Neither can fleas, termites, or bacteria when we ritually kill them, (Ga)ia. Selfish creatures that we are, we don’t even wait for a commandment from God before we slaughter these helpless little animals.

I think she has her blood sacrifice manual mixed up. Moloch is marmots on Thursdays, chickens are Santaria on Fridays. Or is that backwards?

Conventional war where? In Taiwan? In South Korea? I also think that’s totally possible.

How do you feel about military budget cuts under Deng. They slashed the R&D of the passenger aircraft 运十 that had already test flied in the 80s because it was spearheaded by Gang of Four. Those dumbasses only began to wake up after, from what I read, US cut off GPS in late 90s, which China used to conduct missile tests in the Taiwan Strait area. Now Beidou is out.

我想起抗美援朝是中国立国之战，你说的没错，军事决定一切，现在的世界格局大多还是源于二战的结果。

Interesting:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-26/survey-americans-have-remarkably-ignorant-attitude-toward-nukes-and-north-korea

The survey found a large knowledge deficit in responders regarding nuclear weapons, with a majority reporting an unrealistic amount of confidence in both the US military’s ability to eliminate all of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in a preemptive strike and in its ability to shoot down North Korean missiles using current missile defense systems. This inaccurate perspective was significantly higher among Trump supporters.

While the study found that a majority of Americans would prefer to de-escalate against North Korea if given the choice, a jarring number of them would be willing to use nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat, and believe it’s possible to do so at relatively little risk to Americans.

“As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians,” write the report’s authors.

2. Dual Malaysian ports – Haven’t heard about this case.

In 2013, Guangxi and affiliated business interests agreed with Malaysia’s Pahang state government to upgrade Kuantan port, including by developing a cross-country railway, road links and a US$3.4 billion industrial park. Guangxi subsequently leveraged BRI to expand its involvement. However, in September 2015, Guangdong province signed a rival agreement with Malaysia’s Malacca state, including a US$4.6 billion industrial park and a US$10 billion port upgrade.

There is little economic rationale for developing two world-class ports on the Malay Peninsula. These projects reflect not a coherent master plan but rather competitive, sub-national dynamics in both countries. Moreover, these micro-level dynamics clearly do not–indeed, cannot–add up to a coherent, macro-level network of infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, statistical analysis reveals no correlation between Vision and Actions [the official policy document guiding the BRI] six ‘corridors’ and projects on the ground, suggesting that the plan is failing even to guide investment activity in a broad sense. [6]

https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-utterly-dysfunctional-belt-and-road.html

There is a great need for infrastructure across the world especially in Eurasia. And there is some ability to pay for it by Eurasian borrowers. Chinese construction contractors can earn profits from building the infrastructure. Chinese state lending enables the infrastructure to be built and Chinese contractors to get the contracts. The state lending is only modestly subsidized because near commercial interest rates are charged in most cases. A small part of BRI is aid or very low interest loans. Most of the loans can be repaid so the losses won’t be huge (this is admittedly simply my assumption but I think reasonable as I’ll explain below). And all along the way China can pick up soft power dividends by being seen by the masses and elites throughout Eurasia as the model and builder of a brighter national economy that is broadly inclusive in benefits.

You single out specific projects and the CPEC as huge mistakes.

1. China Pakistan Economic Corridor – The amount of lending and investment over the long term is $70 billion. The full amount has not been disbursed. Pakistan is in shambles but still enjoys moderate growth currently and in the future. (India’s real GDP growth figures probably equal Pakistan’s growth, although India’s fiscal health is far better than Pakistan.) Most of the lending for CPEC is in power generation. Power projects are badly needed to stabilize the country, which is China’s only official ally so far. And again the $70 billion is mainly in loans. Advancing loans with near-commercial interest rates is not comparable to the mistake of providing annual transfers (e.g. gas subsidies to Ukraine).

2. Dual Malaysian ports – Haven’t heard about this case. There are like 1,000+ infrastructure projects that are part of the BRI so odd cases like this aren’t representative. In any case South China Sea countries like Malaysia should be the destination for a turbo concentration of BRI resources considering geopolitical needs.

3. Kenya Standard Gauge Railway – The project was a bad idea. And worse, quite a bit of the loan was subsidized at very low interest rates. The project was done at the insistence of the Kenyan side, which envisioned the new railway to nourish dreams of industrialization. The railway will be unprofitable but the loan could eventually be paid off after several delays and re-negotiations (sales taxes have been raised in Kenya to pay for the railway). Kenya has one of the best 5 economic track records in sub-Sahara Africa.

Incidentally, Tanzania is also constructing its own standard gauge railway. It is financed in part by Turkey and a private lender. Chinese state lenders might be absent because Tanzania is less creditworthy. After all the most robust African economy is Ethiopia, which is where another railway has been constructed and financed by China.

However, stringent the lending criteria to African borrowers has been, the inclusion of East Africa in the BRI is bad strategy. Africa has a dim economic future and won’t be influential on the international stage. It’s also far away from China. BRI resources should instead go to Eurasian countries like Malaysia and Poland.

4. The Belt and Road is deliberately vague and meant to be a brand name. The intention is to include just about any Chinese economic activity by state owned enterprises, state banks, and state investment funds as part of the program. The idea is to create the impression in people around Eurasia of the Chinese state offering a giant win-win bargain package. Some private investors trying to acquire assets abroad and overcome the strict foreign exchange controls in China will try to randomly link the project to the BRI to get official sanction. However otherwise the vagueness and kitchen sink inclusion does not illustrate the program going astray.

5. However BRI is headed in a bad direction. The order of the day is to expand it to cover many more countries. I thought East Africa was already a stretch but all of Africa might be included. Plus all of Latin America too. I think 120+ countries have already joined Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which indicates contemplating the eventual inclusion of every non-rich country under the BRI (and even some rich countries in Europe like Luxembourg, which is very enthusiastic about BRI participation both for financial settlements and air cargo logistics).

The big problem with covering most of the world is that the resources of BRI will be stretched so thin that in a lot of places its impact won’t be noticed. This is already happening in Poland where 2 years ago there was a lot of enthusiasm for BRI. Now not much at all. It’s not because of Fort Trump. Poles are asking where are the results of previous engagement? Not much has gone on. The money lent for the Kenyan railway should have been better spent for a big project in Poland to at least sustain the narrative. With inclusion of most of the world, BRI might diminish in significance in most of the world.

