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Post-corona world order

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Invisible Fan, Apr 26, 2020.

  1. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    What fascinates me with Ray Dalio is that he's a student of history and has made his fortune modeling the world and events leading up to it. It doesn't mean he's always right, but the level of transparency he's given in his books makes me more inclined to trust his intentions than other investors like Buffet or Cuban. I think he wants middle class America to succeed rather than abide by some twisted Dog Eat Dog world the Koch brothers have ensnared the American right and in some parts, the neoliberal elite.

    It's a long interview, so the transcript helps. Dalio believes we're at another crossroads where the American people have to decide the kind of New World Order everyone lives in. A punitive one where we punish the unlucky or a collaborative order that helps rebuild the pieces torn apart from the pandemic and the destruction containment has brought.

    It really is your choice, if you choose to shrug off media illusions and recognize that "both sides are not the same".

    Those judge appointments matter. These court decisions will last for several generations. The debt we've put on since trump ($8,300,000,000,000 so far) and the trillion dollar corporate welfare has to be paid by somebody. My guess it's not those who are in the pocket of politicians...


    transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_dalio...for_the_global_economy/transcript?language=en

    Here's the thing about Biden. He's flawed and old. If I were to believe half the sexual assault allegations, it would already make me uneasy if not for ultimate sleezebag Donald Trump as reference and the destructive social impact (let alone political) he's brought upon generations to come. The fact that his supporters are now accusing Biden of being a rapist rings hollow after they shrugged off the same level of sexual assault years ago when he bragged about it on tape.

    But it's fair to be held to higher level of standards if we want to get anywhere as a society. Does that invalidate not voting for Biden out of principle? That's each person's perogative, but here's what Noam Chomsky thinks about it. Highly recommend watching the entire interview. He even mentioned the DLC would rather lose the election than lose the party, but on the scale of enormity, getting Trump out of office is the highest priority.

    It is easier to fight and protest your ideals against a President Biden than protest those same ideals against Trump. Not voting for Hillary has proven this again and again for the last 4 years.



    That brings up some memories. In the early 30s in Germany, the communist party, following the Stalinist line at the time, took the position that everybody but us is a social fascist so there's no difference between the social democrats and the Nazis. So therefore we're not going to join with the social democrats to stop the Nazi plague. We know where that led. And there are many other cases like that. And I think we're seeing a rerun of that. So let's take the position "Never Biden, I'm not going to vote for Biden". There is a thing called arithmetic. You can debate a lot of things but not arithmetic.

    Failure to vote for Biden in this election in a swing state amounts to voting for Trump. It takes one vote away from the opposition, the same as voting for Trump. So if you decide you want to vote for the destruction of organized human life on earth, for a sharp increase in the threat of nuclear war, for stuffing the judiciary with young lawyers who will make it impossible to do anything for a generation, then do it openly, say, "yeah that's what I want".

    So that's the meaning of "Never Biden".
     
    #1 Invisible Fan, Apr 26, 2020
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2020
  2. Senator

    Senator Member

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    @Invisible Fan

    Of all the things to care about, why pretend like a politician's sleazy sexual history is one of them? Americans have time and time again shown that part of a politician's life does not matter. Bill Clinton raped women as President, yet his wife ran on the platform of "pro-women" and "women's rights" because that's what her base wanted to hear. She had no problems silencing those women to protect whatever semblance of honor she had to maintain to run for President.

    This is such an incredibly basic article, I have no idea why you needed a guy like Ray Dalio to convince you of it. That tells me we're dealing with more headless chickens out here, and why Biden is the democratic nominee in the first place over the far more qualified and appropriate Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard and the gay guy.
     
  3. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    https://www.technologyreview.com/20...killed-the-myth-of-silicon-valley-innovation/
    Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation
    The pandemic shows that the US is no longer much good at coming up with technologies relevant to our most basic needs.

    Forgetting for a moment that this is coming from the same guy who famously explained in 2011 “why software is eating the world,” Andreessen, an icon of Silicon Valley, does have a point. As George Packer has written in the Atlantic, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed much of what is broken and decayed in politics and society in America. Our inability to make the medicines and stuff that we desperately need, like personal protective gear and critical care supplies, is a deadly example.

    Silicon Valley and big tech in general have been lame in responding to the crisis. Sure, they have given us Zoom to keep the fortunate among us working and Netflix to keep us sane; Amazon is a savior these days for those avoiding stores; iPads are in hot demand and Instacart is helping to keep many self-isolating people fed. But the pandemic has also revealed the limitations and impotence of the world’s richest companies (and, we have been told, the most innovative place on earth) in the face of the public health crisis.

    Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed.

    It’s not a new complaint. A decade ago, in the aftermath of what we once called “the” great recession, Andrew Grove, a Silicon Valley giant from earlier era, wrote a piece in Bloomberg BusinessWeek decrying the loss of America’s manufacturing prowess. He described how Silicon Valley was built by engineers intent on scaling up their inventions; “the mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production.” Grove said those who argued that we should let “tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die” were wrong: scaling up and mass-producing products means building factories and hiring thousands of workers.

    But Grove wasn’t just worried about the lost jobs as production of iPhones and microchips went overseas. He wrote: “Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate.”

    The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs. We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.

    Economists like to measure technological innovation as productivity growth—the impact of new stuff and new ideas on expanding the economy and making us richer. Over the last two decades, those numbers for the US have been dismal. Even as Silicon Valley and the high-tech industries boomed, productivity growth slowed.


    The last decade has been particularly disappointing, says John Van Reenen, an MIT economist who has recently written about the problem (pdf). He argues that innovation is the only way for an advanced country like the US to grow over the long run. There’s plenty of debate over the reasons behind sluggish productivity growth—but, Van Reenen says, there’s also ample evidence that a lack of business- and government-funded R&D is a big factor.

    His analysis is particularly relevant because as the US begins to recover from the covid-19 pandemic and restart businesses, we will be desperate for ways to create high-wage jobs and fuel economic growth. Even before the pandemic, Van Reenen proposed “a massive pool of R&D resources that are invested in areas where market failures are the most substantial, such as climate change.” Already, many are renewing calls for a green stimulus and greater investments in badly needed infrastructure.

    So yes, let’s build! But as we do, let’s keep in mind one of the most important failures revealed by covid-19: our diminished ability to innovate in areas that truly count, like health care and climate change. The pandemic could be the wake-up call the country needs to begin to address those problems.
     
    mdrowe00 and RayRay10 like this.

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