"I can’t help but worry about a world where every level of the Internet stack feels empowered to act based on political considerations, and it makes me think that my Framework for Moderation was wrong. In a world of idea aggregation the push to go along with the current thing is irresistible, making any sort of sober consideration of one’s position in the stack irrelevant."
Common carriers or you're asking for big, big trouble. Even if it is the optimal policy in the short term, the way the screws were tightened on Russia is going to come back to haunt us.
One good reason for why major questions of international commerce should remain exclusively sovereign prerogatives (i.e., "a monopoly on the conduct of foreign policy") is that, in the event of war, one sovereign entity can make peace with another via negotiations with identifiable leaders or diplomats empowered and authorized to deal with all issues and sticking points as part of the overall settlement, with such promises being definite and credible.
In contrast, and just like you cannot get due process from a twitter mob, there is no way to negotiate with a swarm of thousands of quasi-independent actors following the zeitgeist or beat of their own particular drums and feeling at liberty to intervene in international affairs. The transaction costs of that kind of bargaining and potential for breakdown for any reason at any moment across countless firms makes such activity prohibitively burdensome.
Also, coming soon to a geopolitical dispute near you, every nation out there with some scarce resource upon which another state's economy is dependent will get around various treaties and provisions of international law by claiming that the refusal to trade in that product is, "Just some private company exercising its right to protest the latest outrage X, Y, Z, sorry, nothing we can do about it, that's a freedom our private companies have you know, our hands are tied."
Consequentially, without the understanding that domestic companies must remain neutral as regards foreign states in such matters and simply follow the laws of their own countries, nations will insist that other nations change their laws to force those companies into much more restrictive provisions than mere 'neutrality', since that kind of regulation will now be on the table and considered fair game in the ordinary conduct of international affairs. Or in the alternative, peace treaties will now include specific requirements of new legislation to strictly regulate private companies who could otherwise balk or cause problems in the future.
It is already nearly impossible to get the Senate to ratify ordinary treaties, and so various workarounds have been developed to enable the US to enter into various agreements with slightly less legal standing than a 'treaty', and other countries are usually willing to go along. But after this, it's a fully ratified treaty with strict rules regulating private companies, or nothing, forget it, no deal, the fighting and the killing continues.
"The title of this post is a reference to a line from the TV show Game of Thrones"
Tell us more Noah...
What I find amazing is that in the last two posts Noah has told us that the liberal international order stands for not attacking sovereign states and changing borders, but in the same posts he talks about how the people in charge of Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc, who he calls the center-right/center-left champions of the liberal order, have been doing this on a grander scale for decades. Ukraine itself involved our support for a violent coup and a war against Russian Ukranians.
"As for leftists, if Putin wins, it’ll represent another failure of what they perceive as the American empire."
So the American Empire might stop trying to invade other countries or overthrow their governments?
He says that the liberal international order isn't just a hypocritical front for American international interests and that we would easily let China take the number one spot.
Garbage. The entire elite order declared meritocracy illegal just to make sure Asians weren't more than 20% of the elite. I think Steve Hsu is right, every Asian grasps at an instinctual level that the west will never let it get on top if it can help it.
You look at that map of who is sanctioning Russia and it doesn't include anyone outside the American empire. They see the hypocritical bullshit behind the American Empire.
The people and ideas Noah likes need a distraction from their failures, so they've latched onto something they think they can sell. But if the story has a bad ending it won't sell. Noah's faction has to go maximalist because their position is so weak. If Ukraine gets out of the news cycle we are back to inflation, crime, and teaching tranny shit to kindergartners.
The rest of us don't care about this movie. We are pretty scared that people like Noah will start a nuclear war because they find it entertaining, but either side winning (hint, they are both going to lose) isn't really going to change anything about the world or the issues that concern most people in the west.
Nobody should be thinking "that we would return to the 1990s." Nor the Beaver Cleaver 50s.
In this case, Putin has chosen to be the Bad Guy - he attacked and invaded another country.
