Self-sufficiency
Trade is great; trade is good.
Since at least 2000 BCE, since the first inter-tribal (what was to become international) trading of horses, gold, silver, silk, foods, oils, wines, knowledge, technologies, …; trade between peoples has enrichened the lives of humans everywhere. Traditionally, trade was the great cross fertilizer. Without trade, our world would be a lot more like it was 4000 years ago than what it is like today. But first, before there was trade, there had to be enough self-sufficiency (self-sufficiency being relative to a given civilization at a given time) amongst the peoples, the tribes, trading for them to feel that they could afford to part with a goat, a horse, a bit of gold, … in exchange for something different they would more like to have.
Not all trade is great, or good. Certainly not the selling of weapons to warring nations. The exploitation of less developed people by more advanced people clearly wasn’t good for the less developed people. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was itself fueled by trade; trade that was intended to enhance the wealth of the then first world England, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France. Did so indeed; at horrendous expense to the Africans enslaved and traded, and to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The enslaved Africans produced the tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar that made their enslavers, and these enslavers’ international trading partners, wealthy. It was this pursuit of wealth that fueled the slave trade. Trade from which they, the enslaved, got but hardship and death. The pursuit of land on which to grow these crops for trade fueled the displacement and murder of indigenous people throughout the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The slave trade was a very unbalanced equation; the abducted were enslaved. This misappropriation of the natives’ land was theft; not trade. What is happening today, in this the 21st century, on palm oil plantations in Southeast Asia, is little different.
Trade at arm’s length, trade that is mutually beneficial amongst equals, is better. The slave trade was between the slavers, the slave traders, and the slave buyers. There was no handshake with, no compensation given to, no benefit received by the enslaved. Those being traded had little or nothing to trade, were barely, if at all, self-sufficient. Those being traded were treated as trade goods. Under modern statutes of commerce, none of the contracts of the slave trade would be valid, would be legally binding.
What if, instead of being based on the pursuit of more wealth for the wealthy, on victimization, the trade had been mutually beneficial between the Africans and the planters? Suppose those who wished to grow tobacco, cotton, rice, and sugar for trade and profit had contracted with Africans for their labor (a valid trade good) with mutual agreement on pay, living and working conditions, length of contract, transportation, …? Suppose the planters had treated the Africans as trading partners? Suppose they had grown the cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar in Africa employing African labor?
What if, instead of exploiting, enslaving, and murdering the people of the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia, those doing the colonizing had dealt with them at arm’s length, as equals, to reach agreement on such as fair recompense for their land? Had sought mutually beneficial arrangements with the people of these lands? What if, in exchange, they had agreed to build housing, roads, schools, hospitals, …, infrastructure, across the land, had offered gainful employment, had given the indigenous people the skills to bring themselves into modernity? Had agreed to help them become more self-sufficient? Had traded with, not enslaved, not exploited? Were not the benefits of trade great enough that there would have still been reason to trade? The indigenous, though self-sufficient enough in their world, were not self-sufficient in the sense of the more modern Europeans. Their stone age self-sufficiency was being pitted against that of more advanced people.
What if, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States had traded at arms length with Latin America? What if, instead of co-opting their governments and stealing their resources, the US had helped them build housing, infrastructure, and manufacturing as compensation for their resources. Had paid them a living wage enough to make them self-sufficient enough to trade as equals? Had given them the technological skills necessary for their own advancement; for self-sufficiency in the modern world? If we had, wouldn’t Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, …, be better off than they are today? Wouldn’t we be better off?
Obviously, the colonizers and the 20th century United States preferred to avoid fair trade, did not want the indigenous people, people in developing nations, to be self-sufficient enough. Yet today, the United States uses trade as a weapon by telling developing nations that if they do our bidding they will be rewarded with trade. Such conditions on trade being but a different twist on sanctions, another way trade is weaponized.
What if, in the late 20th century, China had sought out investors to help her build her own manufacturing plants to supply her own domestic market, thus and still bringing China forward and making her more self sufficient while leaving the western world more self-sufficient than it is now after China’s export-based rise (The cheat here was China’s cheap labor.)? Can a nation’s self-sufficiency that is dependent on the non self-sufficiency of other nations survive for the long term?