Russia ran into severe trouble during the GFC and 2014-2015 owing to private sector Dollar borrowing. During the GFC the Bank of Russia allegedly applied for a swap line with the FED, but this was rejected by the State Dept (which had to approve all swap lines).

Russia has indeed deleveraged substantially since the Rouble collapse in 2014 (which I suspect was orchestrated by the United States), but the threat can always reemerge. The Bank of Russia, while still maintaining large foreign reserves (https://www.cbr.ru/eng/hd_base/mrrf/mrrf_m/), has reduced its Dollar reserves.

Russia maintains high interest rates, and since Russia has no capital controls this means the private sector freely borrows abroad.

I’m relatively liberal on economics compared to a lot on this site, but foreign currency risk is a special case that must be closely supervised by authorities. Even American vassal states in Western Europe can run into trouble with this as we saw during the GFC.

In light of the fact that Russia has a substantial current account surplus and modest demand for investment, in principle it should be able to develop low-cost domestic capital pools.

Unfortunately they still haven’t properly cracked down on private sector Dollar borrowing.

I’m not sure this is either feasible or even really necessary. Russia doesn’t have currency controls, the very concept is anathema to the people who manage the country’s finances. Furthermore, corporations have made a lot of progress in the past five years cleaning up their balance sheets, and properly matching the currency they borrow in with revenue streams. It used to be that Russia’s foreign currency reserves roughly matched the sum of private and public sector foreign currency debt, but that ratio has come way down (I haven’t checked it in a while, but wouldn’t be surprised if it was half or less).

I suppose the CBR could signal to the private sector that they will get no relief for foreign currency debt in the event of a crisis. Probably the best way to accomplish the reduction of USD debt would be to develop domestic pools of capital, employed effectively, while being a bit looser with monetary policy. For whatever reason, though, the political will to do this seems close to nonexistent, which is a shame because it restricts Russia’s flexibility on the geopolitical stage.

In light of the fact that there’s a break-of-gauge between Poland and Belarus it doesn’t seem like rail connections to Europe would be of much use in a Sino-American conflict in which Russia provides support to China.

There is a military case for the rail corridor

The military case could be made for a rail corridor to connect with potential allies or neutral powers. But in a shooting war Europe will likely be an enemy. I would expect sanctions against China even if Europe didn’t join the war.

So the military case is for the corridor to reach Russia, Central Asia, Iran, some Southeast Asian countries, and maybe a few others. The corridor to Europe will likely have zero utility.

There is no objective reason why an expanding confident society should not sacrifice animals as a little on the side insurance for success.

Especially when the animals can’t fight back.

Which is worse, that or this?

https://nypost.com/2018/08/26/video-game-tournament-shooting-suspect-identified/

A losing player opened fire on his fellow video-gamers at a Madden NFL 19 tournament Sunday in Florida, killing two people, authorities said — as the horror played out live online.

Just before the first of a dozen shots rang out at around 1:30 p.m., the camera caught a laser dot creeping up the torso of Eli Clayton, aka “Trueboy,” who was in the middle of a match at the GLHF Game Bar in the Jacksonville Landing open-air mall.

The camera cuts away from him as screams fill the air and one of the gamer’s controllers abruptly disconnects.

“Oh f–k! What did he shoot me with?!” one victim yells between shots in the clip, as the carnage unfolds out of frame.

By the time gunman David Katz, 24, of Baltimore, ended his rampage, two people were dead — including Clayton — and another 11 were hurt, nine with gunshot wounds, according to local TV station News4Jax.

The other fatality was Taylor Robertson, 27, of Ballard, W. Va., according to The Miami Herald.

The gunman took his own life afterward, cops said.

Katz snapped and began targeting his rivals after being defeated earlier in the tournament, fellow gamer Steven “Steveyj” Javaurski told the Los Angeles Times.

The psycho shooter:

His victims, killed out of jealousy:

The basic problem with rail transport between China and Europe is that ocean freight is much cheaper, and air freight is much faster.

There is a military case for the rail corridor, but for it to be viable in a blockade scenario China would need to massively subsidize it in peacetime in order for it to develop the required capacity. Consider how many wagon loads would be needed to transport as many containers as a single Maersk Triple E container ship.

As things stand now Chinese entities simply push their pet projects abroad and brand them as “Belt and Road” to gain official sanction. Two different Chinese provinces for instance are building competing and unnecessary deep water container ports adjacent to each other on the Malayan Peninsula at present. And then you have comical projects like the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railroad, the revenues of which can’t even cover interest payments let alone principal.

Sure, ‘investments must be profitable or they’re simply squandered capital’, however the project is far from finished and even the author of the article that you’ve cited declares: ‘As the Belt and Road Initiative is only five years old (and many of its main members have been involved for a far shorter time) its full results cannot yet be judged.’ but I get what you’re trying to say, perhaps China needs to maintain its focus more on completing the trifecta in Europe and not waste valuable time and resources getting perhaps bogged down for geopolitical reasons in South East Asia. Like China, the author of the piece also ignores the role of Europe within this Eurasian behemoth. The original idea as I recall, was to provide more and better railroad links to cart goods back and forth between China and Europe, still an admirable goal IMHO.

Lithuania was inhabited by Lithuanians. The corridor was inhabited mostly by Poles.

agreed

I think the trouble is that “neoliberals” tend to fixate on the top-line GDP growth figure of aggregate GDP.

This makes sense for assessing overall national power, but not so much for societal well-being. Or, contrary to myth, profits. Investors typically overpay for growth stories, and a rising population increases investment needs. The two equity markets in the past generation with the strongest growth in earnings per share are Sweden and Switzerland, not countries we associate with fast population growth.

Overall growth is also relevant for debts and pensions. A stagnant or shrinking population will have more difficulty paying for future obligations, all else equal.

Gamer genocide?

