Terrance Tao is smarter than I am but he is not better in some absolute sense, so you don’t need to deny that he’s smarter on my behalf. Instead, here are some unquantifiable things that do make people meaningfully “better:” kindness, passion, empathy, courage, honesty, wisdom.

Honesty bids me to acknowledge that Tao is smart, and wisdom that it doesn’t matter (re, the meaning of life). Lastly, standardized tests don’t measure EQ because it’s hard to quantify and irrelevant for college placement.

Americans are so fucking weird about IQ. Yes, some brains function better than others. Whoop-de-doo. Case in point, Trump and cows and shit.

Inequality results in higher asset prices. They commodified housing and allowed massive inequality. Now housing is expensive.

This happens because if you have more money than you can spend you start looking for things to buy. Houses and land, for instance. The neoliberal hope is that hoarded wealth will trickle down through investments. But there really isn’t enough money-making enterprise for the billions available, so rich folks start buying up assets, which become super expensive.

To be clear, I’m not saying there’s more money than can be wisely invested. I’m saying the money is concentrated (often into the hands of the least discerning) and not efficiently distributed for utilization. If normal folks had extra cash, they might start a small business, but billionaires aren’t looking to open a trattoria or book store. They don’t have time for such minutiae, so they buy up land or gold or get into crypto schemes or some harebrained bullshit.

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Russia’s favorite propaganda is to claim that democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their own wrongdoing (the way China does): they embrace it with whataboutism.

Saying “all states are authoritarian” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly citizens of Taiwan and China have different relationships with their governments.

To whit, I have no rights in China. They could disappear me for this one comment.

No. I don’t care about any nation state, only about the badness of dictatorships. Tankies defend Russian and Chinese dictatorships in particular.

Interestingly, they don’t defend (and often even condemn) other dictatorships. This is a feature of their tribalistic ideology and a product of propaganda. Concepts like “state enemies” are meaningless to me. I apply moral rules universally to all people and hold their behaviors to the same standard, regardless of their imaginary nation.

One last thing. Russia’s favorite propaganda is that everyone lies and democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their wrongdoing (the way China does), they embrace it with whataboutism. Saying “all states have violence” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly Taiwan and China have very different approaches.

To whit, I have no rights in China. They could literally disappear me for this comment.

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Having strong opinions about reforming vs overthrowing capitalism doesn’t make you a tankie. Apologetics for state violence and Russian and Chinese totalitarianism certainly does; just as defending Israeli wrongdoing makes you a Zionist; and defending Trump makes you a fascist, etc.

it’s not “loyalties” but … the particular brand of propaganda people are getting.

State propaganda exists to engender loyalty to the regime. That’s the whole point.

They are quick to jump on any “western” wrongdoing, but equally quick to dismiss much worse from their own tribe. Because they are tribalists and nationalists who favor some nations over others — because they’re brainfucked by propaganda, as you said.

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This obsession with east vs west is paradigmatic of tankie tribalist ideology. They can’t conceive of someone who doesn’t obsess over nationality or ethnic and cultural loyalties. Humans are humans. We should fight to be free from state oppression. Not complicated.

They’re not communists. They’re tankies: nationalistic authoritarians who defend police state brutality and “alternative facts” to spread disinformation courtesy of Russia and China. They’re obsessed with a west vs east tribalism and nationalism.

Also, I don’t think you mean liberals strictly, but socialists — demsoc, socdem, anarchists, whatever.

Anarchists don’t respect nation states or arbitrary class divisions, which clashes hard with tankies’ rabid nationalism.

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China has more billionaires than we do and complete dictatorial control over a population that has zero civil rights.

Also in existence are the Chinese and Indian oligarchies currently oppressing over a billion people. Not to mention fighting over a meaningless dumb border.

Invading the ancestors descendants of wage slaves whose dead imperial overlords drew some maps is almost as dumb as fighting over those maps.

Modern China and India have their own homegrown oligarchies exercising levels of oppression that put the British imperials to shame.

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