What if, instead of destroying Venezuela’s economy by handing out cash for votes, lining his, his family’s, and his friends pockets with $billions; Hugo Chavez had plowed Venezuela’s oil money from international trade back into her economy to build infrastructure and productive capacity, to educate its citizens; made Venezuela more self-sufficient? What if Venezuela could produce her necessities; make her own medicines, grow her own food, …, today? What would a self-sufficient enough Venezuela mean to Venezuelans, to Latin America, to the world, today?
What if, in the spring of 2020, the US had been able to make one billion N95 masks, a plenitude of PPEs, …, in short order? What if, today, the US could produce one billion doses of COVID vaccines in short order? The US of 2020, of today, isn’t nearly as self-sufficient as it was in 1970. The US of today is more like Venezuela. Mostly because of her mismanagement of trade; mismanagement mostly assignable to greed. We sold away our self-sufficiency.
How self-sufficient should a nation, a household, be? Every nation, every household, should be self-sufficient enough to produce as many of its essentials as possible. This is not to say that every family should raise chickens, and grow and can their own vegetables as our grandparents and great grandparents did. The time came when subsistent farmers saw that they needed to send their kids off to high school, to college, so that their kids could compete, function, in the 20th century. All that August afternoon in 1985, the Fijian Chief wanted to talk about possible ways the tribe could make enough money to educate their young, to give them a fair chance. He understood their subsistence was no longer good enough, that his people needed to make the things they wanted to buy, needed those well paying jobs. Then, the good chief was casting about for ideas. Only one or two generations earlier, his American counterpart subsistent farmers could either find a job with income or see theirs go uneducated, be unable to compete.
What does it mean to be self-sufficient enough in the 21st century? The capacity to deal with a pandemic for starters. We Americans have seen front row, the whole world has watched, America fail spectacularly at coping with a pandemic. Even our government had ceased to be self-sufficient, can’t perform its basic functions (Was it traded away for campaign donations?).
Global Warming has forced homeowners and landlords everywhere, to reassess the sources of energy production, the optimal energy distribution structure. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels has led us to think of all-electric homes and getting additional panels through services like electrical panel Glendora. The polar vortices and wildfires of recent years, the associated more frequent failures of the electrical grid, have prompted us to look for alternatives to the grid; for ways to make our households energy self-sufficient. Off the grid, whether by choice or due to grid failure, how does one generate the electricity needed to heat one’s home when it is 20 degrees below zero for days? How does one heat one’s home off the grid when there is neither enough sunshine nor wind to generate electricity? How does one make one’s home energy self-sufficient enough to deal with Global Warming?
Time was when trade was indeed the great cross fertilizer. Since the mid-twentieth, television, foreign exchange studies, the internet, media of all sorts, … have been. The considerations, the equation, for trade have changed. Today, trade is more likely to bring pests and disease than ideas. A good king would not want his country to be any more dependent on other nations than necessary; would seek to make his people, at a minimum, self-sufficient enough to produce critical goods enough during times of emergencies, most essential goods at all times; would seek, always, a balanced trade equation.
Ken
there has been slavery everywhere in the world since the beginning of time.
When Europeans discovered the African slave trade it ws a well established industry in Africa. Africans on Africans, with help from Moslem slave traders. Slavery existed in America before Europeans arrived here, with a little human acrifice mixed in (also true in Africa). And my ancestors in Europe were more likely to have been slaves than slave owners, even if they weren’t captured by Moslem Barbary pirates.
Slavery is evil, but talking as if Europeans invented it is ignorance.
Those “good paying jobs” turn out to be a form of slavery, as we shall learn.
I’m all for getting back to the Garden of Eden, but all those what-if’s you mention fall on the rocks of reality as it is. has been, and probably will be.
Yes, and why can’t people be do-bees, and not be__e don’t bees;
And everybody be ni_______________________ce?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in thewind.
The answer, is blowin’ in the wind.
