US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3441

On March 24 2016 06:02 CannonsNCarriers wrote:
Guns, Germs, and Steel yo. Mostly Germs.

On March 24 2016 05:57 TheTenthDoc wrote:
What boggles my mind is that we don't see Trump beating up on incompetent Arizona polling places. Guess that just shows how much he cares about straight talk, that's like a masterful target for his anti-establishment message but he just doesn't care.

Maybe he has weighed in and I've missed it. Or maybe he realizes he almost certainly got a better vote % out of it.

On March 24 2016 04:08 IgnE wrote:


TPP is going to help international capital be more international. If the international taxation regimes are so important to advancing your policy goals you would want to have them as part of the TPP. Otherwise the result is that you've made the problem worse and can't push through your global government tax plans later. TPP threatens EU's long term economic prospects but EU is going to be happy to cooperatively tamper down capital flight? Are you envisioning some kind of blackmail scenario? The US playing EU off of its TPP trade partners?

TPP is a vain attempt to keep the good times rolling for as long as possible by the governing liberals. It's a dice throw that consolidates and insulates international capital from democratic forces at home.

On March 24 2016 06:06 cLutZ wrote:



That's the one. A great primer on how to seek out evidence and make up arbitrary, but official sounding rules to support your predetermined conclusions.

On March 24 2016 06:32 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


"When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi_lc3g4NfLAhUMGZQKHUFJDZsQFghLMAc&url=http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html&usg=AFQjCNFIDHm76364BwZDMlwcHq8-emaGFw&sig2=qW-xUmaOowd9fa6qc4TUWg

Seems like a vastly more plausible explanation than anything else.

once upon a time there was a horizontal axis on a continent, one thing led to another and white men ruled the world

On March 24 2016 06:42 KwarK wrote:

The criticism against GGS (apart from all the ones regarding lack of citations and skipping counterevidence) is not that the argument of "factors that lead to technology -> having technology -> winning in wars against people dying of smallpox" is wrong, it's that it's obvious and that it misses the point.

Geographic determinism makes the case that Europeans were destined to have the technological advantages and then one thing led to another and now they have all the money. It's a somewhat simplistic view which ignores human agency entirely and assumes that conquest is the inevitable result of opportunity. When you get right down to it the book is


Still a fun read though. Would recommend.

On March 24 2016 06:49 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


What about the heaps and heaps of dead from disease? Pretty easy to conquer land when everyone is dead.

On March 24 2016 06:32 CannonsNCarriers wrote:


"When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi_lc3g4NfLAhUMGZQKHUFJDZsQFghLMAc&url=http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html&usg=AFQjCNFIDHm76364BwZDMlwcHq8-emaGFw&sig2=qW-xUmaOowd9fa6qc4TUWg

Seems like a vastly more plausible explanation than anything else.

On March 24 2016 06:52 KwarK wrote:

Well done, you have correctly identified one part of the straw man the book successfully knocks down.

On March 24 2016 06:14 oneofthem wrote:

uh tpp is not touching europe. eu is pushing for the ttip.

as far as making it easier to global ur production tpp has to be compared to current structure which is high on trade flow but low on regulation due to nature of bilateral deals+mfn conditions in the wto. if you see absolute trade flow as a problem tpp would not even do much. the most optimistic peterson numbers is less than 2% on inbound flow. reason is simple we already have liberal goods and services markets, and the liberalization overseas is in our most competitive services so there should be little import pressure. trade is also a tool to break down local monopolies made by govt power.

the investment chapter is in the same dynamic, with current u.s. standard of protection already stronger than what tpp obtains for signatory partners. it will make investment environment better overseas if you are worried about that, but it will be a big net plus for us equity owners at not much 'cost' of inversion style relocation of u.s. companies. if anything it would reduce incentive to adopt such structures

however the horizontal effect of diverting flow from china to other partner nations is enough to generate some buy-in for various regulatory standard raising

On March 24 2016 06:53 Lord Tolkien wrote:

Ah, GGS. The most popular and thoroughly reviled (amongst academia) piece of pop-science of the past fifty years at least. Diamond gets to champion geographic determinism, the century-old discredited theory and basis of European imperialism to explain European superiority without trying to sound racist. Lovely.

I'll just link you this and this, because I come across people who aren't aware just how much he's reviled in the fields he's writing in.

EDIT: Specifically regarding the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and the Andes, it should be noted that Guns, Germs, and Steel really had little to no impact on the actual conquest. Native allies in both instances were significantly more vital to the success thereof, and the manner of the local political and social structures involved.

