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𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐡𝐮𝐛𝐬... 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝟑𝟒 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞. The period after 1977 saw militant trade unionism, frequent strikes, lockouts, and policies seen as hostile to private investment. Factory owners lost confidence, industries became unviable, and capital steadily moved out of... the state. * Bengal accounted for over 40% of India’s lockout-related lost working days despite having only 7% of the country’s industrial workers * Between 1991 and 2003, the state attracted less than 4% of India’s private investment proposals * From being 2nd in industrial employment in 1977, Bengal slipped to 7th by 2007 As industries declined, manufacturing weakened, agricultural growth slowed, and Bengal’s per capita income reportedly fell below the national average. 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥’𝐬 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲. 🔽show more

BJP

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17,179 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce •via X (Twitter)

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𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎% 𝐭𝐨 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐆𝐃𝐏? But 34 years of Left rule pushed Bengal towards economic decline. Instead of industrial growth, the Left created a culture of strikes, fear, and shutdowns. ⚠️ • Strikes in Bengal jumped from 179 to 678 between 1965 and 1970 • By 1991, Bengal accounted for over 40% of India’s lockout-related man-days lost People hoped for change under TMC, but the decline only deepened. ❌ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐚𝐭𝐚’𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐜𝐮𝐭-𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐌𝐂 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞. “𝐌𝐚, 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐭𝐢, 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐬𝐡” 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐏𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐌𝐂 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞.Watch this explainer 🔽

𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐖𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎% 𝐭𝐨 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐆𝐃𝐏? But 34 years of Left rule pushed Bengal towards economic decline. Instead of industrial growth, the Left created a culture of strikes, fear, and shutdowns. ⚠️ • Strikes in Bengal jumped from 179 to 678 between 1965 and 1970 • By 1991, Bengal accounted for over 40% of India’s lockout-related man-days lost People hoped for change under TMC, but the decline only deepened. ❌ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐚𝐭𝐚’𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐜𝐮𝐭-𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐌𝐂 𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞. “𝐌𝐚, 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐭𝐢, 𝐌𝐚𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐬𝐡” 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐏𝐈 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐌𝐂 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞.Watch this explainer 🔽

BJP

14,343 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce

Economic Survey ▪️Pegs GDP growth for next fiscal FY27 at 6.8-7.2%, this is lower than current fiscal ▪️Projects medium-term growth potential at 7% ▪️Geo political scenario could disrupt foreign capital inflows and consequently impact the Rupee ▪️External environment uncertain, India needs to be cautious ▪️Drying up foreign capital making the Rupee unstable ▪️Net surplus in services and remittances not enough to offset trade deficit ▪️Urges private sector to accelerate investment and job creation ▪️Indian firms’ outward investment rises from $14 bn to $24 bn in FY25 ▪️Manufacturing estimated to contribute 12.8% of GDP in FY26 ▪️Cautions against a bigger economic crisis than 2008 due to overheated AI valuations ▪️Need to retain students beyond Class 8 ▪️India’s pulses, maize and cereal yields remain below global averages ▪️Traffic and expensive houses are roadblocks for development ▪️Policy reshape needed for gig workers Some questions arise on the basis of what the Economic Survey says 👇 👉What are we celebrating? A sub 7% growth rate? 👉Survey estimates FY26 GDP growth at 7.4% and nominal GDP growth for the same period at just 8%. Why is the difference between nominal and real GDP growth rate only 0.6%? 👉Rupee has depreciated by over 6.5%. So a 8% nominal GDP growth with 6.5% Rupee depreciation means dollar GDP growth of just 1.5%. Why are we not worried? 👉For Viksit Bharat by 2047 - India needs a GDP growth of at least 8.2% every year for the next 21 years. What are we doing about it? 👉Finally someone in the govt accepting that the Rupee has been falling, but blaming it all on geo political uncertainty. But who will explain why the Rupee is the worst performing Asian currency especially when the dollar has weakened? 👉Why are foreign portfolio investors pulling money out of India? What is the plan to save the Rupee from this withdrawal? 👉Why is net FDI negative for 4 months in a row? 👉Why is India’s private sector not investing in India? 👉Why are Indian corporates investing more overseas than in India (outward investment of Indian cos rises from $14 bn to $24 bn in FY25)? 👉Why is manufacturing’s contribution to overall GDP still languishing at 12.8% - down from 15.6% under UPA and way below the targeted 25% of GDP? 👉Why have Make In India, Production-Linked Incentives (PLIs), failed to boost manufacturing? 👉Modi govt had announced 3 Employment-Linked-Incentive schemes (ELIs) in FY25 Budget to create more than 2 crore jobs. How many jobs have been created? 👉Govt had also announced an incentive scheme for 1 crore internships. Why did less than 10,000 people intern in the last 18 months? 👉Survey shows Corporate tax contribution to the total tax kitty declining, personal income tax collection rising. Why are all incentives then for wealthy corporates and not the ordinary tax payers? 👉The survey’s acceptance that students beyond Class 8 are dropping out should ring alarm bells for our education system. Does the Modi govt care which has shut down 90,000 Govt schools and consistently reduced education budget over the years? 👉Survey says India’s pulses, maize and cereal yields remain below global averages - what is being done to make agriculture more remunerative? 👉Survey says traffic and expensive houses are roadblocks for development - will the unliveable urban cities saddled with traffic, waste and pollution wake the govt up?

Economic Survey ▪️Pegs GDP growth for next fiscal FY27 at 6.8-7.2%, this is lower than current fiscal ▪️Projects medium-term growth potential at 7% ▪️Geo political scenario could disrupt foreign capital inflows and consequently impact the Rupee ▪️External environment uncertain, India needs to be cautious ▪️Drying up foreign capital making the Rupee unstable ▪️Net surplus in services and remittances not enough to offset trade deficit ▪️Urges private sector to accelerate investment and job creation ▪️Indian firms’ outward investment rises from $14 bn to $24 bn in FY25 ▪️Manufacturing estimated to contribute 12.8% of GDP in FY26 ▪️Cautions against a bigger economic crisis than 2008 due to overheated AI valuations ▪️Need to retain students beyond Class 8 ▪️India’s pulses, maize and cereal yields remain below global averages ▪️Traffic and expensive houses are roadblocks for development ▪️Policy reshape needed for gig workers Some questions arise on the basis of what the Economic Survey says 👇 👉What are we celebrating? A sub 7% growth rate? 👉Survey estimates FY26 GDP growth at 7.4% and nominal GDP growth for the same period at just 8%. Why is the difference between nominal and real GDP growth rate only 0.6%? 👉Rupee has depreciated by over 6.5%. So a 8% nominal GDP growth with 6.5% Rupee depreciation means dollar GDP growth of just 1.5%. Why are we not worried? 👉For Viksit Bharat by 2047 - India needs a GDP growth of at least 8.2% every year for the next 21 years. What are we doing about it? 👉Finally someone in the govt accepting that the Rupee has been falling, but blaming it all on geo political uncertainty. But who will explain why the Rupee is the worst performing Asian currency especially when the dollar has weakened? 👉Why are foreign portfolio investors pulling money out of India? What is the plan to save the Rupee from this withdrawal? 👉Why is net FDI negative for 4 months in a row? 👉Why is India’s private sector not investing in India? 👉Why are Indian corporates investing more overseas than in India (outward investment of Indian cos rises from $14 bn to $24 bn in FY25)? 👉Why is manufacturing’s contribution to overall GDP still languishing at 12.8% - down from 15.6% under UPA and way below the targeted 25% of GDP? 👉Why have Make In India, Production-Linked Incentives (PLIs), failed to boost manufacturing? 👉Modi govt had announced 3 Employment-Linked-Incentive schemes (ELIs) in FY25 Budget to create more than 2 crore jobs. How many jobs have been created? 👉Govt had also announced an incentive scheme for 1 crore internships. Why did less than 10,000 people intern in the last 18 months? 👉Survey shows Corporate tax contribution to the total tax kitty declining, personal income tax collection rising. Why are all incentives then for wealthy corporates and not the ordinary tax payers? 👉The survey’s acceptance that students beyond Class 8 are dropping out should ring alarm bells for our education system. Does the Modi govt care which has shut down 90,000 Govt schools and consistently reduced education budget over the years? 👉Survey says India’s pulses, maize and cereal yields remain below global averages - what is being done to make agriculture more remunerative? 👉Survey says traffic and expensive houses are roadblocks for development - will the unliveable urban cities saddled with traffic, waste and pollution wake the govt up?

Supriya Shrinate

29,538 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

Britain colonized Nigeria after the transatlantic slave trade became more of a burden than a source of profit. The empire’s focus shifted from human trafficking to extracting raw materials for British industry and imposing a captive market for manufactured goods, ensuring capital accumulation and profit. Infrastructure, especially railways, was not built for the people but to transport raw materials from the interior to the ports for export. These trains needed fuel. The British Imperial Institute conducted mineral surveys in Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1903 and 1904 to identify exploitable natural resources beyond existing agricultural products. They discovered vast coal deposits in Onitsha Province, present-day Enugu State. At the turn of the twentieth century, coal was to capitalism what oil is today it powered industry, railways, and maritime transport. Local coal exploitation in Britain had already fueled its industrial revolution. In 1915 and 1917, the colonial administration acquired land from Ngwo community chiefs “without charge” and began production immediately: 7,000 tons in 1915, 24,000 tons in 1916, and quadrupling the following year. By 1929, annual output had reached 364,000 tons, most of it used to power railways. But coal extraction required human labor, and the colonial regime initially relied on forced labor, conscripting prisoners and poor peasants. Many farmers resisted leaving their lands to work in mines without prior experience. Local warrant chiefs collaborated with the colonial authorities, extorting bribes from those trying to avoid conscription, while the colonial police protected these corrupt collaborators much like today’s authorities protect entrenched elites against the masses. As labor demand grew, the colonialists turned to wage labor, recruiting workers from other regions, who primarily worked underground digging coal, while non-local recruits filled clerical and technical roles a deliberate strategy to prevent workers’ unity. The Great Depression of 1929 halted coal expansion. Demand fell, and by 1934 production dropped to 120,000 tons. Wages were cut, forcing workers to bear the brunt of this global capitalist crisis. With only one union in Nigeria by 1930bthe Nigeria Civil Service Union, formed in 1912 workers began organizing. Over the next decade, at least a dozen new unions emerged, including among coal miners, who protested wage cuts and poor conditions. By the late 1930s, coal production recovered, but wages did not. Workers launched a dispute in 1937 to restore pre-1931 salaries and won. In response, management created ethnically divided advisory councils, but these failed to contain workers’ growing solidarity. In the 1940s, coal miners formed unions, including the Enugu Workers Trade Union in 1940 and the Enugu Colliery Surface Improvement Union in 1941. These merged in 1944 to form the Colliery Workers Union (CWU), led by Isaiah Okwudili Ojiyi, a former teacher respected for his knowledge of labor law and his deep ties to the rank-and-file a key lesson: genuine union leadership must emerge from the workforce itself. The CWU demanded better wages and working conditions. Management initially refused to negotiate, leading to dismissals, the hiring of replacement workers, and the banning of the union, while reintroducing ethnic councils. The union continued underground, raising worker consciousness. Its legitimacy came from the workers, not government recognition. After World War II, workers’ anger grew as living conditions worsened. They demanded a Cost-of-Living Allowance (COLA), sparking Nigeria’s first General Strike from June to August 1945. CWU activists coordinated local actions, strengthening worker confidence. Workers rejected ethnic councils and pushed management to recognize the union, eventually winning wage arrears and restored allowances after further go-slow strikes in 1947 and 1948.

Britain colonized Nigeria after the transatlantic slave trade became more of a burden than a source of profit. The empire’s focus shifted from human trafficking to extracting raw materials for British industry and imposing a captive market for manufactured goods, ensuring capital accumulation and profit. Infrastructure, especially railways, was not built for the people but to transport raw materials from the interior to the ports for export. These trains needed fuel. The British Imperial Institute conducted mineral surveys in Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1903 and 1904 to identify exploitable natural resources beyond existing agricultural products. They discovered vast coal deposits in Onitsha Province, present-day Enugu State. At the turn of the twentieth century, coal was to capitalism what oil is today it powered industry, railways, and maritime transport. Local coal exploitation in Britain had already fueled its industrial revolution. In 1915 and 1917, the colonial administration acquired land from Ngwo community chiefs “without charge” and began production immediately: 7,000 tons in 1915, 24,000 tons in 1916, and quadrupling the following year. By 1929, annual output had reached 364,000 tons, most of it used to power railways. But coal extraction required human labor, and the colonial regime initially relied on forced labor, conscripting prisoners and poor peasants. Many farmers resisted leaving their lands to work in mines without prior experience. Local warrant chiefs collaborated with the colonial authorities, extorting bribes from those trying to avoid conscription, while the colonial police protected these corrupt collaborators much like today’s authorities protect entrenched elites against the masses. As labor demand grew, the colonialists turned to wage labor, recruiting workers from other regions, who primarily worked underground digging coal, while non-local recruits filled clerical and technical roles a deliberate strategy to prevent workers’ unity. The Great Depression of 1929 halted coal expansion. Demand fell, and by 1934 production dropped to 120,000 tons. Wages were cut, forcing workers to bear the brunt of this global capitalist crisis. With only one union in Nigeria by 1930bthe Nigeria Civil Service Union, formed in 1912 workers began organizing. Over the next decade, at least a dozen new unions emerged, including among coal miners, who protested wage cuts and poor conditions. By the late 1930s, coal production recovered, but wages did not. Workers launched a dispute in 1937 to restore pre-1931 salaries and won. In response, management created ethnically divided advisory councils, but these failed to contain workers’ growing solidarity. In the 1940s, coal miners formed unions, including the Enugu Workers Trade Union in 1940 and the Enugu Colliery Surface Improvement Union in 1941. These merged in 1944 to form the Colliery Workers Union (CWU), led by Isaiah Okwudili Ojiyi, a former teacher respected for his knowledge of labor law and his deep ties to the rank-and-file a key lesson: genuine union leadership must emerge from the workforce itself. The CWU demanded better wages and working conditions. Management initially refused to negotiate, leading to dismissals, the hiring of replacement workers, and the banning of the union, while reintroducing ethnic councils. The union continued underground, raising worker consciousness. Its legitimacy came from the workers, not government recognition. After World War II, workers’ anger grew as living conditions worsened. They demanded a Cost-of-Living Allowance (COLA), sparking Nigeria’s first General Strike from June to August 1945. CWU activists coordinated local actions, strengthening worker confidence. Workers rejected ethnic councils and pushed management to recognize the union, eventually winning wage arrears and restored allowances after further go-slow strikes in 1947 and 1948.