Throughout history traders of all nations have taken to raiding when they could get away with it. Even the Vikings considered themselves to be traders; and slave-raiding by southern Europeans, North Africans, Maylays, and (most recently) Thais has devastated vulnerable populations. By the way, the sellers in the Atlantic slave trade were Africans, often men of tribes that also ended up supplying victims.
Evolution, via iterated prisoner’s dilemma, has inclined humans toward altruism, but only partially, and only within a fluidly defined in-group. Only Leviathan can constrain the predatory impulses of human behavior. Internationally, we can only hope that balance of power can promote a partially effective form of Leviathan.
Really thought provoking, important writing.
Please though explain this further when possible:
“What if, in the late 20th century, China had sought out investors to help her build her own manufacturing plants to supply her own domestic market, thus and still bringing China forward and making her more self sufficient while leaving the western world more self-sufficient than it is now…”
I post and the thread disappears. This is sadly impossible.
Just about every society has had some form of slave trade since time immemorial. The Garamantians, based inland in North Africa were running a salt and gold for slaves trade between the Mediterranean and West Africa before the founding of Carthage. In Europe, Slavs got their name because that part of Europe was a good source of slaves. Islam shifted the slave trade to Africa since Muslims cannot own Muslim slaves. Europeans globalized the slave trade by exploiting existing networks. In the northern part of what was going to become the US, there were slaves and slave raids, but the Europeans wanted pelts. In what would become the southern part of the US, they wanted slaves. In both cases, the money was good, and it could buy one guns which made business even easier.
I’m happy enough about trade, but I’m with Jane Jacobs. It isn’t exactly about self sufficiency, it’s about becoming a productive place, a place that can provide a good subset of its own needs. There are places that basically can’t provide much. No one expects the Kerguelen Islands to produce steel or have fields of wheat. It’s a military base and research station, and is a strange example of a place continuously occupied for over a hundred years but with no one staying more than a few years. As long as the Kerguelen Islands are considered to have some strategic importance and scientific interest, outsiders will provide goods and services. When that ends, their occupation will end. Other places are at similar risk. There are plenty of abandoned cities and former empires around.
Kaleberg
I guess I ought to be happy enough with trade too. But with importing exotic species from one continent to another, or just suporting the insane specialization and work frenzy that goes with trade, i’m not so sure.
When I was very young I read about Nepal, it was easy to see that they could use things we have that they can’t make for themselves. So I thought of providing them with what they needed. But what could they give me in trade? Tours of Mt Everest? And yet they seemed happy enough without the stuff I thought they needed.
How much value there might be to me in particular from Tibet, I do not know. However, I just happen to know that from Tibet rivers originate that are essential for life for hundreds of millions of Asian people. Possibly closing, say, India from Tibet might be intolerable for Indians.
Please explain this further when possible: “What if, in the late 20th century, China had sought out investors to help her build her own manufacturing plants to supply her own domestic market, thus and still bringing China forward and making her more self sufficient while leaving the western world more self-sufficient than it is now…”
“What if, in the late 20th century, China had sought out investors to help her build her own manufacturing plants to supply her own domestic market, thus and still bringing China forward and making her more self sufficient…”
China has had a very high personal savings rate for decades and used the savings to overwhelmingly build her own increasingly sophisticated manufacturing plants. Increasing trade was and is useful for China, but Chinese development was driven primarily by domestic policy and domestic savings and investment.
Recent years have repeatedly shown China just how important domestic production is since American policy has been overtly designed to prevent Chinese development; from the denial of participation in “International” Space Station programs in 2011, to blocking use of the Global Positioning System to attacking Chinese companies such as Huawei….
Thinking: That China is too export-dependent, too dominant in manufacturing, for her own, and the world’s good. That the US, where a lot of the capital came from, is left too bereft of manufacturing capacity; especially for such critical and essential products as medicines, PPEs, …, and beyond.
At this time, I doubt that we could mobilize for much of anything without products from China. That none of this bodes well.
Wondering how much real trouble China is in at the moment because of all these things. Bothered by Xi and the adherence to ‘culture’.
