Blowback

[Hygro]

Hell yeah that was quality high effort posting. It looked like a small number but your post showed otherwise.

 

[Crezth]

Yeah people really need to put it out of their head that this foreign aid stuff is really or has ever been "pocket change" when it's probably the single most important glue in the international order since Bretton Woods. In fact nobody here has actually suggested that South Korea's leaders might have had ulterior motives to support the U.S. in order to get at that money, or that North Korea might argue it's taking some principled stand refusing to come to the table and only eating canned beans. Money? What's that? Y'all need to remember what money is and why it matters.

 

[Hygro]

I am 1000% on the literal patriarch dictators mafia style ruin everything train, either themselves immediately or their offspring, so I won’t join you on the full suggestion. But I do see your point.

 

[Crezth]

For the record I don't think it's that much of a principled stand, but if I was dictator of North Korea I probably wouldn't do anything different from ol' Kim.

 

[Birdjaguar]

but if I was dictator of North Korea I probably wouldn't do anything different from ol' Kim.

Enslave your citizens and keep them 40 years behind the rest of the world. Such compassion for the workers of the world.

 

[Crezth]

Well I obviously wouldn't be the same born-in-the-rust belt, come-from-the-hood little hero you all know and love so much. I'm not sure how much compassion for the workers of the world a hereditary dictator of a besieged nation is supposed to have.

 

[Estebonrober]

None of it was Soviet business either, As the North supported another megalomaniac
How insanely clear looking back now can only be denied by people whom brains are addled by Soviet propaganda

The US has and will do dumb stuff, especially as half the population have lost there minds but overall its been a force for good
Change will come once the older generation die off, its normally how progress is made

The Soviets were barely involved if you look into it. You are jsut reinforcing my overall point here that even now, in 2023, that the western perception of the Cold War is insanely violent, childish in its reactionary naivete, and counterproductive for the actual economic welfare of most humans.

The Soviets have been dead and gone for 30 years, the US and its allies are literally pushing genocidal propaganda today.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Soviets have been dead and gone for 30 years, the US and its allies are literally pushing genocidal propaganda today.

And yet it is Putin and Russia that is actually trying to eradicate Ukrainians at the moment.

 

[Crezth]

"Trying to eradicate Ukrainians" said with such boldness and brashness about a war where the front line is held with trenches between two opposing armies, while Gaza is currently being glassed with the full faith and backing of U.S. democracy, it seems a little... insane, no?

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Ukraine war is currently locked into trench lines but it has a 16 month history accompanied by Russian deporting Ukrainians and their children, destroying whole cities and ongoing air attacks against civilian targets. In addition there has been lots of Russian talk about eradication of the Ukraine and its people. My post was to point out that Estebonrober's post was his typical false in its onesidedness in always blaming just the US and never his BFF countries. The difference in scale make Ukrainian genocide more difficult than in Gaza. Gaza is very dynamic atm and the rhetoric extreme on both sides. Disinformation abounds. Many Israeli are out for blood. We will have to see the degree to which that wish is fulfilled.

 

[Crezth]

Disinformation abounds, yes, it's a mysterious problem in Israel; we'll just have to see where the dust settles. Russia, though - lots of talk of genocide from those people, and they deported children. Can you imagine? Children! Forced to leave their homes. That must be harrowing.

I think the "both sides" point is being made very capably right now and this thread has adequately demonstrated that Americans will never admit to any wrongdoing even if you can prove it to them.

 

[r16]

north Koreans are fully up to date with nuclear weapons which is leading their industry to match up with the world . So , while it might be 40 years in 1970 it is nothing of the sort today .

 

[Hygro]

Disinformation abounds, yes, it's a mysterious problem in Israel; we'll just have to see where the dust settles. Russia, though - lots of talk of genocide from those people, and they deported children. Can you imagine? Children! Forced to leave their homes. That must be harrowing.

I think the "both sides" point is being made very capably right now and this thread has adequately demonstrated that Americans will never admit to any wrongdoing even if you can prove it to them.

You and I are Americans and are admitting to wrongdoing.

 

[bernie14]

blowback is not fafo, this particular thread is not meant to be more than sharing information (whether american hogs like the information or not the accuracy is not in question) and sharing my shock in learning it. We fudging leveled an entire nation (south korea included) and killed ~2million human beings basically jsut so we could keep building bombs and crush unions in the homeland. Its fudging abhorrent. It is an abomination. I'm not a Stalinist, I'm not a Maoist, I'm not even a Marxist. I'm not here to defend the merits of the workers owning the means to production. I'm here to call out the fudging reality that the US is the most war crime nightmare riddled nation state in the last hundred years and it is not even close. We pointlessly have gone around crushing or directly helping crush social; movements at the slightest pretense that it would hurt some little horsehocky firm's stock price.

I just wanted to know why so many people bought into it and so far, I'm just getting childish rote recapitulation of that very same propaganda. Trust me, I know I am not going to get any enlightenment from you on this topic, your reactionary behavior over the years has been consistent and constantly disgusting. I see you consistently and constantly justifying mass murder at the slightest pretense of being annoyed about a topic. I would not expect worker's rights to be a thing you care about.

Ok, thanks! Tankie thread it is.

 

[Crezth]

You and I are Americans and are admitting to wrongdoing.

