Waiting on Coming UAF Offensive, US Economy Still King, Slavery in Libya Continues to Persist, Management Consultants as Apparatchiks, Forgotten Pygmies of East Africa
Social mobility wasn't really a thing in a Europe where wealth was concentrated in the hands of aristocrats, nobles, industrialists, etc. Many strivers made their way to the USA where land and resources were plentiful, and the rest is history.
I have long suspected that the US is pioneering a dystopian form of capitalism that is suited for a world of chronic resource scarcity: redefining debt-peonage and the mass consumption of shoddy consumerables as prosperity, substituting entertainment for experience, managing expectations of all kinds down. The US may yet win the race to the bottom and establish a sustainable oligarchy atop a carefully managed superior version of what we now see in the Third World.
Thank you. Truly an interesting read or set of reads as I sit here, watching my son's soccer game, passive aggressively loathing my wife, and waiting for my fishing trip this afternoon.
Much like how the USA won its overarching objective on the first day of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, you too won the day by just getting out there. Any trout you caught would have been gravy.
Very fair summation of Ukraine, given the mile-high problem, but I see a lot of Ukraine supporters making much hay over the Wagner situation. No idea what will happen.
There's also a nice symmetry in this week's roundup - management consultants, the UN and its various organs, and of course the EU are salivating over the chance to, er, synergize and implement best practices in Ukraine (read: bleed it dry.) Then again, there is a large appetite in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, to join the 'European family'. Certainly it has its good points. But I wonder how easy the adjustment will be in a country with a huge gender imbalance, a sclerotic economy, and an ingrained tradition of corruption. All I know is that none of it had to be this way, and thr failure of Minsk 2 is one of the saddest and most frustrating events of this century.
Not to mention the 'house divided' problem. Absent centralized population transfers, not everyone pro-West is going to self-select into Ukraine and not everyone pro-Kremlin is going to self-select into the new blasts, let alone today's recognized Russia.
Still, stranger things have happened. Look at Rwanda. From hellish crucible genocide to tourist destination in a single generation.
As you live so near Diocletian's gate, I'd guess you'd know, but wasn't Ukraine an important source of grain for the Roman empire?
And, while we're talking about Diocletian, what do you think were the cabbages he was referring to in his famous quote? I've heard different theories given how many different veg are in the cabbage family.
It’s increasingly clear that Ukraine is struggling and dependent upon poorly trained draftees sent as meat shields into the trenches--even WaPo was reporting on this recently. But for the pro Ukraine fanatics this can barely be contemplated because they’re so Marvel brained that they have to believe each Ukrainian is a hyper competent Captain America who can take on ten Russians at a time.
I would bet that we’ll see a much worse Ukrainian death toll in retrospect as well as much more corruption than expected. Russia has similar problems, of course, but western analysts don’t want to see how similar the two groups are. As it turns out, centuries of being Slavs followed by decades of being a post-Soviet failstate can’t be undone by a few years LARPing as a wholesome chungus western democracy.
Both Russia and Ukraine have lost lots of their best-trained, most experienced soldiers, replac ing them with more recent conscripts. The Ukrainian conscripts have access to better training than the recent Russian batch and certainly have more motivation and better leadership.
Russia has an advantage at the moment as it is defending territory and has built up some defenses in depth. We’ll see how the Russian conscripts fight of the UA is able to break through in a few places. My guess is there will be a lot of running.
" The Ukrainian conscripts have access to better training than the recent Russian batch and certainly have more motivation and better leadership." How do you know that?
Russian sources re: training, equipping and morale of Russian conscripts.
Western sources for leadership, showing some really boneheaded tactics. Could be faked or non-representative, but Russia has done nothing but lose territory since the invasion, ex-Bakhmut and environs,
I'd vigorously disagree. Russia sent in regular troops plus border guards and mercenaries like Wagner. Their best troops (like the VMO, the paratroopers) are in reserve to deter NATO. Many are deployed in Belarus and, I assume, the Kaliningrad oblast.
As for better leadership, General Zaluzhny (Ukrainian commander) has said many times that he has read every word published by General Gerasimov (Russian chief of staff) and is a great fan.
Re running, this is just silly. The war is not about territiory. There is a lot to go around. The Russians are fighting to destroy the regime in Kiev and keep out NATO. Russians will manouvre and if this involves withdrawing, so what? Retreat is never defeat in steppe warfare. It is a key to victory.
Rolo's (🤩... ok, mostly 😇) The Slavland Chronicles (👌) is a go-to place for soberly measured takes on all stuff Russia & Ukraine --> roloslavskiy.substack.com.
PS And the wording! You gonna like it, heaps upon bigger heaps of ingenious quips to gladly savour.
There are supposed to be vast numbers of Polish troops in Ukrainian uniform. Plenty of Westerners, some, perhaps many, on active service in NATO larping as volunteers or mercenaries. The high tech weaponry (advanced artillery and rockets) are quite likely operated by foreigners and the targeting would certainly be coordinated with the Five Eyes crowd using satellite surveillance. Most likely plenty of special forces from the west too.
Americans, the most miserable and anxious people on earth, hate themselves and each other: GDP Threatened!
Humans of the spreadsheet variety can only see dollars and cents, they are like people who know a family that never stops fighting but thinks it can't be so bad because the dad makes money.
If Americans can't rally around simple common-sense solutions like escorting every McKinsey consultant to the guillotine, we really are doomed as a nation.
If I wanted to be a dick, I'd point out how much of the elites are post-national in orientation, and that countries are (or are about to become) little more than economic trading zones.
May 6, 2023·edited May 6, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
why would speaking the truth make u a dick??
"The nation is the great invention of the West. It is the heart of the free world, but it is also the Achilles heel of the Western world. If the nations evaporate, disintegrate, rust away, the possibility of free life will be lost and the West will fall. People without a homeland can never be free, they can only be landless pawns of the global elite." ORBAN
The Achilles' heel of globalization is that it relies upon trust between the elites of disparate nations. This no longer exists in sufficient amounts to sustain any US led system.
The emerging trade blocs will be structured around the relationships where trust enables substantive cooperation. The US itself is a low trust society that has hollowed itself out and is now utterly incapable of generating the social capital to function as a free society of any kind, hence the resort to authoritarianism under the pretension of social justice/civil rights and equity. It is unclear how long an economic trading zone like that can last, especially given the fact that the US can no longer be trusted to hold the cash reserves of foreign nations.
Philip I hate to sound strange, but the US elites are not American society. The conflict isn’t just interests or beliefs, they are very different than us.
In America there’s simply more to this enormous land than the elites. N Soldo is right about elite theory to a point, but it stops at our shores and DC city limits (they have Foreign Policy, Government at National level, Finance and media) but the idea that Americans treat each other this way isn’t true. That can be hard to see if you don’t live here I suppose.
This wretched elites are alien to us, to most people. They’re also very limited outside their own circles.
TLW, you do not sound in the least bit strange. I have no trouble believing that there is a divergence between ordinary people and the national elite. Something very similar has developed in Australia within my lifetime.
From my perspective, it is often very hard to disentangle Americans (in all their variety) from 'America' (DC and its institutional and social outposts). The American Fifth Column (our elites) are fixated on 'America' and use it as an excuse for every conceivable mischief and many of the ills imposed on us have been self-inflicted attempts at Americanisation by stealth.
I live in Canberra, the national capital, and 'America' is a very real presence here in that people are focused very closely on American national level gov't, finance, media etc. Have worked with people who interned in your Capitol or done secondments/postings in the US. Have also worked under regulations crafted (covertly) to follow the standards of 'America'.
To this I would add that a great deal of governing in America is done at the state and local levels. For the most part, these polities are quite coherent. While there is often extreme disagreement between local-state, local-federal, and state-federal units of gov, internal cohesion within these units is surprisingly strong. Of course, there are great differences between states, and between some blocks of states and other blocks of states, but these often play out through largely symbolic media spectacles more than real, consequential conflicts.
The result is that, while government on the ground as it matters to most people--basic infrastructure, social services, tax paying, development, permitting and licensing, etc.--often sucks, as government can be reasonably expected to suck much of the time, especially in a relatively new, incredibly diverse place with very little history living together, it's also pretty functional in most of the ways that matter. Hardly exemplary, but functional enough so that the American economic machine--fueled by vast natural resources and global empire and visionary leaders of the past--runs largely unfettered.