Anne
it’s been a long time since i thought about saving Tibet from its poverty. But if you are suggesting Tibet could dam the Ganges and charge India for the water, I think you have to solve two problems: First, how are the Tibetans going to do this without a lot of things they don’t have to build dams with. Second, how long are the Indians going to put up with it.
Meanwhile..or used to be…the Tibetans, and the Yanomami, are happier in their trade free poverty than we are with all our plastic toys from China.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2020/October/weo-report?c=924,134,534,158,111,&s=NID_NGDP,NGSD_NGDP,&sy=1980&ey=2020&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
October 15, 2020
Total Investment & Gross National Savings as a Percent of GDP for China, Germany, India, Japan and United States, 1980-2020
Thinking: That China is too export-dependent, too dominant in manufacturing, for her own, and the world’s good. That the US, where a lot of the capital came from, is left too bereft of manufacturing capacity; especially for such critical and essential products as medicines, PPEs, …, and beyond.
At this time, I doubt that we could mobilize for much of anything without products from China. That none of this bodes well.
Wondering how much real trouble China is in at the moment because of all these things. Bothered by Xi and the adherence to ‘culture’.
[ China having experienced far faster real per capita growth than any developed country since 1977, and having experienced far faster growth in 2020 and already off to a fine growth year for 2021, may really be in no “real trouble” in terms of growth at all.
China had contained the coronavirus by April 2020, and while vaccinating residents of China has already distributed some 425 million doses of vaccine to other countries.
President Xi evidently strikes hundreds of millions of Chinese as a splendid president, culturally speaking.
As for most of the world, the Chinese economy is helpful enough that taking Africa every African country save for Eswatini, and I think another that I cannot just now recall, is part of the Belt and Road Initiative. China is a member of the world’s largest free trade alliance; Asian.
For her “good” and for most of the world, China is a fine development example or even model.
Coberly,
I made a mistake and should have written Nepal in my response. Nepal is the source of river water for much of Asia.
“Nepal” is the country in question that you initially mentioned.
I am so sorry for the carelessness.
Anne
Tibet. Nepal. I couldn’t tell them apart if you dropped me out of an airplane.
What difference does it make to the argument?
My seventh grade teacher of blessed memory would cry if she knew I can’t even remember where the Ganges actually arises.
I find it awfully difficult to comment since the blog has changed, and I am sorry for repeatedly botching spacing and such in posts.
As for Coberly, I was not criticizing but only meant to use Nepal as an example of a country that hundreds of millions of people are vitally dependent on. As for Tibet, poverty has indeed been ended and life in Tibet has been remarkably bettered as all China has developed.
As for Ken, I assure you that China overwhelmingly developed China. “Much of the capital of China” did not come from the United States, though some capital did come from the US.
I also know that an economics professor at the University of California has been predicting the crashing of China for years, because China does not have the necessary “North Atlantic institutions” to continue to develop. I know the professor in question predicts President Xi will cost China 10 to 50 years of development, in line with The Economist, but I find that absurd. Prejudice is absurd, but we have just been subject to a President and administration that fostered prejudice against 1.4 billion Chinese from beginning to end. No matter, prejudice against the Chinese will be overcome.
Ken, I always appreciate your writing and I appreciate the responses of Coberly.
Anne
I can’t imagine why you should apologize for criticizing, or not criticizing me. That’s what blogs are for. If anything, I was criticizing your argument.
fwiw I was a very early believer in China. Probably got it from my mother who read books. Went through the McCarthy era believing that Communist China was “the enemy” like everyone else (my uncle fought in Korea) and didn’t think compromising over Quemoy and Matsu was a good idea. But believed in the Flying Tigers, and the heroism of China in fighting Japan and rescuing american flyers.. one of whom said the people in NW China, who had only wheat to eat, were the happiest people he had ever met.
So it’s hard to get me on board with China-hating, or China-loving, since I think their dietary choices are disgusting and their human rights attitudes are immoral.
I don’t think much of pFree Trade or products made by organ donors. And I fully expect China to become the leader of the pFree World (chinese edition). Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind.
I don’t think much of pFree Trade or products made by —– —— .