Where was the fear about "the same corporations that imposed private sanctions on Russia will be pressured into imposing sanctions on dissenters in this country" when, after the FBI instigated Jan 6 Capital protest + illegal trespassing, so many corporations DID impose sanctions on Trump and Trump supporting/ neutral Parler, to protect Twitter's monopoly?
Russia, China, Iran and all the new "Axis of Evil" will increase their efforts to develop a parallel non-USD based international trade order. Buying Russian oil in renminbi (or yuan?) by China, or rubles by India so as to buy more Russian weapons or more Russian uranium, like that Russian stuff mined by Uranium One. Remember the Canadian/ US mining company sold to the Russians and approved by HR Clinton, thanks to the $145 million donation/ bribe to the Clinton Foundation? https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/thururanium-oil-and-technology-how-russia-got-stronger (HT Neo https://www.thenewneo.com)
Accepting corruption destroys the liberal order - all who opposed Trump are, implicitly, accepting the Dem corruption and liberal order destruction to stop Trump from his ... mean tweets.
Here's a refresher for those not yet totally disgusted by the Democrat Administration - whom Arnold has not yet pronounced as inferior to Trump, tho there were many anti-Trump notes.
There were damn few Fantasy Intellectuals supporting Trump - tho all of Biden's disasters were quite predictable from his long political career. Especially his increasing dementia and frailness, as well as stopping US oil production -- which naturally supports higher oil prices, and Putin, and such monetary support for Putin includes current invasion - worse than expected.
All expected he would mess up Afghanistan - tho he was worse than expected.
All expected bad inflation - tho his mess was worse than expected.
(How many FIs voted for Trump? I didn't think it was important last year; now I do. 'Cause I'm open to changing my mind.)
When lots of stuff is "worse than expected", such intellectuals deserve a lot of blame.
Rod Dreher, a Trump-voting frequent Trump critic (a Trump voting Trump hater, tho almost never quoted here, and a bit verbose sort of like Scott A.) is giving up on the liberal order, when a future SC justice can't define "woman":
He thinks Christians need to develop practices to live under anti-Christian soft totalitarianism, since the money folk are forcing us to live by lies - contrary to his new book: Live Not By Lies.
Gab is trying to start a Rep - conservative - anti-elite parallel economy in the USA. I don't like it. I'm going to support it more - we need new institutions. Maybe my tiny support can help it get better.
I think you are catastrophizing in assuming that the Noah Smith and Twitter types will set the agenda for US policy. Biden hasn't listened to Twitter about no fly zones and other idiocy (Smith hasn't advocated an NFZ to be clear). He also won't listen about whether to destroy the economy with sanctions beyond what's useful to deter aggression. This is my prediction.
I am also a bit disappointed in some of your thinking about sanctions, I should add. The point isn't necessarily to change the aggressor's mind, but to deter future aggression from other possible aggressors by making an example of this one. Incentives are key to shaping behavior, as you have observed many a time.
The international liberal order is caput because less than optimal? More international trade among more nations flows every single day than recent ancestors could have dreamt of.
What Noah Smith writes here is a fabrication. It is pure projection of the fevered Progressive mind:
"If Putin loses, then Trump and his allies who for years praised and defended Putin’s regime will be discredited."
My rule of thumb is when I read a person advance an idea that is pure, partisan hack garbage, every opinion offered by that person ought to be considered suspect.
Answer this: If Trump was such a suck up to Putin, why have Putin's greatest aggressions taken place during the Obama & Biden presidencies?
The Trump / Russia hoax was a hoax. It was a narrative invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign and supported by deceit and duplicity by campaign, the media, players at the State Department and heavy hitters at the CIA and FBI.
You know what wasn't a hoax? The Bidens and Clintons and other American Oligarchs exploiting Ukraine for family profit. And yet for having the temerity of quizzing Zelinsky about the Biden profiteering, Democrats impeached Trump.