For instance, the Aztecs ran a large, decentralized tributary empire based on militarism; there were enough powerful tributaries and rivals in the region that hated the Aztecs, with the Spanish merely the catalyst for the overthrow of the system. If you read first-hand accounts of the Conquest like Bernal Diaz, you'll note that the Spanish THREW AWAY their steel armors and weapons for native ones. Neither was gunpowder a significant factor outside a few early engagements: early arquebuses are equivalent, or worse, than bows when faced with non-heavily armored targets, and the shock and awe factor of firearms wore out quickly. Disease was much more impactful on the outlook of native demographics AFTER the Conquest, and was not the decisive factor. In the Andes in particular, demographic decline due to disease was slow and gradual over the decades to the relative isolation of different communities of different and even the same altitude.

And it should be noted that native societies like the Mapuche resisted encroachment despite consistent attempts by the Spanish and later Chileans and Argentines over the centuries until the late 19th century and the advent of machine guns.

Thus, the complete ignorance and rejection of the decisive political and social factors in favor of JUST technology, coupled with bad/terrible research and generalizations and support for a LONG DEAD theory of imperialism, is why the book is hated amongst anthropological and other social science circles.

On March 24 2016 06:06 cLutZ wrote:



That's the one. A great primer on how to seek out evidence and make up arbitrary, but official sounding rules to support your predetermined conclusions.

On March 24 2016 07:12 cLutZ wrote:


Exactly. I have no quarrel with the premise "If you are equipped with better guns, and you have the bonus of a better immune system and sometimes carry diseases that kill your enemies you will probably win a war". That seems fairly obvious.

The reason the book is BS is it goes much further and says, essentially, that European/Asian peoples got those guns and germs by pure coincidence and the poor Africans and Americans could not possibly make do with Zebras, Bison, Water Buffalo, Wildebeest, and Turkeys.

Plus what LT says.

President Obama's visit to Argentina this week coincides with the anniversary of a dark moment in that country's history. Thursday marks 40 years since a 1976 military coup that ushered in that country's so-called Dirty War, when as many as 30,000 Argentines were killed or disappeared during a seven-year dictatorship.

Human rights groups want the U.S. to divulge what it knew back then. The president is now promising that he will declassify new documents.

"I'm launching a new effort to open up additional documents from that dark period," Obama told a joint news conference in Buenos Aires on Wednesday with Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri. "We previously declassified thousands of records from that era, but for the first time now, we will declassify military and intelligence records as well."

That's welcome news to Carlos Osorio. At his office in the George Washington University library, he shows off boxes and boxes of government documents. These are papers that his research organization, the National Security Archive, forced the U.S. government to declassify more than a decade ago.

Some appear to show former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger giving Argentina's coup leaders the green light to go after their enemies.

"In early 1976 through January 1977, Henry Kissinger took U.S. policy into his hands," Osorio says. "And he was deliberately telling the [Argentine] military at every point through the year, 'We will support you.' "

Although Kissinger has denied any complicity, Osorio says the State Department quietly released U.S. security assistance to Argentina — even as the U.S. ambassador at the time was reporting hundreds of human rights abuses.

On March 24 2016 07:14 IgnE wrote:


Tpp doesn't touch Europe? No trade diversion? Greater integration of supply chains and consumer markets in Pacific has no bearing?

Edit: you also have a tendency to focus on "trade" numbers, the higher the better. This isn't about a simple trade calculus, it also involves americanized arbitration and ip regimes that protect large businesses while disempowering the people in democratic countries that they would do business in. It's an uncritical plan. And your argument that international taxation can provide a counterbalance is like taking down the fence in your backyard and arguing that you can start training your dog not to leave the property. That dog is already gone before you can begin the process.

On March 24 2016 07:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
If you actually read guns, germs and steel, the author basically includes Europe, the Mediterrean (including Morroco and Egypt), Middle East and Asia as one connected unit that had advantages that the other locations (rest of Africa, the American continent, South east Asia, Oceania) could not match. It actually had very little to do with Europe specifically.

On March 24 2016 07:26 oneofthem wrote:

no it doesnt touch europe. the stuff you list is either low impact or beneficial for eu interests given similar position to us in terms of the value chain. if you are afraid tpp would displease eu this is far from the case. ill answer rest later but basically in ur analogy the dog is already far gone. are you under the impression that we do not currently have free trade in the sense of globalized production chain?

we just have bilateral deals with the multilateral mechanism (gatt) dead in terms of institutional momentum