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Azuma Hazuki (5086)
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Sapphic, sword-swinging schoolgirl seeking spacetime-sliding sister
Journal of Azuma Hazuki (5086)
Not for the first time, the thought has occurred to me that an empire, defined as any nation with an expansionist and/or colonialist system of existence, bears several striking resemblances to parasitic and parasitoid species. Beyond simple resource theft, I speak mostly of parallels to how these organisms often lose functions from their own genomes in favor of allowing the host to perform them instead...and their subsequent complete dependence on said host species. When the hosts either die out or move on, the parasite too withers and dies.
There has been a pattern throughout history of analogous processes taking place in imperialist nations. What chiefly concerns me here is the effective outsourcing of both manufacture and raw-material procurement, beyond what is necessary due to said resource not existing natively or lack of infrastructure at home. Rome, in its middle and latter days, relied on grain imports and slave labor. Britain's loss of India had much to do with its economic dependence on its colony, for textile manufacture for example. And I don't think I need to paint you a picture of the effects of globalization on the US's economy, specifically with regard to wage depression and overseas flight of production.
What all these have in common is that the people at the top are essentially trading the vitality and independent function of the nation they rule--and make no mistake, the golden rule, that the guys with the gold make the rules, is and has always been in full force--for their own personal enrichment. Whether it be kings or CEOs of multinational corporations with US headquarters, the end effect is the same, because the concentration of power is the same.
(Incidentally, this is why the Citizens United decision was such a complete disaster and why lobbying itself ought to be illegal: making money does not always coincide with the interests of the nation, and very often opposes them in a global society.)
So...where does this end? Eventually, the empire in question allocates more resources to maintaining its "interests" (read: colonies) overseas and across borders than it does internally. And the citizens of the empire, especially the poorer ones, suffer more and more over time. There grows, between the moneyed powers and the average citizen, a great, impassible chasm, a gap of not just material wealth but of anomie and hopelessness. The laws and law enforcement apparatus turn inward, protecting not citizens from criminals, but the haves from the have-nots. Long-term planning by the ruling class for the good of the nation becomes not just impossible, not just unthinkable, but outright mocked. The average citizen completely loses faith in the institutions of the nation, and with good reason, for they have become an enemy and they see the citizens as such.
Add to this that no empire ever truly got its power and resource base by above-board, honest, peaceful means--with the possible exception of the Marshall Plan, and even that struck me, all the way back in sixth grade, as a particularly cynical piece of international brinksmanship. Empires have terrible karma. They become ringed with enemies, many of whom may at one point have been allies. Foolish decisions regarding allies and trade and warfare are made. Eventually, the global order shifts...and the empire in question, overextended beyond endurance, demoralized from within, decadent and incompetent and decrepit from decades of internal misrule, is vulnerable and weak and *completely* unable even to see the coming seismic shift as it happens, let alone respond to it after the fact.
Time flows like a river. History does not repeat, but it does rhyme. Care to guess where the US is in this pattern?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday July 02 2018, @10:43PM (3 children)
This ought to be good! Waiting for it...
Don't you? After that enigmatic beginning?
Still waiting...
The last colony we conquered and took over was... Hawaii. So... We are in trouble because we are in danger of outsourcing pineapples and fresh lava products to Hawaii?
I actually don't think that the US is a parasite that lives on Hawaii*. (Or "North Mexico." or the remains of our Panamanian holdings. Etc.) If Hawaii, North Mexico, and Our Tiny Slice Of The Panama Canal Zone all left the U.S. and formed "The Federated Union Of No Thank You, United States" I think that we would go through a minor adjustment period and then move on as a solidly unified nation. I don't think we'd evaporate in the absence of those conquest areas.
In the larger sense, the US can be said to be a parasite that exists off its captured holdings, i.e., the land where it now sits, but that's a different story that doesn't seem to fit your narrative.
Still waiting...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
America is a military empire. Colonies take the form of military bases worldwide, the American sphere of influence is the entire world, and the world is divided into regional commands of the American military.
America spends more on its military interests than any empire in history, to the detriment of American citizens who suffer poverty from taxation to pay for the military and who suffer abuses of power from their increasingly militarized civilian police forces.
The future of America is total economic collapse such as occurred to the Soviet Union before it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:28AM
In absolute or relative terms?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-military-spending-in-ancient-Rome-at-its-height-compare-with-military-spending-by-the-United-States-today [quora.com]
There may be a lot of waste at the Pentagon, but the U.S. does get a lot more bang for its buck than the Roman Empire did. Enough to devastate the planet with nukes or win a war in days with troops, tanks, and air support. (The occupation phase is an unsolved problem. Maybe mech suits and more drones will help.)