Cool with me, we can look forward to loads of gamer holocaust memorials all over the world and mass of gamer holocaust movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_memorials_and_museums

the point i’m addressing is

If China doesn’t want to head down the same path we need to boost the birth rate now

which is the standard neoliberal argument that raw population numbers are needed for growth

(and a con to promote open borders imo).

i’m saying if you have a fixed population size and productivity growth then if you share out the productivity growth between capital and labor you can get growth with the same population size.

(this wasn’t possible for most of history cos they didn’t have the kind of productivity growth seen since the industrial revolution)

nb i’m not promoting equality as i don’t think that’s optimal either. i’m saying if different layers of society have different patterns of demand and saving then there will be an optimal distribution of those layers.

If China wanted better returns they certainly wouldn’t invest their reserves in sovereign debt.

The question is what could China invest in which would offer comparable stability, liquidity, and safety.

If it didn’t invest in Treasuries, that basically means the sovereign debt of other first world countries. These debt markets aren’t as large and are less useful for hedging against currency risk and capital flight (since China’s trade and private sector foreign borrowing are mostly in Dollars).

Many also yield even less than Treasuries do. Bunds and JGBs for instance yield around…zero.

There is also gold (which China does purchase), but this yields zero and is more volatile. As recent shenanigans with Venezuela demonstrate, the safety is somewhat dubious at least as far as gold for immediate settlement goes (i.e. gold not stored in Mainland China itself).

Think how overwhelmingly rational this distribution is.

Getting access to resources and a road to Europe. Encircling India.

Mali has uranium. Turkmenistan has gas. pic.twitter.com/wZJBGqci68

— Spandrell (@thespandrell) March 14, 2018

A game that many young people play in many countries, notably Russia and its former satellites, is chess. In Armenia, it is a required subject in school. When I was visiting the huge, famous, Chess House in Yerevan, Armenia a few years ago, kids were happily arriving with their chess workbooks for their lessons and games. The above is not the case in Iran or Syria. By the way, it is difficult for me to reconcile the notion of Putin as a crude monster with the fact that he visits with the national chess team.

What should China invest in that would offer better returns?
I have a feeling they allocated enough funds in crucial areas that throwing additional resources at them wouldn’t change anything.

Asean summit: splits over China leave Prayuth in the hot seat https://t.co/PBakrfyiWB if prc was smart it'd give ASEAN a sweet deal on the SCS code of conduct & get from behind the 8-ball. not holding my breath, tho

— chinahand (@chinahand) June 24, 2019

The British Empire was devoted to liberal capitalism during its zenith, but not during its rise to power. Hence why Friedrich List described their doctrine of free trade as kicking out the ladder under others.

A big part of the reason, incidentally, was to allow cheap food from overseas into Britain in order to pay factory workers cheap wages.

Britain permitted American and German goods to enter its domestic market without tariff competition while those two countries enjoyed massive tariff walls. Even retaliatory tariffs against protected markets (the “Big Revolver” policy) were rejected.

One consequence of this was that Britain entered the First World War without much of a chemicals industry.

It wasn’t until the Great Depression that this was finally abandoned. Neville Chamberlain (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) finally realized his father’s dream (in reduced form) with the enactment of Imperial Preference.

Investments must be profitable or they’re simply squandered capital. The BRI is simply an extension of China’s domestic “construction-industrial complex” to the rest of the world, with a thin varnish of geopolitics painted over. The BRI is likely to be the greatest misallocation of capital in world history, exceeding even the Soviet “development” of Siberia.

They’ve already poured $70bn in counting in the black hole that is Pakistan for instance.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/bri-china-belt-road-initiative-blunder/

Obviously some projects make sense, like the Power of Siberia pipeline.

Britain didn’t even extend official recognition to the Republic of Texas, which was earnestly sought by President Mirabeau Lamar

This is certainly what happened in the preceding thirty years.

Washington gave away the store to China while pursuing futile wars in the Middle East.

Bill Clinton was simply openly bribed the Chinese, and the W administration abandoned its policy of
strongly confronting China after 9-11.

Probably you don’t normally read my comments, so your reaction is understandable (though I did explicitly single out Huawei as advanced).

I’m not someone who thinks that Chinese can’t innovate or that they’re doomed to some middle income trap.

Chinese engineering, science, and technology are all progressing strongly and indeed in certain areas they lead the world.

But it’s a fact that today China’s position in the global value chain is decidedly not top tier. Note that the comment I responded to cited Chinese smartphone assembly. Supply chains can thus be moved out of China, whereas they could not be moved out of Japan.

One of many reasons to despise Bill Clinton is that he failed to take the golden opportunity in 1995 to destroy the disgusting Canuckist Entity once and for all. Instead he lent his prestige (which was real in Quebec) in support of the integrity of the Canadian Confederation.

Prior to the “Great Compression” in the mid-20th century the USA had inequality comparable to today and no issues with demand growth.

Rich people buy stuff too.

It’s just a distributional question. Greater equality was politically prudent in the context of the World Wars, the Cold War, and concentrated labor power. Those factors no longer exist, so unsurprisingly egalitarian economics were tossed out by the oligarchy.

More people, within Malthusian limits, is always desirable in the context of power politics. More people means more workers and more soldiers.

Why would American foreign policy be expected to promote the interests of non-American nations?

The Monroe Policy was a success for America.

I also find it very difficult to see how the doctrine of President James Monroe is responsible for present immigration (I assume this is what you’re referring to).

The Dollar lost 50% of its value as a result of the 1986 Plaza Accord, which took place at a time of high deficits and high interests rates.

There was no fiscal crisis.

Obviously there is always a cost, but permabears predicting Dollar Doom have been consistently wrong for decades and are likely to remain wrong.

China’s holdings of Treasuries have reduced from their peak and have been flat for many years now. This is because they have all the reserves they require, just as Japan does.

Russia has massively diversified out of Dollar reserves for good and obvious reasons–they may not be permitted to use them in the event of a crisis. Unfortunately they still haven’t properly cracked down on private sector Dollar borrowing.

The US has pursued a more expansionary fiscal policy in the aftermath of the GFC than Britain, whose conservative governments have been more influenced by austerity politics. The results are mixed. More growth, but also more public sector debt.