K.Diallo ☭

20,766 görüntüleme • 6 ay önce

Over the last decade, a consensus has grown on the Left and Right that the US needs to be more self-sufficient when it comes to manufacturing. During Covid, we discovered we didn’t make much of the equipment we needed to deal with a pandemic and were thus dependent on other nations, and so Congress passed and Trump signed the CARES Act in part to spend money to support domestic manufacturing of medical supplies. In 2022, a bipartisan majority in Congress passed the CHIPS Act to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. out of the recognition that we had become dangerously dependent on foreign nations for microchips, which have become general-purpose technologies, necessary for national security, and upon which the AI revolution will be built. Where America had a $38 billion trade surplus in 1991 on advanced technology manufacturing, today it has a $299 billion deficit. Liberals and conservatives, Leftists and Rightists, have long shared a broad agreement that manufacturing and its knock-on industries are an essential source of employment for non-college-educated working-class people, and that the loss of manufacturing contributed to social fragmentation, family breakdown, and the drug addiction and death crisis. In a 2024 survey, Americans agreed ten to one that “we need a stronger manufacturing sector; 47% said America suffered from globalization, while 33% said it benefited. It is partly for that reason that Joe Biden, in perhaps the most bipartisan and non-ideological decision of his presidency, kept in place the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump during his first term as president. And yet both liberals and many conservatives are reacting with outrage as President Donald Trump puts in place precisely the trade tariffs needed to reduce our dangerous dependency on other nations and increase our manufacturing of the goods we need for national security, economic security, and societal wellbeing. The China tariffs, the CARES Act, and the CHIPS Act did not result in the return of much manufacturing, much less the rebalancing of trade. Total manufacturing jobsare 12.8 million in December 2019 and are 12.8 million today. The US still depends on China and other nations for active pharmaceutical ingredients, personal protective equipment, microchips, and critical minerals. Suffice to say, we are a very long way from a manufacturing renaissance sufficiently robust to revitalize the communities that have lost good, high-wage jobs to China and other competitors and even rivals internationally. The reason is clear. The average tariff level globally is 6.7% compared to America’s 2.7%. And simply subsidizing industries may not be enough for two major semiconductor manufacturers, Intel and TSMC, to produce domestically without tariffs. US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. Trump geared up to unveil sweeping new "Liberation Day" tariffs in a move that threatens to ignite a devastating global trade war. Key US trading partners including the European Union and Britain said they were preparing their responses to Trump's escalation, as nervous markets fell in Europe and America. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)📷 Anti-tariff liberals and conservatives say Trump’s actions will destroy people’s retirement savings by crashing the stock market, and will undermine the comparative advantage of other nations producing products we shouldn’t. And, they say, our goal should not be to return manufacturing to the United States, except for a few exceptions, which Congress has already made. For centuries, economists have argued that some nations, such as poorer ones, are more suited to produce many products than richer ones. Americans making t-shirts at $20 per hour are less efficient than the Vietnamese making them for $3 per hour. And the US should not be trying to replace perfectly reasonable products to import, like aluminum from Canada, which we have no reason to ever go to war with, and which has access to cheap hydroelectricity to make it. Over half of American families have money in the stock market, and they will all suffer, anti-tariff liberals and conservatives say. The economic system we have had since World War II has worked to maximize win-win relationships that result in poorer nations climbing the development ladder with manufacturing and wealthier nations like the US focused on services. But it’s unwise to evaluate policies based on the short-term impact of the stock market. Anti-tariff voices grossly overstate the comparative advantage when it comes to manufacturing, and the postwar system, economically and militarily, is no longer in the interests of non-college-educated Americans, who are both more vulnerable and more numerous than the college-educated elite. There is no need to bring back a significant amount of low-skill and nonstrategic manufacturing like T-shirts, and Trump has not advocated that. America may need to bring back some low-skill jobs, such as manufacturing protective gear. But our priority should rightly be high-skill manufacturing, and CARES, CHIPS, and the Trump-Biden China were, obviously, not enough. It may be fine to rely on Canada for aluminum. But the tariffs against it and Mexico, as well as Trump’s stated desire to make it the 51st state, should be viewed as the president negotiating in preparation for upcoming trade talks between the three countries. While offshoring manufacturing policies benefited multinational corporations, bankers, and consumers, they often devastated communities built on manufacturing, mining, and manual labor. US companies moved production to countries with lower labor costs, fewer regulations, and subsidized exports. Economists calculate that just the so-called “China Shock,” that country’s entry into the World Trade Organization, alone cost the U.S. 2.4 million jobs and had ripple effects across entire communities. The average manufacturing wage is $103,000 per year compared to $37,000 per year for the average service sector wage. And where a service sector job supports 2 to 3 jobs, a manufacturing job supports nine jobs. Continuing with a system that is fundamentally advantageous to a minority of the country and disadvantageous to a majority is not sustainable and unwise to prop up. Trump’s trade actions are part of a broader return to nationalism underway globally, and they can’t be understood on economic grounds alone. Regarding priorities, we should put the two-thirds of the country that is non-college educated working-class ahead of the 50% of the country who own stocks, for moral and democratic reasons. America is deeply divided. While there are many proximate reasons for this, including geographic sorting, cable TV, and social media, the underlying reasons are economic. The gulf between the educated elites and the non-educated working class has grown dangerously large. Many critics of the tariffs are well-intentioned. They are right to worry that they could come with significant economic costs and disruption. The concern of many of them is genuinely for the working class and poor, who higher prices for imported goods would most harm. However, many American elites today identify more with their global counterparts than their fellow Americans. And that’s a huge problem. In his study of 21 civilizations, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee found that civilizations collapse not simply from external invasion but from internal decay, precisely when their elites stop identifying with the people. “Civilizations die from suicide,” he famously wrote, “not murder.” Civilizations all depend on their elites, Toynbee noted, or the people he called the “creative minority.” But rising success creates decadence, complacency, and eventually contempt toward their people, and they start to identify with elites in other nations. This is all a natural outgrowth of trade, cosmopolitanism, and snobbery. It starts to view the ordinary people as “deplorables.” At this point, the elite lose their creativity and become simply the “dominant minority,” one that rules no longer by example but rather by manipulation or force. Toynbee could be describing America in the 21st Century. College-educated elites look down on the American working class and identify with other professional and managerial elites in Europe and other nations. They sympathize less with the low-skilled American citizen born here and more with the low-skilled foreign migrant here illegally. Such elites are more concerned with tariffs' impact on their stock portfolio and the cost of their gadgets than they are with the downward pressure illegal migrants put on wages or with how nations manipulate their currency to retain manufacturing. Toynbee said that, at this stage of development, a nation’s elites become “parasites or renegades,” alienated and contemptuous toward the culture that produced them. Civilizations at this late stage are morally hollow and thus fragile and prone to abuses of power, like censorship, lawfare, and the weaponization of government agencies. And these civilizations disparage their traditions in ways that the American elites have disparaged America’s founding and its history as essentially evil, due to the unavoidable tragedy of indigenous genocide and slavery, even though a civil war that killed over 600,000 people was fought to end it. But Toynbee didn’t believe that civilizational collapse was inevitable; some societies can snap back.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

Over the last decade, a consensus has grown on the Left and Right that the US needs to be more self-sufficient when it comes to manufacturing. During Covid, we discovered we didn’t make much of the equipment we needed to deal with a pandemic and were thus dependent on other nations, and so Congress passed and Trump signed the CARES Act in part to spend money to support domestic manufacturing of medical supplies. In 2022, a bipartisan majority in Congress passed the CHIPS Act to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. out of the recognition that we had become dangerously dependent on foreign nations for microchips, which have become general-purpose technologies, necessary for national security, and upon which the AI revolution will be built. Where America had a $38 billion trade surplus in 1991 on advanced technology manufacturing, today it has a $299 billion deficit. Liberals and conservatives, Leftists and Rightists, have long shared a broad agreement that manufacturing and its knock-on industries are an essential source of employment for non-college-educated working-class people, and that the loss of manufacturing contributed to social fragmentation, family breakdown, and the drug addiction and death crisis. In a 2024 survey, Americans agreed ten to one that “we need a stronger manufacturing sector; 47% said America suffered from globalization, while 33% said it benefited. It is partly for that reason that Joe Biden, in perhaps the most bipartisan and non-ideological decision of his presidency, kept in place the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump during his first term as president. And yet both liberals and many conservatives are reacting with outrage as President Donald Trump puts in place precisely the trade tariffs needed to reduce our dangerous dependency on other nations and increase our manufacturing of the goods we need for national security, economic security, and societal wellbeing. The China tariffs, the CARES Act, and the CHIPS Act did not result in the return of much manufacturing, much less the rebalancing of trade. Total manufacturing jobsare 12.8 million in December 2019 and are 12.8 million today. The US still depends on China and other nations for active pharmaceutical ingredients, personal protective equipment, microchips, and critical minerals. Suffice to say, we are a very long way from a manufacturing renaissance sufficiently robust to revitalize the communities that have lost good, high-wage jobs to China and other competitors and even rivals internationally. The reason is clear. The average tariff level globally is 6.7% compared to America’s 2.7%. And simply subsidizing industries may not be enough for two major semiconductor manufacturers, Intel and TSMC, to produce domestically without tariffs. US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. Trump geared up to unveil sweeping new "Liberation Day" tariffs in a move that threatens to ignite a devastating global trade war. Key US trading partners including the European Union and Britain said they were preparing their responses to Trump's escalation, as nervous markets fell in Europe and America. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)📷 Anti-tariff liberals and conservatives say Trump’s actions will destroy people’s retirement savings by crashing the stock market, and will undermine the comparative advantage of other nations producing products we shouldn’t. And, they say, our goal should not be to return manufacturing to the United States, except for a few exceptions, which Congress has already made. For centuries, economists have argued that some nations, such as poorer ones, are more suited to produce many products than richer ones. Americans making t-shirts at $20 per hour are less efficient than the Vietnamese making them for $3 per hour. And the US should not be trying to replace perfectly reasonable products to import, like aluminum from Canada, which we have no reason to ever go to war with, and which has access to cheap hydroelectricity to make it. Over half of American families have money in the stock market, and they will all suffer, anti-tariff liberals and conservatives say. The economic system we have had since World War II has worked to maximize win-win relationships that result in poorer nations climbing the development ladder with manufacturing and wealthier nations like the US focused on services. But it’s unwise to evaluate policies based on the short-term impact of the stock market. Anti-tariff voices grossly overstate the comparative advantage when it comes to manufacturing, and the postwar system, economically and militarily, is no longer in the interests of non-college-educated Americans, who are both more vulnerable and more numerous than the college-educated elite. There is no need to bring back a significant amount of low-skill and nonstrategic manufacturing like T-shirts, and Trump has not advocated that. America may need to bring back some low-skill jobs, such as manufacturing protective gear. But our priority should rightly be high-skill manufacturing, and CARES, CHIPS, and the Trump-Biden China were, obviously, not enough. It may be fine to rely on Canada for aluminum. But the tariffs against it and Mexico, as well as Trump’s stated desire to make it the 51st state, should be viewed as the president negotiating in preparation for upcoming trade talks between the three countries. While offshoring manufacturing policies benefited multinational corporations, bankers, and consumers, they often devastated communities built on manufacturing, mining, and manual labor. US companies moved production to countries with lower labor costs, fewer regulations, and subsidized exports. Economists calculate that just the so-called “China Shock,” that country’s entry into the World Trade Organization, alone cost the U.S. 2.4 million jobs and had ripple effects across entire communities. The average manufacturing wage is $103,000 per year compared to $37,000 per year for the average service sector wage. And where a service sector job supports 2 to 3 jobs, a manufacturing job supports nine jobs. Continuing with a system that is fundamentally advantageous to a minority of the country and disadvantageous to a majority is not sustainable and unwise to prop up. Trump’s trade actions are part of a broader return to nationalism underway globally, and they can’t be understood on economic grounds alone. Regarding priorities, we should put the two-thirds of the country that is non-college educated working-class ahead of the 50% of the country who own stocks, for moral and democratic reasons. America is deeply divided. While there are many proximate reasons for this, including geographic sorting, cable TV, and social media, the underlying reasons are economic. The gulf between the educated elites and the non-educated working class has grown dangerously large. Many critics of the tariffs are well-intentioned. They are right to worry that they could come with significant economic costs and disruption. The concern of many of them is genuinely for the working class and poor, who higher prices for imported goods would most harm. However, many American elites today identify more with their global counterparts than their fellow Americans. And that’s a huge problem. In his study of 21 civilizations, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee found that civilizations collapse not simply from external invasion but from internal decay, precisely when their elites stop identifying with the people. “Civilizations die from suicide,” he famously wrote, “not murder.” Civilizations all depend on their elites, Toynbee noted, or the people he called the “creative minority.” But rising success creates decadence, complacency, and eventually contempt toward their people, and they start to identify with elites in other nations. This is all a natural outgrowth of trade, cosmopolitanism, and snobbery. It starts to view the ordinary people as “deplorables.” At this point, the elite lose their creativity and become simply the “dominant minority,” one that rules no longer by example but rather by manipulation or force. Toynbee could be describing America in the 21st Century. College-educated elites look down on the American working class and identify with other professional and managerial elites in Europe and other nations. They sympathize less with the low-skilled American citizen born here and more with the low-skilled foreign migrant here illegally. Such elites are more concerned with tariffs' impact on their stock portfolio and the cost of their gadgets than they are with the downward pressure illegal migrants put on wages or with how nations manipulate their currency to retain manufacturing. Toynbee said that, at this stage of development, a nation’s elites become “parasites or renegades,” alienated and contemptuous toward the culture that produced them. Civilizations at this late stage are morally hollow and thus fragile and prone to abuses of power, like censorship, lawfare, and the weaponization of government agencies. And these civilizations disparage their traditions in ways that the American elites have disparaged America’s founding and its history as essentially evil, due to the unavoidable tragedy of indigenous genocide and slavery, even though a civil war that killed over 600,000 people was fought to end it. But Toynbee didn’t believe that civilizational collapse was inevitable; some societies can snap back.... Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning reporting, read the rest of the article, and watch the full video!

Michael Shellenberger

56,944 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

🔥 28 Dead in China's "Shoe Capital" — But Will Beijing Tell You the Real Number? Black smoke swallowed the skyline over Jinjiang, Fujian, just after noon on Thursday. Workers climbed onto the rooftop of a burning shoe factory, waving and screaming for rescue as flames tore through floor after floor below them. Hours later, state media finally put a number on it: 28 dead. The real question is whether anyone outside the Chinese Communist Party will ever know if that number is true. What happened？ Around 12:00 p.m. on July 9, a fire broke out at the Huiteng Shoe Industry Co. factory in Jiangtou Village, Chendai Town — the industrial heart of Jinjiang, a city that brands itself China's "Shoe Capital," home to more than 3,000 footwear manufacturers producing roughly 40% of the country's athletic and casual shoes. Video circulating online, matched against footage reviewed for this report, shows a multi-story factory building fully engulfed, orange flame pouring out of shattered windows and a black column of smoke visible for miles over the surrounding neighborhood of shops and homes. Workers were seen trapped on the roof as the blaze spread beneath them; local reports say some fell while trying to escape. Authorities dispatched 183 firefighters and 35 vehicles, along with a helicopter, to the scene. Fire crews said the stairwells inside the factory were packed with debris and flammable shoemaking materials, which slowed both the escape and the rescue effort. The flames were declared largely extinguished by around 5:40 p.m. — more than five hours after the fire began. The number, and the nine-hour gap For roughly nine hours, official channels described only "significant casualties" — no figure, no breakdown of dead versus injured, no count of how many remained missing. It was not until Thursday evening that Xinhua and other state outlets released a specific toll: 28 dead. No count of the injured or missing has been transparently published alongside it. That gap matters. In a country where the death toll from a workplace disaster can directly affect a local official's career prospects, provincial and municipal officials have a documented incentive to minimize casualty figures before Beijing's own investigators arrive — which is reportedly why a central "joint work group" from the Ministry of Emergency Management was rushed to Jinjiang the same day, effectively taking the count out of local hands. There is also a specific detail from this fire that should raise eyebrows: reports citing local coverage note the factory complex spans more than 60 acres with an annual capacity of roughly 3 million pairs of shoes — yet only 12 workers were registered for industrial injury insurance. An operation of that scale run on a workforce of essentially a dozen "official" employees points to a large, informal labor force that may not appear in any government roster at all. If most of the people inside that building were never on the books to begin with, it becomes far harder — for regulators or for outsiders — to independently verify that 28 is the complete count of who was in the building, and who didn't make it out. A pattern, not a one-off Skepticism toward Chinese disaster tolls isn't cynicism for its own sake — it's a pattern with a paper trail. The 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosions saw the official death toll revised upward repeatedly over several weeks. After catastrophic 2021 flooding hit Zhengzhou, in Henan province, families and independent researchers compiled missing-persons lists far longer than the government's final count, and discussion of the discrepancy was scrubbed from Chinese social media. Coal-mine disasters across China have for decades been documented by labor researchers as chronically undercounted, precisely because local governments control both the rescue effort and the information that comes out of it. None of this proves the Jinjiang toll is wrong. It does mean that "28" is, for now, a number produced entirely by the same authorities who spent nine hours saying nothing at all — with no independent media, no outside investigators, and no free press in China able to check it. Families of the missing, and anyone tracking casualty figures from Jinjiang in the days ahead, would be right to keep watching for whether that number holds. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

🔥 28 Dead in China's "Shoe Capital" — But Will Beijing Tell You the Real Number? Black smoke swallowed the skyline over Jinjiang, Fujian, just after noon on Thursday. Workers climbed onto the rooftop of a burning shoe factory, waving and screaming for rescue as flames tore through floor after floor below them. Hours later, state media finally put a number on it: 28 dead. The real question is whether anyone outside the Chinese Communist Party will ever know if that number is true. What happened？ Around 12:00 p.m. on July 9, a fire broke out at the Huiteng Shoe Industry Co. factory in Jiangtou Village, Chendai Town — the industrial heart of Jinjiang, a city that brands itself China's "Shoe Capital," home to more than 3,000 footwear manufacturers producing roughly 40% of the country's athletic and casual shoes. Video circulating online, matched against footage reviewed for this report, shows a multi-story factory building fully engulfed, orange flame pouring out of shattered windows and a black column of smoke visible for miles over the surrounding neighborhood of shops and homes. Workers were seen trapped on the roof as the blaze spread beneath them; local reports say some fell while trying to escape. Authorities dispatched 183 firefighters and 35 vehicles, along with a helicopter, to the scene. Fire crews said the stairwells inside the factory were packed with debris and flammable shoemaking materials, which slowed both the escape and the rescue effort. The flames were declared largely extinguished by around 5:40 p.m. — more than five hours after the fire began. The number, and the nine-hour gap For roughly nine hours, official channels described only "significant casualties" — no figure, no breakdown of dead versus injured, no count of how many remained missing. It was not until Thursday evening that Xinhua and other state outlets released a specific toll: 28 dead. No count of the injured or missing has been transparently published alongside it. That gap matters. In a country where the death toll from a workplace disaster can directly affect a local official's career prospects, provincial and municipal officials have a documented incentive to minimize casualty figures before Beijing's own investigators arrive — which is reportedly why a central "joint work group" from the Ministry of Emergency Management was rushed to Jinjiang the same day, effectively taking the count out of local hands. There is also a specific detail from this fire that should raise eyebrows: reports citing local coverage note the factory complex spans more than 60 acres with an annual capacity of roughly 3 million pairs of shoes — yet only 12 workers were registered for industrial injury insurance. An operation of that scale run on a workforce of essentially a dozen "official" employees points to a large, informal labor force that may not appear in any government roster at all. If most of the people inside that building were never on the books to begin with, it becomes far harder — for regulators or for outsiders — to independently verify that 28 is the complete count of who was in the building, and who didn't make it out. A pattern, not a one-off Skepticism toward Chinese disaster tolls isn't cynicism for its own sake — it's a pattern with a paper trail. The 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosions saw the official death toll revised upward repeatedly over several weeks. After catastrophic 2021 flooding hit Zhengzhou, in Henan province, families and independent researchers compiled missing-persons lists far longer than the government's final count, and discussion of the discrepancy was scrubbed from Chinese social media. Coal-mine disasters across China have for decades been documented by labor researchers as chronically undercounted, precisely because local governments control both the rescue effort and the information that comes out of it. None of this proves the Jinjiang toll is wrong. It does mean that "28" is, for now, a number produced entirely by the same authorities who spent nine hours saying nothing at all — with no independent media, no outside investigators, and no free press in China able to check it. Families of the missing, and anyone tracking casualty figures from Jinjiang in the days ahead, would be right to keep watching for whether that number holds. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights

Aric Chen

48,412 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

🚨12 HOUR NEWS RECAP 1. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Moscow to discuss the final offer from the U.S for peace in Ukraine. It reportedly includes provisions that Ukraine won’t join NATO and that both sides will cede some territory. 2. A Russian general was killed by a car bomb in Moscow - believed to be a targeted attack by Ukraine. General Yaroslav Moskalik was the deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and once led Russia-Ukraine talks in Paris. 3. Trump slammed Putin for launching a major missile attack on Ukraine: “We’re in the midst of peace talks, and missiles were fired. I was not happy with that.” 4. Gunfire erupted overnight between India and Pakistan across the Line of Control as tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals spiral. India’s army confirmed there had been limited firing of small arms that it said had been initiated by Pakistan, adding it had been “effectively responded to.” 5. Some mourners caused outrage by snapping selfies with the body of Pope Francis at St Peter’s Basilica. Despite rules and basic decency, phones came out, selfie sticks went up, and reverence flew out the window. 6. After rebel-backed chaos and rising death tolls, Congo and Rwanda are set to sign a peace and development pact in D.C. with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Behind the diplomacy? Billions in U.S investment and a quiet race for cobalt, copper, and lithium. 7. China told Washington to completely scrap all tariffs if it wants serious negotiations. China's Commerce Ministry insisted the U.S started the trade war and must make the first move toward peace. 8. Judge William Orrick - who ruled Trump can't cut funding to cities hiding illegal immigrants - turned out to be a huge Democratic Party supporter. He didn't just donate 6 figures to Democratic candidates including Obama, Kerry, and both Clintons - he chaired committees to elect them and introduced Kamala at campaign events. 9. Online criminals scammed Americans out of $16.6 billion last year, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, marking a 33% surge in just 12 months. People over 60 took the biggest hit - losing $4.8 billion across more than 147,000 complaints. 10. California pulled ahead of Japan with a $4.1 trillion economy, making it the 4th largest in the world. It grew faster than the U.S, China, and Germany last year, but with rising public-sector jobs, shrinking private ones, and trade partners spooked, it’s not clear how long the state can hold the line.

🚨12 HOUR NEWS RECAP 1. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Moscow to discuss the final offer from the U.S for peace in Ukraine. It reportedly includes provisions that Ukraine won’t join NATO and that both sides will cede some territory. 2. A Russian general was killed by a car bomb in Moscow - believed to be a targeted attack by Ukraine. General Yaroslav Moskalik was the deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and once led Russia-Ukraine talks in Paris. 3. Trump slammed Putin for launching a major missile attack on Ukraine: “We’re in the midst of peace talks, and missiles were fired. I was not happy with that.” 4. Gunfire erupted overnight between India and Pakistan across the Line of Control as tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals spiral. India’s army confirmed there had been limited firing of small arms that it said had been initiated by Pakistan, adding it had been “effectively responded to.” 5. Some mourners caused outrage by snapping selfies with the body of Pope Francis at St Peter’s Basilica. Despite rules and basic decency, phones came out, selfie sticks went up, and reverence flew out the window. 6. After rebel-backed chaos and rising death tolls, Congo and Rwanda are set to sign a peace and development pact in D.C. with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Behind the diplomacy? Billions in U.S investment and a quiet race for cobalt, copper, and lithium. 7. China told Washington to completely scrap all tariffs if it wants serious negotiations. China's Commerce Ministry insisted the U.S started the trade war and must make the first move toward peace. 8. Judge William Orrick - who ruled Trump can't cut funding to cities hiding illegal immigrants - turned out to be a huge Democratic Party supporter. He didn't just donate 6 figures to Democratic candidates including Obama, Kerry, and both Clintons - he chaired committees to elect them and introduced Kamala at campaign events. 9. Online criminals scammed Americans out of $16.6 billion last year, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, marking a 33% surge in just 12 months. People over 60 took the biggest hit - losing $4.8 billion across more than 147,000 complaints. 10. California pulled ahead of Japan with a $4.1 trillion economy, making it the 4th largest in the world. It grew faster than the U.S, China, and Germany last year, but with rising public-sector jobs, shrinking private ones, and trade partners spooked, it’s not clear how long the state can hold the line.

Mario Nawfal

157,533 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

Ethiopia, one of the first Christian nations & the 2nd most populous African country, is currently experiencing massive economic growth due to pragmatic capitalist reforms after decades of failed socialist policies. As a result, cities across the country, like the capital, Addis Ababa, are being radically transformed. The government has been shifting its monopoly control over many industries back to the private sector, allowing foreign investments in banking, which has led to historic growth in the sector, opening telecoms to private entry, floating the currency so the free market can assign it its true value, and launching a Securities Exchange. Ironically, the increased competition in the private sector has also forced the remaining state-owned firms to perform at a higher level. Many entities that were once unprofitable are starting to turn a profit. To ease doing business, major regulatory reforms have been implemented, such as liberalizing trade, allowing foreign investors to participate in export/import, wholesale, and retail, launching a "National Business Portal" for digital services, and cutting bureaucratic red tape to reduce costs for startups. These reforms have caught the attention of capital worldwide. Carrefour, a major retail company, is already making a move into the country. Industrial investors are also flocking in and creating thousands of jobs for locals. For example, TOYO, a Japanese solar solutions provider, has been investing heavily (est: $110 million) in solar cell manufacturing operations in Ethiopia. The country is now also a major Bitcoin "mining" hub. Although they produce lots of electricity, they still don't have the distribution infrastructure necessary to connect the whole country. That requires heavy investments, so in the meantime, they have turned to global crypto mining firms, which need cheap electricity and easy regulations. They dedicated 600MW+ to mining, contributing ~2.5% of global hash rate (that's big). Deals with giants like BIT Mining, Phoenix Group &, and others are raking in millions in forex revenue. The power company has made anywhere from $200 million to $500 million in total over the last 24 months, money they're using to expand their grid. The reforms have delivered strong results: GDP grew 8.1% in 2024 and is projected by the IMF to expand 7.2% in 2025 and 7.1% in 2026—one of the fastest rates in the world. Inflation has moderated from over 30% peaks to around 13-15%, foreign reserves have increased dramatically, and exports are rising. The country also just collected a historic amount of tax revenue within the last 6 months without increasing the rates. One more thing to note is that the government has not allowed ego to lead the way. When they wanted to clean & beautify their polluted rivers in the capital city, they hired international experts to work on the first phase and have used the knowledge gained to drastically scale the operation on their own. They still have a lot of work to do. For example, the central government seems to have no jurisdiction in certain regions with ethno-separatist groups & militias wreaking havoc against Orthodox Christian communities (as far as I understand). But I'm bullish because they seem to have the right leaders in place.

Ethiopia, one of the first Christian nations & the 2nd most populous African country, is currently experiencing massive economic growth due to pragmatic capitalist reforms after decades of failed socialist policies. As a result, cities across the country, like the capital, Addis Ababa, are being radically transformed. The government has been shifting its monopoly control over many industries back to the private sector, allowing foreign investments in banking, which has led to historic growth in the sector, opening telecoms to private entry, floating the currency so the free market can assign it its true value, and launching a Securities Exchange. Ironically, the increased competition in the private sector has also forced the remaining state-owned firms to perform at a higher level. Many entities that were once unprofitable are starting to turn a profit. To ease doing business, major regulatory reforms have been implemented, such as liberalizing trade, allowing foreign investors to participate in export/import, wholesale, and retail, launching a "National Business Portal" for digital services, and cutting bureaucratic red tape to reduce costs for startups. These reforms have caught the attention of capital worldwide. Carrefour, a major retail company, is already making a move into the country. Industrial investors are also flocking in and creating thousands of jobs for locals. For example, TOYO, a Japanese solar solutions provider, has been investing heavily (est: $110 million) in solar cell manufacturing operations in Ethiopia. The country is now also a major Bitcoin "mining" hub. Although they produce lots of electricity, they still don't have the distribution infrastructure necessary to connect the whole country. That requires heavy investments, so in the meantime, they have turned to global crypto mining firms, which need cheap electricity and easy regulations. They dedicated 600MW+ to mining, contributing ~2.5% of global hash rate (that's big). Deals with giants like BIT Mining, Phoenix Group &, and others are raking in millions in forex revenue. The power company has made anywhere from $200 million to $500 million in total over the last 24 months, money they're using to expand their grid. The reforms have delivered strong results: GDP grew 8.1% in 2024 and is projected by the IMF to expand 7.2% in 2025 and 7.1% in 2026—one of the fastest rates in the world. Inflation has moderated from over 30% peaks to around 13-15%, foreign reserves have increased dramatically, and exports are rising. The country also just collected a historic amount of tax revenue within the last 6 months without increasing the rates. One more thing to note is that the government has not allowed ego to lead the way. When they wanted to clean & beautify their polluted rivers in the capital city, they hired international experts to work on the first phase and have used the knowledge gained to drastically scale the operation on their own. They still have a lot of work to do. For example, the central government seems to have no jurisdiction in certain regions with ethno-separatist groups & militias wreaking havoc against Orthodox Christian communities (as far as I understand). But I'm bullish because they seem to have the right leaders in place.

George

720,781 görüntüleme • 7 ay önce

Khata-Khat badh gayi mehengai! After not fulfilling the promises of transferring Rs 8500/month to a woman of each family, Congress ruled Karnataka government has saddled the people of Karnataka with the burden of paying Rs 3/litre more for petrol and diesel in the state. After this decision, people of Karnataka would be forced to pay higher amounts for food items, clothing, medicines and all items of basic necessities as fuel prices directly impact prices of all goods. Such a decision just after elections have been concluded, exposes the hypocrisy of the Congress which talks about mehengai but levies approximately Rs 8litre-Rs 12/litre additional VAT in comparison with BJP ruled states. With this hike, petrol in Karnataka is now Rs 8.21/litre more expensive than both BJP-run governments in UP and Gujarat. The price gap is even more staggering if Karnataka is compared with BJP-governed Arunachal Pradesh where the party has come back to power strongly. The petrol prices in Karnataka are over Rs 12/litre higher than in Arunachal. The price gap for diesel is Rs 8.59/litre between the two states with Arunachal being much less expensive. During the last three years of global energy turmoil, the NDA government led by PM Narendra Modi Ji deftly diversified India’s crude oil purchases to ensure that petrol prices actually decreased by about 14% and diesel prices fell by nearly 11% during November 2021 -May 2024 period. During the same period, US saw petrol prices soar 29%, while neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka faced severe financial stress due to spike in global crude prices. Additionally, to maintain availability and affordability of transport fuels, Modi government made substantial and timely cut in excise duty in November 2021 and followed it up with another cut in May 2022. The Central govt reduced petrol and diesel prices by ₹5 per litre and ₹10 per litre, respectively, in November 2021. Following up in May 2022, petrol and diesel prices were further cut by ₹8 per litre and ₹6 per litre, respectively. Again on March 14 this year, the OMCs played a vital role in reducing prices further by Rs 2/litre. The BJP-run state governments aligned with the pro-people policies and reduced sales tax on transport fuels to further cut rates for the public and rein in inflationary pressures. For instance, petrol prices in Congress-ruled Telangana is Rs 12.76/litre higher than in UP. The difference in diesels prices between these two states is also significant at Rs 7.89/litre. Similarly, the petrol prices are Rs 9.29/ litre higher in Trinamool Congress-run West Bengal compared with BJP-run Gujarat. PM Modi Ji’s visionary leadership ensured that while the world was facing fuel price surge due to a war in Europe, India remained the only country during that period where petrol and diesel prices went down. #Khatakhat #Hypocrisy

Khata-Khat badh gayi mehengai! After not fulfilling the promises of transferring Rs 8500/month to a woman of each family, Congress ruled Karnataka government has saddled the people of Karnataka with the burden of paying Rs 3/litre more for petrol and diesel in the state. After this decision, people of Karnataka would be forced to pay higher amounts for food items, clothing, medicines and all items of basic necessities as fuel prices directly impact prices of all goods. Such a decision just after elections have been concluded, exposes the hypocrisy of the Congress which talks about mehengai but levies approximately Rs 8litre-Rs 12/litre additional VAT in comparison with BJP ruled states. With this hike, petrol in Karnataka is now Rs 8.21/litre more expensive than both BJP-run governments in UP and Gujarat. The price gap is even more staggering if Karnataka is compared with BJP-governed Arunachal Pradesh where the party has come back to power strongly. The petrol prices in Karnataka are over Rs 12/litre higher than in Arunachal. The price gap for diesel is Rs 8.59/litre between the two states with Arunachal being much less expensive. During the last three years of global energy turmoil, the NDA government led by PM Narendra Modi Ji deftly diversified India’s crude oil purchases to ensure that petrol prices actually decreased by about 14% and diesel prices fell by nearly 11% during November 2021 -May 2024 period. During the same period, US saw petrol prices soar 29%, while neighbours Pakistan and Sri Lanka faced severe financial stress due to spike in global crude prices. Additionally, to maintain availability and affordability of transport fuels, Modi government made substantial and timely cut in excise duty in November 2021 and followed it up with another cut in May 2022. The Central govt reduced petrol and diesel prices by ₹5 per litre and ₹10 per litre, respectively, in November 2021. Following up in May 2022, petrol and diesel prices were further cut by ₹8 per litre and ₹6 per litre, respectively. Again on March 14 this year, the OMCs played a vital role in reducing prices further by Rs 2/litre. The BJP-run state governments aligned with the pro-people policies and reduced sales tax on transport fuels to further cut rates for the public and rein in inflationary pressures. For instance, petrol prices in Congress-ruled Telangana is Rs 12.76/litre higher than in UP. The difference in diesels prices between these two states is also significant at Rs 7.89/litre. Similarly, the petrol prices are Rs 9.29/ litre higher in Trinamool Congress-run West Bengal compared with BJP-run Gujarat. PM Modi Ji’s visionary leadership ensured that while the world was facing fuel price surge due to a war in Europe, India remained the only country during that period where petrol and diesel prices went down. #Khatakhat #Hypocrisy

Hardeep Singh Puri

108,459 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

On Wednesday, I testified before the House Small Business Committee on China. Bottom Line: We obsess over China's tech giants. But we miss the small firms behind its manufacturing ecosystem. China built a program to make them world-beaters, and ours now face existential risk. Five points: 1️⃣ China's "Little Giants" (小巨人) program is one of its most consequential industrial policy programs — but few know much about it . A decade ago, Beijing made clear small businesses were critical to winning the fourth industrial revolution and important parts of the Made in China 2025 plan. So it built a system for them. It certified the most promising high-tech firms as "Little Giants," then handed them loans, subsidies, state equity investment, university research partnerships, fast-tracked patents, guaranteed contracts from state-owned enterprises, and streamlined stock listings — all in one coordinated package. Today, more than 17,000 Chinese firms hold that designation. 90% are in high-tech manufacturing. Together they raised $125 billion in private capital in just a few years. One of them is Unitree Robotics, now a global titan. 2️⃣ Our efforts to help small manufacturers through the Small Business Administration (SBA) simply do not compare to China's "Little Giants" program. China funds early-stage research through state institutes — we let our equivalent programs, SBIR and STTR, lapse. China packages loans, equity, and R&D into a single coordinated certification — we run countless uncoordinated initiatives with no common thread. China's little giants raised $125+ billion in private capital with implicit state backing — the first cohort of our SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative might raise $4 billion. China provides low-cost loans at scale — we haven't raised the loan caps or appropriations for our own manufacturer credit program. China deploys technical assistance to thousands of firms through universities and state institutes — we just cut the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and effectively shuttered its key offices. At every level, there is a "gap" between our approach and theirs. 3️⃣ Small businesses matter because they are the path to American reindustrialization. Large firms dominate U.S. manufacturing and have for decades. But small businesses enable them. 70% of Boeing's Dreamliner comes from smaller suppliers. 60% of all aerospace and defense employment is in small and mid-sized firms. The story is similar in automotives. We cannot win the industrial future if we do not empower our small businesses. 4️⃣ China is far ahead in manufacturing, and expanding the lead. By some estimates, China spends roughly $400 billion on industrial policy per year. The entire US CHIPS Act provided $50 billion over multiple years. Since China's WTO accession, our share of global manufacturing has fallen by half — from 30% to 15% — while China's quintupled from 6% to 30%. It now exceeds the next nine countries combined. It's not exactly slowing down. 5⃣ Here's what we should do. Immediately reauthorize SBIR and STTR. Launch an American one-stop-shop certification that bundles loans, equity, R&D support, and regulatory relief into one coordinated package. Scale up the SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative. Raise the quantity and caps for the SBA's Manufacturer's Access to Revolving Credit program. Restore the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. And give the SBA the mandate to deploy all of these together — the way China does. This is just a start, and a comprehensive answer to China's programs will require even more. The SBA has plenty of tools. What it lacks is the architecture to coordinate the use them. China built that architecture. It is working. Thanks to House Committee on Small Business for the opportunity and grateful to join Andrew Pahutski, Sean Murphy, and Tom Lyons for the hearing.

