A Thai court has ordered the dissolution of the reformist party which won the most seats and votes in last yearās election - but was blocked from forming a government.
The ruling also banned Move Forwardās charismatic, young former leader Pita Limjaroenrat and 10 other senior figures from politics for 10 years.
The verdict from the Constitutional Court was expected, after its ruling in January that Move Forwardās campaign promise to change royal defamation laws was unconstitutional.
Honestly even thatās ambitious. The really dangerous mines with lots of forced or child labour are artisanal ones run by small-time gangsters. Roughly speaking, they sell to some sort of local fence, who sells to a regional company theyāre connected with, who sells to a national subsidiary that can maintain a rough appearance of propriety when the guys from Apple Silicon come to visit. Every once in a while a journalist traces the chain from end to end, and the Western company says āthatās horrible, we had no ideaā with as straight a face as they can muster and cuts out all involved players immediately. Itās a big branching network, though, so thereās lots of people to pick up the slack. Maybe somebody goes to jail, but the rest will slip away and may well start up a new operation thatās the exact same thing.
The sad thing is, I donāt know if it can work any other way. Apple could never openly sign off on the conditions that are just standard in poor countries (actually, wasnāt there a scandal exactly like that?), and nobodyās about to give distant brown people free ergonomic equipment for their sweatshops. If you want poor countries to get on the development path, this is the deal basically, and slavery and other awful things tend to slip in along with that.
Terrified might be overselling it. Thatās like saying ordinary Westerners are terrified of nuclear warfare. Sure, it scares them, but do they really viscerally believe itās not just a thing on TV?
Iām reminded of that article where the author gets called in for a consultation with hedge fund guys about bunker planning, and theyāre asking if, like, they can force their guards to obey them with shock collars. Hopefully you can tell how dumb that is. They donāt know what they donāt know, and have had smoke blown up their ass by wannabes for so long they wonāt until itās too late.
I think it is extraordinary, but I also think I have a pretty good picture of how it works. Itās more sad than dramatic.
I think our disagreement here is pretty narrow, about how covert the coverup really is. But when you say you āhave a pretty good picture of how it works,ā I have to ask if you know anything about who is currently supplying children for the ultra-wealthyās sexual entertainment. If you donāt know, if itās not generally known, then I think that means there is a covert network that does its best to stay hidden.
If you think thatās somehow no longer happening any more, then I think you really donāt understand how the world works. People like that do not give up their indulgences easily.
You may simply think Iām ascribing more planning and coordination than I really am, and that would just be a miscommunication. However, I do think there are definitely some small number of people who put a lot of thought into how to get away with this, and theyāve largely succeeded for decades.
A journalist could get to the bottom of the coltan mining trade and expose one chain there, but how do you think theyād fare exposing the latest Epstein-style network? Do you think theyād live through it?
Yeah, thatās true, but my point was even in the worst-case scenario that consequences really did happen to someone, it would be a middleman, and thatās by design. Epstein was no different in that respect.
There was a guy on some news network around 2020 when people were panicking about Bernie Sanders and his nefarious communist plot to destroy America, and one guy was talking about how there was a time when he was really scared the communists would come in and kill all the rich people and he mightāve been one of those people strung up in Times Square. He certainly sounded terrified to me. Like Iām sure it was partly crocodile tears, but also you donāt pull that story from nowhere. Thatās obviously something he thinks about.
I mean, I wouldnāt say Iām always actively terrified of being hit by a train, but I take steps to avoid it. Thatās what I mean - they know itās a threat.
This is tangential, but itās my biggest issue with what youāve said. Poor countries all over the globe are made and kept poor by colonialism which rolled into modern capitalist imperialism. Africa in particular has been particularly brutally invaded, pillaged and oppressed for centuries. The most recent mechanisms by which this is done have been the World Bank and the IMF sucking them into predatory loans with structural adjustment policies that are calculated to keep them poor and strip them of vital infrastructure.
The cheap labour isnāt some natural transitional state between āundevelopedā and ādevelopedā. It is an imposed condition, and the only time such countries ādevelopā and improve their station is when the working class organises and forces change to happen. It is never handed down from above or a natural outworking of wealth flowing in from the market. The market is structured to ensure that any wealth that flows in from the exploitation of cheap labour is kept in the hands of a few and siphoned back out as quickly as possible.