On the world stage there are way to many leading men playing the part of the villain. If only they all could fail while preserving the rest of humanity. But no, societies need leaders and the quality of those leaders makes all the difference.
"When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan" ~ Proverbs 29:2
I don't know about the "Twitter Mob," but if Putin proposed the status quo ante -- he keeps Crimea, Ukraine is not in NATO but remains an independent country (like Austria?), roll back of sanctions, they wouldn't be able to stop it.
The dynamics of energy supply markets is mathematically unstable. Any supply/demand market is a feedback control system where changes in demand or supply cause the creation of more supply to compensate for the changes. However, if the response frequency of the supply function is slower that the apparent natural rates in the effective demand function, it is mathematically unstable and the system will oscillate.
To make the system more stable make regulatory permission times for all types of energy sources near zero, which would allow faster responses. If the frackers and pipeline companies could add capacity over a shorter time scale than the futures market in oil/gas, the system could be stable and we won't see huge spikes.
Such rapid responses are impossible with a regulatory state like we have where every "stakeholder" or "activist whiner" has a veto or delay vote. Our democracy has devolved into a vetocracy.
"This [Putin] has done for an understandable reason: he correctly fears that if Ukraine becomes successful and increasingly integrated with the West, the people of Russia will eventually want the same"
Although both empire building and regime protection motives are no doubt involved, it makes sense to me that regime protection is the stronger motive and why the threat of sanctions was not enough to deter him.
I'm interested in what people think they mean when they write "if Putin loses."
What if Putin is deposed and his successors are generals who want to prosecute the war more competently or more fiercely? That's not a good outcome for the world but a loss for Putin!
Or what if the war drags on like the 2014 conflict with sporadic conflict, but over a wider area of Ukraine like a big swath of the the Ukrainian Southeast. With neither side able to achieve a decisive victory. Is that a loss for Putin?
I encourage us all to have a very wide aperture when it comes to considering various outcomes.
What gives the social media their potency is not their evident large numbers of subscribers, but the MSN’s obsession with it, reporting it as if it were the Fount of all knowledge and veracity. Most MSM columns are just cut & paste Twitter feeds and Governments respond and slant policy on what’s ‘trending’ on social media. People get fired, reputations trashed, lives ruined on no more than one Tweet without anyone doing due diligence to find out the details or truth.
OK folks what is wrong with my reasoning here? Markets. Oil export ban… will reduce the supply of oil on the international market which will push the price of oil up. This will increase the price of things the US imports, including gasoline made from that now higher-priced oil. The glut of oil on the domestic market a ban will cause, will result in lower oil prices for domestic producers as it becomes a buyers’ market for US refiners who will bargain down prices - some/many oil producers will reduce output to push prices back up, or just leave their oil in the ground until the ban is lifted. Net result, the export ban will not have the desired result. People are not blocks of wood incapable of reacting to Government actions, and as Margaret Thatcher used to say: ‘You can’t buck the markets’.
5 million barrels per day = 5% of world oil production. I understand that the action is at the margin. But wouldn't energy markets (production) adjust to meet demand at this margin if not hamstrung by domestic policies?
2. Re: Noah Smith, "if Putin loses, it’ll be a success for the globalist order — sanctions and aid to Ukraine will represent a triumph of international cooperation."
Presently, South America, Central America, Africa, and all of Asia except Japan and S. Korea reject economic sanctions against Russia. These countries have half of the world's population. Should Putin lose, would these countries really reverse course and embrace "the globalist order"?
3. Re: Arnold Kling, "Economic sanctions will seem imperative as long as Mr. Putin is in power."
Wouldn't economic sanctions remain entrenched even after Mr Putin leaves or loses power, unless somehow perchance he would be replaced by a pro-western government?
"I can’t help but worry about a world where every level of the Internet stack feels empowered to act based on political considerations, and it makes me think that my Framework for Moderation was wrong. In a world of idea aggregation the push to go along with the current thing is irresistible, making any sort of sober consideration of one’s position in the stack irrelevant."
