce for everyone (although I guess central planning does play a role here, too). My point is just that your example would work better if you narrowed it down to the events that fit, because the narrative you repeated (famines once per decade throughout colonialism, unprecedented and ending at independence) sounds like your source was a revisionist Indian nationalist. The actual history has more than enough evidence to support your point without embellishment.
It’s a classic example of centralized planning resulting in horrific outcomes.
Indian agriculture remained centrally planned after independence as well though. They just adopted better practices.
The Bengal Famine of ’43 was a case of “the wogs eat or we move war stuff….sorry woggy.”
The main difference is that if the local strongman kills people, then it is on the local strongman. If westerners kill them instead, even if they killed less then the local strongman would have hypothetically killed, those deaths are on the westerners. Moral agency is a bitch like that. Just because someone else may do a bad thing, that doesn’t justify other people doing other bad things.
This is exactly my point.
Tanzania/Germans; maji maji uprising, c. 250,000 Africans killed.
Okay, but other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?
skipping past the very-fascinating “History is full of bad stuff”-discussion…
here’s a thought-experiment
(likely doomed to complete failure, but anyway…) =
– Would Mexico be improved or worsened if it were overthrown and turned into a US vassal-state?
(subquestion: has that already effectively happened? second subquestion: would the US end up worse off for doing so?)
whether you call it a ‘colony’ or not is sort of irrelevant. the question is more along the lines of whether Mexico would actually benefit itself more (e.g. its population and its own economic/social development) by retaining its nominal sovereignty the way it is…. or whether US annexation of mexico could theoretically produce benefits far in excess of it own independent (and highly corrupt) potential.
the basis for this is more or less derived what Razorfist said in his ‘build the wall’ video; he basically argued that mexico is a quasi-failed state which will remain failed in perpetuity because the US enables it via a ‘release valve’ for a disaffected population. his ‘solution’ was basically to cut it off, and stop letting them use the US as a release value, and expected a internal “mexican civil war” to come about as a consequence.
my hypothetical is basically wondering, ‘would the better solution be to just buy the place and own it?’
I can tell you that the US would be worse off….
do continue
The corrupt Mexican political class would join our corrupt political class, and that union would produce even worse results for freedom loving people of either?
i actually agree with your basic idea that the net-net could possibly be for the worse. i’m not sure if any group of politicians is ever really ‘unified’. they are similar conduits between cronies and the patronage system, but that doesn’t really make them pals.
i think about the thing sort of like a “mergers and acquisitions” sum-of-parts analysis. yes, there are obvious liabilities, and areas that would probably suffer (just think of the glee of democrats having a whole new country of dependents to pander to)… but then there’s also the upside potential of such a inefficient and badly-run economy. The boom in growth/development/investment that would likely result would probably outpace the ability of politicians to graft it away.
i don’t think anything like this will ever happen, obv, but i do think that sooner or later the US is going to be forced to “do something” about the fact that our largest neighbor is a 3rd world shithole.
Back in the 1990s when there was the Mexican loan crisis, I thought we should have offered them the money as a payment for Baja California. Make it a territory with statehood upon reaching certain goals. It would have shortened the land border with the US. Nice tourist locations within the US. And would have answered your question with a small experiment.
I think that (vs biting off the whole thing at once) would have benefited both that part of Mexico and the US.
I am pro manifest destiny. From sea to sea, Boffin Bay to Tierra del Fuego.
Cuba and Puerto Rico are obviously not perfect analogies, but the one that became a US vassal state is infinitely better off in terms of material wellbeing of its people than the one that became independent.
well, i think puerto ricans are most often compared to dominicans, and i’m pretty sure the standard of living in the DR is … at least marginally better, if not wildly so. Cuba isn’t a fair comp obviously.
I used PR and Cuba only because their entanglements with the United States were both borne of the Spanish-American war and they were on similar pre-war footing as Spanish colonies, so their modern history therefore has a similar starting point. One ends the war as an American territory, the other an independent sovereign. The historical complication, of course, is that free Cuba became a Soviet vassal state. It’s not surprising that a Soviet vassal state ended up worse off than an American one.
And in the period from 1898 to 1960, sovereign Cuba was one of the richest states in the Americas. Puerto Rico…wasn’t.