It will be interesting to see whether China develops a similar imperial appetite, not counting its autonomous and special administrative regions.
Will China Have 7 Aircraft Carriers by 2025? [thediplomat.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:26AM
Perhaps so, but that doesn't follow from anything you're saying.
A country agreeing to host a military base for you is very different from your conquering that country and making it a colony of your military empire, paying tribute to Washington DC.
This is also true of Panama, China, Russia, Great Britain... Also nations who do not rule the entire world, also not having conquered all its former countries and made them colonies of their respective military empires.
Neither overspending on a really robust military, nor having trigger-happy cops, gives the U.S. conquering dominion over so much as a square centimeter of territory or conquers a single additional warm body of citizenry.
~325,000,000 people live in the U.S. out of ~7.6 Billion folks in the world [ http://www.worldometers.info/population/world/ [worldometers.info] ].
That means that over 95% of the world's population lives under the government of some country that is not the United States.
That's a pretty ineffective world domination plan at work, regardless of the budget numbers or cop-trigger-happiness.
Look, I am not saying I agree with much that the U.S. does, and I am not saying that its government is a bunch of upstanding guys and gals trying to do their best in a tough world. I am just saying that they knocked off the military conquering in favor of "military influence" many years ago, and in the past few years, even "military influence" isn't worth much because other leaders don't respect the U.S. president and have trouble taking the U.S. seriously as a result. China doesn't care what we do off their coast; they'll take all the land they please, thanks very much. Russia isn't interested in our opinions on Syria nor Ukraine. Not even European nations care much what the U.S. thinks these days.
That's why I am curious as to the specifics of the obvious-to-more-insightful-people-than-me conclusion of the original post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @12:16AM (1 child)
To my mind, this is the non-wealth producing class; the rent seekers. the oligarchs and the money lenders. [cointelegraph.com] So long as you live in a functional capitalist society, the marxist value of labor holds true because you can personally invest and take the risk yourself. As Marx put it:
Of course, he was talking about usury which is parasitism in the extreme. So we get to fiat which is money created as interest bearing bonds and to fractional reserve banking which is a debt multiplier. The ponzi scheme has exhausted itself, there could never be enough wealth to repay the interest on the principle. [azquotes.com] Governments financial models were all based on unending growth and this is why they need immigrants to take on debt. The people don't need it, self-serving, elitist government does.
There was a time when myself and my lefty friends were on the same page with this, laughing at the imminent demise of finance and crony capitalism. Talking about localism in preference to globalization. How times have changed, at least I can say that my principles have not. Go Trump!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:25PM
No, he was speaking of Jews not usury. The full quote (in your Wikipedia link) is just a bit of blatant anti-semitism. And what is usury here? Dictionary definition is that it is lending at interests that are unreasonably high. Marx OTOH tends to paint all lending as bad.
Quite a jump from Jews, isn't it? Perhaps you could have come up with a better Marx quote?
While true to a large extent, we will actually grow for a while as people globally continue to get richer and healthier.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:47AM (25 children)
I was with you right up until here:
The problem you're not seeing is that in each and every case, domestic production became more expensive than the people were willing to pay. There is so little domestic manufacturing not because the employers don't want to pay the workers but because the workers don't want to pay what it costs to manufacture something domestically. If they did, the employers would happily pay the workers and rake in the profits.
It may be easier to blame all your problems on the rich but you don't realize that you're doing precisely the same thing that you claim they are. You're advocating feeding off of them and will continue doing so until the host dies. Once you teach people that they can vote themselves Other People's Money, the cat is out of the bag and you're not going to be able to stop it until you've run out of Other People's Money. People are greedy as fuck. Not rich people. Not poor people. People.
Now there are solutions to this problem. I know two of them and neither is good. You can deglobalize your nation through tariffs which instantly lowers the entire nation's standard of living by an amount directly related to the size of the tariffs you employ. You can also get used to the idea that your nation is overinflated compared to the rest of the world and needs to go through a very painful period of depression to lower the disparity between foreign and domestic labor costs. A third solution would be to find something that you can do that can't be done cheaper overseas. I haven't really though so I don't count it as a proper solution yet.
A better word than imperialism for participating in a global economy would be capitalism by the way. There's nothing evil about buying the product you need from the cheapest source, even if it's not a domestic one. It may not always be wise but it's not any more evil than going to the grocery store with the best prices for the quality and service levels you demand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:22AM (24 children)
I was wondering when you were going to a) show up and b) shit approximately this type of squitter all over my thread :/
You forget solution 4, which unfortunately is very unlikely to happen: people have a collective change of heart and start using all this post-scarcity tech we've been building up since the 70s. This will of course need to come with sane population controls, which SHOULD be a matter of education and raising the standard of living, as we've seen in the developed world.
I don't have much faith in most people being enlightened enough to go this route, but at least the idea occurred to me.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:25AM (2 children)
You should check out the carrion eaters journal entry.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @06:36AM (1 child)
Saw it. I apparently annoy him so badly by refusing to fit into his ideas about what women are supposed to be and do he decided to mention me in said entry. And my "team." Lolwut, team? What, does he think there's some kind of lesbian triathlon or something? Like, 100-meter hardware store dash followed by carpentry competition and ending with an Indigo Girls cover-song audition? With, I don't know, a Subaru SUV as first prize?
He reveals so, so much about himself and the way he thinks (using the word generously...) with things like this. He seems to believe that because *he* works this way, literally everyone else on the planet does. I really hope he gets to reap the full logical consequences of his solipsism and egotism.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday July 05 2018, @12:49AM
That sounds better than half the sports in the latest Olympics.
TMB and the other right wingers that post on this site always seem to avoid thinking about the massive amounts of taxpayers money paid to corporate interests in the form of tax-breaks and direct subsidies, not to mention the $800 billion you guys are going to spend on your military this year.
You could all be a lot richer if you weren't propping up so much of the Nasdaq, but apparently giving people a hand up when they are out of work is bad.
I think I disagree with the contention that the US has a military empire. In my view the military bit is there to support the actual corporate interests that really benefit, much like the old Royal Navy used to help out British interests around the world.
While I am not a fan of Stalin, his thoughts about US economic power after WWII make interesting reading.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:50AM
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-26/the-quest-to-find-a-trillion-dollar-nuclear-fuel-on-the-moon [bloomberg.com]
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/in-a-country-long-wary-of-nuclear-an-indonesian-chases-the-thorium-dream/ [mongabay.com]
https://thediplomat.com/2018/06/how-china-can-make-the-most-of-its-solar-energy-boom/ [thediplomat.com]
I hope you're right. And although population growth is projected to decline over the next century with the population peaking at 10-12 billion, I'm not sure that it will go that way once anti-aging starts to take off. On the other hand, you have Bezos saying that the solar system can sustain a 1 trillion population [cnbc.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:55PM (19 children)
What exactly did I say that you find objectionable or untrue?
Re: solution 4... Yeah, I generally rule out anything that requires a fundamental change in human nature. I mean, it's technically possible but astoundingly unlikely.
Re: "sane population controls"... Jesus fucking Christ, woman! Are you going for the Junior Stalin award or something? Oh, are you talking about humanity's tendency to reproduce less as they become prosperous? If so, my bad and I agree. The thing is, you have to get them to stop measuring prosperity against their fellow human beings or this is logically impossible to achieve. History tells me that's never going to change but I suppose anything's possible.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:12PM (7 children)
First, I don't take the role of referee between the two of you. Have at it; both of you are nice enough, respectful enough to each other, that it's fun to watch on some levels.
But on this particular topic, if the question is whether "(sane|insane|totalitarian) population controls" are more Stalinist or simply an artifact of human nature, you need look no farther than the word "controls".
A group of people--and by that I mean any group of people from size of "one person with child-bearing ability" up to "the global population"--can look at world population vs. available resources and decide that resources are not sufficient to support more people and decide to not have kids until the situation changes. (Just as the same group can utilize things like a hopeful outlook and work towards meaningful societal change as factors considered in deciding to have kids to propagate same.)
But if there are "population controls", then there are population controllers, and that's more Stalinist than sane no matter how you slice it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:53AM (5 children)
The one and only idea I have is making practicing class warfare such a social taboo that anyone using it is immediately ostracized and teaching from a very young age that you need to measure your standard of living by your past rather than someone else's present.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:34PM (4 children)
Ya, those poor people should just fuck off and leave you to yours right?
Dumbass.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:02PM (3 children)
You know what they call basing your happiness off of other people's wealth relative to your own, yes? Envy. It's one of the seven deadly sins for a reason.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 04 2018, @05:38PM (2 children)
Where does it end though? There has to be a limit beyond which your philosophy ceases to work in reality. Imagine you keep increasing a society's population, with a corresponding increase in the value of the land which is not followed by increases in wages. There comes a point where there simply isn't enough land to go around and the land prices become so high that a lifetime career can never pay for it. Imagine you're born into this situation and you work as hard as possible but the odds are stacked so far against you that you simply can't afford anywhere to live. If you can't get any wealth from "someone else's" present, you're fucked and so is anyone else just starting out from that point unless they're an exceedingly lucky statistical outlier. Once you get a situation like this, gentle disincentives to population expansion suddenly look a whole lot more attractive.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:24PM (1 child)
No, there really isn't. You're talking about inability to meet your fundamental needs and I'm talking about basing your happiness on what others have. The two are not the same. The latter will always make a bitter, hate-filled, spiteful prick out of you and if anyone in the government caters to that hatred it creates more both in you and in those that have been stolen from so that you can feel your revenge satisfaction.
