Digest 21: Brave Jeffrey Sachs; firing 21 MPs; Dalio on Treasuries
Update: as an experiment, I’ve recorded a video version of this digest:
https://twitter.com/EdwardMDruce/status/1674847420339847180
If you find this preferable to reading, please let me know. I’ll consider making a regular thing.
This update isn’t about the past 24 hours and coup.
On that I’ll just cite David Sacks:
‘[We should not express] glee over the possibility of a coup in the world’s largest nuclear weapons state by a warlord whose main gripe is that Russia has not prosecuted the war vigorously enough, who advocates full mobilization and total war, and is more likely to countenance nuclear use.’
And, from The Spectator’s Coffee House Shots podcast (30 seconds):
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Most interesting highlights from the past two weeks…
Dalio on Treasuries:
2 mins:
The question is: when?
- The speed at which interest payments are taking over the U.S. budget…
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1668355310136745992
- This is surely what the beginning of the end of reserve currency status looks like (African leaders celebrating cutting out USD from their transactions):
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1668694622154141696
Brave Jeffrey Sachs
Writing about some of the things here on Substack has given me a new appreciation of the courage one needs to put forward uncomfortable views.
Jeffrey Sachs (professor at Columbia University) is the most mainstream figure I am aware of – who is not a full-time alternative commentator/Presidential candidate/billionaire – to put forward these views in so relaxed, and a non-alarmist, way.
This clip (~3 mins) is now a few months old, but a very good overview of peace negotiations that likely happened in early 2022, we heard almost nothing about.
(Video embed not working for some reason – but click in to see. ~3 mins from point it’s queued to begin. And ignore video title: time-stamped clip is nothing to do with Nord Stream.)
https://www.youtube.com/live/ySNyAaw4VEI?feature=share&t=948
Jeffrey doesn’t even have Twitter – so I consider there’s no incentive for him to be pronouncing these things, other than to try and uncover and disseminate the truth. I salute his bravery.
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Further, a New York Times Opinion piece (paywall) with the byline ‘Joining NATO Won’t Keep the Peace in Ukraine’:
A slightly saner history/narrative is beginning to break through.
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Though, simultaneously, there are now think tanks in the U.S. advocating that we give Ukraine tactical nukes:
We should not do anything that risks breaching the eight-decade stigma of their use.
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Lastly on Ukraine, from Seymour Hersh:
What is happening today in Ukraine, he [Karaganov – an academic in Moscow and chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy] argues, would be “unthinkable” in the early years of the nuclear era. At that time, even “in a fit of desperate rage,” “the ruling circles of a group of countries” would never have “unleashed a full-scale war in the underbelly of a nuclear superpower.”
3 notable bits of history from George Marshall book
I’m going to post part two next Saturday of highlights from The China Mission: George C. Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947.
Three bits of history that stood out to me…
in 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing marked the start of China’s Century of Humiliation. Ninety-five years later, the Rape of Nanjing marked the apex of Japan’s savagery, with hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents killed, many by imaginatively sadistic methods—castrated and hanged, half-buried and consumed by dogs. The tally of rapes ran into the thousands, maybe tens of thousands.
We should keep in mind this is the country the UK has just signed a defence agreement with, allowing Japanese soldiers to operate on our soil (and vice-versa). We have no permanent enemies, and should never vilify entire cultures.
If from 1945–2023 the UK and Japan can become allies, in 70 years it is not inconceivable that the U.S. and Russia will be signing defence agreements.
For Stalin, Mao’s victory induced a surge of revolutionary euphoria. When the Communist leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, asked for permission to invade South Korea, Stalin, despite having said no before, said yes. What had changed was China.
> An example of ‘domino theory’ in practice.
When North Korean troops attacked in June 1950, the United States quickly sent troops to defend the South, as part of a multinational force under United Nations auspices but with MacArthur in command.
> Is this the best positive post-WWII example of American intervention? At some point in the second half of the year I’m going to read This Kind of War – a book Jim Mattis is said to have studied and highly rated on the Korean War.
Dominic Cummings on firing 21 MPs
Two other favourite, thought-provoking paragraphs from Dom’s recent writing…
I knew that firing the 21 would go down very well with relevant voters who were desperate to see someone show leadership. The boss firing people who contradict their fundamental goal is normal — it’s leadership. I knew normal voters would see it different to SW1.
Sacking the 21 was an obvious move if you shared my priorities. If your priority was ‘being seen as a normal SW1 player who is friendly to the underlying system’ — i.e the priority for ~100% of Insiders — then it was crazy/appalling.
Does evolutionary biology help explain Westminster?
Listening through Steve Hsu’s Manifold podcast archive, this for 30 seconds from David Skrbina, philosopher of technology, was interesting…
One of Dom’s core theses being politicians don’t actually optimise for winning elections, but rather for signalling to in-groups… Are there deep ev.-biological reasons for this, that only a very small handful of people seem able to transcend?
(I disagreed with the vast majority of what David Skrbina went on to say in this interview. But this 30 seconds, tied with the above thought, was interesting.)
The Course of Empire
Grateful to the New-York Historical Society for tweeting these onto my radar…
Thomas Cole’s 5-painting series ‘The Course of Empire’… civilization appears, matures, and collapses. Cole—an early environmentalist—had a more pessimistic outlook than his peers. The fourth painting in the series, ‘Destruction,’ depicts the ruin of a civilization.
So: an uplifting note on which to close.
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