Common carriers or you're asking for big, big trouble. Even if it is the optimal policy in the short term, the way the screws were tightened on Russia is going to come back to haunt us.
One good reason for why major questions of international commerce should remain exclusively sovereign prerogatives (i.e., "a monopoly on the conduct of foreign policy") is that, in the event of war, one sovereign entity can make peace with another via negotiations with identifiable leaders or diplomats empowered and authorized to deal with all issues and sticking points as part of the overall settlement, with such promises being definite and credible.
In contrast, and just like you cannot get due process from a twitter mob, there is no way to negotiate with a swarm of thousands of quasi-independent actors following the zeitgeist or beat of their own particular drums and feeling at liberty to intervene in international affairs. The transaction costs of that kind of bargaining and potential for breakdown for any reason at any moment across countless firms makes such activity prohibitively burdensome.
Also, coming soon to a geopolitical dispute near you, every nation out there with some scarce resource upon which another state's economy is dependent will get around various treaties and provisions of international law by claiming that the refusal to trade in that product is, "Just some private company exercising its right to protest the latest outrage X, Y, Z, sorry, nothing we can do about it, that's a freedom our private companies have you know, our hands are tied."
Consequentially, without the understanding that domestic companies must remain neutral as regards foreign states in such matters and simply follow the laws of their own countries, nations will insist that other nations change their laws to force those companies into much more restrictive provisions than mere 'neutrality', since that kind of regulation will now be on the table and considered fair game in the ordinary conduct of international affairs. Or in the alternative, peace treaties will now include specific requirements of new legislation to strictly regulate private companies who could otherwise balk or cause problems in the future.
It is already nearly impossible to get the Senate to ratify ordinary treaties, and so various workarounds have been developed to enable the US to enter into various agreements with slightly less legal standing than a 'treaty', and other countries are usually willing to go along. But after this, it's a fully ratified treaty with strict rules regulating private companies, or nothing, forget it, no deal, the fighting and the killing continues.
"The title of this post is a reference to a line from the TV show Game of Thrones"
Tell us more Noah...
What I find amazing is that in the last two posts Noah has told us that the liberal international order stands for not attacking sovereign states and changing borders, but in the same posts he talks about how the people in charge of Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc, who he calls the center-right/center-left champions of the liberal order, have been doing this on a grander scale for decades. Ukraine itself involved our support for a violent coup and a war against Russian Ukranians.
"As for leftists, if Putin wins, it’ll represent another failure of what they perceive as the American empire."
So the American Empire might stop trying to invade other countries or overthrow their governments?
He says that the liberal international order isn't just a hypocritical front for American international interests and that we would easily let China take the number one spot.
Garbage. The entire elite order declared meritocracy illegal just to make sure Asians weren't more than 20% of the elite. I think Steve Hsu is right, every Asian grasps at an instinctual level that the west will never let it get on top if it can help it.
You look at that map of who is sanctioning Russia and it doesn't include anyone outside the American empire. They see the hypocritical bullshit behind the American Empire.
The people and ideas Noah likes need a distraction from their failures, so they've latched onto something they think they can sell. But if the story has a bad ending it won't sell. Noah's faction has to go maximalist because their position is so weak. If Ukraine gets out of the news cycle we are back to inflation, crime, and teaching tranny shit to kindergartners.
The rest of us don't care about this movie. We are pretty scared that people like Noah will start a nuclear war because they find it entertaining, but either side winning (hint, they are both going to lose) isn't really going to change anything about the world or the issues that concern most people in the west.
Nobody should be thinking "that we would return to the 1990s." Nor the Beaver Cleaver 50s.
In this case, Putin has chosen to be the Bad Guy - he attacked and invaded another country.
Where was the fear about "the same corporations that imposed private sanctions on Russia will be pressured into imposing sanctions on dissenters in this country" when, after the FBI instigated Jan 6 Capital protest + illegal trespassing, so many corporations DID impose sanctions on Trump and Trump supporting/ neutral Parler, to protect Twitter's monopoly?