'Tis a common misconception—long-overdue to be ruthlessly cancelled 🤭—that élites are crème de la crème of their respective nations. Obviously, they're a highly cohesive tribe of their own, spanning the globe 🤷
May 9, 2023·edited May 10, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
I agree with others that this week's commentary was particularly enjoyable. I've always thought, however, that your outlook on the US is a bit rosy. Maybe it's just the good company you keep when you visit, but I think the reality is closer to that which Phillip often indulges us with. I see a culmination of different factors - social and economic - in motion which all lead to nothing positive. Unfunded liabilities resulting from the Baby Boomers retiring that make the nominal debt look minuscule, terrible demographics making said debt situation unserviceable, unrelenting flow of economically ineffective 3rd worlders from Central America, and mind-numbing political discourse at the national level to name a few. The unmitigated societal and cultural rot is what really makes "Turbo America" unsustainable in my mind going forward. I'm young - 29; but, at least I got to be a small piece of the last echelon to come of age unscathed before everything really started to go south in earnest. The generation coming up behind us...utterly useless. Every generation has said the same thing of the young folk throughout all of world history, but it most likely is one of those weak men/hard times situations now. Want to talk about a national consciousness or identity? There no longer is one, at least not one that's usable in any way unless your name is Lenin. Some will always be good. Many are foreign, have no allegiances, and hate America. Many are loathsome, economically-illiterate communists and hate America. Many (~15%) are... and hate America. The rest are degenerates and/or tik-tok consuming retards. Most can't even perform at a 4th grade level out of high school. These are the people to keep this train from derailing? No. We're victims of our own success as is always the case.
Or are some nations retracting from globalization into reshoring industry?
There’s a definite economic and Reshoring of industry tide turning back into America, and Russia already has, China never outsourced. Absent nuclear war (more likely now than 3 years ago) multipolarity is the only counter to Turbo America.
Russia and China already doing multipolar world, Europe wants to...
Multipolarity is already happening because the emerging economic forces are disrupting the legacy of mid-20th c. industrial arrangements. The US empire initially rested on the US enjoying a near monopoly of industry. That has been weakening ever since the 60s with the recovery of W. Germany and Japan. Now that Russia is trading freely on the global market and China has industrialised there is no way that America can simply dominate. It shall have to compete industrially too across all areas (consumer goods, tool making, engineering, aerospace).
Europe would love to take its place alongside Russia and China (the EU is desperate for this) but it can't happen. Europe can rely on North Sea energy only up to a point, but they inevitably need extra-regional imports. They could tap the reserves in the Eastern Med (the Greeks, Cypriots and Israelis want this very much) but the exploitation of these reserves is vulnerable to disruption by Iran, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia or, conceivably, the US too.
Some nations, their elites coward whores are turning their countries into economic trading zones, others other way, some like Sri Lanka tried and failed.
I think it’s both possible to have a functioning economy and a bunch of really fucked up people in it. Management Consultants (👋) don’t consider anyone but management consultants fellow citizens anyway, so for them American economy is outperforming and more.
I think the leaks on Ukraine's weakness and the mainstream acceptance of it are accurate. The drone strike in Moscow is evidence that Ukraine knows they need to swing big because even if they don't get their target, baiting Russia into a rash over-escalation could trigger a new level of NATO response. Very long shot scenarios though
Major potential turning point in the economic and geopolitical aspect of the war: the Turkish elections. Erdogan has the incumbency advantage and is clearly fine with going gloves off but this will be his toughest battle, against an opponent with clear western backing. Turkey going fully towards the other side potentially changes a lot of calculus for Russia. Also not sure how it would impact migrants to Europe. Erdogan strategically weaponized them when convenient. Does the new guy invite them to merely walk through all the time? What happens with Syria? Very fascinating election overall
In tech, there has been a big revelation that a lot of six figure jobs handed out to Zoomer WOC were in fact fake. The entire point was for individual departments to build out larger and larger teams as evidence that they were doing well, and this probably got those managers promoted, but many of the people hired did nothing but attend meetings all day. This was able to persist for a while due to the low interest rate environment tech abused throughout the 2010s, but that bubble burst (and funny enough I believe Elon helped burst it) and it looks like more and more tech companies are clearing out these positions. All this is to say hopefully McKinsey suffers the same fate
The BBC sitcom "Yes Minister" articulated that fifty years ago, albeit in the UK's civil service and not private business. The concept is the same however; increase you're budgets, increase you're staff; gain prestige.
Negotiations are made virtually impossible, as the guarantor on the Ukrainian side, the USA, is officially viewed by Russia as "agreement non-capable" (Lavrov's words). Any freezing of the conflict simply kicks the can down the road a few more years.
May 6, 2023·edited May 6, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The US may not actually want the war to end. Kiev agreed to a peace treaty in Istanbul. Bojo talked them out of it (presumably at the behest of Washington).
Things may change. Russia is rumoured to have used a hypersonic missile on an underground command post near Lvov in retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on civilians inside Russia in Bryansk oblast. About 300 senior Ukrainian officers were killed, along with about 20 senior NATO officers. The facility had been designed to withstand a nuclear bomb. If true, this would have sent shockwaves through the Pentagon.
It is hard to see how Russia could possibly trust the US given the history of US diplomacy since the Cold War. Washington's enthusiasm for the conflict, plus the relish of the US regime for the deaths of Russians has also roused real anger in Russia at a popular level. Public opinion generally holds that Putin needs to finish the job he started. Russia has the troops in reserve and the logistical capacity to deter NATO. The transfer of nukes to Belarus indicates that Russia is indeed getting serious.
"The US may not actually want the war to end". They don't want the war to end because the real war is against Russia and it cannot end until Moscow has been captured, a GAE-friendly regime installed and the country then broken up into a hundred Kosovo's. Short of that, the GAE will continue to wage war on Russia by any means available.
I had heard about this bombing but only as you present it here. As a rumor. Where is the source for this? I don’t doubt it could have happened I just want to understand how plausible it could be?
Can't recall where I heard about it, but it has been vigorously denied by the usual suspects so I am tentatively accepting it as based on fact. It seems eminently plausible.
Here is a link to a piece that dismisses it as misinformation, if that helps.
With the US' schizophrenic lurch between Trump and Biden it's hard to imagine any country making serious agreements with the US without dealing with the absurd 180s between regimes.
Probably not an issue with Dem ballot harvesting apparently being accepted as normal, granted.
It’s amazing that the re-election of Trump is being called a disaster for Ukraine. There could likely have been a peace agreement. The dead in Ukraine is very likely in the six figures and yet the present course isn’t considered a disaster.
I’m not even a big Trump person I just think on this one issue he has been correct.
NH Gov. Sununu is a traditional conservative, and apparently is polling third for the NH presidential primary -- he is 36 points behind Trump, and 16 points behind Florida Gov. DeSantis. My best guess for what the Germans could expect with a Pres. Sununu, or possibly even a Pres. DeSantis, is less crazy-making in the news but 90+% of what you have described as "Turbo-America" policies may still remain intact.
What is not - still - is why there is still a lot of support for Trump. NH Gov. Sununu appears to be a very sane, sensible and highly intelligent person, and in the past could have made a credible presidential run without having to start from so far behind in the polls. Criticizing unpleasant behavior unfortunately is not the way to close the polling numbers in the conservative base -- the 100-ton gorilla in the room is continued globalization. (Hint: who are the largest employers? In what country(ies) are the largest NH employers headquartered?)
May 6, 2023·edited May 6, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
As somebody rather firmly on the Ukrainian side, I find the focus on the counteroffensive from the numerous propagandists obnoxious and irrelevant. I don't think it's that bad for Ukraine as the quoted passages make it to be; Russia has its own issues. But overall, I do agree that time is on Russia's side and that it's incredibly hard to actually win against a vastly superior force when you don't have the material means to do it. Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side though, to counter Russia's sheer numbers. Russia likely lost more people, but it has the human resources to keep throwing men at it.
Personally I fail to see how Ukraine can score some sort of win unless it manages to incite a revolution of sorts inside Russia. We give Ukraine weapons, but they are not nearly enough. And we have no wartime economy anywhere in the West to mass produce shells and what Ukraine actually needs - massive amounts of artillery and long(er) range missiles in obscene quantities to be able to hit Russian supplies and training camps reliably.