If there's a problem with too many people being unable to meet their needs despite supplying valuable human effort to their employers, that can be addressed without ever staining your soul. If it's a case of people trying to half-ass it through life, never learning anything useful and never doing more than the bare minimum though, fuck em; worthless effort deserves worthless pay. The problem we have here is neither side is going to be willing to take an honest look at the situation because doing so would make them unable to wind their base up and get them out to the polls.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:32PM
How would you address it? Or, to be more precise, how best should a government address it in a manner that you consider satisfactory?
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 04 2018, @05:41PM
You're thinking of extremes. "Population control" doesn't have to involve force. It can be a case of gently incentivizing producing fewer than average offspring and / or removing or reducing incentives for having more of them. There'll always come a point where that's a kinder thing to do than just trying to let it correct itself.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:35PM (3 children)
An interesting dilemma that no one has solved. I look forward to you TMB coming up with a novel approach the everyone can get on board with.
Problem: freedom vs. survival
Setting: planet Earth
GO!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:49AM (2 children)
I got nothing. Most any proposed solution is going to run afoul of my libertarian sensibilities if it's anything but entirely voluntary. And if you incentivize low-population families, the Dems are going to lose their shit because minorities breed way more than white folks in the US and they know upon which side their bread is buttered. Mind you, we're currently incentivizing high-population, low-income families via the welfare system. I'm pretty sure that's not at all helpful in this context.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)
Incentivizing? You are so out of touch with modern reality. Most people don't want welfare and yes there are scammers and people who have kids for the welfare check; but they are a ridiculous minority!! You claim to not be bigoted, but reread your comment, what does it matter what color of skin has more babies? Why is that even one of your worries?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:34PM
You do realize I live in a town that's about half people living in run down shitholes, yeah? I get along with them just fine but they are some of the laziest motherfuckers on the planet for the most part. My neighbor, before he moved to PA a month or three back, never worked a Friday the entire time I lived here because he got paid on Thursday and was too hung over. Add to that the fact that he took about one in every four days off from work and blamed it on health conditions he didn't actually have. He then got tired of working at all and went to the Social Security office and played mentally incompetent so he could get a monthly check to go with his woman's monthly check.
That sitting on your ass and scamming the government shit is not the exception around here, it's the rule. The heating and air contractor I had to talk to last week has been desperate for hands for years. He can't get any that will even reliably show up every workday and he's paying damned well for utterly unskilled apprentice wages. Every other contractor I've talked to has been in a similar situation and I've had to talk to around two dozen over the past month.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:14PM (6 children)
Don't worry, Uzzard, I said *sane* and I meant it. That means widespread education, emancipation of women, and cheaply-available contraceptives. The other alternatives are horrendously immoral...though, will be blunt here, if someone offered me a 5-figure incentive to get my tubes tied, I'd take it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @01:44AM (5 children)
Oh what a straight line... I'll refrain though because this is an interesting topic.
Well, you lot are already pretty damned emancipated here in the west and rubbers are dirt cheap but it hasn't helped a whole lot. Not that I'm particularly worried about overpopulation. I'm pretty sure we could easily handle ten times our current global population without issue. I wouldn't want to be in India afterwards though. Them folks need to learn the joys of sodomy in a big, bad way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:47AM (4 children)
Just about every other post of yours has been about buttsex in the last couple of days. And you've admitted you wish you could be gay. Those are not the thoughts of a straight man. That sounds like closeted bisexuality. Go gargle a sausage and get it out of (into?) your system already, jeez.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:18AM (3 children)
If it blows your skirt up to imagine that, go for it. I don't see being gay as something to be ashamed or afraid of, so it's not going to bother me. I know, it's annoying when straight folks don't do you the courtesy of being homophobic. It's what you lot kept saying you wanted though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:19PM (2 children)
Lol, if only you could read your posts from an objective stand point. You are one messed up individual.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:37PM (1 child)
Oh but I do, sweety. I don't blame you for not noticing this though. I mean you think objective means fitting your narrative, so it's understandable that you wouldn't know shit from shinola.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:56PM
Gaaaaagh! Damn it, that's bright! Fucking WARN US before you turn the projector on full-force like that, damn you!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...