[late]

When have I bullshitted you?

You tend to put the cart in front of the horse..

IOW, you BS yourself.

[Tainari88]

How many carriers does Argentina has again?

Argentina has zero (0) aircraft carriers. But it has these military vehicles and so on.

70,600 active soldiers (2022) 350 medium & light tanks 800 armored fighting vehicles 60 self propelled artillery 400 towed artillery 30 rocket artillery,etc.

How strong is Argentina's navy?
As of 2017, there were 41 commissioned ships in the navy, including 4 destroyers, 2 amphibious support ships and 2 submarines (though both boats were non-operational as of 2022). The total displacement of the fleet (including auxiliaries) was approximately 128,461 tonnes.

UK's navy and armed forces:

There are four branches of the UK armed forces, the British Army, the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Marines. Of the 142,560 people serving in the UK's armed forces in 2023, over half of them were in the British Army, which had 77,540 personnel.

How much does England spend on Defence?
In 2022/23, the United Kingdom spent approximately 55.5 billion British pounds on defense, compared with 51.9 billion pounds in the previous year. This was the highest defense spending for the UK during this provided time period and the second consecutive year of increased defense expenditure.Jul 26, 2023

Meanwhile Argentina spends a lot less than the UK does on defence.

So in a fight with the UK over any territory in dispute? Most probably Argentina will be on the losing end.

Argentina Military Spending/Defense Budget - Historical Data
Year Billions of US $ % of GDP
2021 $2.59B 0.57%
2020 $2.83B 0.73%
2019 $3.13B 0.71%

[Tainari88]

You tend to put the cart in front of the horse..

IOW, you BS yourself.

I would prefer he would not put the cart in front of the horse. But? People gonna be people who do their bad habit thing.

[Tainari88]

Any guesses on whether for how long Milei will last out as president?

He is going to last out the presidency.

How long is a presidential term in Argentina?
Term duration

Under the 1994 constitutional amendment, the president serves for four years, with a possibility of immediate reelection for one more term.

I can guarantee you that what is wrong with Argentina is not going to get fixed in one four-year term. He will not be a two-term president.

[wat0n]

You tend to put the cart in front of the horse..

IOW, you BS yourself.

@Tainari88

Like? Provide an example.

[late]

@Tainari88

Like? Provide an example.

Most of my replies to you are examples.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88

Like? Provide an example.

The Israel Palestine Thread. And many many others. @late the rest is for you to read.

His one really bad habit is not bothering to either read the links and or the information other posters provide for him.

I read almost every single link or post that people provide me. It is common courtesy to do so. I mean, if a person took the time to read up the material and paste it in the post and read the content and thought it was relevant to the discussion at hand or to prove a point? Isn't it common courtesy to do the work of reading the material?

You follow and like to read Stigler. Do you know what I did? I listened to a lecture of his and I read what I could find for free that was available. Why? Because you were enthused about him. He is a pro capitalist but he wants something balanced. You are a liberal and as such you think a certain way. I find that the best policy to debating well, is gathering information from many perspectives and synthesizing it and placing it in a context.

It is interesting but sometimes one can find some little thing in an opponent's politics that actually can improve your own. And if you love diversity and all the options it provides humans in life? The smart thing to do is adapt it to a core political philosophy so that you can glean as much flexibility as possible from the research and results it allows.

Why bother with these debate formats if you ignore the hard work that others put in for you?

@wat0n goes into these threads and never bothers to work the information he is given with diligence. I find that a big flaw of his.

He should have some common courtesy.

No one has all the answers to all the questions that are possible out there. But we have access to huge libraries of information at the tip of our fingers. If we fail to take advantage of that in a debate format? Then how productive are we in these fora? Not very.

I enjoy diversity. At the same time being very clear on why one believes and backs a certain political philosophy has to be very clear. Know how you think, why you think what you think, and how to apply it to real societal, economic and social and political problems all over the world.