US political culture also traditionally frowned on overt imperialism. America’s 19th century expansion was across largely unsettled territory. The All-Mexico annexationist faction was soundly defeated in the Senate after the victorious Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War was extremely controversial and opposed by many prominent Americans (e.g. Andrew Carnegie).

Southerners were generally in favor of expansion anywhere, but they were crushed in the Civil War.

On an opportunistic basis it would’ve made good sense for America to join the Central Powers in WW1. I’m not aware of that idea even having been considered. There was Gallup polling in WW2 before America got involved, and while most Americans favored neutrality there was also considerable pro-British sentiment. There was close to zero pro-German sentiment.

Neither the US nor Britain threatened each other territorially ever again after the War of 1812 (aside from the diplomatic dispute about the Oregon Country–America had a maximalist “54’40” or Fight!” faction), but American power eclipsing British power was one of the causes of the collapse of the British Empire. Even during the war FDR frequently pressured Churchill to make promises about postwar decolonization.

With the benefit of hindsight it was therefore an error for Britain to permit America’s rise unmolested. Of course, public opinion in Britain might not have accepted war on those grounds. Palmerston was favorably disposed to intervening in the American Civil War, but refused to do so because British public opinion was strongly (and irrationally) against slavery.

It is being played pretty well by Elon Musk’s OpenAI, so why try harder?

The world would have been better served if Germany had been allowed to keep Danzig and Poland had been given control of Lithuania instead as their route to the sea.

Got to respect those rights of small nations though!

Exemption from accounting practices? What are you talking about?

Hollywood is now largely controlled by publicly traded corporations. I doubt the SEC gives tinsel town a free pass.

If you believe they are getting a pass for whatever reason, I suggest you report the entities in question to the IRS. Tipsters get part of any back taxes evaded as a result of tax fraud.

They might just start the Iranian version of PersianKitty.com.

What are the two things that made America great? Not liberty and industriousness, but the Atlantic and the Pacific.

>crosses atlantic in ships
>plants colonies on atlantic coast
>conquers land from natives
>settles land westward
>reaches pacific ocean
>colonized, conquered and settled entire continent
>lol losers only success because protected by oceans

Probably more importantly, it means a lot less Iranians playing League and instead angrily shitposting on 8chan to create memes – the ultimate form of warfare, I’m told.

Would breaking up Germany into separate states again have been such an evil crime?

Would Germans still have a claim on Mallorca as the 17th Bundesland?

The problem here is that you “googled” it. If you had searched on Baidu, you’d have gotten a bit more variety.

And how the hell was it not a good thing that France did not take the Rhineland?

VT failed because it was too harsh for a proper reconciliation, but not harsh enough to keep Germany down. France taking over the Rhineland could have ensured the latter.

Would breaking up Germany into separate states again have been such an evil crime? It does not seem like a very bad thing to enforce separation (better than putting Germans under the rule of another ethnic group).

Whether or not it would have been effective is a different question.

This is a good thing, right? It means their gamers will be relegated to lesser, more rudimentary games and won’t be able to keep up with Team America in future e-sports events at the Olympics and, more importantly, in the inevitable cyber wars of the future.

Poland HAD to have the Danzig corridor

From an ethnic point of view, I think Germany retained some mixed areas, so giving Poland access to the see by giving it Gdynia (whose port the Poles built in the interwar years) was certainly correct. Until Gdynia was built, and in light of the fact that Germany, after all, lost the war, I think it was also justifiable to give Poland military control over Danzig, however, I would have limited that military control to a set period of time (say, twenty years) instead of perpetuity. After which a Saar-type plebiscite could’ve decided its fate.

Even so, the borders probably favored the German side slightly more (i.e. some Polish-speaking areas in Germany; albeit in East Prussia, the Masurians preferred Germany and were treated as Germans even after the war; it was ambiguous in Silesia either, but somewhat favorable to Germany), so I think giving Poland control over the corridor was the correct decision.

Germans resented this, but I don’t think they’d have gone to war for it, if they received Austria (and maybe the Sudeten, too), unless of course with Hitler.

Did Britain really have free trade (or even capitalism)? It seems like the whole point of the British Empire was to micromanage all resources of the colonies and bring them back to the center. The colonies really couldn’t trade with one another freely.

They created one of the least stable systems in history because it ended in two world wars. Britain’s American colonies also broke away for this very reason, so it is ironic that the United States has become everything its founders hated. It will unfortunately come apart very violently too.

And Washington stopped them? That was not necessarily a good thing.

Washington hardly “stopped” them. What stopped them was the civil resistance of the German people, and probably pressure from London. England, for all its stupid handling of Germany otherwise, was not inclined to see France consistently invading the Rhineland and assaulting German civilians. America’s government, after Wilson, did not meddle much again in European affairs until Roosevelt.

And how the hell was it not a good thing that France did not take the Rhineland?

Unless your contention is that might entirely makes right. Have fun with that, Thrasymachus.

The point is that if the French and British had treated post-Wilhelmite Germany fairly, instead of trying to bury it in guilt, then the governments preceding Hitler might have actually been able to keep the country stable.

If the English want to pretend that it was an appropriate policy to attempt to dismember Germany after World War 1, then they deserve to be ruled by the American empire that cruelly steps on all our liberty.

I edited out the part about Hitchens’ being dead. Yes, I thought it was Christopher we were talking about. I didn’t click the link, to see which Hitchens it was, until after I read the block quote. But somehow I am proud of my ignorance of moronic British talking heads.

With that said, ideas of American-British cultural affinity generally come about mostly when leaders in each country want to use an alliance for their own goals.

Nothing, this is a problem of data volitilty. DotA 2 payouts are skewed by TI tournament, which constitute the bulk of player revenue and player career lifespans. Win the next TI and you are on the top of the list.

Also Chinese teams go through roster changes at an accelerated rate. Even a winning team will disband and reform with entirely new players after a single season. Western players are more likely to stick around with one team for a longer time, so more opportunity for a player to rack up winnings. Concentrated talent on a few teams, but weaker league overall.

When the Confederates invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, they were astounded by the prosperity of the farms.

The farmers themselves lived quite modestly, as a virtuous man ought to live. Their homes were solid but totally unpretentious. But their barns were, in the words of the rebels, “fat” with successful crops.

It takes industrious and honest men to make fine land into a garden.