[ This is malicious rubbish, meant to be shockingly nasty though false, but I am ever so grateful for the response. ]
Global price arbitrage is not what Adam Smith meant when he wrote about comparative advantage as an incentive for trade. Price arbitrage is nothing but profiteering from cost shifting.
The beauty of globalization is that price arbitrage can be used to steal from two countries simultaneously, capitalism at its finest. So far though, it has served the purposes of emerging economies, but when the butterfly completes emerging from its cocoon then it will lay its eggs on our plants.
America’s Growing Trade Deficit Is Selling The Nation Out From Under Us. Here’s A Way To Fix The Problem–And We Need To Do It Now. – November 10, 2003 (fortune.com)
So that we know, there has been an American trade deficit in every month save 1 since September 1976. The exception was September 1980. Ronald Reagan engineered a devaluation of the dollar in 1985, but the trade deficit continued. Bill Clinton actually strengthened the dollar and of course the deficit continued and worsened. China did not even become part of the World Trade Organization until the close of the Clinton years.
The idea of the “nation being sold out from under us” was and is nonsense.
anne
maybe now you do need to apologize.
i can’t tell if you are objecting to my characterization of p f r e e trade, or my reference to organ donors, or my attempt to suggest the complications of arriving at a non-bigoted opinion in a world of lies and conflict.
i did look up the source of the ganges. amused to find two sites that confused the ganges with the indus.
at least i know when i am ignorant.
anne
anyway, now that we are being rude to each other, i have put up with patience to your whining about the difficulties AB as been having with a new posting system. you act like it was a conspiracy against yourself.
maybe you need a course inhuman relations.
I don’t think much of pFree Trade or products made by —– —— .
[ This is an entirely false and rottenly vicious comment. Clear enough? Now, go along and try to intimidate someone else.
I was of course completely polite, before the rotten comment, but I do understand. ]
I think their dietary choices are …
[ I understand perfectly and do appreciate the explanation. ]
I have now idea what “pFree Trade” means, the rest was horrid but demeaning 1.4 billion people is evidently fine.
anne
two more comments from you showed up in my inbox, but not here.
i have a great deal of trouble following your argument. not that it matters very much.
the “inhuman relations” in my last comment was a typo, but i’m not sure it wasn’t directed by the hand of god.
[and yes, that’s another joke, in case you can’t tell.]
looking back, it seems to me you are locked into an unconditional positive regard for China. that may be as dangerous to your mental health as anti-chinese bigotry if there was any sign of that around here.
anne
oh, there you are.
pFree Trade was my way of making fun of free-trade absolutists. the p is silent.
i did not demean 1.4 billion people. i objected to their rulers eating them.
the rest is pHistory.
I usually do not understand sarcasm, so I took the expression about —– donors to simply be a crude expression of prejudice. That and the word “disgusting” bothered me. Possibly I failed to understand, and was and am too sensitive. Possibly all was meant to be playful and I missed any play. I still have no idea what a silent p represents.
Oh well, I am sorry to have become angry and to have been rude.
I am sorry.
President Trump and the Trump administration fostered prejudice against the people of China these last 4 years and the prejudice often worked and that has terribly worried me.
No matter.
I am completely sorry to have been rude.
Anne
now you are making me feel like a bully, i am sorry you don’t get sarcasm. but i know my brand of sarcasm is a little idiosyncratic.
the organ donor reference is to published reports with reasonable credibility that political prisoners in china are executed and their organs sold to people who need an organ transplant. i did not make this up. in any case it is not “prejudice” against chinese people. it is pointing at what their leaders are acused of: crimes against chinese people.
similar for the forced labor of prisoners, from which some American companies are alleged to profit.
So as I say, I have a two generation concern for the chinese people. i have a whole different concern about their leaders.
and i think i have a “realpolitik” concern about their growing power in the world. one does not need to be a bigot to notice that power is dangerous:
their bad guys are just as bad as our bad guys. we have only ourselves to blame… not for their success, but for our failures…beginning, as far as i know, with our moral failure in vietnam… our failure of morals. if you insist upon reminding me, i would have to admit that American moral failure (really English moral failure?) began in about 1620. but America had a reputation as the good guy in the rest of the world until Vietnam.
only reason i am going through all this is to get you to not confuse me with Donald Trump. and maybe to back off from your feelings enough to consider that the other guy may not be as rottenly vicious or even as entirely wrong as you first think.
the p is silent to make a joke of pFree Enterprise true believers. Sorry if you don’t get that joke, but I meant it seriously.
by the way… it’s one thing to say “i’m sorry i didn’t understand” and another to say “i’m sorry” as though you are being beaten until you say you’re sorry. At least I don’t think I am being that mean to you. Only a little sarcastic.