On Wednesday, I testified before the House Small Business Committee on China. Bottom Line: We obsess over China's tech giants. But we miss the small firms behind its manufacturing ecosystem. China built a program to make them world-beaters, and ours now face existential risk. Five points: 1️⃣ China's "Little Giants" (小巨人) program is one of its most consequential industrial policy programs — but few know much about it . A decade ago, Beijing made clear small businesses were critical to winning the fourth industrial revolution and important parts of the Made in China 2025 plan. So it built a system for them. It certified the most promising high-tech firms as "Little Giants," then handed them loans, subsidies, state equity investment, university research partnerships, fast-tracked patents, guaranteed contracts from state-owned enterprises, and streamlined stock listings — all in one coordinated package. Today, more than 17,000 Chinese firms hold that designation. 90% are in high-tech manufacturing. Together they raised $125 billion in private capital in just a few years. One of them is Unitree Robotics, now a global titan. 2️⃣ Our efforts to help small manufacturers through the Small Business Administration (SBA) simply do not compare to China's "Little Giants" program. China funds early-stage research through state institutes — we let our equivalent programs, SBIR and STTR, lapse. China packages loans, equity, and R&D into a single coordinated certification — we run countless uncoordinated initiatives with no common thread. China's little giants raised $125+ billion in private capital with implicit state backing — the first cohort of our SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative might raise $4 billion. China provides low-cost loans at scale — we haven't raised the loan caps or appropriations for our own manufacturer credit program. China deploys technical assistance to thousands of firms through universities and state institutes — we just cut the Manufacturing Extension Partnership and effectively shuttered its key offices. At every level, there is a "gap" between our approach and theirs. 3️⃣ Small businesses matter because they are the path to American reindustrialization. Large firms dominate U.S. manufacturing and have for decades. But small businesses enable them. 70% of Boeing's Dreamliner comes from smaller suppliers. 60% of all aerospace and defense employment is in small and mid-sized firms. The story is similar in automotives. We cannot win the industrial future if we do not empower our small businesses. 4️⃣ China is far ahead in manufacturing, and expanding the lead. By some estimates, China spends roughly $400 billion on industrial policy per year. The entire US CHIPS Act provided $50 billion over multiple years. Since China's WTO accession, our share of global manufacturing has fallen by half — from 30% to 15% — while China's quintupled from 6% to 30%. It now exceeds the next nine countries combined. It's not exactly slowing down. 5⃣ Here's what we should do. Immediately reauthorize SBIR and STTR. Launch an American one-stop-shop certification that bundles loans, equity, R&D support, and regulatory relief into one coordinated package. Scale up the SBIC Critical Technologies Initiative. Raise the quantity and caps for the SBA's Manufacturer's Access to Revolving Credit program. Restore the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. And give the SBA the mandate to deploy all of these together — the way China does. This is just a start, and a comprehensive answer to China's programs will require even more. The SBA has plenty of tools. What it lacks is the architecture to coordinate the use them. China built that architecture. It is working. Thanks to House Committee on Small Business for the opportunity and grateful to join Andrew Pahutski, Sean Murphy, and Tom Lyons for the hearing.

Rush Doshi

57,209 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce

Today I wanted to wish a Man who, at sixteen, left Ahmedabad with almost nothing in his pocket. He took the Gujarat Mail to Mumbai, joined Mahendra Brothers to learn diamond sorting, and later started his own small brokerage in Zaveri Bazaar. That was his beginning. #HappyBirthdayGautamBhai Gautam Adani. From those humble steps, he went on to build one of India’s largest infrastructure empires. Not through shortcuts, but through consistent execution, bold bets on long-term projects, and a clear focus on nation-building. And then let me tell u something on his 64th Birthday… 1 - Started in diamond trading after moving to Mumbai at 16. 2 - Worked at Mahendra Brothers before starting his own brokerage in Zaveri Bazaar. 3 - Moved into commodity trading and exports in the late 1980s. 4 - Incorporated Adani Exports in 1993. 5 - Identified Mundra’s potential as a port in the mid-1990s. 6 - Developed Mundra Port from a small creek into a major commercial port. 7 - Created India’s first private port with integrated SEZ facilities. 8 - Focused on long-term infrastructure assets over short-term gains. 9 - Expanded port capacity steadily even during low investment periods. 10 - Grew Mundra into one of India’s busiest ports. 11 - Entered the power sector and built large thermal power plants. 12 - Expanded Adani Ports across both coasts. 13 - Built transmission lines to strengthen power infrastructure. 14 - Established a model of port-led industrial development in Gujarat. 15 - Began investing in renewable energy as India’s energy transition started. 16 - Expanded solar and wind projects across multiple states. 17 - Built one of India’s early large-scale renewable energy portfolios. 18 - Acquired six airports in 2020, entering the aviation sector. 19 - Took over operations of Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and other airports. 20 - Modernised and expanded airport infrastructure across India. 21 - Added Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports to the portfolio. 22 - His airports now handle nearly 23-25% of India’s air traffic. 23 - Accelerated renewable energy capacity at a rapid pace. 24 - Developed the world’s largest single-location renewable project at Khavda. 25 - Delivered the highest-ever annual capex by any Indian corporate — ₹1.53 lakh crore in FY26. 26 - Added over 5 GW of new renewable capacity in a single year. 27 - Took Adani Green’s operational renewable capacity beyond 19 GW. 28 - Installed over 9.4 GW at the Khavda Renewable Energy Park. 29 - Crossed 500 million tonnes of cumulative cargo at Adani Ports. 30 - Made Mundra the first Indian port to handle over 200 MMT cargo in a year. 31 - Invested in data centres and digital infrastructure. 32 - Scaled cement and other businesses to support India’s construction needs. 33 - Maintained high execution pace despite global and domestic challenges. 34 - Through Adani Foundation, impacted over 9.6 million people. 35 - Worked across more than 7,000 villages in 22 states. 36 - Built and upgraded schools and digital classrooms in rural areas. 37 - Provided healthcare through hospitals, clinics, and mobile units. 38 - Focused on skill development and sustainable livelihoods in backward regions. 39 - Supported nutrition and women empowerment programmes. 40 - Created direct employment for tens of thousands of people. 41 - Generated lakhs of indirect jobs through port, airport, and energy projects. 42 - Promoted local hiring and entrepreneurship around project sites. 43 - Played a major role in improving India’s port and logistics capacity. 44 - Helped increase India’s share in global trade through better infrastructure. 45 - Accelerated India’s transition towards renewable energy at scale. 46 - Strengthened India’s energy security through power and renewable projects. 47 - Created long-term assets that will serve India for decades. 48 - Attracted significant investment into Indian infrastructure. 49 - Demonstrated that Indian companies can deliver and operate mega projects.

Today I wanted to wish a Man who, at sixteen, left Ahmedabad with almost nothing in his pocket. He took the Gujarat Mail to Mumbai, joined Mahendra Brothers to learn diamond sorting, and later started his own small brokerage in Zaveri Bazaar. That was his beginning. #HappyBirthdayGautamBhai Gautam Adani. From those humble steps, he went on to build one of India’s largest infrastructure empires. Not through shortcuts, but through consistent execution, bold bets on long-term projects, and a clear focus on nation-building. And then let me tell u something on his 64th Birthday… 1 - Started in diamond trading after moving to Mumbai at 16. 2 - Worked at Mahendra Brothers before starting his own brokerage in Zaveri Bazaar. 3 - Moved into commodity trading and exports in the late 1980s. 4 - Incorporated Adani Exports in 1993. 5 - Identified Mundra’s potential as a port in the mid-1990s. 6 - Developed Mundra Port from a small creek into a major commercial port. 7 - Created India’s first private port with integrated SEZ facilities. 8 - Focused on long-term infrastructure assets over short-term gains. 9 - Expanded port capacity steadily even during low investment periods. 10 - Grew Mundra into one of India’s busiest ports. 11 - Entered the power sector and built large thermal power plants. 12 - Expanded Adani Ports across both coasts. 13 - Built transmission lines to strengthen power infrastructure. 14 - Established a model of port-led industrial development in Gujarat. 15 - Began investing in renewable energy as India’s energy transition started. 16 - Expanded solar and wind projects across multiple states. 17 - Built one of India’s early large-scale renewable energy portfolios. 18 - Acquired six airports in 2020, entering the aviation sector. 19 - Took over operations of Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and other airports. 20 - Modernised and expanded airport infrastructure across India. 21 - Added Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports to the portfolio. 22 - His airports now handle nearly 23-25% of India’s air traffic. 23 - Accelerated renewable energy capacity at a rapid pace. 24 - Developed the world’s largest single-location renewable project at Khavda. 25 - Delivered the highest-ever annual capex by any Indian corporate — ₹1.53 lakh crore in FY26. 26 - Added over 5 GW of new renewable capacity in a single year. 27 - Took Adani Green’s operational renewable capacity beyond 19 GW. 28 - Installed over 9.4 GW at the Khavda Renewable Energy Park. 29 - Crossed 500 million tonnes of cumulative cargo at Adani Ports. 30 - Made Mundra the first Indian port to handle over 200 MMT cargo in a year. 31 - Invested in data centres and digital infrastructure. 32 - Scaled cement and other businesses to support India’s construction needs. 33 - Maintained high execution pace despite global and domestic challenges. 34 - Through Adani Foundation, impacted over 9.6 million people. 35 - Worked across more than 7,000 villages in 22 states. 36 - Built and upgraded schools and digital classrooms in rural areas. 37 - Provided healthcare through hospitals, clinics, and mobile units. 38 - Focused on skill development and sustainable livelihoods in backward regions. 39 - Supported nutrition and women empowerment programmes. 40 - Created direct employment for tens of thousands of people. 41 - Generated lakhs of indirect jobs through port, airport, and energy projects. 42 - Promoted local hiring and entrepreneurship around project sites. 43 - Played a major role in improving India’s port and logistics capacity. 44 - Helped increase India’s share in global trade through better infrastructure. 45 - Accelerated India’s transition towards renewable energy at scale. 46 - Strengthened India’s energy security through power and renewable projects. 47 - Created long-term assets that will serve India for decades. 48 - Attracted significant investment into Indian infrastructure. 49 - Demonstrated that Indian companies can deliver and operate mega projects.

Anshul Saxena

338,612 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

It is well known that I do not support xenophobia or Afrophobia in South Africa. I have become deeply unpopular among xenophobes and Afrophobes because of this. However I disagree with this white South African. We must condemn xenophobia without hesitation, but we should never use that condemnation to rewrite history. His argument is that black South Africans who have taken over businesses previously run by African migrants should not ask the government for financial assistance to buy stock because “real entrepreneurs” do not depend on the state. It sounds appealing until you look at history. Many of South Africa’s most successful white-owned businesses were built with enormous support from the state. The apartheid government deliberately created and financed a white entrepreneurial class. It did this through subsidised loans, preferential access to land, state procurement, industrial incentives, protectionist policies, and legislation that excluded the black majority from meaningful economic participation. Sasol and Iscor were either created or heavily financed by the state. Volkskas Bank was established specifically to empower Afrikaner business. White commercial agriculture flourished because of generous state support, cheap credit, and land acquired through discriminatory laws. Colonial Rhodesia followed the same pattern. Many of the country’s most successful commercial enterprises were built on land allocated by the colonial state. They were supported by favourable government policies and sustained by an economic system that overwhelmingly favoured white settlers over the African majority. The suggestion that government assistance makes black entrepreneurs less legitimate than white entrepreneurs does not survive contact with this history. Governments have always played a role in building national business champions. The real question is not whether government should support entrepreneurs. It is whether that support is transparent, fair, and available to everyone rather than reserved for one group. If today’s government chooses to support black traders who are trying to rebuild businesses and create jobs, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. What would be wrong is if that support were distributed through corruption, political or patronage. We should reject xenophobia and Afrophobia because they are wrong. We should also reject attempts to erase the fact that many of Southern Africa’s most prominent white business fortunes were built with substantial government assistance under systems designed to favour them over everyone else. History deserves to be confronted honestly, not selectively. The scarecrow of the “tenderpreneur” is often invoked by people who do not understand the economic history of South Africa and Zimbabwe. They speak as if the relationship between business and the state began in 1994. It did not. Another point that is conveniently ignored is that the word tenderpreneur is often used as though it describes a uniquely post-apartheid phenomenon. It does not. What changed after 1994 was not the relationship between business and the state, but who was allowed to participate in it. Under apartheid, access to state contracts, licences, agricultural subsidies, mining rights, import permits and industrial finance was overwhelmingly reserved for white South Africans. Political connections and racial privilege determined who received opportunities, while the black majority was legally excluded from competing for them. Today, people condemn politically connected businessmen as “tenderpreneurs”, yet many of the fortunes accumulated under apartheid through political patronage are rarely subjected to the same scrutiny. History should be applied consistently. If we are going to criticise businesses that prosper because of their proximity to the state, then we must acknowledge that this relationship did not begin with democracy; it was a defining feature of the apartheid economy itself. It is a fact that one of the major downsides of many post-colonial governments in Africa has been the inefficient and, in some cases, corrupt use of state resources. That, however, does not mean the solution is to abandon the idea of helping black people build businesses. The real solution is to ensure that state support is directed towards those who have the merit, the capability, the discipline, and the vision to build sustainable enterprises. I have heard public intellectuals such as Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi argue for the establishment of a state-backed bank dedicated to supporting black entrepreneurs. For expressing such views, they have often been demonised by people who, unfortunately, have not taken the time to study the history of how many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs built their fortunes. This is not unique to South Africa or Rhodesia. In the United States, Fred Trump built much of his property empire through Federal Housing Administration-backed loans and public contracts, and his son Donald Trump inherited a fortune substantially shaped by that state support, later benefiting from long-term tax abatements that made several of his own developments commercially viable. Of course, there is a real difference. FHA lending was framed as broad-based housing policy, not an instrument of racial exclusion, whereas apartheid-era support for white business was explicitly designed to entrench a racial hierarchy. But the underlying mechanism, the state absorbing risk so that private wealth could be built, s the same in both cases. If similar instruments were proposed for entrepreneurs in South Africa, Zimbabwe, or Angola today, many would call it corruption outright without first asking whether the policy was transparent, accountable, and merit-based. The same was true in South Africa and Rhodesia. Many successful white-owned businesses were built with the assistance of subsidised finance, preferential tax policies, state procurement, industrial incentives, and legislation that deliberately favoured white entrepreneurs while excluding the black majority. In many instances, the state absorbed much of the risk, while the wealth that was created became private. The beneficiaries accumulated private fortunes, but the broader public continued to bear many of the long-term economic costs of those policies. So let us not be duplicitous. We must condemn xenophobia, Afrophobia, and all forms of violence directed at people because of their nationality or origin. But we should not allow that condemnation to erase historical reality or prevent serious discussions about how entrepreneurial classes have been built throughout history. The real debate is not whether governments should support entrepreneurs. History shows that governments across the world have done exactly that. The real question is whether such support is transparent, merit-based, accountable, and directed towards people who have the ability to create successful businesses that generate jobs, create wealth, and drive economic growth. Equally, people who have made mistakes or who have been associated with wrongdoing do not automatically lose the right to contribute to important public debates. Their arguments should be judged on their merits, not dismissed simply because of who they are. Listening to an idea is not the same as endorsing the person making it, just as supporting capable entrepreneurs is not the same as supporting corruption. Recognising history does not justify corruption today. It simply reminds us that the relationship between the state and private enterprise has always existed. The real issue is how that relationship is governed.