Pat – Have you looked at their books lately?
Gilmore – Have you ever cleaned a honeypot? Taken in an urchin?
is that some sex thing?
It’s a bucket full of shit. Like my grandfather said “You cant stir the shit without getting it on you.”
Pat – Have you looked at their books lately?
Yes. The material wellbeing of the people is a separate question from their public finances. Puerto Ricans will be better off in pubic bankruptcy than any living Cuban whose last name isn’t “Castro” will ever be. Like I said though, it’s not a great analogy because Mexico, for all its problems, isn’t a dilapidated communist dictatorship.
has that already effectively happened?
There’s a fun 19th century map of the US an Mexican railroad systems. The US one crisscrosses and connects major cities and small towns, the Mexican one looks like a Christmas tree with the tip of it connecting to the US one. Regardless of how we define the economic systems that created that and what power (economic, military, political) that brought it to bear, you definitely had an infrastructure built around the idea of harvesting resources and passing them north.
Yes. And i think in many ways this is still the case. And i suspect its not going to change sans some drastic measures. A social revolution in mexico would not necessarily produce better outcomes. Venezuela on a grander scale, more like. I just think its a long term problem and there aren’t any easy answers.
Dunno, after 50 years of owning Philippines, it’s not like US made it anything but a third-world shithole. With an Islamic insurgency to boot.
If you’d like to have an Iraq next door until you give up, go grab Mexico by all means. Unless you can ensure that population density of Spanish-speaking people is the same as it was after American-Mexican war, you ain’t incorporating that.
(I’m presuming you’re not adding the Mexican states as new US states with Senate and House representatives, and giving the 127 mililon Mexican citizens US citizenship – you know, acting as a Colonizer).
You don’t think we’d have the hubris of the French colonial ideal?
You will be Parisians, over there. Your land will be contiguous with France, over there. YOU WILL BE INTEGRATED AND PERFECTED AS FRENCH.
United United States would be hilarious, to be sure.
That was basically the initial plan for what the UN would be. There’s a great alternate history book to be written about that.
Note how every major successful formerly colonial nation is a product of settler colonization (i.e. replacing the native population overwhelmingly with your own) not exploitation colonization (foreign elites exploiting a subjugated population).
i don’t think its a fair comparison for many reasons. One, its an island. you can’t change an island culture from the outside. Mexico is tied to the US by the hip, literally.
Also, i don’t think the US “made” anything in 50 years.
Well, the Philippines was given independence at the close of WWII – after everyone had gone through a lot. The first few governments were pretty solid till Marcos took over and implemented martial law.
“I wanted to chime in on the colonialism thing.”
As soon as I saw that…*sigh*…I thought, oh shit here we go again.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
Trying to project 19th/20th century political and economic philosophies and ideologies on 1st century semi-literate zealous carpenters is bloody retarded.
what if that carpenter was magic though?
Even if he’s magical, if he didn’t know about germ theory he sure as shit doesn’t know about the means of production.
You can’t discount what the divine carpenter wizard does or doesn’t know through magic. Hell he was already living post-scarcity with his loaves and fishes multiplication spell and his water to hooch transmogrification spell. Dude was like level 20+
Please. Jesus wasn’t a divine carpenter wizard. He was clearly multiclassing wizard/cleric.
I think once you get to 9th level spells a wizard can pretty much duplicate a cleric’s skillset, but you could be right about the multiclass. He seems like a pretty charismatic dude though so maybe he was a Sorcerer/Cleric or something.
So did he cast raise dead or resurrections spells? And he was not much of a wizard because he didn’t start teleporting until after they nailed him to the cross…
Look, Create water is a level 0 spell in modern games and was like, level 1 in AD&D if you’re old school. He only cast it once that day to my knowledge. No way he’s level 20 based on that.
The first people to actually use the term “means of production” didn’t know about germ theory either. By that standard there is no historical writing from prior to the 18th century that has any political or economic philosophical implications on the modern world. And that, my friend, is bloody retarded.
That’s an incoherent leap that makes absolutely no sense.
The point is that trying to say “Jesus was a communist” when he didn’t even live in an industrial economy or hierarchical structure that establishes the metaphysical framework that was the core of communistic thought is bloody retarded. He lacked the ideological framework to be considered even close. Hell, by the communists’ own definitions of the progress of history he couldn’t really be one.