…the organ —– reference is to published reports…
[ So, sadly, I was correct. The reports originate from a terrible cult, literally a mad cult, that wants to destroy China. The reports are false and horrid. The reports are unspeakable and that they are given any attention at all only shows the legacy of racism that has been fostered so these last years.
The reports are false and horrid, reports such as those that were used to prepare the way for the Holocaust. Such false and horrid reports are meant to destroy a people.
Please, I beg you, never ever make such a comment again. ]
…the organ —– reference is to published reports…
[ This is a libel, a libel such as those used in the 1930s to allow for the destruction of a people. A blood libel, I think is the terrifying expression.
I literally beg you never ever use such an expression again. People who invented this libel would destroy all of China.
You were lied to by the reports; never ever spread the lies.
Never again, I beg you. ]
Anne,
When Dean Baker writes about free trade, it is usually “free” trade, because he is rebuking a journalist for an unwarranted use of the adjective. I think you can take Coberly’s use of pFree to be a rebuke of the person the journalist was parroting.
…the organ —– reference is to published reports…
[ Again, this is a blood libel, completely false and malevolent. This is a libel meant to destroy an entire people. I never thought I would directly be told this libel, which is why I was so shocked and upset.
Understand the efforts the Chinese made to protect every person against this terrible epidemic. Understand the Chinese have already distributed over 424 million vaccines abroad, as public goods. This is a people that values life.
Anne
you still have trouble telling the difference betwen hating a people, and crediting a report about their leaders.
if I said the leader of Germany was putting people in gas chambers, would you count that as a blood libel against Germans?
I don’t see any point in repeating myself.
“you still have trouble telling the difference betwen”
No, I have no trouble telling the difference. I have no trouble at all. The “reports” were false; the false reports were a libel against an entire nation, against an entire people. Though I plead and beg that the libel not be repeated, the repeating is evidently to be justified and continued.
Sadly, I understood from the beginning. The word “disgusting” was used to prepare the way. I understood.
Such a libel against an entire people is going to be repeated. There are more such libels being made and repeated against this people as well, and I have no words that will stop the repeating of the falseness.
President Trump and Secretary Pompeo defamed an entire people, but I am evidently unable to explain.
the —– —– reference is to published reports
[ The reports against this people are false. Other reports against this people, reports drawing on the terrible images of the 1930s, are false.
The problem is not being “mean” to me but vilifying, demeaning an entire people. ]
You decide:
1. Nice talk
2. Useless Internet blog flame war
Your vote counts. What – no like button?
As always, trashing anything that matters to me. Demeaning 1.4 billion people is obviously of no importance to some, but to me it is important, so trash away.
It takes two to tango or perpetrate a “Useless Internet blog flame war,” but of course one may just decide “Nice talk.”
Ron
i vote useless flame war. but i am a slow learner.
Arne
thanks. i was surprised there was any doubt.
Ron
i hate to have to say this, but i thought i was trying to put out the flame. i am sorry if you didn’t see it that way.
“As always, trashing anything that matters to me.”
Anne,
I actually believe your comments are a positive contribution on balance.
Coberly,
Nothing against either you nor Anne, but ne’er the twain shall meet. On a positive note though, neither of your opinions will make a hill of beans to those embroiled in the matter that you guys were discussing. Also, no skin off my butt either way.
I don’t even have an opinion on the matter myself. It is entirely beyond my reach. I have never traveled to China nor ever intend to do so. I have not traveled outside the US since I returned from Vietnam. I do know what trade policy has done to workers here though.