That way some unknown person on the internet looks up politicsforum.org and goes searching for a point of view? They do not come away with....that was sheer shit. No one made sense, no one argued intelligently. No one bothered to read, or understand what the other party was saying and there was no real exchange of contrasting ideas that led to a productive synthesis of possible options.

Waste of my time.

Instead, they think that they want to be part of the overall whole.

People read a lot more than what they wind up writing.

One should be courteous to those who spend time on here writing their thoughts. Even if we disagree. I do not like bad habits that lead to a turn off.

[late]

You follow and like to read Stigler.

Stiglitz?

Unlike most economists, he knows where the rubber hits the road.

[wat0n]

Most of my replies to you are examples.

So no example.

The Israel Palestine Thread. And many many others.

How so?

If you want to iterate into the past, the very first instances of violence against civilians were carried out by Palestinians against Jews in the 1920s.

An actual case of you putting the cart before the horse ITT: You claimed Argentina began to become indebted to the IMF due to neoliberalism, even though that process began in the 1950s - long before the implementation of the neoliberal policies of the 1990s.

Source:

https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad ... 2023-11-30

@late the rest is for you to read.

His one really bad habit is not bothering to either read the links and or the information other posters provide for him.

I read almost every single link or post that people provide me. It is common courtesy to do so. I mean, if a person took the time to read up the material and paste it in the post and read the content and thought it was relevant to the discussion at hand or to prove a point? Isn't it common courtesy to do the work of reading the material?

You follow and like to read Stigler. Do you know what I did? I listened to a lecture of his and I read what I could find for free that was available. Why? Because you were enthused about him. He is a pro capitalist but he wants something balanced. You are a liberal and as such you think a certain way. I find that the best policy to debating well, is gathering information from many perspectives and synthesizing it and placing it in a context.

It is interesting but sometimes one can find some little thing in an opponent's politics that actually can improve your own. And if you love diversity and all the options it provides humans in life? The smart thing to do is adapt it to a core political philosophy so that you can glean as much flexibility as possible from the research and results it allows.

Why bother with these debate formats if you ignore the hard work that others put in for you?

@wat0n goes into these threads and never bothers to work the information he is given with diligence. I find that a big flaw of his.

He should have some common courtesy.

No one has all the answers to all the questions that are possible out there. But we have access to huge libraries of information at the tip of our fingers. If we fail to take advantage of that in a debate format? Then how productive are we in these fora? Not very.

I enjoy diversity. At the same time being very clear on why one believes and backs a certain political philosophy has to be very clear. Know how you think, why you think what you think, and how to apply it to real societal, economic and social and political problems all over the world.

That way some unknown person on the internet looks up politicsforum.org and goes searching for a point of view? They do not come away with....that was sheer shit. No one made sense, no one argued intelligently. No one bothered to read, or understand what the other party was saying and there was no real exchange of contrasting ideas that led to a productive synthesis of possible options.

Waste of my time.

Instead, they think that they want to be part of the overall whole.

People read a lot more than what they wind up writing.

One should be courteous to those who spend time on here writing their thoughts. Even if we disagree. I do not like bad habits that lead to a turn off.

Have you considered many of us don't have time to watch YouTube videos or read books on topics that have little to do with the thread at hand?

[Tainari88]

Stiglitz?

Unlike most economists, he knows where the rubber hits the road.

I am sorry I typed too fast. Stiglitz.

You mentioned him? I read him and watched videos. You see?

I do not agree with Stiglitz but I agree with Richard Wolff. Why? I am a socialist and Marxian economics serve working class people. But? I read Harari and he breaks it down to something very interesting. He puts in modern problems and runs old theory through it and then he starts saying why something might not adapt to that well. That is what a really great Historian or Anthropologist or Sociologist does. You run it through human history, the history of human behavior and the way society has evolved. Because the old theories might not work at all anymore because the contexts change.