If they really start a counteroffensive, it will likely be super bloody and akin to smashing head against a wall. They might take some territory if all goes well, but then what? Russia will launch its own and on and on it goes. Unless Russia's leadership is dealt with, Ukraine is stuck. And maybe the same is true for Russia, unless it deals with Western-friendly Ukraine leadership, it's also stuck, not even having full control of its claimed territories, not even able to take one small city after 9 months of hell-on-Earth warfare, relying on Wagner PMC to throw people at Ukrainians until something changes.
Back in the early days of the war when Zelensky was saying one thing one second, and then contradicting himself the next second, he told the media that if they manage to kick Russia out of Ukraine, "they'll just come back".
Russia has committed aggression against Ukraine by invading, but that only describes one war. The other war is NATO against Russia. The Americans the Ukes are not fighting the same war, and as the Americans are the sponsors, their goals take precedence. This is what no doubt worries Kiev, as the Americans can declare victory and leave a broken Ukraine while changing focus to China.
In addition to America winning the moment the war started, Ukraine lost. I get why they are fighting and respect the hustle when they propagandize American libtards, but true Ukrainian independence is gone. They stopped a complete Russian takeover early on but in doing so they now have to be puppets of the west, with all the post-nationalism that comes with that. Tragic and inevitable outcome that doesn't change if the war ends tomorrow or 3 years from now
Oh please, do you think the Ukrainians are bothered about being puppets of the West (i.e., Washington)? Every other country in the West is already a puppet and perfectly happy with that arrangement, thank you very much. If the Ukrainians thought it would help them achieve victory over the Russians, they would spit on their hands, hoist the rainbow flag and begin cutting genitals.
Niccolo- Ukraine broke Minsk, then from Feb 16-24, 2022 was firing 1500-2000 shells a day * into Donetsk and Luhansk territories = Firing Artillery is War. As far as this silly business of “Russia invaded” yes, after endless provocations, broken accords and a week of war by artillery. If you fire weapons at people from your land at your neighbors your land is not being invaded.
Niccolo- CORRECT: America won it’s most important goal in Ukrainian war by separating Europe from Russia (and largely China Trade, always look for indirect approach).
Then...
Then we didn’t stop, still haven’t.
Notice a pattern? Like Afghanistan and Iraq- win, then squander success.
Why?
Because 🇺🇸 government is Feudalism in a Federal skin.
The consensus built, it cannot stop. We’re still with our WW2 consensus for example.
So Putin is Hitler and anyone saying stop is Chamberlain or Mosley.
Unfortunately this consensus ends in either Moscow and Beijing, or nuclear war - perhaps both.
Aggression? Perhaps. Unabashed Putin apologists like myself would point out that Ukraine was firing heavy artillery into the Donbass for a fortnight prior to the Russian troops crossing the border and was assembling a 90,000 strong force to storm Donetsk and Lugansk. The Special Military Operation was, from this perspective, a textbook case of Samantha Power's 'responsibility to protect'.
For Ukrainians loyal to Kiev the Russians are certainly invaders. For others the Russians are either liberators who intervened in the latest iteration of a civil war that began in 2014/15 or simply a lesser evil.
Fundamentally, you are entirely correct that there is more than one war going on. I'd argue that there are actually three: the civil war between Kiev and Donetsk and Lugansk, the war Russia is waging against Kiev and the struggle between Washington and Moscow that began years earlier, possibly when the US bombed Belgrade or supported the Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia.
'Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side'.
I'd contest that. Since 2014 millions of Ukrainians have left the country or been driven out, millions took up arms against the government and the political parties representing over half the country are banned. The majority religion is under attack from the state. In the absence of anything resembling a democracy we cannot have any certainty about how much real fervor there is for the war or for the regime. There are reports that the gov't is press-ganging teenagers to fight for them.
Nationalist fervor of a sort certainly exists and it gets attention in the West. How representative any of this is I do not know. To be honest, my sympathies lie with the 'other Ukraine' we are not hearing about.
Only statistical data matters, and that data is indicating that Russia is unable to win a single tiny city for 9 months against a military force that has taken thousands of deaths, yet does not give up, and Russia is allegedly a superpower.
Orthodox Christianity is not banned, only the branch of the church that has ties to Russia. A lot of Orthodox Churches support the pro-Ukrainian branch. It's essentially a schism due to war and political conflict.
Thousands continue to die, and you can visit the channels of various groups and see they keep fighting and have zero plans to give up. Most despise Zelensky's regime and tolerate it simply because it has good links to the US and results in military help.
Military help that units like Kraken would otherwise not receive from the US at all, due to their ethnonationalist views.
As for democracy, lmao. It doesn't exist in Ukraine or Russia. Both countries are corrupt and abuse their citizens regularly and are plagued with oligarchs playing dirty games.
Re data, the data that matters most is the kill ratio and the absolute numbers of dead and seriously wounded.
The duration of the fighting at Bakhmut/Artyomovsk does not indicate Russian weakness but Russian priorities: the Russian generals were not wasting the lives of their men storming the city...they just kept patiently shelling the Ukrainians. It is a war of attrition. Provided Russia keeps it losses low, they win big this way. Patience is a supreme virtue in Russia. So the 9 month time frame works for Russia, not against her.
Formal democracy is besides the point. Russia remains deeply flawed but the social base in support of the Russian state is clearly considerable. Russia today is certainly pluralistic to a degree never previously seen and the oligarchs have been curbed to a considerable degree. The Ukrainian state IMHO is a blend of pure gangster and extremists, both supported by foreigners.
I agree. But it's not about ambition or smarts, it's about brand. Some of the stupidest and least creative people I've ever met went to one of the brand-name management class schools (Stanford for me).
It is true that the US in decline stories sound a lot like Chicken Little. The US also has two extreme advantages over every other country in the world - net positive immigration and the financial markets. The US has the most valuable and innovative companies in the world. But just saying that the US GDP is the largest and the US spends a shit ton of money isn't that meaningful.
1) GDP numbers are not a great metric of an economy. Yes, we don't have anything better right now, but the US spends $4 trillion, or almost 20% on healthcare. What do we get from that? Not much. This country is sicker than others. So services GDP doesn't mean that much. If our GDP is all social media telling people to take obesity drugs, is that a net value to a country? I doubt it.
2) The productive power of the US economy is weaker than 1950 and 1990. Assuming history isn't all propaganda, we all know about how amazing US manufacturing was in 1941 to 1945. The arsenal of democracy - producing a ship a day, tanks by the 1000s a month - etc. The US did amazing things. Now, we can't even produce enough artillery shells. What is the $800 bn in defense spending going for? Our technology (which is vastly more expensive than any other country) doesn't seem to do well in the field. Russia can jam the HIMARs. We can't seem to build anti air defenses.
US multinationals have spent decades making their supply chains global to lower costs and raise stock prices. A great example of that is McDonnell Douglas (run by accountants) versus Boeing (run by risk taking engineers.) The two merged and the accountants won. Now Boeing seems unable to build the next gen plane because it is so complicated. They have hundreds, maybe thousands, of contractors. This is not helpful if it comes down to a real war.
3) I am not a Krugman fan by any stretch but I do think he has a point about inequality. When people don't believe they can get ahead, they stop working. Countries are a lot stronger when they are united in pursuit of a vision or ideal. Being divided means a lot more fighting over stupid things, and over a pie that may not be growing. Why can't the US meet enrollment targets for the military? Nobody wants to fight for this government. If kids care more about LGBT issues than actually learning, I can't imagine that won't be a problem. The US is supposed to be more than a few oligarchs and a sea of serfs. That describes Europe.
I think the US has plenty of problems. That doesn't mean China and Russia don't have serious issues. But why are Chinese PhDs returning back to China? That is not a good sign for a country built on immigration. Have you seen the guys actually writing code on Wall Street and Silicon Valley? They are not woke activists. Why are banks in the US failing? Why are other countries telling us to screw off? That is not a sign of great strength. We can't back up our words, and we are making promises that are dubious.
Again, I am not saying the US isn't the most powerful country in the world. I think if we focused on what matters, (human capital, shoring up our finances, better outcomes for kids), we can fix our problems. But the UK in 1910 thought they were the greatest of all time. Every empire should be concerned about internal problems. (which are far more important than perceived threats - well, unless your enemy is Genghis Khan.)
