DarthOne
☦️
Hopefully your people will take actions to change things for the better.
I don’t think any nation back during WW1 would have made the decisions they did if they could have seen their modern versions.
Immigration and multiculturalism news
- Thread starter Aldarion
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Hopefully your people will take actions to change things for the better.
I don’t think any nation back during WW1 would have made the decisions they did if they could have seen their modern versions.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
If Great Britain in either 1910 or 1920 had been shown what it would become in 2024, of course they still would have fought both World Wars. They had a sense of identity and pride.
Far more likely than refusing to fight, would be them banning atheists and socialists from any public office or position of trust, as the ideological seeds that wrought ruin over the next century.
Given that Christianity was more a thing back in the early 20th, I could see that. But socialists especially would be basically made persona non grata.
Remember, national identity and sense of pride doesn't always mean fighting for the interests of others. We might have still fought Germany had we known, or we might have gone with Hitler's initial plan of being the world's maritime Empire/trading partner for Germany. shrug
Either way, I know that they'd have done everything to prevent what's happening today, even the road traveled would be a dark one.
SoliFortissimi
Well-known member
It wouldn't matter. The Labor Unions had already won by the time the first war ended. Soviet infiltration had already reached the elites of society. Independence movements were already inflamed. Germany was already raring for a fight, and Hitler's fascism crushed the property owners and the middle class just as much as Stalin's communism did.
Don't waste your time in fruitless delusions of how things could have been different. Just stay focused on the future. Win.
Don't waste your time in fruitless delusions of how things could have been different. Just stay focused on the future. Win.
mrttao
Well-known member
If you read the full article, that member of the national guard is a human trafficker who is being paid between 5000$ to 6000$ per each person he smuggles in.
Most of them did. The UK is not the US.
Atheists wouldn't have helped. The issue was there was long known about rot in the Church of England, which had many priests not be believers. I believe there's a survey where about a third right now doubt the physical resurrection. Quite bluntly, if you have people learning from liars every week (as any preacher who preaches something they don't believe in is a liar), you are screwed. The issue, IMO, is that its a state run church, and so you had multiple competing interests in who you hire to proselytize. Had they not split from the Catholics, or if they had made a hard split where there was no longer the catholic-lite central structure and gone full protestant, they would have been much better served.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
The major powers in 1914 would probably abort if they could be magically convinced of what 1920 would look like, never mind 2020. It's a silly rhetorical point in my opinion.
The fun part is that he's doing this against orders and open to all sorts of UCMJ infractions.
DarthOne
☦️
And he’ll probably not suffer for it. Because if he was thrown to the dogs, it might make others who are doing the same thing be a bit more reluctant to do the work.
Yeah...and since he is guard it is a lot easier for this to happen in
He will be. If he is enlisted that is, especially a junior.
DarthOne
☦️
If, IF, he is it will only be because the outrage has become too great to ignore.
Poe
Well-known member
In what way is the fundamental theorem of economics "completely wrong" and in what way does your simplistic example disprove winners and losers in foreign trade? Your example is one where the US excels here, just to be clear, but that's besides the point. Whatever mineral you are trading for here is one other countries produce and this transaction is one where the US didn't go with them, thus you have a loser (or set of losers.) In order for there to be no losers in this system it would have to be the case that every country has some thing, mineral or otherwise, where they have an edge (the idea that having different ratios is different than excelling at something is pedantic imo.)
But wait, in order for that to guarantee no losers it would still need to be the case that every person was employed in some industry where they had a similar edge (or "ratio" advantage) because not all people in a country can work in mineral extraction. Thus we are back to that fundamental aspect of competing for resources which results in winners and losers. You can not argue around this without arguing against econ itself, although you are right there are a ton of issues not related to economics as well.
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You don't seem to know what the fundamental theorem of economics is if you think it means that free trade isn't a win-win.
Seriously, there are in fact fundamental theories of economics. I know some off the top of my head. None say what you are claiming.
You don't seem to understand what winning and losing is, in terms of economics. Again, I don't blame you, this is a common misunderstanding. Basically, no, trade is not zero sum, there doesn't need to be winners and losers.
The existence of trade itself means that both the US and Uganda are doing better than they would without each other. You can simply replace one of the countries with "The entire rest of the world" as well, and the example still works.
This isn't just a simplistic example, btw. This is the basics of all international trace economics. For that matter, it's the basics for why capitalism works.
If you think of capitalism as a game that requires winners and losers, you have failed economics or your economics teachers failed you. The whole cool thing about capitalism is that it doesn't. You can have net positive interactions, unlike nearly everything else.
Also, it's not a pedantic point. Uganda doesn't have an edge against the US. It's worse at everything. The US can still benefit via trade. Or, if we swap the US for the entire rest of the world, they can benefit instead, with no extraneous group.
More, you can even use the example I gave on a single person vs the rest of the world angle, which is why we don't all do subsidence farming anymore. The examples don't have to be countries. Comparative advantage works for any two groups of people, or even a person and everyone else.