BTW, I lied. Of course I have an opinion. But I am also secure in the knowledge that my opinion does not matter to anyone in China, Tibet, nor Nepal nor has any capacity to affect any outcome there. I also know that I do not know enough about conditions half a world away for my opinion about matters there to reflect any substantive understanding of people there and what is important to them.
If one wants to insure that their pet is free of fleas, then it is best to keep them out of the tall grass.
Ron
I am not sure what I am supposed to have expressed an opinion on…except that i don’t eat dogs or pangolins. I thought i was trying to explain to someone why she might want to be a little more cautious in expressing her opinions of what she believed with all her mind that I believed or other people should do. I guess that is an opinion after all. i meant to say myself, but forgot in all the excitement that i didn’t think either of us knew enough to assert an opinion as fact. But there I go again.
Coberly,
Well then I sure hope that you think that it was worth the effort.
Coberly,
BTW, have you ever known of charges of libel to be levied in any international court?
Realistic perspective is a good thing to have and by realistic perspective then I am not referring to a grossly exaggerated sense of self-importance. In any case, the successful gambler must know when to hold them and know when to fold them.
I could go on, but really I should just go.
Ron
replying to a comment that does not appear
no. it was not worth the effort, it never is.
but we live in hope.
Ron
never thought about libel in international court: something worth thinking about.
i think exaggerated sense of self importance is why they call them shrinks. those who live in hope do not know when to hold them. they are playing for the long odds.
i do try to avoid inflaming them. but the nature of the problem is that they draw you near and then light their own fuse.
Coberly,
Libel in international court question was a joke. Libel (and slander) is the modus operandi of arms length international relations. Close up then it must be replaced by diplomacy. Talking bad about others is what brings us together. Reference the Pink Floyd song “US and Them.”
Ken Melvin put up a thread today about the difference between opinion and facts, but really even our facts are subject to the opinion that what we think are facts are really facts when it comes to domestic politics much less foreign policy and then ever more so foreign politics. Sure I can measure a cup of sugar, but can I really measure human cruelty or human kindness from the distance of half a planet? What makes the most profound difference in credible opinions is the distinction between knowing what we cannot do as opposed to believing what we can do.
Dog gone.
Ron
I agree with you entirely. And I understood that international libel was, if not a joke, in interesting observation about “libel” in general.
which is a subject that divides me. i feel that “libel” suits are frivolous. But I think that a coalition of persistent liars is a danger to democracy. If free speech is important to protect, we are left with the Aaron Burr solution.
or..the Jefferson solution, which may be a libel on my part.
Coberly,
People take offense at different things. For my part, I find a loaded gun pointed at me or a hard heavy object swung at my head both quite offensive. I could care less what others say about me or anyone else in general. It is good to have a few friends, but time for more than that requires obsessive commitment.
Some people could write a book on what they find offensive. Being that upset about so many different things must be exhausting.
Ron
you addressed that comment to me. did you mean to address it to Anne? I dropped that lady hours ago. I was not being upset; I was trying to administer first aid.
[obscure reference is to a Zen story you may read in Zen Flesh Zen Bones.]
Coberly,
Kinda sort of but, not exactly. I prefer not to approach passive aggressive resistance head on very often. Your engagement offered me a proxy.
Ron
you are wiser than I am, or have more better things to do;
i have mixed motives. first, no doubt, is a sincere but foolish desire to change minds. second might be to teach me not to become upset in the face of,,,, well, something more serious than passive-aggressive personalities… which i also fail at regularly. i think it dawned on me slowly, when i still thought i had a chance to explain Social Security to people, that people the internet calls trolls are just trying to get my goat…but perhaps for reasons deeper than just having a laugh at my stupid sincerity. in the present case i wondered if the subject might be a computer program of unmentioned national origin. a not entirely paranoid thought.
reminded me of ELIZA
Coberly,
Understood, realistic, and a good attitude to hold.
Here is a thought though with regards to “in the present case i wondered if the subject might be a computer program of unmentioned national origin. a not entirely paranoid thought.” Perhaps Asperger syndrome instead. It would explain a lot including the deeply biased bot-like behavior. In any case your musing was a regularly considered question on EV back in the day.
Let it go?
ken.
did.