The history of the US is made of millions of immigrants eager to make a better life for their kids, so that is a pretty big tailwind. There are many ways to slice this apple, but I will talk about Tesla. Not Tesla, the car company, created by an immigrant from South Africa who knew he wanted to come to the US to study and work. Nikola Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire. He was brilliant but had setbacks at school. He came to America in his 20s, worked for Thomas Edison, claimed that Edison screwed him over and started his own company. He licensed Alternate Current patents to Westinghouse and won the electricity war. Edison was promoting DC (Direct Current) In return, Tesla got fairly rich although Westinghouse likely did better in the deal. He still tinkered, and got investors for his various projects, but never hit on another big success. Maybe he was too advanced for that time. A story like Tesla could not happen in any other country. Here is a guy who is gifted but had his own personal issues. In the US, he got funding from investors, created something new, and monetized his research. The distribution of talent may be somewhat random. There are smart people in Asia and Europe. But the distribution of success is not, because historically the US offers the best environment. Tesla helped bring electricity to the world, and he was a guy who never graduated from college.
As for financial markets, I can point you to the people who noted that in the struggle between Britain and France, the British could borrow a lot more money at lower rates than the French. But maybe if Napoleon never invaded Russia, that wouldn't have mattered. It is hard to say. As for today, we may all complain about Apple, Google, Microsoft - but it is really obvious. These companies rule the world (and the US), and they extract huge profits from non US clients. They are far more effective than British colonialism. You can add Coke, Blackrock, semiconductor design, Tesla, Visa, Goldman Sachs to that list. The size advantage of US financial markets versus the rest of the world is enormous. Ergo, we attract talent from entrepreneurs, bankers, P/E types, etc. You may not like these people at all but as a class, they do drive growth. And if the clash of powers is determined by new technology and science, it is a big edge to have Google spent $40 bn on R&D and universities spend billions on STEM. Of course some of it is wasted, like Facebook's Metacrap - but that is true of all research. The Soviet Union lost to the technologies built from consumer electronics.
I think the US is screwing around and our leadership stinks. But those two advantages may outweigh the stupidities of Biden and Congress. After all, the US has had many shitty leaders and other countries occasionally have good rulers. Immigration and finance matter a lot more, except if we go bankrupt or start a nuclear war.
That’s not the history of the US, that’s the made up history of the 20th century. There often ARE immigrants succeeding here, but most of the successful people and tycoons, scientists were born here, their families long established.
That awful plaque on the Statue of Liberty doesn’t make it our story. The country was founded by immigrants and immigrants built America - if you mean 17th century, yes. If you mean 1924 to now - NO. We haven’t been going UP since 1965, but down.
I am not the descendant of those who built America , or tamed it, but a beneficiary. In fairness we try to earn it by military, police, firefighter.
But immigrants built America in the sense Hamilton was black, or the Egyptians were ...no.
Immigrants absolutely make an outsized contribution to the US. They did in 1800, and they did in the latter part of the 20th century.
20% plus of US entrepreneurs are immigrants. It is far larger than their % of the population. Many of the top executives in Silicon Valley are immigrants. Immigrants take more risks and start more companies. I don't have numbers for the immigrant percentage of PhD programs. I suspect it is quite high.
As for 1924 until now, many of the top scientists in the Manhattan project were immigrants. Einstein of course, but also Hans Bethe, Edmund Teller, Johnny Von Neumann. All these people made huge contributions to American science. Richard Feynman's parents were both immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was born very soon after they came to America.
Legal immigration to America is a vast advantage. The US edge in science and technology would diminish greatly without it.
Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semi, came to the US to study at Harvard and MIT. He then worked for a bunch of semi companies. He left America to start Taiwan Semi. If he had stayed in the US, semiconductors might still be made in America, and not Taiwan.
No, Immigrants received outsized benefits by coming to America, and should be grateful. They probably were, and perhaps still are, and certainly should be.
Immigrants should be grateful for the chance to shine and prosper they were denied at home - you see - and grateful to the founding generations of the 17th and 18th centuries who paid the blood price and founded such a great nation. Go and look at for instance the casualty rates from the 17th century and tell me WHO should be grateful - 50% or higher dead.
Go and show me the above names hacking through the wilderness, fighting horrific wars, carving a country from nothing and suffering horrendously for it and tell me Who should be grateful to WHOM. The country they came into was established by others.
You see. They benefited outsized, some of those names would have been dead had they not come here... and there's more to a nation than PhD's, or money.
Credit is due to the pioneers and frontiersman, not just for their bravery but their tolerance and openness. The US would not be what it is today had it originally been settled by Moroccans or the Spanish.
Very good post, thank you. I too question the merit of assigning so much value to GDP, and spending as a metric isn't really all that useful, as I mention in my commentary above.
When I went to a private college, the total all-in bill was $20K to $25K annually. I pay $75K a year for my son now. Is his experience better? Maybe a little (facilities, computers). But was it worth 3X? Particularly if sky high tuition means student debt and worry about paying it back in the future.
The relationship between the strength of an economy and equality is very tricky. And poor people get screwed all the time. But strong countries need to harness all of its people for success. Look at early Rome. They would lose battles, and keep coming back. Look at the British Empire. They had a lot of second sons going abroad, and expanding the reach of imperial power. Look at the US post Civil War.
The US needs to get back to the basics. Powell claiming banks are safe, and State and Treasury Dept imposing sanctions on trade -- that is meaningless.
Some "elite" schools are on the order of $100k per year. A D- GPA grad from an "elite" school has paid for the brand, while an A- grad from a lesser-branded school is someone who probably has learned how to manage their resources as well as how to keep learning. US businesses in the technical domain are asking for PhDs - because they can - when a good 4-year degree should be sufficient.
US businesses can help themselves as well as weaken "elitism" with a couple of apparently simple steps: stop outsourcing planning, increase the number of direct-hire employees, *re-learn how to interview*, and stop being lazy about job descriptions.
May 7, 2023·edited May 7, 2023Liked by Niccolo Soldo
The reason US elite education is so expensive is for the same reason that British Army officers up to the rank of colonel purchased their commissions, but at the same time their salaries were not enough to live on - to ensure class loyalty.
In this case, graduates of elite US universities are either already members of the elite class, or have enough student debt that they dare not rock the boat.
Elitism continues because the system protects itself. The media used to have lots of people from state schools and broad experiences. Now (at least in my impression), the mainstream media is dominated by people from brand name colleges. Those same guys are policy advisers, P/E, consultants, yada yada.
I would like to hope it becomes more broad based, and more driven by your skills than your credentials. But colleges are insidious and adept at expanding influence while virtue signaling they are for equality. Colleges are better than everyone else at grifting the system.
People hire consultants to help justify what they already want to do, yes, but they also hire them to hear what their competitors are doing and copy “best practices” for the industry (ie the same strategies/processes someone else has implemented)
My experience in consulting taught me early on exactly what Locklin says. Management consultants' role is to justify to execs whatever it is they want to do. When things go wrong, the execs can say, ok, maybe it wasn't the best choice, but the geniuses McKinsey (or whoever) told us it was the right thing to do.
Social mobility wasn't really a thing in a Europe where wealth was concentrated in the hands of aristocrats, nobles, industrialists, etc. Many strivers made their way to the USA where land and resources were plentiful, and the rest is history.
Yes !
Moreover Americas federated nature makes dynamism inevitable.
Really do have a look at Francis Jennings , it’s not his main point but it comes up from the pages.
We’re doomed to be a Federation since the Iroquois, it doesn’t matter who lives here - 🇺🇸
This is why I say that the USA has a twenty year head start on everyone else, and can afford to experiment back home like it is presently doing.
A 20 year head start on what?
This is unknown.
I have long suspected that the US is pioneering a dystopian form of capitalism that is suited for a world of chronic resource scarcity: redefining debt-peonage and the mass consumption of shoddy consumerables as prosperity, substituting entertainment for experience, managing expectations of all kinds down. The US may yet win the race to the bottom and establish a sustainable oligarchy atop a carefully managed superior version of what we now see in the Third World.
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Thank you. Truly an interesting read or set of reads as I sit here, watching my son's soccer game, passive aggressively loathing my wife, and waiting for my fishing trip this afternoon.
What kind of fish are you hoping to catch?
Brown and Rainbow Trout, on Tarryall Creek, near Colorado Springs. Praying for no wind today.
Nice. I know a bunch of guys up in Ontario, Canada who love to fish Rainbow Trout. Good luck, bro.
Thanks for the well-wishes. Got skunked, but any day on a quiet stream with no one around is a good day.
Much like how the USA won its overarching objective on the first day of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, you too won the day by just getting out there. Any trout you caught would have been gravy.
True enough. And just like the Russian economy, the trout escaped desolation through guile and cunning.
Sounds like me hunting deer. I never knew those creatures were so smart until I tried to shoot one. Never happened but I enjoyed sitting in the woods.