This is very similar to the way that the working class is kept in a state of poverty by capitalists within their own countries, and oppressed by the state and the legal system. This is the situation that allows wealthy people to prey upon the children of poorer people with relative immunity. The girls are often plied with money, and if they do go to the police, what do they say? āTrump raped me on Epsteinās private jet?ā The cops wonāt touch that, and the wealthy know they wonāt touch it. We know it because that testimony exists and it hasnāt gone anywhere. Even if a detective took the case, heād wind up at the bottom of a river before too long.
Iām not saying this is a āconspiracyā in the sense that this entire situation is engineered just to get young girls, itās evolved over centuries to maintain power, and the powerful will take advantage of it every way they can.
I donāt expect there is such an open practice, to be clear. I donāt really buy the pizzagate stuff.
Itās not impossible there was a third coconspirator that got away. Itās possible Epstein had competition, too, and of course itās possible someone has taken his place. I donāt know which drug dealers billionares use, either, although Iām pretty sure they donāt sit around discussing how to hide their collective drug use.
I basically just disagree. The conventional economic interpretation makes plenty of sense, matches the figures and my anecdotal experiences, and places like South Korea have made this exact trip already.
Thereās neoimperialism too, but the difference it makes from our end amounts to pennies. If we can crush the corruption Africa will develop a bit faster, not overnight. When someone over there wants a computer, they go to the West to buy it, not because theyāre forced to but because they donāt have the infrastructure and institutional experience to build such a thing themselves.
Itās fascinating to me that your example was South Korea. Thatās literally the place I had in mind when I talked about the working class organising to better their lives. They have deeply militant unions.
You know they had an honest to goodness general strike in 1997, right? And that they were specifically striking over laws that would legalise strikebreaking? Thatās going to have a tectonic effect on the quality of life of workers in general. They fought hard for their pay increases and got them. Thatās not attributable to market forces. Striking is literally a breakdown in market behaviour, where the bosses have squeezed so hard and so unfairly that the workers have to withdraw their labour in order to get what they need.
And every single workerās benefit we enjoy today was a function of labour activism. 8 hour days, the weekend, child labour laws, OSHA, I could go on. And all of those benefits are actively fought against by the ruling class because they erode their power over us and raise our wages.
Also, orthodox economics is basically the managerial class being funded by the owning class to come up with post-hoc justifications for why they should keep their wealth. Itās not scientific in the slightest. The Economist is basically neoliberal propaganda.
Chomskyās Manufacturing Consent goes into this in some detail, about the forces that act to ensure that the dominant media narrative caters to the ruling class on all levels, and he has talked extensively on how this process works in academia as well. I forget if the academic discussion is a large part of the documentary, but itās well worth watching anyway. Itās free on youtube: https://youtu.be/BQXsPU25B60
Alsoā¦ if you really think the Epstein network was just two or three peopleā¦ I mean wow. You know authorities seized a bunch of blackmail from his island, video of rich people with kids, and it has never surfaced since? Those same authorities ruled his death a suicide, because theyāre doing their best, honest, but they just canāt seem to find that missing collective brain cell that would let them figure out the blindingly obvious. Was that the one guy arranging that too?
Iām not saying the ultra wealthy run the network themselves, thatās what Iāve literally been saying they donāt do. The difference is if they got caught actually doing the deed, if would be a very different matter, because you physically cannot do that via proxy. Thatās how the blackmail can exist, and why it was covered up.
Oh and to answer your question about who their drug dealers are, they have middlemen for that as well. Personal assistants who are on call for anything the client needs, who will readily break the law rather than disappoint a client, and whose instructions are generally vague enough that any legal risk falls on the assistant. Again: diffusion of responsibllity.
Donāt kid yourself, the society of the wealthy and powerful is rotten to the core, just as it was in the days of monarchy. They just have better cover for it nowadays. Itās no longer the divine right of kings, but the invisible hand of the market.
It was a right-wing dictatorship up until that date, with the main union loyal to them. There was a reason so many sided with the North. Struggle against it later on took that shape of labour activism, which is interesting and new to me, but to say that industrialisation, which happened starting in the 60s, is due to labour organisation canāt be and isnāt correct. South Korean work hours are still famously insanely long, too.