You probably had to live in NYC to get the joke, but Al Golstein had a classic bit on his Manhattan Cable show, Midnight Blue, about how the Chinese were going to bury us with take-out menus, which arrived in the hundreds every week on our doorsteps, particularly if you were not in a doorman-building.

The crazy secular liberals in the French government were the ones who tried to steal the Rhineland from Germany, after all.

And Washington stopped them? That was not necessarily a good thing.

“Thankfully Hitchens can’t write any more bullshit like that, though I hope he rests in peace.”

On the contrary @underling4 1. I am not dead yet and so don’t have a grave. 2. This patent nonsense and babble only serves to show the empty meaninglessness of the term ‘addiction’ even more clearly than before. https://t.co/0WS37ANx0s

— Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) June 24, 2019

Hitchens’s writing there is a work of delusional crankery. To suggest that Wilson made a mess of Europe at Versailles ….. Good Lord, what stinking, filthy Franco-English revisionism that is. The crazy secular liberals in the French government were the ones who tried to steal the Rhineland from Germany, after all. The French and British, not America, were the ones who re-interpreted Wilson’s “access to the sea” to mean that Poland HAD to have the Danzig corridor, instead of some kind of peaceful trade arrangement. etc, etc, etc

Wilson was a naive idealist. The worst and most mendacious thing he did was empower Masaryk and Benes to create Czechoslovakia, despite the protests of the Slovaks (e.g. Monsignor Hlinka) and anyone with any brains. But Wilson’s mendacity pales in comparison to Britain and especially France. Any other interpretation of Versailles, like that of Hitchens, is self-serving English deceit meant to make themselves feel better about their killing 116,000 American soldiers in a final push to break Germany and foolishly pin all the blame and guilt on it for a war that was created by the 1914 ineptitude of multiple politicians in the Entente countries.

Hitchens needs to learn to write less nonsense. I have ZERO patience for any Englishman or Francophone who tries to blame Versailles on America or Wilson. And I HATE Wilson. But lies are worse than him.

Read ‘Desperate Deception’ by Thomas E. Mahl. Britain and America’s intermingled elites were the same parasites cut from the same cloth. And they still are.

Nothing says “hipness” like the Ukraine.

In this sense, it is a microcosm of how China bows before American diktats not to import Iranian oil, despite their own strained relationship with Washington D.C.

Really? Did I miss something? I heard not so many years ago that Iran was China’s second-largest oil-supplier. When did China cut them off? And who did they replace Iran with?

China’s South China Sea Policy is a great example, as to a lesser extent is its Belt and Road Initiative (even if this initiative is actually stupid and self-defeating and as such ought not to be opposed by Washington).

Why so? Doesn’t the recreation and vast extension of the Silk Road not only lend legitimacy to China as a great world economic power, but also provide it with a myriad of practical trade opportunities not only in Eurasia but even beyond?

I disagree.

Britain did try to undermine America and Americans were very suspicious of this until after the Civil War; for instance with the North-East territories, with an independent California and Texas and even with the Confederacy, which was very popular among British politicians and strategists who were only restrained by abolitionist activism. They did try to limit American intrusion into places like China, but for the most part there is no real reason for conflict because America is very far from places that mattered to Britain (India).

There is just no reason for the US (with current borders) to have gone to war with anyone else because they are already huge, have all the resources they could possibly want, have no ethnic diaspora and are not threatened by anyone.

The ethnic solidarity was more important not in preventing a British-American war but in getting Americans involved in the First World War (and to a lesser extent the Second World War).

I wonder if it’s possible for America to be too distracted by self created problems in the Middle East that over the next 20 years China continues to enjoy the time and space to build up its strength and economy. Over the next 20 years China could go from 70% to 200% of US GDP.

Brits and Americans sharing a language was not that important.

Why does the Prime Minister think it does her good to be seen with that global embarrassment, Donald Trump? Why do politicians and media commentators in Britain prattle about how the ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the USA is still flourishing?

This is dangerous fantasy. The United States is not, and never has been, our special friend. Sometimes it has been our ally. Sometimes it has been very close to being our enemy, especially in Ireland (almost all the time) and during the Suez Crisis in 1956, when the US Navy’s chiefs discussed opening fire on the Royal Navy.

I don’t complain about this. The USA does what we should do. It looks after itself first. It is a separate country with different interests from ours. It is not a Big England. We owe them a lot of money. We defaulted on our enormous First World War debts to the US (£866 million at the time, worth about £225 billion at today’s values) back in 1934. Contrary to popular belief, we have never paid this back. We only very recently paid our Second World War debts to America.

For the best explanation of the relations between the two countries, read what President Woodrow Wilson said at a banquet at Buckingham Palace on December 27, 1918, soon after our joint victory over Germany six weeks before.

‘You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the US. Nor must too much importance in this connection be attached to the fact that English is our common language… no, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and interests.’

I do wish that everyone in British politics, journalism and diplomacy would read and remember these words. Wilson was a fairly nasty piece of work who made a terrible mess of Europe and pretty much caused the Second World War. But he spoke the truth.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5320887/Hitchens-desperate-Donalds-doormat.html

Britain did not try to dismember the USA because London was focused on Greater Eurasia.
The Americas were secondary.
As long as Washington was not trying to take over the British Empire there, they would not be bothered.

For Washington, greater Eurasia was secondary and their last war against the British taught them to be more careful.
In fact, London was useful to them because it was the true enforcer of the Monroe Doctrine, keeping the other Europeans from expanding in the western Hemisphere.

In addition, the British Empire and the USA were close economic partners.

Blacks are well known to be prominent among fighting game fans (lol). Except Super Smash Brothers, for some reason.

Wow. I didn’t even know Iranians & Syrians played League of Legends. Totally lost respect for those countries now. I hope Israel and America bomb them back to the stone age.

As for multiplayer… I don’t know how feasible it is NOW but when Warcraft 3 (and WoW) got leaked before their launch there were a handful of user-hosted ‘battle.nets’ to play online. I don’t recall who hosted it and how it was able to handle so many players (as we did play a few 4v4) but there is always hope. Yeah it sucks you can’t play with the rest of the world but whatever. Its fucking LoL, no loss really.