Again, theories that only work for societies that are full of wealthy people and or certain socioeconomic classes running them with zero care about the vast groups of working class and underclass people in almost 200 nation-states in the world? For me are useless concepts. You have to deal with poverty, you have to deal with meeting human needs. and you got to use technology to serve human society first. Serving humans FIRST, and not saving jobs. Serve humans first. Not jobs.

What the hell does economics mean if it does not solve the issues of human need for everyone out there in a nation, who has the same needs? It is really logical stuff Late.

A dog is a dog in India, China, USA, Mexico, Estonia, Russia, France, etc. The dog needs vet care, food, water, and training and education and a relationship in a pack or a human family. It has needs that do not vary. Each nation has different levels of wealth and resources. Dogs in nations with poverty and severe problems are going to have dogs suffering disease, being strays, being full of rabies, dying of starvation, thirst and common canine illnesses.

So humans are one species. Not two species. The competing species died off long ago when Neanderthals lost the battle with the Homo Sapien species. So? Deal with the species' needs.

Capitalism is flawed in my book simply because it centers capital and owners and nonowners as the profit motive as the end of all human societal needs. It has a fatal flaw. It needs to expand infinitely and it has to have a conflict between the needs of humanity for basics and the need the capitalist has to retain control of profit and material productivity in private hands that have power in the center of it. The capitalist has the power to determine if someone who is part of society has a right to get their needs met. If it conflicts with the need of a capitalist to retain power and determine the base of what the economic structure of society becomes? Those needs have to be UNMET and SACRIFICED at the alter of profit and control. That system is flawed in the worst way possible. Power to DENY needs and threatens security in order to coerce humans who have no access to either credit, property rights or skills that are based on a decent education. In order to get a decent education it requires access to being educated. It is about investing in people. Not material goods and power conflicts over who owns and who does not.

It is interesting. For me libertarians are horrors. Why?

@Potemkin said this:

Right Libertarians seem to want freedom for themselves and slavery for everyone else. Many of them openly talk about wanting a neo-feudal social and economic system - with themselves as the aristocracy, of course. This apparent contradiction should not surprise us, of course - individualism, if pressed far enough, becomes the tyranny of one man over all others. As the ancient Greeks used to say of the Persian Empire - the King of Kings was the only free man in the Empire, and everyone else, without exception, were his slaves. This is what every Libertarian wants for himself - ultimate freedom, which can only come from ultimate slavery for everyone else in society.

One is a social animal Late. Always. Without it we are really never just islands in our own world without social input. Politics is about collectivist goals. It is obvious it is that. To think otherwise is really denying reality. Living a lie. That leads to disaster.

[Tainari88]

So no example.



How so?

If you want to iterate into the past, the very first instances of violence against civilians were carried out by Palestinians against Jews in the 1920s.

An actual case of you putting the cart before the horse ITT: You claimed Argentina began to become indebted to the IMF due to neoliberalism, even though that process began in the 1950s - long before the implementation of the neoliberal policies of the 1990s.

Source:

https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad ... 2023-11-30



Have you considered many of us don't have time to watch YouTube videos or read books on topics that have little to do with the thread at hand?

This is an example of lying on your part Wat0n. How do you know that what I am reading is not about what the topic is at hand in this thread?

The topic is Argentina elects chainsaw-wielding libertarian. Why a libertarian wins an election in Argentina? Because people want solutions to their high inflation issues and lack of progress in the economy there. @JohnRawls talks about what he thinks the policy should be about if Argentina gets out of the inflation spiral it is on. He reads that Milei appoints his sister to a post. Nepotism. He thinks that is about Corruption 101. He is right on that one.

So, next, opinion. Beren puts in his opinion that the guy may go down the tubes fast. Why? Because it strikes him like a Rishi Guy from the UK in Europe. Maybe he is fronting for some other unknown background political moves. He puts in an opinion.

Then you have your opinion. But you do not bother to read other peoples' information. You just ask one line posts. Often doing those posts knowing they are either not very clear or relevant. But you do it for what purpose if you refuse to read? That is putting the cart before the horse.

