https://archive.is/k6hU4

For those who don’t have a plugin to bypass WSJ paywall

Here in Japan, a chain has a cheese burger with beef from Kobe, caramelized onions, and gravy made from the drippings for 7.50USD Half that if you want it with regular beef.

I investigated why things are so cheap and businesses can have the weirdest hours (there’s a bar in Tokyo that’s only open for 5 hours a week on fridays), they tax unused commercial property (for certain definitions of unused, like in rural areas just throwing some gravel down and letting your neighbor park there for a few bucks can be enough to dodge the tax), so companies offer extremely competitive rates to get businesses in. The .4% interest rate and very cheap remodeling costs (except plumbers for some reason) serve to keep startup more accessible, so places don’t have to be super profitable to exist. The taxes work in conjunction with the interest rates to keep banks and capital firms from just buying everything up with the free money to establish a local monopoly and drive up prices. There’s probably other things driving down home and commercial property costs, it’s mindboggling to see a 3 floor+attic, 800sqft/floor building in the center of a city with 10 million people and have the business owner say he’s renting it because the owner wanted 2.5m to buy the whole thing, and that was too much.

I know China manages to keep commercial property somewhat cheap by having 5 year plans and SoEs/universities guarantee the commercial sectors have the inputs such as steel, concrete, and skilled labor they’ll need at a specific price point, but I’ve never managed to talk to someone about tax policies and the like.

“british” crown family.

their logistics were worse shit

highly mobile, well-coordinated force with superior technology

refining strategy and tactics in order to fight more effectively was hampered by politcs

Yeah no, again, if you didn’t get your understanding of history through memes/pop-culture osmosis, you’d understand how silly these statements were in this context; the soviets were either comparable or better at all 3 compared to nazi germany, and in the case of refining tactics, the western allies too. The USSR’s system of having the political and military officers submit independent reports is why they tend to be much more accurate when compared against enemy reports of their own equipment numbers than the western allies, or especially the nazis (though China and Japanese reports are something else). If you want I can talk about some books I read, but I really feel like you’re not interested in the actual history and it would be a waste of time.

your comparative casualty numbers seem to imply

Did you even look at the numbers? The point is that the USSR didn’t send endless waves of men any more than the germans did, evidenced by the number of military casualties being roughly similar.

Perhaps more preparation to fight the fascists

We’re talking about a country that opened it’s first tractor factory in 1930, in Stalingrad. The USSR saw the writing on the wall and was preparing for this war before anyone else, and that preparation included ensuring the western allies wouldn’t just sit back and continue to support Nazi Germany as they took care of the global threat of communism.

Stalin backed off of trying to micromanage the war effort

Funny, I thought you were going to go with the myth about Stalin hiding in his room for a week when the nazis invaded.

You’re repeating the nazi myth about Asiatic hordes and misunderstanding intentionally obfuscated things like the role of blocking brigades. In practice, the USSR didn’t have more bodies on the front until roughly Stalingrad. At which point casualty rates roughly equalized. Turns out it’s easier not to get encircled when you don’t have half the number of troops of the enemy.

The USSR suffered about 9 million casualties due to combat, and 16 million more due to nazi warcrimes and famine.

Germany suffered roughly 5 million

That’s not to say that the USSR had the most competent leadership before Zhukov got his shit together, just that you shouldn’t get your understanding of either Stalin, WWII, or Stalin’s role in WWII from memes.

Stalin spent the 30s doing everything in his power to form a bulwark against fascism, the western allies also made non-aggression pacts with Nazi Germany, as they were content to let fascism be the solution to the red menace. Stalin only made his non-aggression pact AFTER every western power refused to make a mutual defense pact, or join in if the USSR committed 1 million troops to an invasion.

Then after dividing Czechoslovakia between Germany and Poland, Hitler invaded Poland and France instead of working with Poland to invade the USSR as the western allies intended.

If that was what they were setting up, they could have done more to characterize them, show us what tendencies or how their lack of ideology makes them susceptible to manipulation, the message I got was just "look at these paranoid, incompetent, trigger-happy, overly-dramatic idiots.

Like there’s historical examples to draw on for what Dedra is planning, from the IRA assassinating their own after British intelligence fabricated evidence others were traitors to Russian police having SR assets on payrole who participated in assassinations to get in with SR groups and identify them in the 1800s, to the FBI’s varied tactics to destroy or render groups ineffectual that would all be more interesting than some group that’s easily manipulated because they’re just a bunch of morons.

There’s some very weird ml groups, but you just made that up, if not, you’d have said which org.

Nope, when you poll on individual policies, they’re way to the left of the democrats.

The democrats showcase healthcare bill wasn’t “subsidies for employer-based health insurance, that you have no idea what it’s going to cost and have to buy at a specific time of year by going to one of 50 sites provided by your state at a specific time of year and filling out a bunch of forms or face a tax penalty, with a sliding scale based on income, marriage status, and other factors” because that’s more popular than “free healthcare”.

Same if you ask americans about Biden (and Harris’s) policies of “loan forgiveness for PELL grant recipients up to X dollars depending on age, loan repayment status, income, parent’s income, and whether you were born on a prime-numbered date” vs “free college”

The democrats compromise their bills, not because there’s a bunch of “moderates” who are exactly between democrat and republican who will vote for democrats if they promote garbage versions of progressive bills that don’t actually help anyone, but because they know those versions are less likely to pass and be easier to chip away at, and therefore won’t piss off their billionaire patrons.

I kinda felt like there was a lot of filler. They didn’t need to spend an hour of the first two episodes focusing on drama within the group of dipshits who presumably

I think I see the confusion. A capitalist is someone who owns a significant amount of capital. China obviously has capitalists. Liberalism is the philosophy of capitalism. China does have liberals, but there’s been some pushback over the last decade or so.

I mean you kinda can, see China.

Not really, because somehow a libertarian society where you can own slaves is less “authoritarian” than a socialist society where everyone is fed, housed, because the poor capitalists don’t get the power to exploit people.

Meanwhile a primitive anarchist commune with so little development of the means of production, a person’s only options are to fill a very specific role in society or starve becomes free again.

The term “authoritarian” is not useful for describing how much agency people in a society have over their own lives.

What are you gonna do, vote for the guy who wants to put 10 holes in the boat? No, you have to vote for me, I will only put 9 more holes in the boat.

Don’t try to take away my gun or tell me to stop putting holes in the boat. What do you want Trump to win?

Other than take the gun from the liberal to save us all, wtf could he have done?

It wasn’t just Trump, Dem governors and mayors had an opportunity to fill in where the federal government was failing, and instead we got Cuomo going on CNN every night to talk about how important it is to balance human health and the economy.

I would hardly call “so greedy I’m ok with an extreme racist regime as long as I keep on getting mine” moderate

This describes anyone who is OK with the country tho? I mean America didn’t start being racist in 2016

You only believe that because the democrats almost exclusively run on the most compromised versions of policies that 9/10 people assume won’t help them. Look at social democracies, and how touching people’s healthcare is so toxic even conservatives run on bolstering healthcare. Obama won by a huge margin in 2008 because people thought they’d get free healthcare. Then they got means-tested subsidies for health insurance through an employer they could buy on a marketplace.

Voters understand “You will go to a doctor and they will treat you and give you medicine for free, you won’t have to pay $10,000 a year for health insurance, and then more when you actually need healthcare, and you won’t have to fill out any complicated forms”. And everybody knows someone who has been fucked by medical debt or forgone medical care because they couldn’t afford it or put it off to another year because they didn’t meet that year’s deductible.

They understand “free child care” or “monthly check for $500 per child”, but “tax credits based on eligibility” and most voters will assume it won’t help them, but they will be paying for someone “undeserving”.

Unpopular policy decreases turnout. That’s just how democracy works. The narrative of blaming the voters just serves to distract from the only people who could have changed the outcome of the last election and will be the only ones who can change the outcome of future lessons.

If Trump runs for a third term, and the democrats run on building the wall and defunding the government, the same fucking thing will happen.

OK, and then the democrats run on Trump’s 2024 platform in 2028 and we either get the same policies Biden never pushed back on, or the dems lose again.

The only way for the dems to win in 2026 and 2028 is if they listen to the base.