When the US blocks porn websites… now that… THAT will cause a revolution that will topple governments.

Then…

Democrat elected. Black Muslim to boot.

Don’t care about war anymore. Kill as many brown people as you want. Go ahed and bomb Libya while your at it, Madam Hillary.

So important this; personalities and symbols matter. The celebrity generals probably were largely opposed to Obama’s spiel of gays in the Armies of Mordor etc, but now in hindsight I see how O got liberals to march in lockstep behind the war machine–maybe an entire generation of them. Russian TV was just gloating about it without any idea of what was going on (after all, not even their bosses understand the USA), but Obama was the generals’ best friend.

imo

1) Wall St. is betraying US from the inside

2) the current trade war isn’t anything to do with US interests; it’s neocons wanting China to stay out of their desired war with Iran.

if the neocons don’t get their war they’ll give up and join Wall St. in destroying the US*.

all China has to do is wait and play just nice enough with western corporations inside China for them to stay put until the US is too weak to retaliate when China nationalizes them.

blocking a US attack on Iran by sending a few hundred dudes on a training exercise to Iran would speed things up a bit as it won’t cause a reaction cos Wall St. won’t allow it and (after a few month’s rage) it would speed up the neocon’s switch to full-on anti-US acceleration (which deep down is what they want to do anyway).

#

(*the reparations thing is an example of how they’re going to do it. if white americans accept the banking mafia will just come up with something else that is harder to swallow. if white americans refuse the media will incite more white children getting thrown off balconies. the banking mafia and their media are going to keep ramping up the ethnic conflict until America goes up in flames.)

You know very little about tech. Huawei has homegrown SoCs which are on par with Qualcomm already. They were banned from getting Nvidia/Intel/AMD technology by the Obama administration to prevent them mastering their own supercomputer. What did they do? Created the world’s fastest supercomputer anyway. China invests more in AI than the US does and in many areas, such as face recognition tech, they are already leading. The list goes on and on.

The whole “China is just cheap labour assembly” hasn’t been true for many years now. You’re just a retarded burger with a Boomer brain.

Similarly, probably that’s why America didn’t dismember Britain and simply annex Canada as soon as it became possible for them. (I guess during WW1 they could easily have done this.)

I want to see this timeline. Imagine the Pentagon’s billions funding Welsh, Australian and Quebecois seperatist terrorism..

If China doesn’t want to head down the same path we need to boost the birth rate now

this accepts the false neoliberal paradigm.

you can *easily* boost demand by sharing out the proceeds of productivity growth between capital and labor (as was the case in the US from c. 1920 to c. 1970).

when capital takes it all (as has been the case in the West for the last 40 years) then the only way to boost demand is with more people.

China’s problem is they can’t do this (share out the wealth thus creating massive internal demand via a 1950s US style middle class) because half “their” factories are owned by western corporations who would move them to cheaper countries.

They’d need to nationalize them all first to stop them leaving – which might be tricky.

High IQ, the Injuns also had that geography.

Even the British government has taken the Chinese side in the dispute over Huawei and the Asian development bank. We can see the way the wind blows and that is why the Chancellor went to the BRI.

https://www.ft.com/content/a791f700-6812-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056

Hopefully the Chinese can sell some Treasuries and buy some Gilts instead, we might post a surplus if the interest costs come down enough.

The Monroe Doctrine was largely successful

For whom? Not for any western hemisphere nation that wasn’t the US or Canada, and now that sort dimbulb jingoism is coming back to bite us hard.

Generally America was able to rise easily because it wasn’t in Europe

What are the two things that made America great? Not liberty and industriousness, but the Atlantic and the Pacific.

There is no objective reason why an expanding confident society should not sacrifice animals as a little on the side insurance for success.

What about Moloch, WCGW?

Hillary Clinton Email Archive…HONDURAS: MAYBE, MAYBE

With fingers crossed, the old rabbit’s foot out of the box in the attic, I will be sacrificing a chicken in the backyard to Moloch . . .

seems very foolish to me – i think gamer-jihadists will prove to be much more dangerous than the standard kind.

(or at least the small percentage capable of becoming cyberpunk style hacker-seal hybrids)

Answer also acceptable:
“Muh GDP”

The public was behind the antiwar stance of France and Germany .
Iraq war proved them to be right and correct .
But something happened in those 2 countries after that .

George Bush was nominally a white male Christian republican from Texas who ran an oil company. A perfect character for trendy leftists to hate. The war could be framed as motivated by imperialism, racism, corporate profit, Christian bigotry etc.

Then…

Democrat elected. Black Muslim to boot.

Don’t care about war anymore. Kill as many brown people as you want. Go ahed and bomb Libya while your at it, Madam Hillary.

Here’s an example of why lefties of the era could oppose him so easily:

George W Bush Jr Salvation Testimony
This is a video of G. W. Bush Jr.’s salvation testimony that he gave during the 1999 Iowa Debate

I don’t think the dollar would collapse, it would obviously weaken, there would be a fiscal crisis that would require substantial retrenchment. Neither raising rates nor inflating the currency are exactly cost free, quite the opposite and those would be the dire choices facing the US. In the long run the USD would remorselessly decline as other former reserve currencies did when they lost their position.

If the largest holder in a stock starts liquidating their holding, and the market knows this, the share price tanks. Good reason market participants make great efforts to disguise their purchases and sales, probably the hardest part for institutional investors. Emotion and sentiment are strong drivers in short term market direction. I expect Chinese holdings of Treasuries to flat line or decline, the Russians have wisely moved out of Treasuries and in to other debt instruments and gold.

What is remarkable is to compare the US to British fiscal position. Britain having been in a worse financial position at the onset on the GFC.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-budget-deficit-grew-39-in-first-eight-months-of-fiscal-year-11560362539

https://www.ft.com/content/fc22a2fe-45a0-11e9-a965-23d669740bfb

So at least half of the top 100 players of Dota 2 are East Asians. Yet none cracked the top 10. What’s holding them back?

It must be stereotype threat.