Well, you have me there, John.

 

[amadeus]

Yeah people really need to put it out of their head that this foreign aid stuff is really or has ever been "pocket change" when it's probably the single most important glue in the international order since Bretton Woods.

I still have little idea what this is about. Bretton Woods? Is this about Korea, or aid, or what? If it’s about Korea, their export-oriented economy was picking up steam as Nixon closed the gold window, and the most substantive economic aid came before that.

If it’s about aid, that’s something also difficult to look at because there are different types: direct grants, loans, humanitarian and military aid, and the multiplier effects of each vary depending on how the money is or can be used; take a military grant that has strings attached, like U.S. equipment purchases as part of the agreement—that economic stimulus, whatever its value, isn’t being captured in Korea or any recipient country.

 

[Joij21]

I get the mentality but not with my tax dollars

Your tax dollars don't fund most of the bulk costs of our expeditionary wars, the Federal Reserve literally gets the go ahead from the Treasury (which gets the go ahead from Congress) to just add some zeros into the bank accounts of defense contractors. It's all digital (or in the older days of fiat before the Internet it was just on the ledgers of bank accounts via pen and paper accounting voodoo). There's no debt or anything, it doesn't need to be paid back, but it does cause inflation once the contractor then spends his money into general circulation via hookers and coke.

So to control the inflation they then tax you to suck up the money that was freely put into circulation so bourgeois merchants don't take advantage of the larger amounts of money by then raising prices on everything else to consolidate a larger pie of the market selfishly for themselves (in order to gain more power and influence in order to be able to bribe Congress more so to choke out rival merchants' ability to regulate them out of business, thus forcing them to raise prices to consolidate the pie for worries of their rivals beating them to the punch now that more money is flowing around and could potentially end up in a rival's hands), but to also reign you in and prevent you the laborer from potentially using your larger amounts of money to no longer decide to work and go into early retirement (which would just collapse the capitalist system if you decided to quit labor while still so young, hence raising prices when there is more money going around as a stick to make sure you're always producing surplus production for the boss man. But of course the government doesn't like it when the merchants do this and cause the inflation because when they do raise prices it's very chaotic and uneven and causes logistical and unemployment/underemployment issues throughout the total economy and thus potential stability problems for any would be politician. This is why the government prefers to kill inflation from being created by the merchants by simply killing it in the womb via taxing you, so that way the merchants then have nothing to panic about now with the money sucked back out and prevented from properly empowering you the proletariat to keep you eternally wage slaving).

But sometimes that's not enough and inflation still happens because of speculation and entropic competition between the merchants and their petty rivalries. The government knows such pigs hoard wealth like dragons only to splurge on lavish expenses which have the potential to "provoke" other merchants into raising prices and squeeze their employees just so they can prove their wealth/status to their rivals such as when Bezos or Musk compete by buying their 50th mansion or 16th super yacht. A sort of sausage length measuring fest among the merchants begins, so the government issues treasury bonds to entice those among the bourgeoisie to invest in such safe assets by giving away a boatload of money back to the government so as to suck up further money out of circulation so they don't start doing stupid things with that money otherwise (and despite bonds being boring the government successfully coerces them into buying bonds because bonds are tax free when the regime pays them slowly back over 30 years then eventually the final principal on maturity, because regular stocks get taxed a ridiculous amount via the capital gains tax if you make too much money in a short amount of time and choose not to wait over a year to make profit. So the bourgeois loving tax free money buys the bonds with loans from private banks (on margin), these banks themselves then collect interest back from the bourgeois via the cashflows generated from the businesses they own which are shackled via the reserve interest rate of the Federal Reserve to also suck up money out of circulation via that vector as well.

What this means is the only reason the bourgeoisie owns any businesses at all is so you slave away to produce the money streams which they use to pay off their personal equivalent of credit card debt. Of course they get their loans from banks your not allowed to even use at interest rates so favorable you're also not allowed to use. And this is where the stocks come in despite being lousy assets for the rich because of taxes, see the bourgeois are only allowed to use these exclusive banks and get these privileged rates because the can prove their worthy via corporate credit scores to get more loans (to get bigger paychecks). They get approval for these mega loans via the speculated worth of their company via the price of it's shares. Since shares are considered "assets" they can put some of them down as collateral for loans (as long as they can keep pumping their share prices higher). Sometimes it's still not enough and they can also issue private "corporate bonds" to banks also as collateral.

The puts, the calls, the futures, and other derivatives are just means of providing liquidity to pump all these assets higher by allowing banks to come in and wheel and deal with these and screw some poor smucks who gamble via these from time to time for get rich quick schemes. Such liquidity is provided by using such gambling to offset risk in the other asset markets thereby providing selfish incentives for buyer and seller within the equities market (but also even the real estate market) to meet in the middle and settle on an agreeable price.

 

[Farm Boy]

I do sometimes think that we should force all futures contracts to be filled with physical delivery. Then at least somebody would get paid to drive the **** around even if all it is is somebody jacking off with their money.

 

[Hygro]

Imagine every time you signed up for a website some dude came to your door for a signature at the end of a printed EULA

 

[Birdjaguar]

Banks and investment houses need to keep inventing new wealth generating ideas so they can generate fees and commissions off greed.