Russia, China, Iran and all the new "Axis of Evil" will increase their efforts to develop a parallel non-USD based international trade order. Buying Russian oil in renminbi (or yuan?) by China, or rubles by India so as to buy more Russian weapons or more Russian uranium, like that Russian stuff mined by Uranium One. Remember the Canadian/ US mining company sold to the Russians and approved by HR Clinton, thanks to the $145 million donation/ bribe to the Clinton Foundation? https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/thururanium-oil-and-technology-how-russia-got-stronger (HT Neo https://www.thenewneo.com)
Accepting corruption destroys the liberal order - all who opposed Trump are, implicitly, accepting the Dem corruption and liberal order destruction to stop Trump from his ... mean tweets.
Here's a refresher for those not yet totally disgusted by the Democrat Administration - whom Arnold has not yet pronounced as inferior to Trump, tho there were many anti-Trump notes.
There were damn few Fantasy Intellectuals supporting Trump - tho all of Biden's disasters were quite predictable from his long political career. Especially his increasing dementia and frailness, as well as stopping US oil production -- which naturally supports higher oil prices, and Putin, and such monetary support for Putin includes current invasion - worse than expected.
All expected he would mess up Afghanistan - tho he was worse than expected.
All expected bad inflation - tho his mess was worse than expected.
(How many FIs voted for Trump? I didn't think it was important last year; now I do. 'Cause I'm open to changing my mind.)
When lots of stuff is "worse than expected", such intellectuals deserve a lot of blame.
Rod Dreher, a Trump-voting frequent Trump critic (a Trump voting Trump hater, tho almost never quoted here, and a bit verbose sort of like Scott A.) is giving up on the liberal order, when a future SC justice can't define "woman":
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/woman-man-ketanji-brown-jackson-woman-gender-ideology-fight-against-evil/
He thinks Christians need to develop practices to live under anti-Christian soft totalitarianism, since the money folk are forcing us to live by lies - contrary to his new book: Live Not By Lies.
Gab is trying to start a Rep - conservative - anti-elite parallel economy in the USA. I don't like it. I'm going to support it more - we need new institutions. Maybe my tiny support can help it get better.
I think you are catastrophizing in assuming that the Noah Smith and Twitter types will set the agenda for US policy. Biden hasn't listened to Twitter about no fly zones and other idiocy (Smith hasn't advocated an NFZ to be clear). He also won't listen about whether to destroy the economy with sanctions beyond what's useful to deter aggression. This is my prediction.
I am also a bit disappointed in some of your thinking about sanctions, I should add. The point isn't necessarily to change the aggressor's mind, but to deter future aggression from other possible aggressors by making an example of this one. Incentives are key to shaping behavior, as you have observed many a time.
The international liberal order is caput because less than optimal? More international trade among more nations flows every single day than recent ancestors could have dreamt of.
What Noah Smith writes here is a fabrication. It is pure projection of the fevered Progressive mind:
"If Putin loses, then Trump and his allies who for years praised and defended Putin’s regime will be discredited."
My rule of thumb is when I read a person advance an idea that is pure, partisan hack garbage, every opinion offered by that person ought to be considered suspect.
Answer this: If Trump was such a suck up to Putin, why have Putin's greatest aggressions taken place during the Obama & Biden presidencies?
The Trump / Russia hoax was a hoax. It was a narrative invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign and supported by deceit and duplicity by campaign, the media, players at the State Department and heavy hitters at the CIA and FBI.
You know what wasn't a hoax? The Bidens and Clintons and other American Oligarchs exploiting Ukraine for family profit. And yet for having the temerity of quizzing Zelinsky about the Biden profiteering, Democrats impeached Trump.
On the world stage there are way to many leading men playing the part of the villain. If only they all could fail while preserving the rest of humanity. But no, societies need leaders and the quality of those leaders makes all the difference.
