OT: A desperate cry for help from Germany

What happened in 1914?

Read Thomas Pekitty's "Capital in the 21st Century"

His thesis is that a rather unfortunate economic trend got reversed in 1914 .

That thump on the reset button allowed western civilisation to make a consi derable step forward, but since about 1980, the original trend has resumed

- albeit from a much more egalitarian base - and is now slowing down econom ic progress as enthusiastically as was 1914.

The effect is much less marked in Germany and Scandinavia, where the rent-s eekers are more enlightened (or under closer restraint) than they are in th e US.

The book is worth reading - it wouldn't have become a best-seller otherwise - but people who like Bastiat don't like it.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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r's breadth of getting Ted Cruz, Carly, Scott Walker, or a number of others who could've set us headed toward liberty.

James Arthur confuses liberty with license. He sees the liberty of the rich to plunder the public purse for their own benefit as a central feature of organised society, and is blind to the fact that organised society gets ric her if it spends enough on the poor to keep them healthy, well-fed and well educated.

Ted Cruz famously supported the 2013 government shut-down, which makes him an irresponsible idiot.

James Arthur is equally blind to the fact that the Republican candidates wh o were acceptable to the Tea Party were a repulsive bunch of psychopaths wh o were even less attractive than Donald Trump, who is merely a narcissist b uffoon, if cunning with it.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 4:38:23 AM UTC+11, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrot e:

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hair's breadth of getting Ted Cruz, Carly, Scott Walker, or a number of ot hers who could've set us headed toward liberty.

country by now, Cruz would be the 24/7 booger eater and Scott Walker never made it out of the gate.

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It wasn't the media that gave you Donald Trump - they saw him as comical fr om the start. It was the Tea Party activists who ensured that every regular Republican candidate fr the nomination was a psychopathic right-winger.

Regular voters are used to ranking lunatics in terms of the risk that they' ll turn feral, and Donald Trump looked less likely to go postal than the ot her candidates.

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She doesn't, and only a right-wing lunatic like James Arthur would risk his - non-existent - credibility by claiming something quite so ridiculous. In fact James Arthur us recycling Mitt Romney's "47%" lapse.

Not, of course, a message she ever sent, but the "Swift Boat People" know t hat some of the voters latch on outrageous lies if you package them careful ly enough.

Taxation isn't - technically - theft, and supporting people between jobs is a rather useful sort of gift. Germany and Scandinavia go in for it more en thusiastically than the US, and it gives them a contented and surprisingly productive work force.

Curious that it becomes possible, practical and effective in Scandinavia an d Germany. James Arthur's American exceptionalism covers mathematical proof s.

Only if the brain understanding her words has been to right-wing de-educati on camp.

James Arthur's imagination has rather tight constraints. Hillary Clinton is an establishment candidate and the US establishment hasn't done a particul arly good job recently, in part because it has been Republican dominated fo r a while.

Donald Trump isn't part of that establishment - largely because he lacks th e self-discipline and organisation to collaborate with anybody - so the vic es that have excluded him from the establishment that nobody much likes are the same vices that are making him unattractive to voters as he becomes mo re visible to them.

The USA political system isn't in great shape, and does need reform. Hillar y Clinton might do it. Donald Trump would trash it.

With any luck, Donald Trump will drag the Republican Party down with him, a nd they may also feel the need for reform. Replacement would be nicer, but bureaucratic inertia will prevent that.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

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What Hillary Clinton actually said was that about half Trump's supporters w ere a deplorable bunch - " ?The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenopho bic, Islamaphobic ? you name it."

That leaves the other half of Trump's supporters as more or less respectabl e (if suffering from poor judgement).

The most recent polls put Clinton a 50%, and Trump at 41%, which makes the deplorables 20.5% of the US voting population, a long way short of "most".

Trump's anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant rhetoric is genuinely deplorable, a nd it's depressing that it isn't making him universally despised.

James Arthur's rhetoric is no less deplorable, but it would be unkind to de spise somebody just because they'd been brainwashed to the point where they couldn't construct a rational argument.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

I first saw her say it in HP, and, even though none of us understood the phrase, the rest of her performance set my mind on leaving HP. The rest is history.

ISTR a report on the internal usenet that Bill met her and silently listened to her spiel, then simply said "Get me out of here". I wish I'd saved the report, since I've never been able to verify it since. For obvious reasons I'm inclined to believe is it true.

Nothing of any significance; it was a quiet year.

I would not say that. I would say that things are going from bad to worse from 1914. Our civilization has made two world wars, sowed his damn shit in almost every country in the world for economic reasons, including the pillaging of natural resources ... pff then yes our civilization has born in 1914 and even fiercer.

No really ! we should cry about this civilization.

Hab.

No need to get nasty. What other interpretation could there possibly be?

The historical Jesus wouldn't have much enthusiasm for the churches that ha ve been set up in his name. Western civilisation does seem to be moving tow ards the kinds of behaviour he'd have been happy about, but the current ver sions of Pharisees want more attention paid to the accreted nonsense that r eligious bureacracy has been tacking on for the last two thousnad years.

Now that most kids survive childhood we don't need as much of it. There's s till plenty of it about.

If there was a void to fill - which there isn't - child-rearing would be mo re popular. People for whom the idea that most children will survive childh ood is new and not entirely credible do have rather more kids, but educatin g the current generation of girls makes that a transient effect.

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The flaws that created the first world war weren't minor, and they weren't fixed as fast as they should have been, which gave us the second world war.

What we've got now is a long way short of perfect, but it's rather better t han what we had in 1914.

Nonsense. Europe didn't die, and the Spanish flu killed more people (about

50 million) than the first world war (about 17 million). The Black Death ki lled even more people (out of a smaller population) and may be a candidate for the "worst thing ever for humanity". s

It wasn't our civilisation that made two world wars - rather the primitive elements that we hadn't gotten around to getting under control.

Civilisation is essentially the skill of being able to set up and run decen t-sized cities. The economic engines that make it work are ancillary. They don't have to be destructive, and the more you know, the easier it is to mi nimise the damage they do.

Natural resources get exploited by everybody - they were being exploited lo ng before there was any kind of civilisation, and civilisation can make the process less destructive and more sustainable.

It needs work. Weeping about it's defects doesn't do much to get rid of the m.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

People are getting sick of that shit.

And the continuous playing of the race card in general. If raising legitimate objections to the world-wide roll-out of a ruinous demonic global plan that none of us are allowed to have a say on makes me a "racist" then so be it.

He should have bought her out:

--sp

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany 
Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition:            http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8

Cursitor Doom trying for promotion from idiot to racist. The phrase "ruinous demonic global plan" rather subverted the attempt.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Big cities on the Earth surface is an abomination.

Habib.

Soros the nation-wrecker and his admirer Sloman want all the peasants hearded off the land into big city ghettos where they will be easier to control - and when the time is right, kill.

Sure, they should all be floating above the surface.

Idiot.

It's not over until the fat lady sings. The LA Times put Trump one point ahead a few days ago.

Read Freakonomics

If you want to do something high-tech, living in an area where there are lo ts of different people with a variety of different high-tech skills is real ly very handy.

Small cities can be that kind of core - Route 128 was built around Boston a nd MIT - but big cities accommodate a wider range of skill sets.

That's why people are prepared to pay higher rents to live in a big city.

Burying the city might make it less of an abomination, but I like my view o ut across Sydney Harbour, and most primates like being able to keep an eye on their immediate environment.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney