Recent posts

#21

Off the Record / Re: Refractory Gauls, or the F...

Last post by Jacob - October 08, 2025, 08:31:00 PM

How likely are RN and LFI respectively to undermine democracy? Where do they stand on Europe? And how likely are they withdraw support of Ukraine?

#22

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Razgovory - October 08, 2025, 08:26:35 PM

When I had to find a new place my eviction could be found with a simple search on the Missouri court site.  Basically no one would rent to me.  My options were living in a motel, or a senior living facility.  I picked the senior living facility.  It is certainly not ideal

#23

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 08, 2025, 08:22:58 PM

It can. A vindictive landlord could start the snowball effect. "The app" is not an omniscient impartial AI.

Perhaps we should ask DGuller for some info on how it works.  Do landlords rate their tenants or does it record evictions?

#24

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - October 08, 2025, 08:09:31 PM

One can have many objections to coordinated economic actions.  The don't all have to apply to every example of them.

Sure, but you're basing your argument on the basis of analogy.  "We object to this, therefore we must object to this."  If there are fundamental differences between the things being analogized then it doesn't work.

Let's rewind and follow the whole sequence of events.  Let's also allow for the possibility that every time you take an analogy somewhere else, it sometimes helps to give local reasoning, which may not carry back three steps back to the origin.

Here is the sequences:

Yi:  Guy welched on me.  Why can't I boycott him?
DG:  You alone cannot boycott someone.  There has to be a coordinated effort for there to be a boycott.
Yi:  I tell someone else the guy welched on me, I guess then it is a boycott?
DG:  Yes, take whispers far enough, and it can very well be.  That's why employers don't whisper about former employees, because it can be taken as a boycott.
Yi:  You think it's fair and just for employers to not be able to whisper about their employees?
DG:  Replying specifically to the situation with employers, yes, I argued it's more fair than the alternative.  I didn't think far enough to realize that trying to find the best reasons for the employer example would come back to bite me, hence I tried to find the best reason that specifically applied to references.

Let's focus on the common thread rather than the fact that compounding the natural imperfection of analogies can eventually add up.  What's common in all the analogies is that the decision of one market actor, when communicated to other actors, can create a coordination that freezes someone out.  One landlord evicting the tenant gets communicated through background checks and prevents the tenant even from an opportunity to get another place.  One gambler refuses to deal with another and badmouths them to other gambles so that they also refuse to deal with them.  One employer decides to fire an employee and through references makes them appear to be a bad hire to other employers.

The justification for spreading the information is secondary; what matters is the resulting coordination that turns private discretion into systemic exclusion. Once that happens, the market stops being free in any meaningful sense.

#25

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Zoupa - October 08, 2025, 07:57:52 PM

I don't get your point.

You object to bad references because they have the potential to be based on vindictiveness.  This objection can not apply to the rental app.

It can. A vindictive landlord could start the snowball effect. "The app" is not an omniscient impartial AI.

#26

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Sheilbh - October 08, 2025, 07:53:51 PM

This is absolutely dystopian shit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeTikToks/s/PNokJGs7RN

A bunch of armed and masked men with no convincing identification thst they are police, put a child into an unmarked civilian car.

Like, the fuck?!

Edit: maybe it's an adult not a child but it only makes marginally less terrifying.

Also the Chicago video. I've said before I think that ICE is lawless and that's not an accident or bad apples. It is the policy. I'd add again that I think this is "American" in the broadest sense - masked paramilitary agents of the state pulling people off the streets, acting on dubious legality etc. I can't help but think of this happening in the rest of the America's in the 20th century fight against Communism and the left and Aime Cesaire's line about how the violence of imperial powers returns to the metropole. How the fascist regimes turned violence and mechanisms of repression onto Europeans that had previously been used by Europeans only on non-Europeans, discretely, imperially. I think Orwell made similar points.

Someone earlier made the comparison with stormtroopers - I think people are talking about conditioning the military to fight like "warriors" in American cities. I'm not sure that'll work. My read is that the American military is committed to its constitutional norms, civil government etc and that is deep in their culture (to an extent that I think they're possibly the last standing institution with a sense of "non-partisanship" about them). But if you need a paramilitary force to go out and be the willing agents of coercion - then I think that's what ICE are absolutely being conditioned to do.

I also think that the right had a weird idea of the partisanship of the military. I think this was Hegseth's pitch - that officers might not like him but the rank and file would love having a real man/"warrior" like him as a leader and he'd basically be able to forge that connection over the heads of officers if necessary. In effect, that the military was ready to be MAGA-fied, they just didn't know it yet. I don't think that's true or that it's happened. By contrast I think ICE, in part because of the political pushback against them (which is correct) are absolutely politicised and aligned with what Trump wants.

#27

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 08, 2025, 07:46:23 PM

One can have many objections to coordinated economic actions.  The don't all have to apply to every example of them.

Sure, but you're basing your argument on the basis of analogy.  "We object to this, therefore we must object to this."  If there are fundamental differences between the things being analogized then it doesn't work.