It is well known that I do not support xenophobia or Afrophobia in South Africa. I have become deeply unpopular among xenophobes and Afrophobes because of this. However I disagree with this white South African. We must condemn xenophobia without hesitation, but we should never use that condemnation to rewrite history. His argument is that black South Africans who have taken over businesses previously run by African migrants should not ask the government for financial assistance to buy stock because “real entrepreneurs” do not depend on the state. It sounds appealing until you look at history. Many of South Africa’s most successful white-owned businesses were built with enormous support from the state. The apartheid government deliberately created and financed a white entrepreneurial class. It did this through subsidised loans, preferential access to land, state procurement, industrial incentives, protectionist policies, and legislation that excluded the black majority from meaningful economic participation. Sasol and Iscor were either created or heavily financed by the state. Volkskas Bank was established specifically to empower Afrikaner business. White commercial agriculture flourished because of generous state support, cheap credit, and land acquired through discriminatory laws. Colonial Rhodesia followed the same pattern. Many of the country’s most successful commercial enterprises were built on land allocated by the colonial state. They were supported by favourable government policies and sustained by an economic system that overwhelmingly favoured white settlers over the African majority. The suggestion that government assistance makes black entrepreneurs less legitimate than white entrepreneurs does not survive contact with this history. Governments have always played a role in building national business champions. The real question is not whether government should support entrepreneurs. It is whether that support is transparent, fair, and available to everyone rather than reserved for one group. If today’s government chooses to support black traders who are trying to rebuild businesses and create jobs, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. What would be wrong is if that support were distributed through corruption, political or patronage. We should reject xenophobia and Afrophobia because they are wrong. We should also reject attempts to erase the fact that many of Southern Africa’s most prominent white business fortunes were built with substantial government assistance under systems designed to favour them over everyone else. History deserves to be confronted honestly, not selectively. The scarecrow of the “tenderpreneur” is often invoked by people who do not understand the economic history of South Africa and Zimbabwe. They speak as if the relationship between business and the state began in 1994. It did not. Another point that is conveniently ignored is that the word tenderpreneur is often used as though it describes a uniquely post-apartheid phenomenon. It does not. What changed after 1994 was not the relationship between business and the state, but who was allowed to participate in it. Under apartheid, access to state contracts, licences, agricultural subsidies, mining rights, import permits and industrial finance was overwhelmingly reserved for white South Africans. Political connections and racial privilege determined who received opportunities, while the black majority was legally excluded from competing for them. Today, people condemn politically connected businessmen as “tenderpreneurs”, yet many of the fortunes accumulated under apartheid through political patronage are rarely subjected to the same scrutiny. History should be applied consistently. If we are going to criticise businesses that prosper because of their proximity to the state, then we must acknowledge that this relationship did not begin with democracy; it was a defining feature of the apartheid economy itself. It is a fact that one of the major downsides of many post-colonial governments in Africa has been the inefficient and, in some cases, corrupt use of state resources. That, however, does not mean the solution is to abandon the idea of helping black people build businesses. The real solution is to ensure that state support is directed towards those who have the merit, the capability, the discipline, and the vision to build sustainable enterprises. I have heard public intellectuals such as Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi argue for the establishment of a state-backed bank dedicated to supporting black entrepreneurs. For expressing such views, they have often been demonised by people who, unfortunately, have not taken the time to study the history of how many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs built their fortunes. This is not unique to South Africa or Rhodesia. In the United States, Fred Trump built much of his property empire through Federal Housing Administration-backed loans and public contracts, and his son Donald Trump inherited a fortune substantially shaped by that state support, later benefiting from long-term tax abatements that made several of his own developments commercially viable. Of course, there is a real difference. FHA lending was framed as broad-based housing policy, not an instrument of racial exclusion, whereas apartheid-era support for white business was explicitly designed to entrench a racial hierarchy. But the underlying mechanism, the state absorbing risk so that private wealth could be built, s the same in both cases. If similar instruments were proposed for entrepreneurs in South Africa, Zimbabwe, or Angola today, many would call it corruption outright without first asking whether the policy was transparent, accountable, and merit-based. The same was true in South Africa and Rhodesia. Many successful white-owned businesses were built with the assistance of subsidised finance, preferential tax policies, state procurement, industrial incentives, and legislation that deliberately favoured white entrepreneurs while excluding the black majority. In many instances, the state absorbed much of the risk, while the wealth that was created became private. The beneficiaries accumulated private fortunes, but the broader public continued to bear many of the long-term economic costs of those policies. So let us not be duplicitous. We must condemn xenophobia, Afrophobia, and all forms of violence directed at people because of their nationality or origin. But we should not allow that condemnation to erase historical reality or prevent serious discussions about how entrepreneurial classes have been built throughout history. The real debate is not whether governments should support entrepreneurs. History shows that governments across the world have done exactly that. The real question is whether such support is transparent, merit-based, accountable, and directed towards people who have the ability to create successful businesses that generate jobs, create wealth, and drive economic growth. Equally, people who have made mistakes or who have been associated with wrongdoing do not automatically lose the right to contribute to important public debates. Their arguments should be judged on their merits, not dismissed simply because of who they are. Listening to an idea is not the same as endorsing the person making it, just as supporting capable entrepreneurs is not the same as supporting corruption. Recognising history does not justify corruption today. It simply reminds us that the relationship between the state and private enterprise has always existed. The real issue is how that relationship is governed.

Hopewell Chin’ono

41,029 görüntüleme • 19 gün önce

A Nation Transformed: Iran's Post-Revolutionary Strides in Education and Health In the annals of nations striving for self-determination, Iran's journey post-1979 stands as a testament to resilience and strategic development, particularly in the critical sectors of education and healthcare. Emerging from a revolution and enduring decades of sanctions and conflict, the Islamic Republic embarked on a profound transformation that redefined its societal landscape. The year 1979 marked a turning point. Prior to the revolution, Iran grappled with pervasive illiteracy, a stark indicator of underdevelopment. The national literacy rate for citizens aged 15 and above hovered at a mere 36%, significantly below the global average. The situation for women was even more critical, with only 35% being literate. Rural communities were particularly marginalized, where a shocking 4% literacy rate spoke volumes about neglected potential. Recognizing that an educated populace was the bedrock of national independence and progress, the new Islamic Republic made universal literacy its first strategic priority. A massive, nation-driven mobilization of resources was unleashed. This wasn't merely about building schools; it was a comprehensive effort to reach every corner of the country, empower communities, and dismantle the barriers to learning. The results were nothing short of decisive. In less than two decades, the national female literacy rate surged to an impressive 74%, and it has since soared to a remarkable 93.5%. The transformation in rural areas was even more dramatic, leaping from 4% to nearly 90%. This foundational investment in education did more than teach reading and writing; it created an entirely new societal environment, fostering critical thinking, national pride, and a belief in collective advancement. All these monumental strides were achieved under the shadows of a devastating war and crippling international sanctions, underscoring the nation's unwavering commitment to its people. Hand-in-hand with educational justice, the same principle of widespread access and state support propelled a dramatic turnaround in Iran's healthcare system. Pre-revolution, vast swathes of deprived cities and villages lacked even the most basic public health infrastructure. To rectify this glaring inequality, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education was established. Its mission was ambitious: to build a national healthcare network that would rival the best in the world, bringing essential medical services to every citizen. This concerted effort yielded profound results. Infant and maternal mortality rates, once tragically high, began to drop at an astonishing pace. The focus on preventive care, primary health centers in rural areas, and the training of local health workers proved highly effective. Moreover, the post-revolutionary era instilled a profound sense of self-reliance, particularly in critical areas like medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. By the 1990s, Iranian industries were producing 96-97% of the country's medical needs domestically, a phenomenal leap from a mere 25% before the revolution. This was not just about generic substitution; Iranian scientists and engineers pushed the boundaries of innovation, venturing into the production of high-tech, complex drugs. This strategic capability transformed Iran into a regional leader in medical science and pharmaceutical production, a capacity that proved invaluable and demonstrated its strategic worth, especially under the relentless pressure of severe international sanctions. Ultimately, the true strength of this transformation lay in its human capital. The generations of educated scientists, engineers, and pharmacists, nurtured by these foundational investments, became the nation's ultimate resource. Their expertise and dedication allowed Iran to innovate, adapt, and not only survive but thrive in the face of external pressures, crafting a future built on knowledge and self-sufficiency.

A Nation Transformed: Iran's Post-Revolutionary Strides in Education and Health In the annals of nations striving for self-determination, Iran's journey post-1979 stands as a testament to resilience and strategic development, particularly in the critical sectors of education and healthcare. Emerging from a revolution and enduring decades of sanctions and conflict, the Islamic Republic embarked on a profound transformation that redefined its societal landscape. The year 1979 marked a turning point. Prior to the revolution, Iran grappled with pervasive illiteracy, a stark indicator of underdevelopment. The national literacy rate for citizens aged 15 and above hovered at a mere 36%, significantly below the global average. The situation for women was even more critical, with only 35% being literate. Rural communities were particularly marginalized, where a shocking 4% literacy rate spoke volumes about neglected potential. Recognizing that an educated populace was the bedrock of national independence and progress, the new Islamic Republic made universal literacy its first strategic priority. A massive, nation-driven mobilization of resources was unleashed. This wasn't merely about building schools; it was a comprehensive effort to reach every corner of the country, empower communities, and dismantle the barriers to learning. The results were nothing short of decisive. In less than two decades, the national female literacy rate surged to an impressive 74%, and it has since soared to a remarkable 93.5%. The transformation in rural areas was even more dramatic, leaping from 4% to nearly 90%. This foundational investment in education did more than teach reading and writing; it created an entirely new societal environment, fostering critical thinking, national pride, and a belief in collective advancement. All these monumental strides were achieved under the shadows of a devastating war and crippling international sanctions, underscoring the nation's unwavering commitment to its people. Hand-in-hand with educational justice, the same principle of widespread access and state support propelled a dramatic turnaround in Iran's healthcare system. Pre-revolution, vast swathes of deprived cities and villages lacked even the most basic public health infrastructure. To rectify this glaring inequality, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education was established. Its mission was ambitious: to build a national healthcare network that would rival the best in the world, bringing essential medical services to every citizen. This concerted effort yielded profound results. Infant and maternal mortality rates, once tragically high, began to drop at an astonishing pace. The focus on preventive care, primary health centers in rural areas, and the training of local health workers proved highly effective. Moreover, the post-revolutionary era instilled a profound sense of self-reliance, particularly in critical areas like medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. By the 1990s, Iranian industries were producing 96-97% of the country's medical needs domestically, a phenomenal leap from a mere 25% before the revolution. This was not just about generic substitution; Iranian scientists and engineers pushed the boundaries of innovation, venturing into the production of high-tech, complex drugs. This strategic capability transformed Iran into a regional leader in medical science and pharmaceutical production, a capacity that proved invaluable and demonstrated its strategic worth, especially under the relentless pressure of severe international sanctions. Ultimately, the true strength of this transformation lay in its human capital. The generations of educated scientists, engineers, and pharmacists, nurtured by these foundational investments, became the nation's ultimate resource. Their expertise and dedication allowed Iran to innovate, adapt, and not only survive but thrive in the face of external pressures, crafting a future built on knowledge and self-sufficiency.

Johannes Maria

66,050 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce

Yesterday, I moved a vote of no confidence in the Albanese Labor Government. Labor survived but only because they were protected by the Greens and Senator Pocock, who voted against my motion, and by Senators Lambie, Tyrell, and Thorpe who abstained. Any Senator who continues to prop up this terrible government should be ashamed. Back in 2017, I was in a delegation to India with other parliamentarians including the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. I learned quite a bit about him and his ‘leadership’ style, and my assessment back then was: “nice bloke, but no leader”. Since last year’s election, my assessment has been proven correct. I have no confidence in the Albanese Labor government. The Prime Minister is unfit to lead, and Labor is unfit to govern this nation. They are controlled by unions, and they are controlled by the anti-Australian Greens. They pursue policies which directly harm the Australian people and the national economy. Their list of failure, neglect and incompetence is a long one in only 18 months. Their obsession with climate change and renewables is directly responsible for the record energy bills hurting Australian families and business, not to mention transmission lines on farming land. This obsession is well on the way to killing our mining and farming industries, our economic mainstays which support regional communities and much of the taxpayer funded services Australians take for granted. They’re also attacking farmers by taking more water from communities in the Murray Darling Basin, shutting down live exports, polluting agricultural land with renewables or locking it up for ‘nature repair’. If you think your groceries are expensive now, just wait. Labor’s incompetence has seen the release of dangerous criminals into the community – three of which have already been arrested for more alleged crimes. 147 have been released – or are about to be released – despite the High Court’s decision on extended detention was only for one of them. They jumped the gun after they were caught with their pants down, and their only response is to blame the former government. People smugglers have also heard the message loud and clear, with a boat actually reaching the Australian mainland a few weeks ago. Immigration is out of control, with record numbers driving inflation and the national housing and rental crisis. The PM sowed division in Australia with his disastrous campaign for a voice to Parliament, wasting 450 million dollars. At least his divisive referendum exposed the failure of the 40 billion dollar per year aboriginal industry to close the gaps Labor refuses to investigate and audit this industry to get to the bottom of why it has failed indigenous Australians in genuine need. Labor has made the family law system even more one-sided against fathers by removing shared parental responsibility, and is failing men across a range of issues. They’ve done nothing to address the epidemic of male suicide, which in the past year has claimed the lives of more than 2500 men and boys. The PM has a minister for women, even a minister for a republic which doesn’t exist, but not a minister for men. Labor refuses to support an inquiry into the huge increase of children being treated for gender dysphoria with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. Labor has given the chop to critical infrastructure projects that would improve road safety and water security. It hasn’t reduced spending – it’s just moved money around and held projects hostage against favourable state election outcomes. Especially in Queensland. Australians are hurting from the cost of living crisis. Virtually everything costs more than it did in May last year, when the Albanese Labor government was elected: • groceries; • fuel; • energy bills; • rents; • mortgages. These costs just keep going up, and there’s no end in sight. On average, mortgagees are paying over 20,000 dollars more per year on their home loans as the RBA desperately tries to reign in this inflation. Labor has made a sport of disrespecting this Parliament, the seat of democracy and the people’s elected representatives. They’ve rammed through laws – heavy with negative consequences for the economy, national security and the cost of living – and given the people’s representatives virtually no time to review them. That is why I have no confidence in the PM or his government, and increasing numbers of Australians agree.

Yesterday, I moved a vote of no confidence in the Albanese Labor Government. Labor survived but only because they were protected by the Greens and Senator Pocock, who voted against my motion, and by Senators Lambie, Tyrell, and Thorpe who abstained. Any Senator who continues to prop up this terrible government should be ashamed. Back in 2017, I was in a delegation to India with other parliamentarians including the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. I learned quite a bit about him and his ‘leadership’ style, and my assessment back then was: “nice bloke, but no leader”. Since last year’s election, my assessment has been proven correct. I have no confidence in the Albanese Labor government. The Prime Minister is unfit to lead, and Labor is unfit to govern this nation. They are controlled by unions, and they are controlled by the anti-Australian Greens. They pursue policies which directly harm the Australian people and the national economy. Their list of failure, neglect and incompetence is a long one in only 18 months. Their obsession with climate change and renewables is directly responsible for the record energy bills hurting Australian families and business, not to mention transmission lines on farming land. This obsession is well on the way to killing our mining and farming industries, our economic mainstays which support regional communities and much of the taxpayer funded services Australians take for granted. They’re also attacking farmers by taking more water from communities in the Murray Darling Basin, shutting down live exports, polluting agricultural land with renewables or locking it up for ‘nature repair’. If you think your groceries are expensive now, just wait. Labor’s incompetence has seen the release of dangerous criminals into the community – three of which have already been arrested for more alleged crimes. 147 have been released – or are about to be released – despite the High Court’s decision on extended detention was only for one of them. They jumped the gun after they were caught with their pants down, and their only response is to blame the former government. People smugglers have also heard the message loud and clear, with a boat actually reaching the Australian mainland a few weeks ago. Immigration is out of control, with record numbers driving inflation and the national housing and rental crisis. The PM sowed division in Australia with his disastrous campaign for a voice to Parliament, wasting 450 million dollars. At least his divisive referendum exposed the failure of the 40 billion dollar per year aboriginal industry to close the gaps Labor refuses to investigate and audit this industry to get to the bottom of why it has failed indigenous Australians in genuine need. Labor has made the family law system even more one-sided against fathers by removing shared parental responsibility, and is failing men across a range of issues. They’ve done nothing to address the epidemic of male suicide, which in the past year has claimed the lives of more than 2500 men and boys. The PM has a minister for women, even a minister for a republic which doesn’t exist, but not a minister for men. Labor refuses to support an inquiry into the huge increase of children being treated for gender dysphoria with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones. Labor has given the chop to critical infrastructure projects that would improve road safety and water security. It hasn’t reduced spending – it’s just moved money around and held projects hostage against favourable state election outcomes. Especially in Queensland. Australians are hurting from the cost of living crisis. Virtually everything costs more than it did in May last year, when the Albanese Labor government was elected: • groceries; • fuel; • energy bills; • rents; • mortgages. These costs just keep going up, and there’s no end in sight. On average, mortgagees are paying over 20,000 dollars more per year on their home loans as the RBA desperately tries to reign in this inflation. Labor has made a sport of disrespecting this Parliament, the seat of democracy and the people’s elected representatives. They’ve rammed through laws – heavy with negative consequences for the economy, national security and the cost of living – and given the people’s representatives virtually no time to review them. That is why I have no confidence in the PM or his government, and increasing numbers of Australians agree.