Now, neoliberalism is an economic policy that was adopted by the IMF and the World Bank due to that short one minute video I put in. It basically says it is about developing nations can't develop on empty stomachs. But what it is really about is that war and conflict has to do with needs not being met in many nations and imperial nations wanting resources from nations who are underdeveloped. How to get access to that without using invasions and troops...via economics.

You then have a fallout of immigration and you get a reaction from governments like Argentina that is protectionist that @JohnRawls mentions as the wrong policy. But it is protectionist because in the past if you were not you suffered economically by having all the resources controlled by a few foreign actors.

Again, I can't help you make connections between what you read and how you interpret the information. That is up to each poster to run it through their own political philosophy and generate relevancy.

That is the purpose of all this writing in here mostly.

It is not to agree with each other. It is to create a diversity of points of view, politics, etc, and then see if it creates enough options and flexibility to make sense or to learn from each other. That is the best of it.

If it is about being petty, lying, and distortions. No vale la pena.

[ingliz]

@Tainari88

Argentina will be on the losing end.

You have misplaced geography.

England is 7,947 miles from the Malvinas,

Argentina 481.

[QatzelOk]

@wat0n goes into these threads and never bothers to work the information he is given with diligence. I find that a big flaw of his.

He should have some common courtesy.

No one has all the answers to all the questions that are possible out there. But we have access to huge libraries of information at the tip of our fingers. If we fail to take advantage of that in a debate format? Then how productive are we in these fora? Not very....

"Pretending not to hear counter-arguments" is a strategy that is not limited to wat0n.

To understand why this is such a common tactic, you have to realize that most Europeans - Christian and Jewish - lived in fear of being killed for apostasy, herecy, or re-interpretation of texts, for thousands of years.

Because of this social norm, many people have come to conclude that the wisest strategy in political argument... is to defend the opinions of the people who pay you your salary.

Your connections to money, status, and power.

This over-rides any "search for truth" on the part of the self-pimping drone.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88

Argentina will be on the losing end.

You have misplaced geography.

England is 7,947 miles from the Malvinas,

Argentina 481.

That is one advantage. But the UK spends a whole lot more on Defence.

It has a lot more soldiers as well as more naval power than Argentina.

The US will normally side with the UK vs Argentina.

Argentina in Latin American political circles and social circles is very heavily criticized for being snobs and Eurocentrics who want to break away from an image of being Indian or having indigenous roots and denying even the existence of African Argentinians. They want to identify with Europe and not Latin America. In the end they continue to be plagued by Latin American issues like inflation, and devaluation of their currencies and losing ground to the US dollar, not diversifying the economy and having issues with polarization in political discourse and policies.

Argentina has an influx of Nazis fleeing WWII like Brazil had. Brazil even had confederacy pro slavery groups who relocated to Brazil in the hope that they could keep slavery going as an economic system forever.

Brazil ended slavery in 1899. The last nation to end slavery in the Americas.

So, in reality and not fiction. It is not about whiteness or genetics keeping people from progressing. It is about how South America has been plagued by ineffective policies and old colonial defunct crap from the past that was never fully addressed. Every time some kind of inequality policy was attempted the PARANOID Kissinger Right Wing Squad who feared domino effect communism in the South of the Border nations to the USA were on high panic mode and used undemocratic authoritarian terror tactics to avoid governments that were about Indians, or Blacks or Lefties or some rich sellout SNOBS from not being the ones in charge....and the blood bath commenced.

It is an ugly history. And it has cost all of South America a lot. Deforestation and dictatorships, torture, poverty, fights to the death, wars, and passionate and violent collisions between people sick and tired of being fucked over with no real progress and the greed of corporations, banks and US imperialism in naked displays of power. It is a hard history.

It is going to take work like you can't believe to get it out of that history and into something better. And it won't be some chainsaw wielding libertarian who is going to get that accomplished. At all!!

[Tainari88]

"Pretending not to hear counter-arguments" is a strategy that is not limited to wat0n.