You just described my annual elk hunting trip each fall. We have a great time doing some armed hiking.
Very fair summation of Ukraine, given the mile-high problem, but I see a lot of Ukraine supporters making much hay over the Wagner situation. No idea what will happen.
There's also a nice symmetry in this week's roundup - management consultants, the UN and its various organs, and of course the EU are salivating over the chance to, er, synergize and implement best practices in Ukraine (read: bleed it dry.) Then again, there is a large appetite in Ukraine, at least in western Ukraine, to join the 'European family'. Certainly it has its good points. But I wonder how easy the adjustment will be in a country with a huge gender imbalance, a sclerotic economy, and an ingrained tradition of corruption. All I know is that none of it had to be this way, and thr failure of Minsk 2 is one of the saddest and most frustrating events of this century.
Ukraine really should be the breadbasket of Europe...but you do a fine job of listing the significant issues with that country's possible inclusion.
Not to mention the 'house divided' problem. Absent centralized population transfers, not everyone pro-West is going to self-select into Ukraine and not everyone pro-Kremlin is going to self-select into the new blasts, let alone today's recognized Russia.
Still, stranger things have happened. Look at Rwanda. From hellish crucible genocide to tourist destination in a single generation.
As you live so near Diocletian's gate, I'd guess you'd know, but wasn't Ukraine an important source of grain for the Roman empire?
And, while we're talking about Diocletian, what do you think were the cabbages he was referring to in his famous quote? I've heard different theories given how many different veg are in the cabbage family.
Sorry for the rando questions.
You're not gonna like my answers:
1. no idea
2. no idea
I like the answers! You didn't make them up (or as ChatGPT - which is making them up).
Just a complete non-expert here, but for your question 1. --- Greeks, not Romans perhaps?
It’s increasingly clear that Ukraine is struggling and dependent upon poorly trained draftees sent as meat shields into the trenches--even WaPo was reporting on this recently. But for the pro Ukraine fanatics this can barely be contemplated because they’re so Marvel brained that they have to believe each Ukrainian is a hyper competent Captain America who can take on ten Russians at a time.
I would bet that we’ll see a much worse Ukrainian death toll in retrospect as well as much more corruption than expected. Russia has similar problems, of course, but western analysts don’t want to see how similar the two groups are. As it turns out, centuries of being Slavs followed by decades of being a post-Soviet failstate can’t be undone by a few years LARPing as a wholesome chungus western democracy.
Both Russia and Ukraine have lost lots of their best-trained, most experienced soldiers, replac ing them with more recent conscripts. The Ukrainian conscripts have access to better training than the recent Russian batch and certainly have more motivation and better leadership.
Russia has an advantage at the moment as it is defending territory and has built up some defenses in depth. We’ll see how the Russian conscripts fight of the UA is able to break through in a few places. My guess is there will be a lot of running.
" The Ukrainian conscripts have access to better training than the recent Russian batch and certainly have more motivation and better leadership." How do you know that?
Russian sources re: training, equipping and morale of Russian conscripts.
Western sources for leadership, showing some really boneheaded tactics. Could be faked or non-representative, but Russia has done nothing but lose territory since the invasion, ex-Bakhmut and environs,
I'd vigorously disagree. Russia sent in regular troops plus border guards and mercenaries like Wagner. Their best troops (like the VMO, the paratroopers) are in reserve to deter NATO. Many are deployed in Belarus and, I assume, the Kaliningrad oblast.
As for better leadership, General Zaluzhny (Ukrainian commander) has said many times that he has read every word published by General Gerasimov (Russian chief of staff) and is a great fan.
Re running, this is just silly. The war is not about territiory. There is a lot to go around. The Russians are fighting to destroy the regime in Kiev and keep out NATO. Russians will manouvre and if this involves withdrawing, so what? Retreat is never defeat in steppe warfare. It is a key to victory.
Rolo's (🤩... ok, mostly 😇) The Slavland Chronicles (👌) is a go-to place for soberly measured takes on all stuff Russia & Ukraine --> roloslavskiy.substack.com.
PS And the wording! You gonna like it, heaps upon bigger heaps of ingenious quips to gladly savour.
Wagner Wagner Wagner
Who’s doing our work in Ukraine?
Its not the Ukrainians
There are supposed to be vast numbers of Polish troops in Ukrainian uniform. Plenty of Westerners, some, perhaps many, on active service in NATO larping as volunteers or mercenaries. The high tech weaponry (advanced artillery and rockets) are quite likely operated by foreigners and the targeting would certainly be coordinated with the Five Eyes crowd using satellite surveillance. Most likely plenty of special forces from the west too.
We 🇺🇸 can’t complain about Wagner or other contractors.
In truth those guys keep costs, casualties down and help prevent conscription.
Thanks v much for the locklin piece on management consulting. Great stuff
THE ECONOMIST 2025:
Americans, the most miserable and anxious people on earth, hate themselves and each other: GDP Threatened!
Humans of the spreadsheet variety can only see dollars and cents, they are like people who know a family that never stops fighting but thinks it can't be so bad because the dad makes money.
If Americans can't rally around simple common-sense solutions like escorting every McKinsey consultant to the guillotine, we really are doomed as a nation.
If I wanted to be a dick, I'd point out how much of the elites are post-national in orientation, and that countries are (or are about to become) little more than economic trading zones.
why would speaking the truth make u a dick??
"The nation is the great invention of the West. It is the heart of the free world, but it is also the Achilles heel of the Western world. If the nations evaporate, disintegrate, rust away, the possibility of free life will be lost and the West will fall. People without a homeland can never be free, they can only be landless pawns of the global elite." ORBAN
The Achilles' heel of globalization is that it relies upon trust between the elites of disparate nations. This no longer exists in sufficient amounts to sustain any US led system.
The emerging trade blocs will be structured around the relationships where trust enables substantive cooperation. The US itself is a low trust society that has hollowed itself out and is now utterly incapable of generating the social capital to function as a free society of any kind, hence the resort to authoritarianism under the pretension of social justice/civil rights and equity. It is unclear how long an economic trading zone like that can last, especially given the fact that the US can no longer be trusted to hold the cash reserves of foreign nations.
Philip I hate to sound strange, but the US elites are not American society. The conflict isn’t just interests or beliefs, they are very different than us.
In America there’s simply more to this enormous land than the elites. N Soldo is right about elite theory to a point, but it stops at our shores and DC city limits (they have Foreign Policy, Government at National level, Finance and media) but the idea that Americans treat each other this way isn’t true. That can be hard to see if you don’t live here I suppose.
This wretched elites are alien to us, to most people. They’re also very limited outside their own circles.
TLW, you do not sound in the least bit strange. I have no trouble believing that there is a divergence between ordinary people and the national elite. Something very similar has developed in Australia within my lifetime.
From my perspective, it is often very hard to disentangle Americans (in all their variety) from 'America' (DC and its institutional and social outposts). The American Fifth Column (our elites) are fixated on 'America' and use it as an excuse for every conceivable mischief and many of the ills imposed on us have been self-inflicted attempts at Americanisation by stealth.
I live in Canberra, the national capital, and 'America' is a very real presence here in that people are focused very closely on American national level gov't, finance, media etc. Have worked with people who interned in your Capitol or done secondments/postings in the US. Have also worked under regulations crafted (covertly) to follow the standards of 'America'.
To this I would add that a great deal of governing in America is done at the state and local levels. For the most part, these polities are quite coherent. While there is often extreme disagreement between local-state, local-federal, and state-federal units of gov, internal cohesion within these units is surprisingly strong. Of course, there are great differences between states, and between some blocks of states and other blocks of states, but these often play out through largely symbolic media spectacles more than real, consequential conflicts.
The result is that, while government on the ground as it matters to most people--basic infrastructure, social services, tax paying, development, permitting and licensing, etc.--often sucks, as government can be reasonably expected to suck much of the time, especially in a relatively new, incredibly diverse place with very little history living together, it's also pretty functional in most of the ways that matter. Hardly exemplary, but functional enough so that the American economic machine--fueled by vast natural resources and global empire and visionary leaders of the past--runs largely unfettered.
'Tis a common misconception—long-overdue to be ruthlessly cancelled 🤭—that élites are crème de la crème of their respective nations. Obviously, they're a highly cohesive tribe of their own, spanning the globe 🤷
When you say tribe...
....never mind
Nothing dickish about pointing out that truth.
I agree with others that this week's commentary was particularly enjoyable. I've always thought, however, that your outlook on the US is a bit rosy. Maybe it's just the good company you keep when you visit, but I think the reality is closer to that which Phillip often indulges us with. I see a culmination of different factors - social and economic - in motion which all lead to nothing positive. Unfunded liabilities resulting from the Baby Boomers retiring that make the nominal debt look minuscule, terrible demographics making said debt situation unserviceable, unrelenting flow of economically ineffective 3rd worlders from Central America, and mind-numbing political discourse at the national level to name a few. The unmitigated societal and cultural rot is what really makes "Turbo America" unsustainable in my mind going forward. I'm young - 29; but, at least I got to be a small piece of the last echelon to come of age unscathed before everything really started to go south in earnest. The generation coming up behind us...utterly useless. Every generation has said the same thing of the young folk throughout all of world history, but it most likely is one of those weak men/hard times situations now. Want to talk about a national consciousness or identity? There no longer is one, at least not one that's usable in any way unless your name is Lenin. Some will always be good. Many are foreign, have no allegiances, and hate America. Many are loathsome, economically-illiterate communists and hate America. Many (~15%) are... and hate America. The rest are degenerates and/or tik-tok consuming retards. Most can't even perform at a 4th grade level out of high school. These are the people to keep this train from derailing? No. We're victims of our own success as is always the case.
Or are some nations retracting from globalization into reshoring industry?
There’s a definite economic and Reshoring of industry tide turning back into America, and Russia already has, China never outsourced. Absent nuclear war (more likely now than 3 years ago) multipolarity is the only counter to Turbo America.
Russia and China already doing multipolar world, Europe wants to...
Multipolarity is already happening because the emerging economic forces are disrupting the legacy of mid-20th c. industrial arrangements. The US empire initially rested on the US enjoying a near monopoly of industry. That has been weakening ever since the 60s with the recovery of W. Germany and Japan. Now that Russia is trading freely on the global market and China has industrialised there is no way that America can simply dominate. It shall have to compete industrially too across all areas (consumer goods, tool making, engineering, aerospace).
Europe would love to take its place alongside Russia and China (the EU is desperate for this) but it can't happen. Europe can rely on North Sea energy only up to a point, but they inevitably need extra-regional imports. They could tap the reserves in the Eastern Med (the Greeks, Cypriots and Israelis want this very much) but the exploitation of these reserves is vulnerable to disruption by Iran, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia or, conceivably, the US too.
You can be a dick of course.
Some nations, their elites coward whores are turning their countries into economic trading zones, others other way, some like Sri Lanka tried and failed.
I think it’s both possible to have a functioning economy and a bunch of really fucked up people in it. Management Consultants (👋) don’t consider anyone but management consultants fellow citizens anyway, so for them American economy is outperforming and more.
I think the leaks on Ukraine's weakness and the mainstream acceptance of it are accurate. The drone strike in Moscow is evidence that Ukraine knows they need to swing big because even if they don't get their target, baiting Russia into a rash over-escalation could trigger a new level of NATO response. Very long shot scenarios though
Major potential turning point in the economic and geopolitical aspect of the war: the Turkish elections. Erdogan has the incumbency advantage and is clearly fine with going gloves off but this will be his toughest battle, against an opponent with clear western backing. Turkey going fully towards the other side potentially changes a lot of calculus for Russia. Also not sure how it would impact migrants to Europe. Erdogan strategically weaponized them when convenient. Does the new guy invite them to merely walk through all the time? What happens with Syria? Very fascinating election overall
In tech, there has been a big revelation that a lot of six figure jobs handed out to Zoomer WOC were in fact fake. The entire point was for individual departments to build out larger and larger teams as evidence that they were doing well, and this probably got those managers promoted, but many of the people hired did nothing but attend meetings all day. This was able to persist for a while due to the low interest rate environment tech abused throughout the 2010s, but that bubble burst (and funny enough I believe Elon helped burst it) and it looks like more and more tech companies are clearing out these positions. All this is to say hopefully McKinsey suffers the same fate
The BBC sitcom "Yes Minister" articulated that fifty years ago, albeit in the UK's civil service and not private business. The concept is the same however; increase you're budgets, increase you're staff; gain prestige.
What was the old Pravda trick? Read the news, learn the lies, then make an educated guess to the truth?
I’m not sure how good I am at that yet, but your comments on Ukraine feel like a glass of water in the desert.
The sooner the war ends the better.
Negotiations are made virtually impossible, as the guarantor on the Ukrainian side, the USA, is officially viewed by Russia as "agreement non-capable" (Lavrov's words). Any freezing of the conflict simply kicks the can down the road a few more years.
It’s hard to see how the USA gets agreement capable. Well, better the cold hard truth than comforting fantasy.
And I’m American. Lol.
The US may not actually want the war to end. Kiev agreed to a peace treaty in Istanbul. Bojo talked them out of it (presumably at the behest of Washington).
Things may change. Russia is rumoured to have used a hypersonic missile on an underground command post near Lvov in retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on civilians inside Russia in Bryansk oblast. About 300 senior Ukrainian officers were killed, along with about 20 senior NATO officers. The facility had been designed to withstand a nuclear bomb. If true, this would have sent shockwaves through the Pentagon.
It is hard to see how Russia could possibly trust the US given the history of US diplomacy since the Cold War. Washington's enthusiasm for the conflict, plus the relish of the US regime for the deaths of Russians has also roused real anger in Russia at a popular level. Public opinion generally holds that Putin needs to finish the job he started. Russia has the troops in reserve and the logistical capacity to deter NATO. The transfer of nukes to Belarus indicates that Russia is indeed getting serious.
"The US may not actually want the war to end". They don't want the war to end because the real war is against Russia and it cannot end until Moscow has been captured, a GAE-friendly regime installed and the country then broken up into a hundred Kosovo's. Short of that, the GAE will continue to wage war on Russia by any means available.
I had heard about this bombing but only as you present it here. As a rumor. Where is the source for this? I don’t doubt it could have happened I just want to understand how plausible it could be?
Can't recall where I heard about it, but it has been vigorously denied by the usual suspects so I am tentatively accepting it as based on fact. It seems eminently plausible.
Here is a link to a piece that dismisses it as misinformation, if that helps.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nato-command-center-strike/
With the US' schizophrenic lurch between Trump and Biden it's hard to imagine any country making serious agreements with the US without dealing with the absurd 180s between regimes.
Probably not an issue with Dem ballot harvesting apparently being accepted as normal, granted.
Here's an example of a country hoping not to get caught off guard again - https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/horror-scenario-germans-prepare-for-possible-re-election-of-donald-trump-a-8668044c-f299-45a8-b6ea-ba3691cddb5f
It’s amazing that the re-election of Trump is being called a disaster for Ukraine. There could likely have been a peace agreement. The dead in Ukraine is very likely in the six figures and yet the present course isn’t considered a disaster.
I’m not even a big Trump person I just think on this one issue he has been correct.
I love how DS blatantly smears Trump in that piece while every statement of his they quote is self evidently true.
While following a different thread elsewhere, I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/12/trump-cnn-town-hall-new-hampshire-governor-embarrassed-audience
NH Gov. Sununu is a traditional conservative, and apparently is polling third for the NH presidential primary -- he is 36 points behind Trump, and 16 points behind Florida Gov. DeSantis. My best guess for what the Germans could expect with a Pres. Sununu, or possibly even a Pres. DeSantis, is less crazy-making in the news but 90+% of what you have described as "Turbo-America" policies may still remain intact.
What is not - still - is why there is still a lot of support for Trump. NH Gov. Sununu appears to be a very sane, sensible and highly intelligent person, and in the past could have made a credible presidential run without having to start from so far behind in the polls. Criticizing unpleasant behavior unfortunately is not the way to close the polling numbers in the conservative base -- the 100-ton gorilla in the room is continued globalization. (Hint: who are the largest employers? In what country(ies) are the largest NH employers headquartered?)
As somebody rather firmly on the Ukrainian side, I find the focus on the counteroffensive from the numerous propagandists obnoxious and irrelevant. I don't think it's that bad for Ukraine as the quoted passages make it to be; Russia has its own issues. But overall, I do agree that time is on Russia's side and that it's incredibly hard to actually win against a vastly superior force when you don't have the material means to do it. Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side though, to counter Russia's sheer numbers. Russia likely lost more people, but it has the human resources to keep throwing men at it.
Personally I fail to see how Ukraine can score some sort of win unless it manages to incite a revolution of sorts inside Russia. We give Ukraine weapons, but they are not nearly enough. And we have no wartime economy anywhere in the West to mass produce shells and what Ukraine actually needs - massive amounts of artillery and long(er) range missiles in obscene quantities to be able to hit Russian supplies and training camps reliably.
If they really start a counteroffensive, it will likely be super bloody and akin to smashing head against a wall. They might take some territory if all goes well, but then what? Russia will launch its own and on and on it goes. Unless Russia's leadership is dealt with, Ukraine is stuck. And maybe the same is true for Russia, unless it deals with Western-friendly Ukraine leadership, it's also stuck, not even having full control of its claimed territories, not even able to take one small city after 9 months of hell-on-Earth warfare, relying on Wagner PMC to throw people at Ukrainians until something changes.
Complete mess.
Back in the early days of the war when Zelensky was saying one thing one second, and then contradicting himself the next second, he told the media that if they manage to kick Russia out of Ukraine, "they'll just come back".
Russia has committed aggression against Ukraine by invading, but that only describes one war. The other war is NATO against Russia. The Americans the Ukes are not fighting the same war, and as the Americans are the sponsors, their goals take precedence. This is what no doubt worries Kiev, as the Americans can declare victory and leave a broken Ukraine while changing focus to China.
In addition to America winning the moment the war started, Ukraine lost. I get why they are fighting and respect the hustle when they propagandize American libtards, but true Ukrainian independence is gone. They stopped a complete Russian takeover early on but in doing so they now have to be puppets of the west, with all the post-nationalism that comes with that. Tragic and inevitable outcome that doesn't change if the war ends tomorrow or 3 years from now
As I mentioned at the beginning of the war:
Big Winner: USA
Small Winner: Russia
Small Loser: EU
Big Loser: Ukraine
Maybe western Ukraine will be Poland's consolation prize.
Oh please, do you think the Ukrainians are bothered about being puppets of the West (i.e., Washington)? Every other country in the West is already a puppet and perfectly happy with that arrangement, thank you very much. If the Ukrainians thought it would help them achieve victory over the Russians, they would spit on their hands, hoist the rainbow flag and begin cutting genitals.
Ukraine became a puppet of the West when Yanukovich was forced out by a US backed coup d'etat in 2014.
Niccolo- Ukraine broke Minsk, then from Feb 16-24, 2022 was firing 1500-2000 shells a day * into Donetsk and Luhansk territories = Firing Artillery is War. As far as this silly business of “Russia invaded” yes, after endless provocations, broken accords and a week of war by artillery. If you fire weapons at people from your land at your neighbors your land is not being invaded.
I’m on America’s side, BTW.
Which is burden enough.
* https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/512683
You don’t get to fire artillery at people for a week and claim victim.
Niccolo- CORRECT: America won it’s most important goal in Ukrainian war by separating Europe from Russia (and largely China Trade, always look for indirect approach).
Then...
Then we didn’t stop, still haven’t.
Notice a pattern? Like Afghanistan and Iraq- win, then squander success.
Why?
Because 🇺🇸 government is Feudalism in a Federal skin.
The consensus built, it cannot stop. We’re still with our WW2 consensus for example.
So Putin is Hitler and anyone saying stop is Chamberlain or Mosley.
Unfortunately this consensus ends in either Moscow and Beijing, or nuclear war - perhaps both.
Aggression? Perhaps. Unabashed Putin apologists like myself would point out that Ukraine was firing heavy artillery into the Donbass for a fortnight prior to the Russian troops crossing the border and was assembling a 90,000 strong force to storm Donetsk and Lugansk. The Special Military Operation was, from this perspective, a textbook case of Samantha Power's 'responsibility to protect'.
For Ukrainians loyal to Kiev the Russians are certainly invaders. For others the Russians are either liberators who intervened in the latest iteration of a civil war that began in 2014/15 or simply a lesser evil.
Fundamentally, you are entirely correct that there is more than one war going on. I'd argue that there are actually three: the civil war between Kiev and Donetsk and Lugansk, the war Russia is waging against Kiev and the struggle between Washington and Moscow that began years earlier, possibly when the US bombed Belgrade or supported the Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia.
'Ukraine does have nationalistic fervor on its side'.
I'd contest that. Since 2014 millions of Ukrainians have left the country or been driven out, millions took up arms against the government and the political parties representing over half the country are banned. The majority religion is under attack from the state. In the absence of anything resembling a democracy we cannot have any certainty about how much real fervor there is for the war or for the regime. There are reports that the gov't is press-ganging teenagers to fight for them.
Nationalist fervor of a sort certainly exists and it gets attention in the West. How representative any of this is I do not know. To be honest, my sympathies lie with the 'other Ukraine' we are not hearing about.
Only statistical data matters, and that data is indicating that Russia is unable to win a single tiny city for 9 months against a military force that has taken thousands of deaths, yet does not give up, and Russia is allegedly a superpower.
Orthodox Christianity is not banned, only the branch of the church that has ties to Russia. A lot of Orthodox Churches support the pro-Ukrainian branch. It's essentially a schism due to war and political conflict.
Thousands continue to die, and you can visit the channels of various groups and see they keep fighting and have zero plans to give up. Most despise Zelensky's regime and tolerate it simply because it has good links to the US and results in military help.
Military help that units like Kraken would otherwise not receive from the US at all, due to their ethnonationalist views.
As for democracy, lmao. It doesn't exist in Ukraine or Russia. Both countries are corrupt and abuse their citizens regularly and are plagued with oligarchs playing dirty games.
Re data, the data that matters most is the kill ratio and the absolute numbers of dead and seriously wounded.
The duration of the fighting at Bakhmut/Artyomovsk does not indicate Russian weakness but Russian priorities: the Russian generals were not wasting the lives of their men storming the city...they just kept patiently shelling the Ukrainians. It is a war of attrition. Provided Russia keeps it losses low, they win big this way. Patience is a supreme virtue in Russia. So the 9 month time frame works for Russia, not against her.
Formal democracy is besides the point. Russia remains deeply flawed but the social base in support of the Russian state is clearly considerable. Russia today is certainly pluralistic to a degree never previously seen and the oligarchs have been curbed to a considerable degree. The Ukrainian state IMHO is a blend of pure gangster and extremists, both supported by foreigners.
I'm surprised at the dismissal of Michigan, a school with no lack of ambitious students, from the management class
I agree. But it's not about ambition or smarts, it's about brand. Some of the stupidest and least creative people I've ever met went to one of the brand-name management class schools (Stanford for me).
Who?
Scott is freaking hilarious!
It is true that the US in decline stories sound a lot like Chicken Little. The US also has two extreme advantages over every other country in the world - net positive immigration and the financial markets. The US has the most valuable and innovative companies in the world. But just saying that the US GDP is the largest and the US spends a shit ton of money isn't that meaningful.
1) GDP numbers are not a great metric of an economy. Yes, we don't have anything better right now, but the US spends $4 trillion, or almost 20% on healthcare. What do we get from that? Not much. This country is sicker than others. So services GDP doesn't mean that much. If our GDP is all social media telling people to take obesity drugs, is that a net value to a country? I doubt it.
2) The productive power of the US economy is weaker than 1950 and 1990. Assuming history isn't all propaganda, we all know about how amazing US manufacturing was in 1941 to 1945. The arsenal of democracy - producing a ship a day, tanks by the 1000s a month - etc. The US did amazing things. Now, we can't even produce enough artillery shells. What is the $800 bn in defense spending going for? Our technology (which is vastly more expensive than any other country) doesn't seem to do well in the field. Russia can jam the HIMARs. We can't seem to build anti air defenses.
US multinationals have spent decades making their supply chains global to lower costs and raise stock prices. A great example of that is McDonnell Douglas (run by accountants) versus Boeing (run by risk taking engineers.) The two merged and the accountants won. Now Boeing seems unable to build the next gen plane because it is so complicated. They have hundreds, maybe thousands, of contractors. This is not helpful if it comes down to a real war.
3) I am not a Krugman fan by any stretch but I do think he has a point about inequality. When people don't believe they can get ahead, they stop working. Countries are a lot stronger when they are united in pursuit of a vision or ideal. Being divided means a lot more fighting over stupid things, and over a pie that may not be growing. Why can't the US meet enrollment targets for the military? Nobody wants to fight for this government. If kids care more about LGBT issues than actually learning, I can't imagine that won't be a problem. The US is supposed to be more than a few oligarchs and a sea of serfs. That describes Europe.