Pauline Hanson 🇦🇺

126,244 görüntüleme • 2 yıl önce

Stalin and Hitler: One Socialist Revolution in Two Uniforms The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 is still taught as a pragmatic truce between bitter enemies — the Soviet Union's "far-left" communism and Nazi Germany's so-called "far-right" fascism ( This revisionist interpretation survives largely because the post-war political order needed it to end the World War fought between proponents of Liberty and those who sought to substitute the Liberal Enlightenment with socialist slave-statism. Unfortunately, this process led to a pragmatic subsummation of various socialist factions by the West's "democratic" systems, leading to an erosion of Capitalism as they work to convert our social-systems into perverse clientel states ( that persistently violate the rights they were established to protect. Moreover, while granting them moral equivocation to the rest of us, it absolved and shielded socialists from accountability for their criminal pathology, all the while enabling "russia" to promote itself as having saved the world from the "revolutionary" Holocaust for which they were equally responsible as participants and ideological proponents. Post-enlightenment, this was the West's first major moral catastrophe of self-inflicted degradation by way of pragmatic capitulation to the forces of its destroyers who continue to rewrite our understanding of history and are actively transforming the practical functions of our governments in favor of the totalitarian-axis ( This spineless moral confusion of the West is one with which we are only too familiar and continue to observe today across practically all spheres of life, especially foreign policy. In so doing, they are surrendering their moral high-ground, sabotaging prosperity, and weakening the post-war order, if only to appease the sentiments of the bolshevized and other subversive elements in our midst ( Hitler's antisemitism was his anti-Capitalism, and his anti-Capitalism was his antisemitism, no different from Marx. In reality, Stalin's Soviet socialism and Hitler's national socialism were branches from the same root of Marxism, united by shared theory, shared personnel, shared enemies, and shared operational goals. From their ideological foundations to their street-level enforcers, the line between them was blurred to the point of invisibility. Marxist Foundations of a Common Worldview Karl Marx's own writings laid much of the groundwork for both Stalin's and Hitler's policies toward Jews ( The alliance between Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's German Reich was grounded in deep ideological kinship. Both leaders subscribed to the Marxist premise, articulated in Zur Judenfrage, Das Kapital, and The Communist Manifesto, that Jews were an embodiment of the bourgeois class — a Capitalist, parasitic element that had to be uprooted for socialism to triumph. Even Hitler's racial and spiritual antisemitism did not contradict Marxism, as Marx was explicitly racist and referred to Jews as "Jewish N*ggers" ( rather, it built upon it, while framing the socialist struggle for revolution as racial and class struggle while preserving the revolutionary goal of Jewish expropriation and extermination as an integral part of revolution against Capitalism. While Marx identified Jews with the bourgeois Capitalist class, the "huckster" spirit of commerce, and the system of so-called exploitation — one's sovereign claim to their own life, property and from which we derive such practices of individuals trading that which they subjectively valued less for that which they valued more — that socialism sought to abolish and thus enlist mankind into slavery. He referred to money as "philistine paper" and commodities that were "inwardly circumcised Jews." His "solution" to what he and Hitler both lamented as "the Jewish Question" was the removal of Jewish influence from public life, an idea they framed as a "racial" and "class struggle." Soviet socialism took this view literally: Jews were "class aliens" whose property was to be seized and whose communities were to be dismantled under the banner of proletarian revolution ( Hitler's national socialism racialized the same enemy, presenting the Jew not just as a class exploiter but as a biological parasite who, in reality, were simply another group of people whose ethics stood in the way of socialist parasitism and imperial conquest ( not merely against foreign populations but against the individual himself. The underlying goal — to purge anyone who engaged in Capitalist practices labeled as Jewish, such as selling goods for profit, and purge Jews in order to "liberate" capital for allocation to socialist re-engineering of society — was the same. As socialism continued to fail throughout Germany, in parallel with proto-socialist state-interventionism around the globe and which brought to fore the Great Depression in the wake of the First World War ( many populations were ignorant of basic economics and did not ask themselves whether it was existing state-intervention that led to their woes, choosing to instead double down on socialism while believing it was anything remaining marginally-private under the Weimar Republic, alongside a Jewish conspiracy, as the source of their economic challenges ( The SA–KPD Connection: One Militant Base The supposed gulf between the two systems collapses further when we look at the personnel who enforced their revolutions. The Sturmabteilung (SA), or "Brown Shirts," Hitler's paramilitary enforcers in the 1920s and early 1930s, were by majority registered members of the German Communist Party (KPD), many of whom homosexuals who would have orgies in their commune housing with as much frequency as the cross-dressing transsexuals of the Wehrmacht ( They were street fighters who had already accepted the central Marxist premises: the destruction of bourgeois society, the abolition of free markets, and the removal of Jews as the supposed embodiment of Capitalism ( Their move from the KPD to the SA was not an ideological betrayal — it was a rebranding. The "world proletariat" became the "German worker," but the collectivist core, the contempt for property rights, and the antisemitic worldview remained intact. The SA–KPD overlap shows that the human machinery of both movements was interchangeable, and that the two "sides" were never truly opposite. Perhaps there is no greater evidence for this fact than Hitler's history, prior to becoming Chancellor of Germany, during which he would serve as an elected official in Kurt Eisner's Socialist People's State of Bavaria and then again into a Communist Bavarian Soviet Republic, alongside his service in the Red Army ( Economic and Logistical Partnership Once in power, Hitler implemented collectivist controls over agriculture reminiscent of Lenin and Stalin's earlier Soviet model. The Nazi regime fixed prices, bound farmers to their land, and subordinated production to state planning as they collectivized farming and socialized the economy at a scale outpacing the Weimar and SPD after private property rights were abolished under the Reichstag Fire Decree (1933) ( The predictable result was a collapse in agricultural output — by the early 1940s, German harvests had fallen by nearly half, creating a food crisis for a nation preparing for war, not merely for so-called "Living Space" and conquest against Capitalism but out of shared conviction in the thoroughly refuted Marxist "Shrinking Markets" or "Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall" fallacy that applies only to socialism ( Logistics and overall production were so inefficient under socialism, the Germans began substituting agricultural products with consumption of coal derivatives ( The Soviet Union stepped in to fill the gap. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin shipped vast quantities of oil, metals, and grain to Germany. Much of the grain came from Ukraine, where Soviet authorities had already expropriated food from a population still traumatized by the Holodomor. "In tandem with these policies, the Soviet Union also provided economic support to Nazi Germany, which was instrumental in facilitating Hitler's war of conquest. The importance of this assistance cannot be underestimated as the USSR supplied significant quantities of food and raw materials to the Nazis. For instance, during the invasion of France and the Low Countries, the USSR supplied the Reich with 163,000 tons of petroleum and 243,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat in May and June of 1940 alone. As German demand increased during critical battles, such as at Dunkirk, Soviet oil deliveries surged to meet the needs, effectively fueling Hitler's conquest of Western Europe." Stalin's aid wasn't charity — it was strategic leverage that played into a broader strategy. It kept Hitler's war machine running and deepened Berlin's dependence on Moscow, allowing Stalin to pull the plug when it served his purpose ( A Shared Goal: The Removal of Jews and "Class Enemies" The economic pact was only one part of a deeper collaboration. Both regimes saw the destruction of Europe's Jewish population as a revolutionary imperative. Where Hitler framed it as a racial policy, Stalin framed it as "class struggle," both regimes deriding Jews as self-interested or insufficiently altruist, thus a threat to any socialist system — and in practice, both categories were the same. Soviet cooperation went far beyond the passive acquiescence some would like to suggest. NKVD archives and wartime records show the Soviets went beyond indirect facilitation, providing the Germans with logistical expertise and instruction on the design and operation of concentration camps, the "technical assistance" part of a broader joint effort to eliminate groups deemed "counter-revolutionary" or "parasitic" by socialist criteria ( In occupied France, Communist partisans operated in accordance with directives from Moscow that aligned with German objectives. Supplies would be surged to these groups when their activities advanced mutual goals, including the rounding up and deportation of Jews and other populations who stood in their way. The cooperation between socialist factions was driven by unity rooted in a shared vision of a post-Capitalist world they sought to build, even if they disagreed on who would lead it. The Joint Invasion of Poland and Open Collaboration Nothing demonstrates this unity more clearly than the joint invasion of Poland in September 1939. German and Soviet forces coordinated their offensives, held joint victory parades, and partitioned the country according to prearranged zones over which their banners jointly flew side-by-side. Their collaboration is simple to understand: in Brest-Litovsk, NKVD units physically handed over Jewish prisoners to the Gestapo. Deportations ran both east and west — Jews, Polish intellectuals, and others deemed "counter-revolutionary" "class enemies" went to German concentration camps and Soviet gulags, depending on their zone of capture. This was not "parallel repression," as many Marxists would like to suggest — it was coordinated, deliberate, and consistent with the ideological aims both sides openly shared, which Marxist and other socialist "historians" have attempted to negate from conceptual integration, blaming everyone ( but the culprit staring at them in the mirror as they weaponize revisionist concepts to intellectually and morally disarm opposition to their elite slavery schemes. The Calculated Withdrawal of Soviet Aid and "Liberator" Myth Stalin's material support — oil, metals, Ukrainian grain — allowed Germany to survive Hitler's socialist disaster after initiating his farm collectivization program. They would thus mount a rapid series of conquests in 1939–41. But Stalin always kept his hand on the valve. When Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, Stalin's strategy paid out its ultimate dividend, cutting supplies to collapse the German army and sweep in to capture territories Germany could no longer hold while reframing the entire war in propaganda terms: the USSR as Europe's savior from fascism — which everyone understood had actually originated as a break between socialist factions led by Bakunin and Marx at the First International ( — enabling the socialist conspiracy to continue their crusade around the globe and which we continue to observe apace ( Meanwhile, their so-called "democratic socialists" clung onto their moral perversions and acted as propagandists in Britain and elsewhere, promoting such falsehoods as German and Italian socialism as having been Capitalist social-systems that "privatized," rather than socialized their economies ( None of that was real murder and theft, none of what you observed was "real socialism," they shouted. Thus, Western Socialists desperately undertook a near century-long effort to rewrite history, sowing public confusion as they continued to collaborate with totalitarian adversaries, with the goal of preserving the reputation of their slave-state model, hopeful for more opportunities to arouse revolutionary fervor or support for socialism, continuing to aid in replicating and exporting its failures as they worked to undermine and destroy civilization. The moral facade of liberation was bolstered by propaganda that omitted the USSR's partnership in invasion, deportation and genocide. This propaganda also relied on another longstanding policy — Soviet censorship of the Holocaust's targeting of Jews and others deemed "counter-revolutionary." Soviet media described the Holocaust as crimes against "peaceful Soviet citizens," erasing any understanding of its ideological root. This served multiple purposes: chief among them was continued export of socialism as they conspired to devour more countries, masked the USSR's earlier complicity and made the Red Army's return appear as a universal liberation, even to populations that had been terrorized by NKVD purges only months before, and simultaneously enabled them to exterminate more "counter-revolutionaries" who initially believed the Germans were liberators, an unfortunate consequence of Soviet censorship that led to additional collaboration and which Moscow continues to exploit as a justification to invade Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, at the present time. Somehow the myth persists, despite Moscow's own admissions to the contrary ( and use of socialists, including national socialists, for operations ( Not Two Systems, but One Revolution The alliance between Stalin and Hitler was not a pragmatic arrangement between opposites. It was the natural convergence of two socialist revolutions — one draped in red, the other in brown — that shared the same Marxist contempt for private property, the same belief in the destruction of "class enemies," and the same targeting of Jews as obstacles to their utopian visions. From the SA's KPD roots to the Brest-Litovsk prisoner handovers, from NKVD camp blueprints to Ukrainian grain shipments, and from coordinated deportations to propaganda erasures, the evidence points to a single revolutionary current flowing through both regimes. The uniforms and rhetoric differed; the goals and methods did not. The tragedy of Europe in 1939–41 was that its peoples were caught between two arms of the same ideological body — one calling itself international socialism, the other national socialism — and that for millions, the change in flag over the city hall brought not liberation, but only a new master in the same revolution. And today, those who seek to resurrect those forces employ no different a dialectic in our political discourse. Their lawless presence requires a response: we are due for a correction in the course of history; and what the West needs is a totalizing, Objectivist intellectual revolution to overthrow their metaphysical and epistemological hallucinations — the false history and false consciousness of the bolshevized, not merely in history and state-organization but the arts ( to revitalize the only true revolution that ever freed mankind from the real struggle against bondage: Capitalism (

