There's a fantastic book by Roger Crowley called Empires of the Sea that covers the Habsburg-Ottoman war for control of the Mediterranean. The early chapters go into great detail on the Siege of Rhodes, including Tadini's efforts, and how the lessons learned there would set the stage for later battles (particularly Malta and Lepanto) and the end of Ottoman supremacy. For anyone interested in this article or the era in general I can't recommend it enough.
Definitely adding that to my reading list. My understanding is that the Ottoman strategy for controlling the Mediterranean was to go the "long way 'round" and control as much of the surrounding ports, as opposed to the Knights Hospitaler, the Genoese, and the Venetians who took the approach of building unmatched naval strength.
As an example, during the siege of Constantinople, the Genoese and Venetian navies were ultimately defeated when the Ottomans literally carried their ships over land to get behind the other's defensive line.
>>It is well known that land and wealth has been acquired by expulsion of people from different faith from your territory (I'm thinking for example expulsion of Jews and Moors from Spain)
The problem with this line of argument is the land always belonged to somebody else first. The Moors took it from the Visigoths, who took it from the Roman Empire, who took it from Carthage, who took it from Celt-Iberian tribes that had been taking it from each other since time immemorial.
>>or taking it from natives of new territories (America, Africa)
Who were engaged in near constant tribal warfare against each other for the possession of territory. The Conquistadors had such an easy time toppling the Aztecs because two of their abused vassal states rose up in rebellion and joined the Spaniards (providing the bulk of Cortes' forces at one point). Africa's tribal kingdoms and regional empires show the same bloody history of conquest as any other region in the world.
Although it's certainly unsettling, one of the ever-present themes across human history is the legitimacy and endurance of conquest. Any attempt to challenge that legitimacy requires a coherent framework for dismantling the hierarchy and replacing it with a "fair" one (a fool's errand). This is precisely the task at which Marxism and its various Critical Theory descendants fail so spectacularly.
It's all well and good to say the current distribution of things is unjust and demands to be addressed. It's another thing entirely to actually do so "fairly" (and more importantly, peacefully). It seems to me far more likely that whatever agency or panel is authorized the enormous power necessary to affect such a change will inevitably abuse that power and merely replace the current hierarchy with a new one of their choosing. And the odds are that if mere government dictate could not accomplish it, they would resort to the same "violence, war, enslavement" that Marx was denouncing (i.e., conquering the conquerors). Friedrich Hayek put it this way: "Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."
I'm reminded of the thought experiment in Rawls' Theory of Justice that he calls the "veil of ignorance"[0]. In short: before individuals enter a society they are totally blind to their own place in it (race, class, gender, wealth, etc), like a randomized spawn in a game. They are then asked to deliberate on the distribution of rights and resources before entering the society. Rawls concludes that everyone would agree on the most equitable distribution because they cannot know who they will be in this new society (e.g., a lopsided society where most people are incredibly poor or enslaved is a huge gamble to take).
What Rawls doesn't do is take things a step further and imagine what that utopian society would be like in practice. Once everyone "spawns" in and begins living (pursuing opportunities, acting out passions, planning for the future, etc) there are guaranteed to be unequal outcomes when some are more successful/economically valued/powerful/attractive/politically manipulative/etc than others. Soon enough the once-equals have established a new hierarchy, as human societies tend to do, and we're back to square one.
Marx was wrong to call Smith "childish", especially when his own ideals are so naively hopeful. Even in a hypothetical world where one could implement a completely "fair" redistribution of possessions, once people begin exercising their will and making choices, inequalities will inevitably emerge and Smith's view of original accumulation would play out.
I think you read more in my comment that was written, probably because it's usually the beginning of a rant in favor of communism.
I don't share Marx's view on the solution, but my point is that he correctly addressed the problem. All the examples you gave about previous violence in conquered territories just strengthen the point that meritocracy and wealth had nothing in common.
Now, I actually believe strongly on personal merit and nowadays it can get you much further than before although I think we could do much better to give more similar chances to everyone at birth.
Very interesting post. This reminds of a passage in Asimov's memoirs where he informs Elie Wiesel that even Jews acted as oppressors during the single occurrence where they obtained significant political power. I recall reading that and suddenly being struck by a wave of melancholy.
Regarding Rawls, it seems as though the point is more to avoid a situation where there is a glut of people living truly miserable lives, such as the world we live in today. Inequalities are inevitable, but if almost everyone has a tolerable standard of living and there is no major dystopic framework in place it's no longer such a huge gamble to be born in this hypothetical world. It's definitely commendable to try to reduce the spectrum of inequality, or to redesign the system so that rent-seeking behavior no longer becomes problematic.
Ted Cruz is probably more to blame in this case than Cambridge; he came across to many as supremely unlikeable/comically phony and clearly lost the mud slinging fights with Trump that dominated the Republican primaries. Whatever benefit Cambridge bestowed probably wasn't enough to turn Ted Cruz into a serious Presidential candidate. In more colloquial terms, perhaps even the most effective data targeting can't polish a turd.
Google's Eric Schmidt proposed a plan similar to this (though in more ambiguous terms) back in 2014, sharing a draft with Cheryl Mills that was forwarded to the Clinton braintrust (John Podesta, Robby Mook and David Plouffe) and subsequently released by Wikileaks[0]. The use of quizzes as a front detailed in OP's article is especially insidious, but the idea of individually targeting voters with "stories" in such a manner was clearly in play. Whether they followed through with it or not, it seems naive to think they won't do something similar in the future now that Cambridge Analytica has been shown to have been so effective.
Gelernter summarized his view on the culture wars and the shift in America's elite class in a 1997 article in Commentary Magazine. It's an interesting take and certainly relevant to the current political climate.
A great companion to this article is the Planet Money episode on Venezuela's collapse [0]. It's only 20 minutes long and combines anecdotes with a basic bird's eye view in NPR's typical fashion.
Venezuela didn't save its oil money. It used it to subsidize goods and services for the people, but in some unusual ways. Another choice: instead of making stuff at home, Venezuela imported almost everything it could. The government also kept tight control on the exchange rate between Venezuelan bolivars and U.S. dollars.
I think the negativity is more focused on the "blockchain will revolutionize x industry" hype than on the blockchain technology itself. I've noticed a similar (and justified) degree of skepticism and fatigue here in regard to all of the AI hype in mainstream media, but nobody is discounting the technical advances made in the field; just the kind of unbridled, naive optimism that played a part in the "AI Winter" of the 80s and could lead to a similar disillusionment with the blockchain.
Can you expand on the evidence of "Negroids" in Brazil 40,000 years ago? I'm familiar with the idea of pre-Clovis settlements and the controversy around that, but I was under the impression these were thought to be earlier settlers from East Asia, like the Clovis people.
The only indication of Africans in South America I can think of are the much later statues and idols of faces from Olmec Mexico, circa 1000 BC, which some claim have "Negroid" features (a supposition that has to be debunked with an unfortunate degree of frequency).
The Negroid thing is more speculative, due to the lack of decent human remains with that age, but we DO have some old remains (older than 10.000) that are seemly negroid, for example the skull nicknamed "Luzia" that was found in Brazil. (there are some others too, but Luzia made international news when it was found).
Some people are trying to find more remains, and others are trying to do genetic research on those remains, one theory is that there was two (or more) waves of migration.
Another theory, is that the people that crossed the strait 22000 years ago were negroids, and "co-evolved" to have Asian features like modern Asians because of converging evolution or coincidence.
A third theory that was more popular when there was fewer evidence (when Luzia was first found) was that Luzia features were just normal genetic variation, and that she was a mongoloid that looked negroid because of randomness.
>I'd prefer if you just said it's because you'd like protectionism to lead to higher wages for American citizens.
If he does want "protectionism to lead to higher wages for Americans", why is that wrong? The purpose of any government is to advance the interests of its own citizens first and foremost.
>Oddly enough, right now, the USA skims the world's talent this way. You get to tax the brightest, you get to profit from the companies they found here, the people they employ here, the business they do here.
I agree with you that inviting the world's brightest to come here certainly benefits America, but the system is being abused to bring in average foreign employees to the detriment of American tech workers(e.g., the Disney case). This practice should end, with H1B focused on extraordinary candidates only.
>I'm here on the E3. Australia has turned up for every US war since Korea. Our blood is mixed with yours in the mud of a dozen nations on four continents, including ours.
This is a bizarre comment; what relevance does it have? Should H1B favor military allies rather than the best candidates? Why does someone else's wartime sacrifice justify your presence here? Does their sacrifice nullify American sovereignty? If the people or their representatives decide to limit the flow of foreign workers, that is their right and that right supersedes any non-Americans privilege to come here.
>Our reward, as one of my colleagues quipped, is that the US gets to take our brightest people.
America isn't "taking" your brightest people, like some form of intellectual impressment. Those people are exercising free will and -choosing- to come here, as you seem more than happy to have done.
>> If he does want "protectionism to lead to higher wages for Americans", why is that wrong? The purpose of any government is to advance the interests of its own citizens first and foremost.
Yes, this is exactly what I want. This is social justice for American workers.
>> If the people or their representatives decide to limit the flow of foreign workers, that is their right and that right supersedes any non-Americans privilege to come here.
Exactly. I've never spent a single day in India and I wouldn't dream of telling the Indian people how to run their country, nor would I tell them that acting in the best interests of their citizens is somehow wrong.
Yet with H1-B, I feel like huge corporations and foreign nationals are exploiting the system in a way that produces profoundly unjust outcomes for American workers.
I rarely see in coverage of these mass replacements what kind of positions are being affected, just "IT workers". The article says they're mostly back-office staff but I don't know what that means at UCSF. Are these software engineers, systems admins, middle-managers, etc? Are they low level help-desk positions? Or is it a broad mix across the entire IT hierarchy? How does the answer in this case compare to other recent incidents (e.g., Disney)?
I don't ask to insinuate "lower-skilled" workers deserve to be replaced or should have prepared for it; I'm merely trying to get a better grasp on the scope of these recent outsourcings.
It probably means some of their developers, the ones who glue systems together --also maybe the sysadmins for mundane things but will probably keep key people like LDAP/Auth dev, InfoSec, network architect and then move all the other routine operational stuff off-shore.