I think the US has plenty of problems. That doesn't mean China and Russia don't have serious issues. But why are Chinese PhDs returning back to China? That is not a good sign for a country built on immigration. Have you seen the guys actually writing code on Wall Street and Silicon Valley? They are not woke activists. Why are banks in the US failing? Why are other countries telling us to screw off? That is not a sign of great strength. We can't back up our words, and we are making promises that are dubious.
Again, I am not saying the US isn't the most powerful country in the world. I think if we focused on what matters, (human capital, shoring up our finances, better outcomes for kids), we can fix our problems. But the UK in 1910 thought they were the greatest of all time. Every empire should be concerned about internal problems. (which are far more important than perceived threats - well, unless your enemy is Genghis Khan.)
The history of the US is made of millions of immigrants eager to make a better life for their kids, so that is a pretty big tailwind. There are many ways to slice this apple, but I will talk about Tesla. Not Tesla, the car company, created by an immigrant from South Africa who knew he wanted to come to the US to study and work. Nikola Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire. He was brilliant but had setbacks at school. He came to America in his 20s, worked for Thomas Edison, claimed that Edison screwed him over and started his own company. He licensed Alternate Current patents to Westinghouse and won the electricity war. Edison was promoting DC (Direct Current) In return, Tesla got fairly rich although Westinghouse likely did better in the deal. He still tinkered, and got investors for his various projects, but never hit on another big success. Maybe he was too advanced for that time. A story like Tesla could not happen in any other country. Here is a guy who is gifted but had his own personal issues. In the US, he got funding from investors, created something new, and monetized his research. The distribution of talent may be somewhat random. There are smart people in Asia and Europe. But the distribution of success is not, because historically the US offers the best environment. Tesla helped bring electricity to the world, and he was a guy who never graduated from college.
As for financial markets, I can point you to the people who noted that in the struggle between Britain and France, the British could borrow a lot more money at lower rates than the French. But maybe if Napoleon never invaded Russia, that wouldn't have mattered. It is hard to say. As for today, we may all complain about Apple, Google, Microsoft - but it is really obvious. These companies rule the world (and the US), and they extract huge profits from non US clients. They are far more effective than British colonialism. You can add Coke, Blackrock, semiconductor design, Tesla, Visa, Goldman Sachs to that list. The size advantage of US financial markets versus the rest of the world is enormous. Ergo, we attract talent from entrepreneurs, bankers, P/E types, etc. You may not like these people at all but as a class, they do drive growth. And if the clash of powers is determined by new technology and science, it is a big edge to have Google spent $40 bn on R&D and universities spend billions on STEM. Of course some of it is wasted, like Facebook's Metacrap - but that is true of all research. The Soviet Union lost to the technologies built from consumer electronics.
I think the US is screwing around and our leadership stinks. But those two advantages may outweigh the stupidities of Biden and Congress. After all, the US has had many shitty leaders and other countries occasionally have good rulers. Immigration and finance matter a lot more, except if we go bankrupt or start a nuclear war.
That’s not the history of the US, that’s the made up history of the 20th century. There often ARE immigrants succeeding here, but most of the successful people and tycoons, scientists were born here, their families long established.
That awful plaque on the Statue of Liberty doesn’t make it our story. The country was founded by immigrants and immigrants built America - if you mean 17th century, yes. If you mean 1924 to now - NO. We haven’t been going UP since 1965, but down.
I am not the descendant of those who built America , or tamed it, but a beneficiary. In fairness we try to earn it by military, police, firefighter.
But immigrants built America in the sense Hamilton was black, or the Egyptians were ...no.
Immigrants absolutely make an outsized contribution to the US. They did in 1800, and they did in the latter part of the 20th century.
20% plus of US entrepreneurs are immigrants. It is far larger than their % of the population. Many of the top executives in Silicon Valley are immigrants. Immigrants take more risks and start more companies. I don't have numbers for the immigrant percentage of PhD programs. I suspect it is quite high.
As for 1924 until now, many of the top scientists in the Manhattan project were immigrants. Einstein of course, but also Hans Bethe, Edmund Teller, Johnny Von Neumann. All these people made huge contributions to American science. Richard Feynman's parents were both immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was born very soon after they came to America.
Legal immigration to America is a vast advantage. The US edge in science and technology would diminish greatly without it.
Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semi, came to the US to study at Harvard and MIT. He then worked for a bunch of semi companies. He left America to start Taiwan Semi. If he had stayed in the US, semiconductors might still be made in America, and not Taiwan.
No, Immigrants received outsized benefits by coming to America, and should be grateful. They probably were, and perhaps still are, and certainly should be.
Immigrants should be grateful for the chance to shine and prosper they were denied at home - you see - and grateful to the founding generations of the 17th and 18th centuries who paid the blood price and founded such a great nation. Go and look at for instance the casualty rates from the 17th century and tell me WHO should be grateful - 50% or higher dead.
Go and show me the above names hacking through the wilderness, fighting horrific wars, carving a country from nothing and suffering horrendously for it and tell me Who should be grateful to WHOM. The country they came into was established by others.
You see. They benefited outsized, some of those names would have been dead had they not come here... and there's more to a nation than PhD's, or money.
Credit is due to the pioneers and frontiersman, not just for their bravery but their tolerance and openness. The US would not be what it is today had it originally been settled by Moroccans or the Spanish.
Very good post, thank you. I too question the merit of assigning so much value to GDP, and spending as a metric isn't really all that useful, as I mention in my commentary above.
When I went to a private college, the total all-in bill was $20K to $25K annually. I pay $75K a year for my son now. Is his experience better? Maybe a little (facilities, computers). But was it worth 3X? Particularly if sky high tuition means student debt and worry about paying it back in the future.
The relationship between the strength of an economy and equality is very tricky. And poor people get screwed all the time. But strong countries need to harness all of its people for success. Look at early Rome. They would lose battles, and keep coming back. Look at the British Empire. They had a lot of second sons going abroad, and expanding the reach of imperial power. Look at the US post Civil War.
The US needs to get back to the basics. Powell claiming banks are safe, and State and Treasury Dept imposing sanctions on trade -- that is meaningless.
Some "elite" schools are on the order of $100k per year. A D- GPA grad from an "elite" school has paid for the brand, while an A- grad from a lesser-branded school is someone who probably has learned how to manage their resources as well as how to keep learning. US businesses in the technical domain are asking for PhDs - because they can - when a good 4-year degree should be sufficient.
US businesses can help themselves as well as weaken "elitism" with a couple of apparently simple steps: stop outsourcing planning, increase the number of direct-hire employees, *re-learn how to interview*, and stop being lazy about job descriptions.
The reason US elite education is so expensive is for the same reason that British Army officers up to the rank of colonel purchased their commissions, but at the same time their salaries were not enough to live on - to ensure class loyalty.
In this case, graduates of elite US universities are either already members of the elite class, or have enough student debt that they dare not rock the boat.
Elitism continues because the system protects itself. The media used to have lots of people from state schools and broad experiences. Now (at least in my impression), the mainstream media is dominated by people from brand name colleges. Those same guys are policy advisers, P/E, consultants, yada yada.
I would like to hope it becomes more broad based, and more driven by your skills than your credentials. But colleges are insidious and adept at expanding influence while virtue signaling they are for equality. Colleges are better than everyone else at grifting the system.
Love the Libya and mgmt consulting takes.
People hire consultants to help justify what they already want to do, yes, but they also hire them to hear what their competitors are doing and copy “best practices” for the industry (ie the same strategies/processes someone else has implemented)
Nobody ever became unemployable for doing what everyone else did.
My experience in consulting taught me early on exactly what Locklin says. Management consultants' role is to justify to execs whatever it is they want to do. When things go wrong, the execs can say, ok, maybe it wasn't the best choice, but the geniuses McKinsey (or whoever) told us it was the right thing to do.
UKR demise! to Libya demise! to Management Consultant non-demise! to exterminated Pygmies! what a combo.
in hear gear --> high gear
[I think this is what you mean - or head gear?]
beginning to ramp down
--> beginning to tamp down
[one ramps up and tamps down...two completely different metaphors...]
economic security for its citizens --> economic security for their citizens
there is no desire in helping --> there is no desire to help
[Or did you mean this? I dont think so but perhaps?:
While helping [it/them] to get better, some in Europe do so in a way that is apathetic, languid, impassive...]
merci, calby! will edit