I think Bismarck was correct when he said that the most important fact of the 20th century would be that both the British and the Americans speak English. In other words, the massive ethnic and/or cultural affiliation of America with the British is what made the latter reluctant to treat the emerging America the way they probably would’ve treated any other similar power. Similarly, probably that’s why America didn’t dismember Britain and simply annex Canada as soon as it became possible for them. (I guess during WW1 they could easily have done this.)

So, both sides being Anglo-Saxon meant they appeared less threatening to each other than they actually were based on abilities, and that assessment was correct in that neither side ever developed the intent to threaten the other. So in this case, basing threat assessments on intent instead of abilities was correct. In any other case, it wouldn’t have been correct, but wouldn’t have been done either.

Playing videogames is why death camps were invented in the first place. Anyone using electronics to play games should be immediately gassed and cremated, and then articles should be written by Ron Unz that they were never born in the first place.

As you point out China is the largest foreign holder, and prices are set at the margin. Volume is really a meaningless statistic, especially for a liquid highly traded market. At times of stress volume disappears.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/goldman-sachs-the-fiscal-outlook-for-the-us-is-not-good.html

US debt dynamics are so dire, akin to Italy really, that they can’t afford a misstep. Italy has a more functional government too.

Yes, these and other practices are what I tried to summarize saying “with the govt, but not of the govt”. The Pentagram’s Hollywood liaison office has a bigger budget than several real-world militaries if I have it right. Though just as important may be the shared mindset, just like with the “serious” media, that they’re all in it together to help the Empire. Maybe Russians could learn something from that.

in the highest paying video game competitions, Dota 2, the top ten current players by ancestry are

Correction: that was a list of “the top players in esports who earned the most prize money”.

Of those 10 guys 9 made over 3 million dollars. The 10th guy made 2.95 million

> Shutting China out of ARM technology means permanently shutting them out of world markets.

Like the fiasco of shutting Huawei out of European and Asian markets?

Legally Huawei and the ARM-Chinese JV controlled by the Chinese have perpetual ARM license up to this point. Huawei already has products using those self designed multi-cores 64 bits ARM server chips. The difference is future development. How market significant will that be when the new ARM tech loses half of their market base? That will not stop China forking the ARM tech in a different direction. What will the ARM Holding consortium owners of Softbank, Saudi and other hedge funds do? Will they move the ARM Holding HQ to Switzerland or do they want to write off their investment?

Qualcomm also had injected their knowledgebase for server chip technology into a Chinese JV with the Chinese as the majority managing partner and they already has a product the StarDragon out in China. Qualcomm had direct licensing disputes with Apple and Apple turns to Intel for products based on Qualcomm patents. Qualcomm is unable to stop that except threatening about access to future Qualcomm innovations.

Though US can force many companies to stop dealing with China that wont stop China dealing with those companies. For example US still regularly pay the rent for Quantanamo but Cuba never cashes those cheques.

Of the next 90 on that list over 50 look to be East Asians, going by names. So at least half of the top 100 players of Dota 2 are East Asians. Yet none cracked the top 10. What’s holding them back?

Btw, the best at playing fighting esports is an african-american Dominique McLean:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SonicFox

Dominique McLean, better known by his alias SonicFox (born March 2, 1998), is an American professional esports player of several fighting games. He is recognized for his versatility to pick up a new game or character and master it for professional play relatively quickly. He has won four Evolution Championship Series (EVO) events, among other tournament wins, and is the highest paid fighting game esports player in the world as of December 28, 2018, with over $500,000 in earnings. He was named Esports Player of the Year at The Game Awards 2018.

Well, not a gamer. But I googled best gamers 2019 and was surprised to find that esports is not dominated by East Asians at least not at the very top. For example, in the highest paying video game competitions, Dota 2, the top ten current players by ancestry are 3 MENAs, 3 Nordics, 2 South Asians, 1 Anglo-American and 1 Southern Slav:

https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/231-dota-2/top-players

1. Iranian
2. Jordanian
3. Danish
4. Bulgarian
5. Finnish
6. Pakistani
7. Finnish
8. Lebanese
9. Indian
10. American

Spanish still sacrifice bulls. Muslims sacrifice chickens on Eid al-adha, n sacrifice camels in untold numbers by strict ritual every year during the Hajj.

There is no objective reason why an expanding confident society should not sacrifice animals as a little on the side insurance for success.

I don’t know any who sacrificed pigs, tho.

Hollywood receives considerable gov’t subsidies, exemption from accounting practices, and hands-off treatment for the degeneracy that is commonplace.

The film industry was so powerful that it won itself an exemption from New Deal minimum wage laws.

And movies that feature the Pentagon positively receive Pentagon assistance with production, free of charge. See: Captain Marvel

This is just more proof that gamers truly are the most oppressed minority

Those two questions just about answer each other. Most consumer products in China are low quality compared to the products China exports. But China is itself a huge market, and in many ways it’s closed off to outsiders. So Chinese companies, even lower quality ones, have a big market at home.

Over time the quality of Chinese goods in the domestic market will continue to improve of course.

The US unsuccessfully invaded Canada in 1776 and 1812. The US wasn’t the rising power yet–it was still very small. And after the War of 1812, it wisely left Canada and other British possessions in the Western hemisphere alone.

The bungled attempt to conquer Cuba was the Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. The US had previously successfully invaded Cuba during the Spanish-American War, when it was a rising power (but gained the diplomatic support of numerous European powers).

The Monroe Doctrine was largely successful, in part because it explicitly respected existing European possessions. The only “violation” was the comical French invasion of Mexico during America’s Civil War. President Theodoore Roosevelt also explicitly refused to use American naval power to protect Latin American deadbeat debtors from European gunboat diplomacy.

Generally America was able to rise easily because it wasn’t in Europe and had no significant geopolitical ambitions outside of North America until after it was already by far the world’s strongest economy.

The European powers screwed up massively in allowing this to happen. The British in particular had a number of pretexts they could’ve used to dismember America.

with the exception of the United States itself, rising powers seem to be largely unable to avoid premature assertion

Didn’t the US have a bunch of bungled attempts to conquer Cuba, enforce the Monroe Doctrine, and invade Canada in its early history?

China’s holdings of Treasuries are equivalent to approximately two days volume on the Treasury market.

https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

They own about 1.2 trillion out of 20 ish trillion total.