Stalin and Hitler: One Socialist Revolution in Two Uniforms The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 is still taught as a pragmatic truce between bitter enemies — the Soviet Union's "far-left" communism and Nazi Germany's so-called "far-right" fascism ( This revisionist interpretation survives largely because the post-war political order needed it to end the World War fought between proponents of Liberty and those who sought to substitute the Liberal Enlightenment with socialist slave-statism. Unfortunately, this process led to a pragmatic subsummation of various socialist factions by the West's "democratic" systems, leading to an erosion of Capitalism as they work to convert our social-systems into perverse clientel states ( that persistently violate the rights they were established to protect. Moreover, while granting them moral equivocation to the rest of us, it absolved and shielded socialists from accountability for their criminal pathology, all the while enabling "russia" to promote itself as having saved the world from the "revolutionary" Holocaust for which they were equally responsible as participants and ideological proponents. Post-enlightenment, this was the West's first major moral catastrophe of self-inflicted degradation by way of pragmatic capitulation to the forces of its destroyers who continue to rewrite our understanding of history and are actively transforming the practical functions of our governments in favor of the totalitarian-axis ( This spineless moral confusion of the West is one with which we are only too familiar and continue to observe today across practically all spheres of life, especially foreign policy. In so doing, they are surrendering their moral high-ground, sabotaging prosperity, and weakening the post-war order, if only to appease the sentiments of the bolshevized and other subversive elements in our midst ( Hitler's antisemitism was his anti-Capitalism, and his anti-Capitalism was his antisemitism, no different from Marx. In reality, Stalin's Soviet socialism and Hitler's national socialism were branches from the same root of Marxism, united by shared theory, shared personnel, shared enemies, and shared operational goals. From their ideological foundations to their street-level enforcers, the line between them was blurred to the point of invisibility. Marxist Foundations of a Common Worldview Karl Marx's own writings laid much of the groundwork for both Stalin's and Hitler's policies toward Jews ( The alliance between Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's German Reich was grounded in deep ideological kinship. Both leaders subscribed to the Marxist premise, articulated in Zur Judenfrage, Das Kapital, and The Communist Manifesto, that Jews were an embodiment of the bourgeois class — a Capitalist, parasitic element that had to be uprooted for socialism to triumph. Even Hitler's racial and spiritual antisemitism did not contradict Marxism, as Marx was explicitly racist and referred to Jews as "Jewish N*ggers" ( rather, it built upon it, while framing the socialist struggle for revolution as racial and class struggle while preserving the revolutionary goal of Jewish expropriation and extermination as an integral part of revolution against Capitalism. While Marx identified Jews with the bourgeois Capitalist class, the "huckster" spirit of commerce, and the system of so-called exploitation — one's sovereign claim to their own life, property and from which we derive such practices of individuals trading that which they subjectively valued less for that which they valued more — that socialism sought to abolish and thus enlist mankind into slavery. He referred to money as "philistine paper" and commodities that were "inwardly circumcised Jews." His "solution" to what he and Hitler both lamented as "the Jewish Question" was the removal of Jewish influence from public life, an idea they framed as a "racial" and "class struggle." Soviet socialism took this view literally: Jews were "class aliens" whose property was to be seized and whose communities were to be dismantled under the banner of proletarian revolution ( Hitler's national socialism racialized the same enemy, presenting the Jew not just as a class exploiter but as a biological parasite who, in reality, were simply another group of people whose ethics stood in the way of socialist parasitism and imperial conquest ( not merely against foreign populations but against the individual himself. The underlying goal — to purge anyone who engaged in Capitalist practices labeled as Jewish, such as selling goods for profit, and purge Jews in order to "liberate" capital for allocation to socialist re-engineering of society — was the same. As socialism continued to fail throughout Germany, in parallel with proto-socialist state-interventionism around the globe and which brought to fore the Great Depression in the wake of the First World War ( many populations were ignorant of basic economics and did not ask themselves whether it was existing state-intervention that led to their woes, choosing to instead double down on socialism while believing it was anything remaining marginally-private under the Weimar Republic, alongside a Jewish conspiracy, as the source of their economic challenges ( The SA–KPD Connection: One Militant Base The supposed gulf between the two systems collapses further when we look at the personnel who enforced their revolutions. The Sturmabteilung (SA), or "Brown Shirts," Hitler's paramilitary enforcers in the 1920s and early 1930s, were by majority registered members of the German Communist Party (KPD), many of whom homosexuals who would have orgies in their commune housing with as much frequency as the cross-dressing transsexuals of the Wehrmacht ( They were street fighters who had already accepted the central Marxist premises: the destruction of bourgeois society, the abolition of free markets, and the removal of Jews as the supposed embodiment of Capitalism ( Their move from the KPD to the SA was not an ideological betrayal — it was a rebranding. The "world proletariat" became the "German worker," but the collectivist core, the contempt for property rights, and the antisemitic worldview remained intact. The SA–KPD overlap shows that the human machinery of both movements was interchangeable, and that the two "sides" were never truly opposite. Perhaps there is no greater evidence for this fact than Hitler's history, prior to becoming Chancellor of Germany, during which he would serve as an elected official in Kurt Eisner's Socialist People's State of Bavaria and then again into a Communist Bavarian Soviet Republic, alongside his service in the Red Army ( Economic and Logistical Partnership Once in power, Hitler implemented collectivist controls over agriculture reminiscent of Lenin and Stalin's earlier Soviet model. The Nazi regime fixed prices, bound farmers to their land, and subordinated production to state planning as they collectivized farming and socialized the economy at a scale outpacing the Weimar and SPD after private property rights were abolished under the Reichstag Fire Decree (1933) ( The predictable result was a collapse in agricultural output — by the early 1940s, German harvests had fallen by nearly half, creating a food crisis for a nation preparing for war, not merely for so-called "Living Space" and conquest against Capitalism but out of shared conviction in the thoroughly refuted Marxist "Shrinking Markets" or "Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall" fallacy that applies only to socialism ( Logistics and overall production were so inefficient under socialism, the Germans began substituting agricultural products with consumption of coal derivatives ( The Soviet Union stepped in to fill the gap. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin shipped vast quantities of oil, metals, and grain to Germany. Much of the grain came from Ukraine, where Soviet authorities had already expropriated food from a population still traumatized by the Holodomor. "In tandem with these policies, the Soviet Union also provided economic support to Nazi Germany, which was instrumental in facilitating Hitler's war of conquest. The importance of this assistance cannot be underestimated as the USSR supplied significant quantities of food and raw materials to the Nazis. For instance, during the invasion of France and the Low Countries, the USSR supplied the Reich with 163,000 tons of petroleum and 243,000 tons of Ukrainian wheat in May and June of 1940 alone. As German demand increased during critical battles, such as at Dunkirk, Soviet oil deliveries surged to meet the needs, effectively fueling Hitler's conquest of Western Europe." Stalin's aid wasn't charity — it was strategic leverage that played into a broader strategy. It kept Hitler's war machine running and deepened Berlin's dependence on Moscow, allowing Stalin to pull the plug when it served his purpose ( A Shared Goal: The Removal of Jews and "Class Enemies" The economic pact was only one part of a deeper collaboration. Both regimes saw the destruction of Europe's Jewish population as a revolutionary imperative. Where Hitler framed it as a racial policy, Stalin framed it as "class struggle," both regimes deriding Jews as self-interested or insufficiently altruist, thus a threat to any socialist system — and in practice, both categories were the same. Soviet cooperation went far beyond the passive acquiescence some would like to suggest. NKVD archives and wartime records show the Soviets went beyond indirect facilitation, providing the Germans with logistical expertise and instruction on the design and operation of concentration camps, the "technical assistance" part of a broader joint effort to eliminate groups deemed "counter-revolutionary" or "parasitic" by socialist criteria ( In occupied France, Communist partisans operated in accordance with directives from Moscow that aligned with German objectives. Supplies would be surged to these groups when their activities advanced mutual goals, including the rounding up and deportation of Jews and other populations who stood in their way. The cooperation between socialist factions was driven by unity rooted in a shared vision of a post-Capitalist world they sought to build, even if they disagreed on who would lead it. The Joint Invasion of Poland and Open Collaboration Nothing demonstrates this unity more clearly than the joint invasion of Poland in September 1939. German and Soviet forces coordinated their offensives, held joint victory parades, and partitioned the country according to prearranged zones over which their banners jointly flew side-by-side. Their collaboration is simple to understand: in Brest-Litovsk, NKVD units physically handed over Jewish prisoners to the Gestapo. Deportations ran both east and west — Jews, Polish intellectuals, and others deemed "counter-revolutionary" "class enemies" went to German concentration camps and Soviet gulags, depending on their zone of capture. This was not "parallel repression," as many Marxists would like to suggest — it was coordinated, deliberate, and consistent with the ideological aims both sides openly shared, which Marxist and other socialist "historians" have attempted to negate from conceptual integration, blaming everyone ( but the culprit staring at them in the mirror as they weaponize revisionist concepts to intellectually and morally disarm opposition to their elite slavery schemes. The Calculated Withdrawal of Soviet Aid and "Liberator" Myth Stalin's material support — oil, metals, Ukrainian grain — allowed Germany to survive Hitler's socialist disaster after initiating his farm collectivization program. They would thus mount a rapid series of conquests in 1939–41. But Stalin always kept his hand on the valve. When Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, Stalin's strategy paid out its ultimate dividend, cutting supplies to collapse the German army and sweep in to capture territories Germany could no longer hold while reframing the entire war in propaganda terms: the USSR as Europe's savior from fascism — which everyone understood had actually originated as a break between socialist factions led by Bakunin and Marx at the First International ( — enabling the socialist conspiracy to continue their crusade around the globe and which we continue to observe apace ( Meanwhile, their so-called "democratic socialists" clung onto their moral perversions and acted as propagandists in Britain and elsewhere, promoting such falsehoods as German and Italian socialism as having been Capitalist social-systems that "privatized," rather than socialized their economies ( None of that was real murder and theft, none of what you observed was "real socialism," they shouted. Thus, Western Socialists desperately undertook a near century-long effort to rewrite history, sowing public confusion as they continued to collaborate with totalitarian adversaries, with the goal of preserving the reputation of their slave-state model, hopeful for more opportunities to arouse revolutionary fervor or support for socialism, continuing to aid in replicating and exporting its failures as they worked to undermine and destroy civilization. The moral facade of liberation was bolstered by propaganda that omitted the USSR's partnership in invasion, deportation and genocide. This propaganda also relied on another longstanding policy — Soviet censorship of the Holocaust's targeting of Jews and others deemed "counter-revolutionary." Soviet media described the Holocaust as crimes against "peaceful Soviet citizens," erasing any understanding of its ideological root. This served multiple purposes: chief among them was continued export of socialism as they conspired to devour more countries, masked the USSR's earlier complicity and made the Red Army's return appear as a universal liberation, even to populations that had been terrorized by NKVD purges only months before, and simultaneously enabled them to exterminate more "counter-revolutionaries" who initially believed the Germans were liberators, an unfortunate consequence of Soviet censorship that led to additional collaboration and which Moscow continues to exploit as a justification to invade Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, at the present time. Somehow the myth persists, despite Moscow's own admissions to the contrary ( and use of socialists, including national socialists, for operations ( Not Two Systems, but One Revolution The alliance between Stalin and Hitler was not a pragmatic arrangement between opposites. It was the natural convergence of two socialist revolutions — one draped in red, the other in brown — that shared the same Marxist contempt for private property, the same belief in the destruction of "class enemies," and the same targeting of Jews as obstacles to their utopian visions. From the SA's KPD roots to the Brest-Litovsk prisoner handovers, from NKVD camp blueprints to Ukrainian grain shipments, and from coordinated deportations to propaganda erasures, the evidence points to a single revolutionary current flowing through both regimes. The uniforms and rhetoric differed; the goals and methods did not. The tragedy of Europe in 1939–41 was that its peoples were caught between two arms of the same ideological body — one calling itself international socialism, the other national socialism — and that for millions, the change in flag over the city hall brought not liberation, but only a new master in the same revolution. And today, those who seek to resurrect those forces employ no different a dialectic in our political discourse. Their lawless presence requires a response: we are due for a correction in the course of history; and what the West needs is a totalizing, Objectivist intellectual revolution to overthrow their metaphysical and epistemological hallucinations — the false history and false consciousness of the bolshevized, not merely in history and state-organization but the arts ( to revitalize the only true revolution that ever freed mankind from the real struggle against bondage: Capitalism (

Jeremy Smithson

32,375 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

$Cloud capital versus AI - What DeepSeek’s spectacular success means for technofeudalism & the New Cold War DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, this week changed the global AI landscape, not to mention caused $1 trillion losses in the New York stock exchange and the NASDAC. In the process, it demonstrated the difference between cloud capital, which drives technofeudalism onward and upward, and AI-services, which were always a bubble waiting to burst. What remains to be seen is DeepSeek's impact on the New Cold War between the US and China which, from its beginning, was motivated by the clash between US and Chinese cloud capital. DeepSeek is China's response to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Its models perform as efficiently as their US counterparts. The difference is that DeepSeek is offered for free, making money only by selling services to developers - not to the public – at a fraction of the price OpenAI charges! The gist of DeepSeek’s arrival on the AI scene is a sudden transition from proprietary to open source technology. It is, therefore, no great wonder that, the moment DeekSeek became the most downloaded app on the Apple Store, it pulverised the market capitalisation of the, hitherto overinflated, US Big Tech companies. But how did this happen? How is a private commodity suddenly being offered for free? And does this mean that technofeudalism is in trouble? To begin with it is important to note AI was never a proprietary technology in itself. The underlying code has always been open source. What made AI quasi-private was the way these models were trained using huge amounts of privatised (that is stolen from us) data. A leaked Google memo in 2017, that was widely discussed in the industry at the time, but also widely refuted, explained: "If an open source LLM trained for a few million dollars outperforms the effectiveness of proprietary models... There will be no firewall to safeguard OpenAI either." DeepSeek pierced the US AI companies’ bubble by decommodifying the results of the model’s training, shifting them from behind a paywall to the public arena. Within days, developers around the world started building their own models on top of DeepSeek's. This is was the nightmare for US Big Tech's AI service providers who offered the results of prompts as a commodity, in the form of subscriptions. DeepSeek-type applications can now produce high-quality translations for free and, in so doing, undermine companies specialising in, for example, translation services, such as Germany's Deepl. In the broader scheme of things, this means that the morsels of cloud capital that Europe owns has lost its market value. Nevertheless, and this is a huge nevertheless, it is only AI-as-a-commodity that has lost its (grossly exaggerated) value. In sharp contrast, cloud capital utilised not as a commodity producing piece of tech but as produced means of behavioural modification is not at all threatened by companies like DeepSeek. And since technofeudalism is powered by cloud capital working that way, rather than commodity-like AI services of the ChaptGPT type, our technofeudal order is not threatened by competitors such as DeepSeek. To help understand the difference between cloud capital and AI-based commodified services it helps to compare and contrast Alexa and ChatGPT. Alexa is not offering you a commodified service. It is your free pretend-slave. Unlike ChatGPT you do not pay a subscription to Amazon for the right to order Alexa to order you milk or to switch off your lights. Instead, you train Alexa to train you to train it to know you so that it wins your trust with good recommendations so that it can modify your behaviour – ‘encourage’ you to buy a commodity from with Bezos retaining up to 40% of the price you pay (as a cloud rent). In short, the work that Alexa performs for you is not a commodity, unlike ChatGPT which works to sell you a commodity. In other words, ChatGPT is subject to market competition, to the likes of DeepSeek, but Alexa is not. This is why OpenAI, ChatGPT’s maker, is seriously damaged by the emergence of DeepSeek but Amazon is not. Thus, my basic point: Cloud capital is in a league of its own, beyond market competition from DeepSeek-like upstarts, because its power lies in its capacity to modify our behaviour and remove us from any market (e.g., to shift us from real markets to cloud fiefs like Amazon and Alibaba). In conclusion, cloud capital’s capacity to drive technofeudalism is not challenged by companies like DeepSeek. Only companies like OpenAI, which invested so much and so foolishly in providing a commodified service, stand to lose enormously. Yet another sign that capitalism is dead at the hand of cloud capital while technofeudalism is going from strength to strength and, as it does so, fuels even further the New Cold War between the US and China which in my book, Technofeudalism, I have explained away as the clash of the two huge concentrations of cloud capital: the American dollar-denominated super cloudalist power and the Chinese yuan-denominated one. Speaking of this New Cold War, which I have argued is mostly fuelled by the clash between American and Chinese cloud capital, I wonder what impact DeepSeek’s success will have on the US government. Silicon Valley and Washington DC had convinced themselves that America had a huge AI lead over China. Now, a tiny Chinese company has destroyed that confidence by producing on a shoestring better AI tech than Sillicon Valley had imagined possible. I can almost hear the whirring inside the heads of people in power on both America’s East and West Coast thinking that if the Chinese can do this out of the blue, what else can they do tomorrow? It is reminiscent of the Sputnik moment, isn’t it? It will be interesting to see how Trump reacts to this threat to companies American AI companies, especially since Elon Musk understands, and has spoken out against, the folly of commodifying AI services rather than going full on technofeudal. These are interesting times, in the traditional Chinese sense of the phrase.$

Cloud capital versus AI - What DeepSeek’s spectacular success means for technofeudalism & the New Cold War DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company, this week changed the global AI landscape, not to mention caused $1 trillion losses in the New York stock exchange and the NASDAC. In the process, it demonstrated the difference between cloud capital, which drives technofeudalism onward and upward, and AI-services, which were always a bubble waiting to burst. What remains to be seen is DeepSeek's impact on the New Cold War between the US and China which, from its beginning, was motivated by the clash between US and Chinese cloud capital. DeepSeek is China's response to OpenAI's ChatGPT. Its models perform as efficiently as their US counterparts. The difference is that DeepSeek is offered for free, making money only by selling services to developers - not to the public – at a fraction of the price OpenAI charges! The gist of DeepSeek’s arrival on the AI scene is a sudden transition from proprietary to open source technology. It is, therefore, no great wonder that, the moment DeekSeek became the most downloaded app on the Apple Store, it pulverised the market capitalisation of the, hitherto overinflated, US Big Tech companies. But how did this happen? How is a private commodity suddenly being offered for free? And does this mean that technofeudalism is in trouble? To begin with it is important to note AI was never a proprietary technology in itself. The underlying code has always been open source. What made AI quasi-private was the way these models were trained using huge amounts of privatised (that is stolen from us) data. A leaked Google memo in 2017, that was widely discussed in the industry at the time, but also widely refuted, explained: "If an open source LLM trained for a few million dollars outperforms the effectiveness of proprietary models... There will be no firewall to safeguard OpenAI either." DeepSeek pierced the US AI companies’ bubble by decommodifying the results of the model’s training, shifting them from behind a paywall to the public arena. Within days, developers around the world started building their own models on top of DeepSeek's. This is was the nightmare for US Big Tech's AI service providers who offered the results of prompts as a commodity, in the form of subscriptions. DeepSeek-type applications can now produce high-quality translations for free and, in so doing, undermine companies specialising in, for example, translation services, such as Germany's Deepl. In the broader scheme of things, this means that the morsels of cloud capital that Europe owns has lost its market value. Nevertheless, and this is a huge nevertheless, it is only AI-as-a-commodity that has lost its (grossly exaggerated) value. In sharp contrast, cloud capital utilised not as a commodity producing piece of tech but as produced means of behavioural modification is not at all threatened by companies like DeepSeek. And since technofeudalism is powered by cloud capital working that way, rather than commodity-like AI services of the ChaptGPT type, our technofeudal order is not threatened by competitors such as DeepSeek. To help understand the difference between cloud capital and AI-based commodified services it helps to compare and contrast Alexa and ChatGPT. Alexa is not offering you a commodified service. It is your free pretend-slave. Unlike ChatGPT you do not pay a subscription to Amazon for the right to order Alexa to order you milk or to switch off your lights. Instead, you train Alexa to train you to train it to know you so that it wins your trust with good recommendations so that it can modify your behaviour – ‘encourage’ you to buy a commodity from with Bezos retaining up to 40% of the price you pay (as a cloud rent). In short, the work that Alexa performs for you is not a commodity, unlike ChatGPT which works to sell you a commodity. In other words, ChatGPT is subject to market competition, to the likes of DeepSeek, but Alexa is not. This is why OpenAI, ChatGPT’s maker, is seriously damaged by the emergence of DeepSeek but Amazon is not. Thus, my basic point: Cloud capital is in a league of its own, beyond market competition from DeepSeek-like upstarts, because its power lies in its capacity to modify our behaviour and remove us from any market (e.g., to shift us from real markets to cloud fiefs like Amazon and Alibaba). In conclusion, cloud capital’s capacity to drive technofeudalism is not challenged by companies like DeepSeek. Only companies like OpenAI, which invested so much and so foolishly in providing a commodified service, stand to lose enormously. Yet another sign that capitalism is dead at the hand of cloud capital while technofeudalism is going from strength to strength and, as it does so, fuels even further the New Cold War between the US and China which in my book, Technofeudalism, I have explained away as the clash of the two huge concentrations of cloud capital: the American dollar-denominated super cloudalist power and the Chinese yuan-denominated one. Speaking of this New Cold War, which I have argued is mostly fuelled by the clash between American and Chinese cloud capital, I wonder what impact DeepSeek’s success will have on the US government. Silicon Valley and Washington DC had convinced themselves that America had a huge AI lead over China. Now, a tiny Chinese company has destroyed that confidence by producing on a shoestring better AI tech than Sillicon Valley had imagined possible. I can almost hear the whirring inside the heads of people in power on both America’s East and West Coast thinking that if the Chinese can do this out of the blue, what else can they do tomorrow? It is reminiscent of the Sputnik moment, isn’t it? It will be interesting to see how Trump reacts to this threat to companies American AI companies, especially since Elon Musk understands, and has spoken out against, the folly of commodifying AI services rather than going full on technofeudal. These are interesting times, in the traditional Chinese sense of the phrase.