Your idea that someone needs to lose somewhere is simply wrong. There's even experimental evidence that proves you wrong: the world's GDP. It's gone up a lot. Literally over team we have all become more productive. That can't happen if money is a zero sum game, as GDP is actually mathematically equivalent to Net Income. Usually, this is done on a per nation basis as Net National Income (each equal to that nation's GDP), but every nations' can be summed up into a world Net Income, which is greater than 0.
This directly contradicts the idea that the economy is a zero sum game. If it were, the Net Income would need to be zero, as any earning by someone would have to come out of someone else's pocket were this a zero sum game. But that isn't true: the Net Income is positive, wildly positive. So we know that economics isn't a zero sum game. And note that this is Real income, which adjusts for inflation as well.
Why is this the case? Because of subjective value: people can value the same item differently, which allows for mutually beneficial trade.
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Like I said, if he is a junior (I don't know his rank) then he will get punished by the UCMJ.
If he is an officer, you may be right.
But it won't be because of the outrage. It will be because he broke some serious laws and UCMJ articles.
Poe
Well-known member
I outright stated the Fundamental Theorem of Economics as it was told to me, and every other student in the world, my first year of econ classes, the scarcity problem. There are finite resources in the world and humans have infinite wants. This causes people to have to ration via devices like currency and thus results in winners and losers. I went to college for this shit and spent years doing economic and equity modeling dude, you're condescension about me being ignorant of economics is hilariously misplaced here.
Your arguments about free trade are entirely ideological and ignore the zero sum nature of a universe with finite energy, and that's fine if you think it's better for humanity, but don't pretend you are arguing from a scientific viewpoint because you aren't.
It's not about what I think, it's the basic problem that the field of economics seeks to solve and I've already stated it in my first post
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Scarcity: What It Means in Economics and What Causes It
Scarcity refers to the most basic economic problem: the gap between limited—that is, scarce—resources and theoretically limitless wants.
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LordsFire
Internet Wizard
You're either expressing all of this very poorly, or you're focusing on only one aspect of things. Bringing up 'zero sum' really does not do you any favors, because while we live in a zero sum physical universe, we absolutely do not live in a zero sum economic system.I outright stated the Fundamental Theorem of Economics as it was told to me, and every other student in the world, my first year of econ classes, the scarcity problem. There are finite resources in the world and humans have infinite wants. This causes people to have to ration via devices like currency and thus results in winners and losers. I went to college for this shit and spent years doing economic and equity modeling dude, you're condescension about me being ignorant of economics is hilariously misplaced here.
Your arguments about free trade are entirely ideological and ignore the zero sum nature of a universe with finite energy, and that's fine if you think it's better for humanity, but don't pretend you are arguing from a scientific viewpoint because you aren't.
It's not about what I think, it's the basic problem that the field of economics seeks to solve and I've already stated it in my first post
Scarcity: What It Means in Economics and What Causes It
Scarcity refers to the most basic economic problem: the gap between limited—that is, scarce—resources and theoretically limitless wants.www.investopedia.com
I'm still not sure what you're trying to get at.
This is by no means a fundamental theorem of Economics. It's also not true that scarcity causes winners and losers. Scarcity certainly exists, but it doesn't cause people to lose.
The idea that scarcity implies that any game must be zero sum is simply incorrect. Your link doesn't even mention that, because it isn't true. The reason for this is subjective value: the same item having different value to different people. In the example above, a machine is worth the same as two minerals to America, but a machine is worth 7 times as much as a mineral to Uganda. Using this, we can find mutually beneficial trades where all benefit.
The idea that economics is a zero sum game is wrong both empirically (World GDP rising) and theoretically (my USA/Uganda counterexample).
In general, someone saying "Fundamental Theorem of Economics" is usually referring to the two Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics, btw.
And so what? I too went to college for this stuff. I did econ research at an R1 institution and wrote journal articles. I could go on. The question isn't what credentials you or I have (there's no way to verify them on the site, and it's a logical fallacy to argue from credentialism), it's what evidence we have. I've given good arguments about how scarcity doesn't make econ a zero sum game. Econ not being a zero sum game is something that any non-socialist Econ professor will tell you on day one.
Here's one telling you this:
Here's another:
Here's the US Fed saying it's not a zero sum game:
Here's the Mises Institute saying it's not a zero sum game, and they hate the Fed:
Not a Zero-Sum Game: The Paradox of Exchange | Mises Institute
The key to understanding how society comes to be, works without central direction, and develops into a thriving civilization can be understood through the least
Unfortunately, it's a very common misconception, especially among groups that vote lefty. The welfare system is a zero sum game (or actually a negative sum game). But most economic activity is in fact positive sum. The communist argument of a labor theory of value is the attempt to pretend that economics is zero sum.
Look, there are actual zero sum games (notably military power). But economics isn't one of them.
Poe
Well-known member
Lmao yes it is, it is THE fundamental problem economics seeks to understand.
No I think I've expressed the very simple point clearly and you just want it to not be true so will continuing arguing until the cows come home.