As someone who actually understands a good chunk of it, no. Itās a strong theory with strong predictions. Maybe you should try it before you knock it. That magazine is just magazine, not a journal or anything related to the field.
Iām not familiar with the law of the area, but donāt they have to be able to prove it in order to rule it a homicide? I donāt believe in conspiracy theories in general, and doubt Iāll believe the one youāre proposing in specific until that changes.
Which dictator do you mean? The democracy movement and the June struggle was in 1987, 10 years before the general strike.
Also, neoliberal capitalism is very, very happy with right wing dictators because they love oppressing workers and lowering wages. Just look at Pinochet in Chile.
And again the June struggle was won by popular struggle, not market forces. The idea that the unions supported the dictator is a weird one too. Like, where are you getting that, and is there any evidence they werenāt just yellow unions approved by the dictator?
Even then I donāt know why you brought those things up. You just added a bunch of details and I guess assumed those details - some of which were very wrong - were somehow in support of some point, but you didnāt say what that point is.
And I donāt know why you think Iām talking about industrialisation when I talk about workers improving their lives. That is not at all what Iām talking about. And industrialisation isnāt a capitalist thing, they just happen to coincide in human history. We donāt have alternative Earths to test the idea, so crediting the gains of industrialisation to the market and capitalism is weird. You just put that out there completely unsupported.
Thatās another thing neoliberal economists love to do, just blame all the problems of capitalism on unions and regulations, and credit every good thing that happens on the glorious invisible hand.
And since you understand a good amount of economics, perhaps you can tell me what is the scientific basis of supply & demand for instance? Iāve looked for this information and had people try to show me, but theyāve never actually shown it. Itās a fundamental part of economics so Iām told. What is the science behind it? The perfectly straight, perpendicular bisecting lines on an unscaled graph do not suggest any scientific basis to me, they suggest the aesthetics of science devoid of its substance. If you could disabuse me of this notion then perhaps I could move on from my current woeful ignorance on the matter.
And finally, you donāt think thereās any conspiracy around Epstein, fine. I bet itās easy to maintain that idea when you just ignore all the evidence I gave you.
My SK history is fuzzy, Iāll admit. I knew it was authoritarian up until recently (which is why the North had support), and started developing earlier. I searched the rest. If I misunderstood the exact dates my apologies.
Yup, no argument. Iām still team eat the rich.
Iām sure thatās exactly what they were. No argument.
The point I was defending there is just that tiger economies work based on trade. The early USSR achieved the same thing by importing a bunch of ready-made US factories, and working from there. The West obviously did it very slowly and painfully over a couple centuries, with no outside competition. Japan sounds like it might have been a mix of the former three. That covers every successful example of development I know of.
I have trouble imagining a pre-industrial society that would beat the one we have for standard of living, so I think itās pretty synonymous with development, which is what this tangent was about.
Youāre right, thereās no alternative Earth to test. I suspect markets, ācapitalistā or not, are the only practical way to do it, but thatās just my guess.
Yeah, itās not supposed to be real, itās the simplified āno friction in a vacuumā case. The theory still roughly works (and seems to hold empirically) as long as the system is convex. If itās not, funny, bad things happen and you get Google, and market failure which roughly corresponds to enshittification. We had a whole historical period about breaking up monopolies, but unfortunately weāve backtracked, especially when computers are involved. Politicians are mostly old and afraid of computers.
Have I linked the yardsale model yet? Hmm, yes, but not to you. Behold, the economics reason for mass inequality. To go back to my recurring theme, itās dumb. The rich would much rather be called evil geniuses - a lot of them think of themselves that way - but theyāre not even.
Okay, so I think weāre largely in agreement except for a little misunderstanding. Iām glad because that means you might be a little more receptive to some of the stuff I might share. I have more links but Iām writing this novella on my phone if you can believe it. Iāll share them later.
My criticism about the professional class being paid by the owning class to justify their wealth was specifically about orthodox economics, like the Chicago School who would literally construct studies to justify whatever you wanted if you paid for it. The yardsale model - thatās a great link by the way, the graph that emerges perfectly mirrors our actual economy - is an example of heterodox economics, which largely stands in opposition to orthodox economics. The opener to that page is very well written. Itāll do a better job than me.