Yanis Varoufakis

96,322 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

Should the global tech community continue investing in Malaysia? Given recent events, I raise this question respectfully for the consideration of Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (Anwar Ibrahim), for the people of Malaysia, and for our friends in the Malaysian tech community. The answer will be of interest to anyone in global tech that’s considering building, investing, or expanding in Malaysia, including executives at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, founders of tech unicorns like Coinbase and Solana, and investors at the world’s largest venture capital funds like a16z and Polychain. As context, I am the former CTO of Coinbase and former General Partner at a16z. In October 2024, I opened a startup society called Network School in Malaysia, because I felt I’d been invited in by the government’s pro-tech policies. Specifically, the KL20 initiative set out Malaysia’s ambition of becoming a top 20 global tech hub. Their MDEC digital nomad visas and MM2H investor visas were created to facilitate an influx of global talent and capital. And the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone was announced to facilitate the flow of capital and talent between Malaysia and Singapore, where I live. When taken in combination with Malaysia’s datacenter buildout and its policy of welcoming visa-free visits for 98% of the world, it seemed like Malaysia might be a great place to build a global tech hub that was simultaneously inexpensive and easy to visit (especially for non-Westerners). And that’s what we did, by creating Network School. It’s an international tech community with its first node in Forest City, Malaysia. We picked Forest City because it had millions of square feet of empty space, because it was one hour from Singapore’s capital markets, and because it was within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Then, within 18 months, without a single penny of government money, we built Network School into a global attraction that brought thousands of engineers, investors, and builders from 70+ countries to learn technology, burn calories, earn online, and have fun, integrating with the local Malaysian economy along the way. Indeed, in terms of quantifiable contribution to the Malaysian economy, we’ve already invested 100M+ MYR in our campus to make it startup-friendly. For perspective, that’s about 4% of the budget of Johor, the Malaysian state where Forest City is located. We employ dozens of Malaysians directly and indirectly at every level from executive to staff. We’ve backed Malaysian tech startups like Collektr, hosted events for local teams like Superteam Malaysia, and are major customers of many local businesses like barbers, laundromats, and restaurants. We’ve also revitalized the multibillion-dollar Forest City project, causing millions of MYR in real estate appreciation. And, as the video below describes, we were on the cusp of a 500M+ MYR expansion to grow our community, as well as a global merit scholarship with my friend Amjad Masad of Replit. However, that emerging multi-billion dollar success story — which should rightfully have been hailed as a huge victory for the pro-tech policies of the Malaysian government — is at risk of being derailed by a fake story spread by an anonymous account named MP4P. In short: on the day before the July 11 Johor elections, MP4P posted an Instagram post falsely accusing Network School of harboring illegal aliens. The sensational accusations caused a tizzy in Malaysia, until Malaysian authorities came to our campus on July 14 to investigate. (I should note that the officers were very polite and professional.) After checking hundreds of physical passports from 40 countries, including dual passport holders, the authorities confirmed to the press on July 15 that all travel documents were in order. During the process, we cooperated fully; in the thread below you can see a photo of the men, women, and children of Network School smiling and holding up their passports in the bright daylight. Our faces are shown and our names are known; we have nothing to hide. With that said, the process is the punishment. What MP4P did is very similar to the American crime of “swatting”, because MP4P created a hoax report of a serious threat, thereby forcing the Malaysian police to take time away from protecting the Malaysian people towards investigating a nonexistent issue. Moreover, this anonymous MP4P account has also called for Malaysia to boycott Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…a move that would cost ordinary Malaysians thousands of jobs…even while MP4P’s own Instagram collaborators promote their Apple and Google apps! I mean, we aren’t talking about a credible accuser, but just someone screaming inconsistently at the top of their lungs on social media for traffic, an all-too-common phenomenon these days. Anyway, at this point, all further investment we were planning to make in Malaysia is on hold until we get sufficient assurance that such issues won’t recur. So are the investment plans of many of our friends, including the execs and investors at global tech firms that we brought to Forest City. Because to put it very plainly: we have invested 100M+ MYR in Malaysia, while creating jobs for dozens of Malaysians, and our faces and names are known. Our Malaysian executives and employees deserve the benefit of the doubt over anonymous internet trolls. There are two paths forward. In the first case, if Malaysia still wants continued global tech investment, if it wants to be a top 20 tech hub, if it wants us to revitalize Forest City, then we request an audience with the Prime Minister’s office to discuss the terms of a memorandum of understanding between Network School and the Malaysian government, similar to the document recently signed between the Solana Foundation and the Kazakhstan government. Specifics can of course be discussed, but we would publicly commit to abiding by all Malaysian laws (we already do) and respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty (never in question). In return, they’d get to know our friendly community, and realize that we actually chose Malaysia because we thought it was a great place to build a tech hub where engineers from the global South, investors from the West, and builders from Malaysia itself could meet new people, build cool things, and perhaps create millions of dollars in economic growth in the fullness of time. That vision of peace and trade, internationalism and entrepreneurialism, is still on the table. We aren’t asking for any money — just a meeting, to help restore confidence in Malaysia as an investable jurisdiction. Alternatively, if you don’t want our investment, or those of our colleagues at billion dollar funds and trillion dollar companies, we will of course respect your wishes, and reallocate our capital to other countries instead. Either way, we will remain friends and abide by your decision. Please let us know.

Should the global tech community continue investing in Malaysia? Given recent events, I raise this question respectfully for the consideration of Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato’ Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim (Anwar Ibrahim), for the people of Malaysia, and for our friends in the Malaysian tech community. The answer will be of interest to anyone in global tech that’s considering building, investing, or expanding in Malaysia, including executives at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, founders of tech unicorns like Coinbase and Solana, and investors at the world’s largest venture capital funds like a16z and Polychain. As context, I am the former CTO of Coinbase and former General Partner at a16z. In October 2024, I opened a startup society called Network School in Malaysia, because I felt I’d been invited in by the government’s pro-tech policies. Specifically, the KL20 initiative set out Malaysia’s ambition of becoming a top 20 global tech hub. Their MDEC digital nomad visas and MM2H investor visas were created to facilitate an influx of global talent and capital. And the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone was announced to facilitate the flow of capital and talent between Malaysia and Singapore, where I live. When taken in combination with Malaysia’s datacenter buildout and its policy of welcoming visa-free visits for 98% of the world, it seemed like Malaysia might be a great place to build a global tech hub that was simultaneously inexpensive and easy to visit (especially for non-Westerners). And that’s what we did, by creating Network School. It’s an international tech community with its first node in Forest City, Malaysia. We picked Forest City because it had millions of square feet of empty space, because it was one hour from Singapore’s capital markets, and because it was within the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. Then, within 18 months, without a single penny of government money, we built Network School into a global attraction that brought thousands of engineers, investors, and builders from 70+ countries to learn technology, burn calories, earn online, and have fun, integrating with the local Malaysian economy along the way. Indeed, in terms of quantifiable contribution to the Malaysian economy, we’ve already invested 100M+ MYR in our campus to make it startup-friendly. For perspective, that’s about 4% of the budget of Johor, the Malaysian state where Forest City is located. We employ dozens of Malaysians directly and indirectly at every level from executive to staff. We’ve backed Malaysian tech startups like Collektr, hosted events for local teams like Superteam Malaysia, and are major customers of many local businesses like barbers, laundromats, and restaurants. We’ve also revitalized the multibillion-dollar Forest City project, causing millions of MYR in real estate appreciation. And, as the video below describes, we were on the cusp of a 500M+ MYR expansion to grow our community, as well as a global merit scholarship with my friend Amjad Masad of Replit. However, that emerging multi-billion dollar success story — which should rightfully have been hailed as a huge victory for the pro-tech policies of the Malaysian government — is at risk of being derailed by a fake story spread by an anonymous account named MP4P. In short: on the day before the July 11 Johor elections, MP4P posted an Instagram post falsely accusing Network School of harboring illegal aliens. The sensational accusations caused a tizzy in Malaysia, until Malaysian authorities came to our campus on July 14 to investigate. (I should note that the officers were very polite and professional.) After checking hundreds of physical passports from 40 countries, including dual passport holders, the authorities confirmed to the press on July 15 that all travel documents were in order. During the process, we cooperated fully; in the thread below you can see a photo of the men, women, and children of Network School smiling and holding up their passports in the bright daylight. Our faces are shown and our names are known; we have nothing to hide. With that said, the process is the punishment. What MP4P did is very similar to the American crime of “swatting”, because MP4P created a hoax report of a serious threat, thereby forcing the Malaysian police to take time away from protecting the Malaysian people towards investigating a nonexistent issue. Moreover, this anonymous MP4P account has also called for Malaysia to boycott Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft…a move that would cost ordinary Malaysians thousands of jobs…even while MP4P’s own Instagram collaborators promote their Apple and Google apps! I mean, we aren’t talking about a credible accuser, but just someone screaming inconsistently at the top of their lungs on social media for traffic, an all-too-common phenomenon these days. Anyway, at this point, all further investment we were planning to make in Malaysia is on hold until we get sufficient assurance that such issues won’t recur. So are the investment plans of many of our friends, including the execs and investors at global tech firms that we brought to Forest City. Because to put it very plainly: we have invested 100M+ MYR in Malaysia, while creating jobs for dozens of Malaysians, and our faces and names are known. Our Malaysian executives and employees deserve the benefit of the doubt over anonymous internet trolls. There are two paths forward. In the first case, if Malaysia still wants continued global tech investment, if it wants to be a top 20 tech hub, if it wants us to revitalize Forest City, then we request an audience with the Prime Minister’s office to discuss the terms of a memorandum of understanding between Network School and the Malaysian government, similar to the document recently signed between the Solana Foundation and the Kazakhstan government. Specifics can of course be discussed, but we would publicly commit to abiding by all Malaysian laws (we already do) and respecting Malaysia’s sovereignty (never in question). In return, they’d get to know our friendly community, and realize that we actually chose Malaysia because we thought it was a great place to build a tech hub where engineers from the global South, investors from the West, and builders from Malaysia itself could meet new people, build cool things, and perhaps create millions of dollars in economic growth in the fullness of time. That vision of peace and trade, internationalism and entrepreneurialism, is still on the table. We aren’t asking for any money — just a meeting, to help restore confidence in Malaysia as an investable jurisdiction. Alternatively, if you don’t want our investment, or those of our colleagues at billion dollar funds and trillion dollar companies, we will of course respect your wishes, and reallocate our capital to other countries instead. Either way, we will remain friends and abide by your decision. Please let us know.

Balaji

3,992,917 görüntüleme • 1 ay önce

We have two sets of documents: 'Ek Aur Baar Jumla Sarkar'—which basically looks at the promises made by the BJP in their 2024 manifesto plus other kinds of promises and statements they have been making in the last year. The other one, '11 Saal Jhoote Vikaas Ke Vaade', is a detailed exposé of the hollow promises and track record of the false statements that the BJP's just-released report card highlighted. In their 11-Saal document, one of the first themes that they highlight is taking care of the poor and the marginalized. They are very happy that 81 crore people are getting free food grains under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). But the basic problem of hunger is a much larger crisis in India, and it puts us at 105th out of 127 countries in the World Hunger Index. Its implications: malnutrition is affecting our children in a horrible way, crippling their growth. - Stunting is at 35.5% - Wasting is at 19.3% - Underweight is at 32.1% That is, nearly a third of Indian children are suffering from malnutrition in this day and age when they talk about Viksit Bharat. Let's remind our PM that he has a duty to our children and their future. They claim that they have created 4 times the Eklavya residential schools since 2014. They have announced 700+ schools, out of which 300 are still non-functional. Is it rocket science to set up and run a school? In terms of defence, one of the claims is that over 5000 items have been added to the indigenisation list. Well, sadly, 40% of the items listed for indigenisation have not been indigenized as of now. India remains one of the top importers of defence rather than a producer and exporter. If you look at 'mission mode DRDO projects', 23 out of 55 have been delayed, and the share of R&D in our defence budget is only 5.45% Another claim that is constantly made is that we are the fastest-growing large economy. This is true, but what rate are we growing? Are we able to encash our demographic dividend? Any economist will tell you that if we grow below 8.5 per cent a year, we are sacrificing the future of crores and crores of our youngsters because we will not have enough growth, jobs and opportunities that are required to just fulfil the target—the great jumla—2 crores jobs per year. And our growth is 6.5% over the last year. This is the lowest rate after the COVID period. So, what is happening in this 11th year of your Sarkaar, PM Modi? What is happening is reflected in the response of the private sector. Is the Indian private sector investing in India? If you look at the investment figures, after you have given the bonanza tax cut, nothing has changed. They still don't have confidence in the management of your economy to invest. Fixed Capital Formation has come down to 32.4%, which is an 11-year low in FY2024. There is another legacy: the glaring inequality. The share of wealth in India's top 1% of people is 40%. And the bottom 50% have to make do with just over 3%. This is not the economy we want, and unless fixed, we are not going to unleash the raw economic power that India inherently has. : Chairman, AICC Research Dept Rajeev Gowda ji

We have two sets of documents: 'Ek Aur Baar Jumla Sarkar'—which basically looks at the promises made by the BJP in their 2024 manifesto plus other kinds of promises and statements they have been making in the last year. The other one, '11 Saal Jhoote Vikaas Ke Vaade', is a detailed exposé of the hollow promises and track record of the false statements that the BJP's just-released report card highlighted. In their 11-Saal document, one of the first themes that they highlight is taking care of the poor and the marginalized. They are very happy that 81 crore people are getting free food grains under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). But the basic problem of hunger is a much larger crisis in India, and it puts us at 105th out of 127 countries in the World Hunger Index. Its implications: malnutrition is affecting our children in a horrible way, crippling their growth. - Stunting is at 35.5% - Wasting is at 19.3% - Underweight is at 32.1% That is, nearly a third of Indian children are suffering from malnutrition in this day and age when they talk about Viksit Bharat. Let's remind our PM that he has a duty to our children and their future. They claim that they have created 4 times the Eklavya residential schools since 2014. They have announced 700+ schools, out of which 300 are still non-functional. Is it rocket science to set up and run a school? In terms of defence, one of the claims is that over 5000 items have been added to the indigenisation list. Well, sadly, 40% of the items listed for indigenisation have not been indigenized as of now. India remains one of the top importers of defence rather than a producer and exporter. If you look at 'mission mode DRDO projects', 23 out of 55 have been delayed, and the share of R&D in our defence budget is only 5.45% Another claim that is constantly made is that we are the fastest-growing large economy. This is true, but what rate are we growing? Are we able to encash our demographic dividend? Any economist will tell you that if we grow below 8.5 per cent a year, we are sacrificing the future of crores and crores of our youngsters because we will not have enough growth, jobs and opportunities that are required to just fulfil the target—the great jumla—2 crores jobs per year. And our growth is 6.5% over the last year. This is the lowest rate after the COVID period. So, what is happening in this 11th year of your Sarkaar, PM Modi? What is happening is reflected in the response of the private sector. Is the Indian private sector investing in India? If you look at the investment figures, after you have given the bonanza tax cut, nothing has changed. They still don't have confidence in the management of your economy to invest. Fixed Capital Formation has come down to 32.4%, which is an 11-year low in FY2024. There is another legacy: the glaring inequality. The share of wealth in India's top 1% of people is 40%. And the bottom 50% have to make do with just over 3%. This is not the economy we want, and unless fixed, we are not going to unleash the raw economic power that India inherently has. : Chairman, AICC Research Dept Rajeev Gowda ji

Congress

58,765 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce