He did the best he could with the tools they had.
Representative "democracy" is not Democracy, and legislative fiat is not the rule of law. But still better than Absolutely or Oligarchy, the other two models in fashion at the time
That sounds like agreement with my point, and with TJs
Find a way to prove "least flawed" mathematically and you will have our attention.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
- Thomas Jefferson
I think you're both right.
Fiat monopoly money allowed the bad people to become worse for longer.
We can have governance without governors, though.
A majority of humans came to live under nation-states only in c. 1500 AD
Truth, Deng's PRC had the longest sustained double-digit annual economic growth in history. (USSR 1950s and 60s is second.)
But anything built on Statism is a disaster waiting to happen. Look at the West...
Yeah, nah, they fall an order of magnitude short. They made more actual profit from those they killed, though. Three Difficult Years was just so pointless and unnecessary
100% true, but its not the whole picture.
Beiyang China was best China. Killed no more than a few hundred thousand innocent people over two decades.
KMT bodycount hit the millions, CCP the tens of millions before they arrived at systems that allow initiative and investment.
Its nice what they have now, if you're wealthy like my friend in HK. But the failure modes of Statism are really not nice.
In-your-face assholes are great in that scenario; its bleeding hearts and "economic hitmen" gifting dependency and delusion that people should fear
Emirates was the first where I ate food that tasted like food!
There have been so many...
The more typical scenario is retrenchment and retreat by the regime to control only key transport checkpoints and maybe a natural resource extraction facility or two, and extort monopoly rents from those, while the hinterland returns to local tribal self-governance.
An older and less intrusive form of Statism, at worst, so long as traditional cultural institutions for internal dispute management and collective defense are still around.
I was talking a year or so ago with a former mine manager in Bouganville Island, PNG, where this happened two decades back. Well, he talked, I listened. He's still mad, invested a lot of his own money but treated the locals like slaves and isnt afraid to boast of it
Truth.
If there were a credible alternative, they'd be banned or deregistered.
Melbourne, Australia.
Smells just like Black Saturday, and I see the smoke drifting across the sky, but I have no idea which of the many reported bushfires it is. A mate messaged to say his family home in the Dandenongs has been evacced.
Stay safe out there, ppl
"45; suspected vibe coder"
(kidding; I'm using today's / latest Amethyst but not seeing these numbers)
No, the bot don't use any Microsoft API, this is false. It use the Mistral API. The code and the AI prompt are fully open source : https://github.com/judemont/Nostr-FactChecker .
Yes, it can make mistakes. I try to improve its reliability by giving it the ability to search the web and open web pages. So it generates text based on web sources.
No, it won’t uncover a potential global mafia controlling all sources.
It’s just a tool. Don’t overestimate it. Sometimes, it’s just a faster way to find out the current scientific consensus on a theory than doing a web search yourself. It can be useful for those who choose to use it. If you really don’t want to see it, you can mute it.
It has no authority. You don’t have to agree with it. I don’t always agree with it either.
I really try to be transparent about these points because the purpose of my bot is often misunderstood. That’s why I include a cautionary message in all its replies.
Read its profile message for more info.
Thats better than I thought.
Mistral is better than the Microsoft APIs I've seen before, but its far from transparent, decentralized or authoritative.
Appreciate the cautionary message, but surely we can do better
Xeer - read "The Law of the Somalis"
Pastunwali is similar, but in southern Afghanistan, any time there's nobody physically present trying to enforce Shariah at gunpoint
Original-flavour Common Law was very close.
Merchant Law in medieval Europe.
Rural South Asia and East Africa today mostly run on traditional courts of various local flavours. Often the central fiat governments try to repress them and stamp them out, but traditional freedoms die hard.
Yes, 100%, but there are decentralized legal systems for dealing with those.
Mises.org has hundreds of papers on times and places that worked on that principle.
Things got better.
https://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
Then the outside world noticed, decided they were setting a dangerous example, and spent hundreds of billions to liberate them again. Not just the West; the AU, Turkey, UAE and Ethiopia decided to get violently involved.
Its worse.
No Nostrich built that, its using a Microsoft content moderation API.
They've built is an AI Political Commissar who snitches can summon to inject AI slop into any conversation that deviates from The Narrative.
A Commissar who cannot be bribed, reasoned with, or (easily) fragged.
And someone brought this to Nostr
My taxes get spent on terrorism, sanctions and "nation building" for those bros, not fair to judge them on the results of my taxes.
Read "Better Off Stateless" for what happened during those few years Somalia was just left the hell alone
Every satoshi has a transaction history that is publicly accessible.
Ownership is still psuedonymous, and can be made hard to identify with good OPSEC.
Same fire, just slower and with a different means of initiation :)
🚨 BREAKING: Border Patrol Commander Bovino was just ASSAULTED by leftists on the streets of Minneapolis
This is RIDICULOUS.
How many agents have to be assaulted before the INSURRECTION ACT is invoked?!
IT’S TIME! INVOKE THE INSURRECTION ACT!
https://blossom.primal.net/f61a689088ab77fa6b364cf7d42685404a385e02df467062c116451b02642a39.mp4
Not sure if parody.
Cops (and paramedics) deal with that or worse every Friday night, without dissolving into hysterics or burning down democracy.
Aluminium - air does come close.
(But everything else about it sucks.)
I agree, although literal zero is historically unusual.
Recreating historical ethnicities in historical borders won't work and requires new injustices, but I'm all for population stability and voluntary separation with new boundaries when wanted.
90% are, and assimilation into Han culture is enforced for the others.
The CCP is the second most minority-tolerant regime China has ever had, but it sure isnt multiculturalism
Truth, but they were violently conquered, and are being replaced. Hindutva does not celebrate diversity.
- "Wage Restraint"
- Bodyguarding elites, without getting onboarded into non-elite politics.
- Rent boys / girls for those with jaded tastes
- Visibly different scapegoats for a future season of "divide and rule"
Those seem to be historically universal for States
Hahaha; I've known a few who joined the police force, but none made it to 12 months.
Anyone who can pass that filter is probably a monster.
There are many different flavours of nationalism.
Nationalism, if defined as an attachment to an imagined community of shared fate, promotes pro-social, altruistic and responsible behaviour.
It is not, alas, the only form.