This does not in anyway suggest that anything before the 18th century has no political or economic philosophical implications on the modern world, and to come up with that based on what I wrote is, in fact, bloody retarded.
“Are you tryin’ to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?”
Meh. He hated baseball, devoting his life to soccer as a goalie.
Marxism is a communist ideology, but not the first or only. Even Marx himself imputed communism onto primitive pre-agricultural human societies – private property being a byproduct of surplus, in his view. Likewise there were analogues of what we now call “capitalism” long before its academic exposition. You seem to have whittled what was an incredibly broad statement – that a 1st century person without knowledge of germ theory couldn’t have understood the means of production – to an incredibly specific one – that a 1st century person couldn’t have understood the means of production in a Marxist framework because Marx was still 18 centuries away from being born. Forgive me for taking the broader implication, but I think it’s more a fault of your implication than my inference. Obviously you couldn’t say “Jesus was a Marxist” with any accuracy, but you could certainly say “the teachings of Jesus are most compatible with communism as a social organization”, for example.
Weren’t there some nasty rumors that Jesus spent time as an Essene monk? They were pretty solid communists (people living in a commune without personal property) ?
“Even if he’s magical, if he didn’t know about germ theory …”
Heh. Yeah, I usually get silence when I ask “If those guys were so wise why couldn’t they figure out how to keep their own shit out of their food supply?”
Semi-literate?
He seemed to have mastered the Torah or Talmud or some of those other (((works))).
I view vowel-less languages very negatively.
They have vowels. Orthography is not Phonology
Orthography is not Phonology
If google can be trusted, that is only the 5th time that phrase has ever been used.
At least in written form. On the internet.
So I don’t win anything? Damn.
So, Rule #34 or no?
I should have a site up by the end of the week, now that I know others are interested…
Not in the Torah I’m pretty sure. And the messy vowel written system they use now is from the Middle Ages.
That’s what I mean about othography is not phonology. They don’t have written vowels, but they do have vowels.
Fair enough, *I view vowel-less written languages very negatively.
So basically the Semitic languages can go to hell, Greek’s where it’s at.
I can struggle my way through Koine if someone put a gun to my head and gave me enough time. I was never a big fan though and since I was a Medievalist I got a pass in my classics classes for being shitty at Greek,
The irony being that Greek, and just about every other Indo-European language I can think of, is written using a writing system borrowed from the Semitic language family.
@Negroni
Yes, both Homeric and Koine suck. Attic is where it’s at.
lol no way would I even attempt Attic. Late Antiquity is as far back as I go. I’m cool with Latin since I pretty much had to be, but I much prefer working in the Germanic vernaculars and I learned them first. I studied Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, Old Icelandic, and Gothic before I ever took a Latin or Greek class. For that matter I did all those before I took German. My German accent is weird to say the least and I randomly inject really archaic words when I can’t think of the proper NHG word.
just about every other Indo-European language I can think of, is written using a writing system borrowed from the Semitic language family
Hey, I’m perfectly fine with improving on a faulty product. I’m not using Roman numerals out of nostalgia.
LXIX
Your mom is not Phonology. BURN.
I think the vanco is starting to try my brain…
Fry not try. SEE?!??!
*Sizzles*
Jesus seemed like a big supporter of the Ten Commandments – which is pretty much a repudiation of communism.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
That has to burn the ears of a Bernie Bro.
But it’s totes different when the government does it.
It absolves you of that sin, and you can secretly continue to covet while virtue signaling otherwise..
Most Bernie Bros I’ve met vacilate with (to paraphrase Stewie from Family Guy: “It’s not that I want him to be poor, it’s just that I don’t want him to have all that stuff he worked for anymore”.
Fuckers.
On the other hand, you’ve got Matthew 6:24, Mark 10:21-25, Luke 6:24, Luke 6:19-25, and Luke 12:13-21. There isn’t a flattering portrayal of a rich person in any of the red letters, or the entire New Testament for that matter. Only the Old Testament patriarchs.
It’s not until after Christ’s death that the church goes full commie though. Acts 2:44-45 is “From each according to his ability to each according to his means” nearly word for word with the caveat of religious solidarity. Then in Acts 5 you get the first executions of hoarders and wreckers, Ananias and Sapphira.