To understand why this is such a common tactic, you have to realize that most Europeans - Christian and Jewish - lived in fear of being killed for apostasy, herecy, or re-interpretation of texts, for thousands of years.

Because of this social norm, many people have come to conclude that the wisest strategy in political argument... is to defend the opinions of the people who pay you your salary.

Your connections to money, status, and power.

This over-rides any "search for truth" on the part of the self-pimping drone.

Wow, that is some harsh criticism and truthful.

Botaste la pelota con eso.

Jiji.

A suggestion for some folks:

[wat0n]

Then you have your opinion. But you do not bother to read other peoples' information. You just ask one line posts. Often doing those posts knowing they are either not very clear or relevant. But you do it for what purpose if you refuse to read? That is putting the cart before the horse.

I don't need to do a much larger effort when I can simply point out the claim you're making is factually false.

Argentina borrowed from the IMF for the first time in 1958 - this was at the peak of the ISI strategy (import substitution). Do you know what that was?

Now, neoliberalism is an economic policy that was adopted by the IMF and the World Bank due to that short one minute video I put in. It basically says it is about developing nations can't develop on empty stomachs. But what it is really about is that war and conflict has to do with needs not being met in many nations and imperial nations wanting resources from nations who are underdeveloped. How to get access to that without using invasions and troops...via economics.

Yet Argentina's loan addiction began way, way before the IMF and the World Bank adopted a neoliberal approach in the 1980s.

You are, in fact, putting the cart before the horse in this one.

You wonder how exactly am I reasoning on this one. Simple: I searched for Argentina's IMF loan history, saw the cycle began before neoliberalism had any relevance and drew my own conclusions. Knowing that, in fact, neoliberalism arose precisely as a critique of the approach used by Argentina that got it into its IMF dependency to begin with helps a lot too.

@QatzelOk ad-hominem's are not arguments.

[QatzelOk]

...ad-hominem's are not arguments...

Ignoring legitimate points, the way you do, is not the way to find the truth.

Pretending to be deaf to other people's points... is probably the worse kind of ad hom in terms of attacking other people's self esteem through gas-lighting.

[wat0n]

Ignoring legitimate points, the way you do, is not the way to find the truth.

Pretending to be deaf to other people's points... is probably the worse kind of ad hom in terms of attacking other people's self esteem through gas-lighting.

Saying your points are wrong isn't being "deaf" to them

Even here, I would like to know how can neoliberalism be to blame for Argentina's addiction to IMF loans when this cycle began before neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman had any significant influence in policy-making circles.

[Istanbuller]

Are you on drugs or something? How come appointing family members is not a sign of corruption? This is corruption 101 that you appoint cronies and family in to high government positions while giving them full access to de facto control private enterprises along with it.

Could you explain how appointing a family member is corruption? It is not illegal to appoint or elect two people from same family. If a person is successful, then it means she/he deserves the job. As far as I read, his sister is his political adviser. She does her job very successfully. She got her brother elected the president. Apparently she deserves a high ranking position in the government.

You don't know corruption. Let me explain it for you. Corruption is government involvement in misleading things. When the government gets bigger, it gets more corrupt. Government spending results in corruption. If you get the government as small as you can make, corruption disappears.

Libertarians, classical liberals and American conservatives calls it corruption, but you guys call it social democracy.

[JohnRawls]

Could you explain how appointing a family member is corruption? It is not illegal to appoint or elect two people from same family. If a person is successful, then it means she/he deserves the job. As far as I read, his sister is his political adviser. She does her job very successfully. She got her brother elected the president. Apparently she deserves a high ranking position in the government.

You don't know corruption. Let me explain it for you. Corruption is government involvement in misleading things. When the government gets bigger, it gets more corrupt. Government spending results in corruption. If you get the government as small as you can make, corruption disappears.

Libertarians, classical liberals and American conservatives calls it corruption, but you guys call it social democracy.

You are asking to explain here how come shooting somebody in the head kills them...