Now, for an example of how completely divorced from reality orthodox economics is, the market convexity concept is perfect. The exceptions you mentioned about veblen and giffen goods arenāt the main problem with convexity. The simple problem of inelastic demand is a much bigger problem. This is all couched in extremely obfuscating language, those articles are impenetrable to anyone who isnāt steeped in economics language.
I assume you know what inelasticity is, itās something for which demand doesnāt change with price, for instance things like shelter or food. So, to demystify the language, another term for āinelastic demandā is āneedā. Basically, if you read between the lines even slightly, the founding, econ 101, highschool level principle of orthodox economics has been forced to admit that it doesnāt work for anything anybody actually needs. And then they go on insisting that this principle should govern our entire society. Got to keep that yardsale going.
Market convexity is an amalgamation of post-hoc justifications for why supply & demand is so hard to find in the real world. When I mentioned the perfectly straight, bisecting, perpendicular lines graph, you admitted that was just an illustration, and I agree, it is a doodle. I know itās now in vogue to use slightly curved lines, but thatās just because economists are aware of how ridiculous the first illustration was and they put in just the slightest amount of extra effort to hide it.
When Iām asking for the science, let me ask you this: what data constructs the graph? Where did it originate? This is the question Iāve never had answered. Just literally the graph appearing in real world data, just one time.
See, when actual sciences want to āillustrateā a concept, sometimes they idealise, but they almost always have real data and real graphs to show. Their idealised lines pass through data points with error bars. Scientists work hard for their data, and they always, always show it off. Stress-strain curves, electron microscope images, star life-cycle data, red-shifting, animal population surveys, and on and on. Real data is complex and interesting and beautiful and scientists will show you their cool slide and say āyou can see such-and-such feature here and this indicatesā¦ā, itās great.
I have looked for the supply & demand version of this and can find nothing but hand-waving excuses.
Also, the convexity article talks about the Nobel Prize in Economics, which is wrongly named. It is the Nobel Memorial Prize. It was named after Nobel, because itās not a Nobel prize, because the Nobel prize committee rejected the economics category because it isnāt a real science. Some Swiss bank then financed the wish.com version Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
I suspect this isnāt so hard for you to accept since youāve already come so far in your understanding of heterodox economics. You still seem to have some respect for the orthodox schools, which is strange when you understand so much of where they have led us.
As for the Epstein thing, I donāt have any reason to believe that anything has changed. We know Epstein was part of the trafficking of minors, and absent any evidence about the state of that practice, the idea that removing two people from the network actually fundamentally altered anything seems hopelessly naive. I think the burden of proof lies on anyone who wants to claim the practice has been abolished.
Heterodox economics includes crazy stuff like the modern Austrian school, too, so itās not like itās one thing. I believe and hope the mainstream will come around to the yardsale model eventually.
Yes, this is a great explainer. Iāve linked it far more than anything else on any subject. People need to know.
Thereās degrees of need, though. You need food, but, like, prison rations are technically medically sufficient, and people often waste food when they arenāt worried about starving. Most things that are bought and sold in the West are definitively beyond the bare minimum for survival. The only thing I can think of that actually has a measured price elasticity of zero is higher education.
However, because we have massive inequality, effective demand doesnāt reflect actual demand very well. Thatās the source of evil here if you ask me.
What do you mean by that, exactly? Iāve seen supply and demand play out plenty just in my personal life. Houses are in massive shortage here, and as a result theyāre getting really expensive. On the other hand, itās cheap to get scrap metal, despite there having been times when a big chunk of steel costed more than a house. When a crop fails it gets expensive and I buy less tomatoes or whatever. Conversely, I visit the clearance section all the time and buy stuff nobody wanted for cheap.
Relatedly, part of why I buy orthodox economics is that every time I have to budget out a project or fundraiser or something, I pretty much see it in action. Thereās no free lunch; if thereās a productive human activity of some kind in demand, somebody else is doing it full time for a pretty normal salary. Already, in the current economic framework.
Econometrics, itās called econometrics.
Youāre not going to get quite the quality of data that you can with a cylinder of C-103 in a press, because humans are complicated, but what Iāve seen looks clearer than what youād get in, say, medicine.
Well, itās cost acceptable per unit on one axis (for each party), and the total units on the market on the other. Itās hard to collect data far away from the middle because in practice, because in practice amount of goods on the market doesnāt stray too far from equilibrium in the first place. If you just want the measured slopes at the middle, here you go, you can go to the citations for support.