This is what happens when you open a page with no comments, leave it open for an hour before you read it, and forget to refresh before adding your 2 cents.
Well that explains why (((we))) are evil capitalists and the current Pope is Che without the groupies.
What makes you think he doesnt have groupies?
They prefer the term “altar server”
I would read A&S a little differently: “Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4 Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
Shorthand version I heard 25 years ago:
He lied, he died. She lied, she died.
Yes, they were ostensibly killed by the holy spirit and not by the church leaders as well.
Boil it down to its essence though: early Christians were obligated to give all of their material possessions to the church and the two who held a little back for themselves were killed for it as a demonstration:
Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.
Apparently it was only the literal Jerusalem congregation and just that one time frame. There is no evidence of anything that extreme going on in the other churches as Paul traveled and etc.
It was a time of crisis, not a overarching principle.
Although it does say something about what the christian community should do in some extreme disaster scenario.
I would contest that Ananias and Sapphira got it because they were liars.
(probably won’t be around for the Afternoon Lynx, may post this again if ZARDOZ or STEVE SMITH do Friday Night Links this evening, but I need to get it off my chest)
You know why this is the only place I discuss politics now? Because when I try to talk to my prog friends it’s so obvious they don’t give a shit about anything except for team. I decided to try to temper down their boners for Kamala Harris (shudder) with a list of the shit she did as Attorney General, and all I get is “She had to do it! It was her office! She had to defend the state!” This, of course, from the same people who were all “STUNNING AND BRAVE!” when the acting attorney general in January said she wouldn’t defend Trump’s travel ban.
If you have a left-leaning person who is a committed, honest, and has some kind of principles, those arguments will work. But the majority of people, who are really just trend-following, virtue signalling tribalists? Nothing matters but supporting the tribe and its leadership. They’re principle-less, if Harris came up with a travel ban they’d call it harsh but necessary.
“If you have a left-leaning person who is a committed, honest, and has some kind of principles, those arguments will work.”
I disagree respectfully sir. If you have a committed, honest, and principled person, they won’t be leftists.
Well, this is charming.
I guess somebody had a shovel they weren’t using.
strangely specific
I am QUITE sure I do NOT want to know what was planned with those items.
*shudder*
First century eastern Med societies were pretty big on the idea of limited good. You should all recognize the idea: the pie size is fixed and it is not getting any bigger and the only way to get ahead is via theft. Or hooking up with a sugar daddy. I believe the technical term there is patron.
The rich dude and the first two servants are the bad guys and the last one is the only virtuous one.
The whole story is there to serve as a contrast to the parable immediately proceeding and as a warning that God isn’t coming back to return us all to the glorious days of 1950s union manufacturing anytime soon.
At least that’s the take away if you are a first century peasant or twenty first century Soviet Union apologist.
Can you blame them for having that world view when society was rigged to control the pie and who had access to it?
For most of human history, the pie wasnt expanding. There were times and places here or there where it did, but mostly things were pretty flat.
So, not so much a pie as a pancake?
Looking at the Maddison Project database, the eastern empire area was basically flat in per capita GDP from AD 1 to AD 1820. Egypt was significantly down.
I have asked this question before: If God is all knowing and all powerful why do all of the stories in the bible, all of the history of the church and all of his instructions for man end up looking like the machinations of people seeking power over other people?
Samuel’s advice when Israel requests a King looks like the exact opposite of that.
Never mind. I am exhausted from the colonization discussion, I certainly dont want to start one about religion.
Its. A. Parable. It isn’t about money or holy investing habits.
The money in the story represents the gifts God gave you. The first guy has enjoyed many blessings in life, he takes his talents and channels them to good purpose, and furthers God’s plan in a significant way. The second guy has fewer talents, but still does what he can and furthers God’s plan. The third guy does not share his blessings with the community and so in the end is cursed for not using his talents to further the work of the Lord.
Way late to the party as usual, but I may as well mention it since i haven’t seen it in any of the last few threads.
One of the biggest misquotes ever – “Money is the root of all evil”. Vs. the original 1 Tim. 6:10a – “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
Folks just can’t seem to get that one right.