"When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan" ~ Proverbs 29:2
I don't know about the "Twitter Mob," but if Putin proposed the status quo ante -- he keeps Crimea, Ukraine is not in NATO but remains an independent country (like Austria?), roll back of sanctions, they wouldn't be able to stop it.
The dynamics of energy supply markets is mathematically unstable. Any supply/demand market is a feedback control system where changes in demand or supply cause the creation of more supply to compensate for the changes. However, if the response frequency of the supply function is slower that the apparent natural rates in the effective demand function, it is mathematically unstable and the system will oscillate.
To make the system more stable make regulatory permission times for all types of energy sources near zero, which would allow faster responses. If the frackers and pipeline companies could add capacity over a shorter time scale than the futures market in oil/gas, the system could be stable and we won't see huge spikes.
Such rapid responses are impossible with a regulatory state like we have where every "stakeholder" or "activist whiner" has a veto or delay vote. Our democracy has devolved into a vetocracy.
"This [Putin] has done for an understandable reason: he correctly fears that if Ukraine becomes successful and increasingly integrated with the West, the people of Russia will eventually want the same"
Although both empire building and regime protection motives are no doubt involved, it makes sense to me that regime protection is the stronger motive and why the threat of sanctions was not enough to deter him.
"Normal people just want America to produce more energy. And maybe when it’s all said and done, that’s the most humanitarian thing we could do"
Even better would be to enact a net tax on CO2 emissions (which in practice would not apply to exported fossil fuels).
Zeihan has always been predicting extreme outcomes, presumably in hopes of selling his consulting service. Go into the archives and you will see.
I'm interested in what people think they mean when they write "if Putin loses."
What if Putin is deposed and his successors are generals who want to prosecute the war more competently or more fiercely? That's not a good outcome for the world but a loss for Putin!
Or what if the war drags on like the 2014 conflict with sporadic conflict, but over a wider area of Ukraine like a big swath of the the Ukrainian Southeast. With neither side able to achieve a decisive victory. Is that a loss for Putin?
I encourage us all to have a very wide aperture when it comes to considering various outcomes.
What gives the social media their potency is not their evident large numbers of subscribers, but the MSN’s obsession with it, reporting it as if it were the Fount of all knowledge and veracity. Most MSM columns are just cut & paste Twitter feeds and Governments respond and slant policy on what’s ‘trending’ on social media. People get fired, reputations trashed, lives ruined on no more than one Tweet without anyone doing due diligence to find out the details or truth.
OK folks what is wrong with my reasoning here? Markets. Oil export ban… will reduce the supply of oil on the international market which will push the price of oil up. This will increase the price of things the US imports, including gasoline made from that now higher-priced oil. The glut of oil on the domestic market a ban will cause, will result in lower oil prices for domestic producers as it becomes a buyers’ market for US refiners who will bargain down prices - some/many oil producers will reduce output to push prices back up, or just leave their oil in the ground until the ban is lifted. Net result, the export ban will not have the desired result. People are not blocks of wood incapable of reacting to Government actions, and as Margaret Thatcher used to say: ‘You can’t buck the markets’.
A few, scattered questions:
1. Re: Peter Zeihan on oil prices.
5 million barrels per day = 5% of world oil production. I understand that the action is at the margin. But wouldn't energy markets (production) adjust to meet demand at this margin if not hamstrung by domestic policies?
2. Re: Noah Smith, "if Putin loses, it’ll be a success for the globalist order — sanctions and aid to Ukraine will represent a triumph of international cooperation."
Presently, South America, Central America, Africa, and all of Asia except Japan and S. Korea reject economic sanctions against Russia. These countries have half of the world's population. Should Putin lose, would these countries really reverse course and embrace "the globalist order"?
3. Re: Arnold Kling, "Economic sanctions will seem imperative as long as Mr. Putin is in power."
Wouldn't economic sanctions remain entrenched even after Mr Putin leaves or loses power, unless somehow perchance he would be replaced by a pro-western government?