Regardless, the idea that the US is dependent on China owning US Treasuries is uninformed. So agree Thorfinnsson. Their are enough real dangers.

The roots of the American/Liberal empire ultimately lie in the coercive strength of it’s military, everyone should hold no illusions on this.

And that’s true of the dollar and its “stability” as well, of course.
However, when you talk countries who have not tens, but hundreds of atom bombs, it’s no longer about who defeats and who is defeated, nobody can go “all-in” any more.
One of the superpowers could devise an unthought-of new weapon far outgunning the atom bomb, and then things would change…

Consoles are inferior platforms used only by filthy, unwashed peasants.

The party made the correct decision.

Other countries should also ban consoles and send existing console gamers to reeducation camps.

I agree that with Taiwan’s present defense planning (or lack thereof) that the military balance of power across the Straits is shifting strongly in the PRC’s favor.

But at present I would not bet on a PRC victory (nor against it). Taiwanese forces have the capability to deal substantial damage to any invasion fleet, and any PRC forces that land on the island would likely face determined and well-armed resistance as well.

5-10 years from now a successful defense of Taiwan will no doubt require immediate assistance by US and/or Japanese forces unless something changes drastically in Taiwan.

The apparent unwillingness of the Taiwanese to defend themselves, while simultaneously embracing “nationalism”, is one reason why I favor the island’s sale to the PRC.

PUTLER should just buy CD Project and get all this stuff turnkey-style.

In addition to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan hardly being a guaranteed cake walk (https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-with-china/)

One year later, the same author basically admitted that Taiwan is screwed.
They have neither enough manpower, morale and ammunition for a decent defense.

Two weeks ago The National Interest published an important, hard-nosed essay by Wendell Minnick. I have had the opportunity to meet Minnick before. His knowledge of and long experience with the ROC Armed Forces (the “guojun” 國軍) has few equals. His assessment on Taiwanese defense preparations is unsparing:

Taiwan’s military brass are very cognizant of the China threat; it is Taipei’s political leadership that has forced the military to reduce military readiness over the past twenty years. Public lethargy and a lack of confidence in the military has drained the armed forces of manpower and morale. And it is this lethargy, along with the unwillingness of Taiwan’s political elites to communicate this imminent threat to the public, that must be addressed.

Even if Taiwan procures all of its dreams and desires from the U.S. government, then the question becomes: who will fly them, drive them, sail them and fire them.

According to the Ministry of National Defense (MND), the current estimate of personnel officially stands at 215,000. Many critics argue that this is the bare minimum needed to repel the first wave of a Chinese invasion.
Now remember, that is the minimum.

The reduction to 215,000 was the result of the 2011–2014 Jing-cui streamlining program, which was extended to 2015. Fortunately, the follow-up Yung-gu plan was canceled. It would have further reduced the number from 215,000 to 175,000 and eliminated conscription entirely, opting for an all-volunteer force.
Now, recruiters face a real nightmare. Last year the big brains in the presidential office cut pensions 30 percent, with plans to further reduce it 50 percent.

Even though Yung-gu is temporarily on hold, the official current number, 215,000, is an outright lie. The actual number of operational active duty personnel is devastating.

There are actually only 188,000 in total and if you exclude civilian employees, noncombat personnel, those on leave, and cadets, the actual number of warfighters is 152,280; 81 percent of the authorized strength levels needed for fending off an invasion.

As a general rule, Taiwan has about one-third to one-half of the munitions it needs for two-days of aerial combat; it plans to place an emergency order with the United States when a war is on the horizon. In 1996, during the height of the Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis, emergency orders were sent to Washington for a wide array of missiles and bombs, but quickly canceled when the crisis ended.

https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2019/03/who-is-to-blame-for-taiwans-military.html

I am not so sure any more. What do TW leaders want most In their military?

Advanced fighters, submarines, an aegis like destroyer, and big ol tanks.

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) June 14, 2019

What good will American friendship do TW then? America will need time to get back in theater, and TW forces will not be prepared to trade anything for time. Their force structure and training won’t prepare them for it.

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) June 14, 2019

Not the first time. For example, the god invoked by (some) Japanese students was a historical person.

Sugawara no Michizane [August 1, 845 – March 26, 903] … was a scholar, poet, and politician of the Heian Period of Japan. He is regarded as an excellent poet, particularly in Kanshi poetry, and is today revered in Shinto as the god of learning, Tenman-Tenjin (天満天神, often shortened to Tenjin).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugawara_no_Michizane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenjin_(kami)

The console ban is one of the shittier decisions made by the Party. The fortunate part is that some games are ported to PC (purchasable on Steam) and thus one can connect one’s laptop to a TV and buy a controller in Hong Kong to partially bypass this.

The unfortunate part is that there are far too many peasants playing pseudo-games on their phones. This is what we have electroshock psychotherapy for.

I expect Trump to lose in 2020, and since the rich upperclass – totally citizens of the world & thoroughly anti-nationalist – controls the United States, it’s possible that short-sighted, greedy Western capitalists will go back to business as usual afterwards. In fact, lots of American corporations are stridently advocating against these tariffs. I think they will carry the day sometime soon. Most of these tariffs will go away in a Kamala Harris administration because they are thought to be geared towards supporting middle-class whites. POC don’t care about that group and neither does the Ruling Class.

How much longer before this reparations talk going on turns into horrible economic polices fueled by POC envy? How much worse can it get when whites are no longer able to restrain this madness? Land appropriations? Corporate board affirmative action? Movie and video game representation quotas?

Reminder that Chinese are white.

In fact, when complexion was mentioned by an early Western traveller or missionary or ambassador (and it very often wasn’t, because skin colour as a racial marker was not fully in place until the 19th century), East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2184754/chinese-were-white-until-white-men-called-them-yellow

They are going to pay too.

https://twitter.com/GeopoliticsNerd/status/1142876212278243328

One of the easy predictions is that total Jewish domination won’t last forever. (Though the other easy prediction is that there will be Jews around for a long time, probably as long as humans are around.)

It is interlinked, the means of their survival is also what usually causes their (all-too-temporary) downfalls. Unfortunately, it has been a part of them for so long that one would have to be quite panglossian to hope that they can ever outgrow it.