#28

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - October 08, 2025, 07:30:56 PM

I see where you're coming from there. Trouble is with this path the working class get left out which means we head down the far right death spiral.
We need more of a balance. We need to support this higher education side of things, whilst also opening up opportunities for working people.

I don't disagree from a political perspective.

But I think path dependency matters and we can't just re-imagine our economy's strengths and it happens. I think, ultimately, the sort of lever we probably need to pull are industrial strategy, nationalisation, British preference in procurement etc - for political purpose. Not because it's necessary for national security or even necessarily good for the British economy as a whole but because it is good for the body politic. Obviously that is in breach of lots of international trade law, including the TCA with the EU which would be challenging.

Going into the mystic dark arts that area way beyond what I can grasp a bit here, but I do wonder if this is related to the talk of introducing a UK-ISA. More stock market than bond market focussed, but it could be turned that way too.
But yes. Another part of Japan's incestuousness here.

I'm surprised at this. Not education. But public works seems to be something where Japan spends a tonne.
I wonder whether their system of privatised-but-not-really is masking the numbers here with all that infrastructure officially being private sector spending.

So on this, the yield on Japanese 20 year bonds:


At the highest level since August 1999 - just months after the BoJ started its zero interest rate policy for the first time. And a lot of countries' debt yields (including ours) look like that with rates back at what they were in the late 90s.

There are structural drivers for this and real fiscal challenges for the UK. This is where I think the influence of American discourse is really unhelpful because the idea that we could get out of this via MMT or a one off wealth tax on billionaires/"the 1%" is for the birds. That stuff might work for America - the world's most important economy, the richest, the most important currency etc.

But I think the fundamentals here are really worrying. Household consumption is low (in part because households are actually still reducing their debt from the 2000s - as a share of GDP). We've got one of the largest goods trade deficits in history (and one of our major manufacturers - with hundreds of thousands of jobs in its supply chain - has had to stop production because of a cyber attack). We've got a deficit to cover current spending which is making capital spending more expensive as rates reach their highest levels in decades (and consistently above the rest of the G7 for the first time since Truss). At the same time the private investment story is deteriorating over a variety of issues: lack of Treasury support, planning issues, the life sciences industry looking like they're going on strike over NHS pricing (we pay about 25% less for drugs than other countries because the NHS uses its purchasing power ruthlessly). Weak consumption, weak exports, weak investment and increasingly expensive public spending. We're not America on this.

Yeah this solar power in the desert thing is something we really need to see happen on a much bigger scale.
Though given recent lessons with the Iberian grid....

To be clear I think it's a bad idea - not so much the Iberian rid as Russian subs and a big wire from Morocco to Devon is a lot to protect. I think we're in a world that is less and less tolerant of the very efficient, the thin stretched networks whether that's supply chains or just-in-time or power infrastructure. We need to be thinking far more about resilience (which in my view also means, largely domestically and democratically controlled) and spare capacity..

Would be nice. Maybe this RR micro-reactor stuff will lead somewhere.

I agree although even that feels like a classic story - British tech developed by a company here. It can't be deployed here because it's drowning in red tape, but going ahead in Czechia and Poland already

Potential for sure.
Though with the current wave, I could be wrong, though I really hope I'm not, I do think it has been oversold.
We're kind of at a .com bubble sort of stage where all these grand ideas are firing off but the technology and state of development just isn't there for them yet.
I also think there is a risk for the government in being very gung ho about AI while simultaneously increasing the cost of employing people.
I do think we're going to see a bit of a reversal on the cuts in the short term as more and more companies realise AI isn't delivering the miracles they expected.

Maybe but I think the way grad recruitment/entry level recruitment works that may not be enough for the cohort that have come up in recent years.

My basic view on AI is perhaps a little pessimistic. I think it's either going to be transformative technology that will boost productivity, to the benefit of capital and at the expense of labour. It'll do to white collar jobs what the cotton mills did to the skilled working class of that era - or automation to some jobs in the last few decades. That'll have huge social and economic consequences that will need to be managed politically.

Or it's a massive misallocation of capital that could have been more productively used elsewhere. Markets will eventually realise that and we'll face a crash I think closer to 2008 than the dotcom bubble. Which will have huge social and economic consequences that will need to be managed politically

Yes, probably so.
Even assuming a Harris win I do think we were drifting this way as we have been since the end of the cold war- the resurgence of Russia the past decade or two being a bit of a blip that halted things. Though longer term with Russia thrashing itself on the rocks in Ukraine and eating up the last of its power, along with the middle east declining in importance, US interest was firmly heading away.
With Trump though things have sped up and it has become a far more acrimonious split.  Less of the idea that there's a collaboration here.

I'm not so optimistic on any of this

#29

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by DGuller - October 08, 2025, 07:19:34 PM

I don't get your point.

You object to bad references because they have the potential to be based on vindictiveness.  This objection can not apply to the rental app.

One can have many objections to coordinated economic actions.  The don't all have to apply to every example of them.

#30

Off the Record / Re: What does a TRUMP presiden...

Last post by Admiral Yi - October 08, 2025, 07:14:31 PM

I don't get your point.

You object to bad references because they have the potential to be based on vindictiveness.  This objection can not apply to the rental app.