Reflections on Palantir

>You would rarely find any other nation that where defense tech companies are turned away from job fairs. Kinda ridiculous.

Probably because US MIC is weird political place. On one hand, it's turns out really cool tech and US needs defense. On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems? Throw in some pork barrel in there to add to political stuff.

When people post memes about "You are about to find out why US doesn't have free healthcare." with some overwhelming American firepower equipment in the image, it's not hard to see why a lot of people find it a grey area.

> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems?

Because someone has to be this if you want the continuation of the post-WWII rules-based international order that underpins the entire global economy. The Department of Defense and US hegemony are essentially overhead that is the Least Bad Option to stop WWIII from kicking off or the world from fragmenting into spheres of influence (which is starting to happen already). Who else would do this and not screw over everyone else even worse? Russia? China?

Force is only one of many methods to achieve certain outcomes, not all methods that could achieve the same general outcome are known, very little cognitive effort is put into searching for alternatives, leaving few options other than speculation if one is obligated to form a conclusion on the matter.

We should stop defending an imperialist establishment which relies on the rampant exploitation of the global south and is committing genocide and calling it rules-based order. More like America rules.

The containment rhetoric/logic is long past its use-by date - the US's pretense as guardians of a common moral high ground was shattered at the very latest with the Vietnam War, and in 2024 it is an absolute tragedy of a joke in poor taste.

You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive anyone decent crazy. What else can happen when you hear pieces of shit like Blinken wax lyrical about the human rights of Palestinians while supercharging weapons deliveries to Israel, or the very existence of the UNSC veto which will guarantee outcomes that reinforce unforgivable and unforgettable mass crimes, beckoning awful consequences for the whole world.

Great. So Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME.

This country has a collapsing middle class, horrendously bad health outcomes, ever increasing amount of corruption and little chance to turn things around because of entrenched interests.

I can just picture the thought process going in your head(and many others) right now. If you hate it so much why dont you leave.

>You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive anyone decent crazy.

All complaints, no solutions. Typical.

So who does have the moral high-ground around the globe? It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much worse, just by reading a history book.

I'd like to think that Pakistan would be on a better road if their democratically elected leader wasn't ousted by the US.

Thats one example, there are many others.

In terms of solutions, well looking at history of the US, the only time the people at the top ever gave any semblance of crumbs to everyone else was when they knew they were in deep trouble and were forced to part with whatever little they could give to calm the masses.

Think of Medicare, Social Security etc. We saw it again with Obamacare. The country was in a rage so out came the bare minimum. Elimination of barbaric things like pre-existing conditions in exchange for guaranteed income for the insurance companies. Absolute breadcrumbs but it was something.

We just need something like that on a worldwide level. Maybe China rising will finally put pressure on the US given that the EU never amounted to much more than being a US vassal state.

You may be correct on at least one point: the DOD may have stepped us all down from WW3 recently, to the chagrin of other elements of the establishment who have gotten used to whispering foreign policy into the relevant ears with no pushback

> It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared.

You've misread the situation. I don't think it would be global peace and harmony if we stopped playing world police. I simply do not care. It's not our responsibility to take care of other countries while we have serious problems at home that are going ignored.

> Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME

America benefited greatly from this position though, it's just the gains have not been equally distributed, and one can make an argument that Americans simply vote for that outcome. It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's lifestyle abroad.

I think there's some clarification that needs to happen, though: what would it mean for "China to dictate the terms", and does that necessarily happen if the US "steps back" (and what does that mean?) In a charitable interpretation, the US remains an important trading, industrial, technological, and educational world power. Perhaps it might even keep the spending on worldwide surveillance (e.g. spy satellites). Geopolitical influence allows for many strategies.

Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order means letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install their satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around the world, by force if needed. Which means access to the foreign markets will be curtailed for the US or otherwise "dictated" by other powers. It's hard to see how that leads to more prosperity for Americans, especially since the political forces trying to bring that about are also not very pro-"trading, industry, technology and education".

The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign lifestyles because the middle class in the US is struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will not make things better for the US middle class. Nor for middle class of any other country really, although the GP doesn't care about those.

All deliberate actions to achieve certain outcomes are "force", it is a scale not a binary option.

Kissinger set out for a policy that prioritized stability, communication, and mutual understanding of each others' desires to live their own lives.

If we do not "take care" of other countries (as in stop being world police, stop assisting in their problems like Clinton did with Ireland's Troubles, etc...) we would have their problems at our doorstep.

Also, there is definitely a subset of Americans that cannot stand by living well when others aren't, just because they other people were born elsewhere. This applies on all levels: Country, State, County, City, Neighborhood, block, house, etc.

>It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's lifestyle abroad.

This was explained in the other post which I will reproduce here:

"looking at history of the US, the only time the people at the top ever gave any semblance of crumbs to everyone else was when they knew they were in deep trouble and were forced to part with whatever little they could give to calm the masses.

Think of Medicare, Social Security etc. We saw it again with Obamacare. The country was in a rage so out came the bare minimum. Elimination of barbaric things like pre-existing conditions in exchange for guaranteed income for the insurance companies. Absolute breadcrumbs but it was something.

We just need something like that on a worldwide level. Maybe China rising will finally put pressure on the US given that the EU never amounted to much more than being a US vassal state."

We saw the best of the US system during the cold war. The system had to prove itself. Im not advocating for communism nor Chinese style fascism just more competition.

The third world is already taking advantage of this situation. Nearly every country in the global south has been negatively damaged by the US or Europe at some point. They don't have many options other than to tough it out and hopes the West leaves them with whatever scraps they can get by. If they got too powerful, then the West topples them over. See Pakistan or Bolivia as a recent example. Now China has entered the scene and it has provided the ability for countries to start playing the US and China off of each other to see what they can get out of both countries. Djibouti and its military bases is a small example but we see it with countries like Brazil and Pakistan as well.

How would this help the middle class in the US? Well if the elite in the US start to think they will lose out they will start to enact change that will bring the middle class up to snuff in order to better compete...and lets be honest for a moment, whatever they say goes.

I am skeptical, let's run an experiment and see what the response is:

Is feeding the homeless so they are not hungry "force"?

Is lending a compassionate ear to someone suffering so they may feel a bit better "force"?

Is making myself a nice sandwich and watching a movie because I find it pleasant "force"?

>Stepping back from enforcing post-WW2 world order means letting China, Russia, Iran to freely install their satellite and unfriendly-to-the-US regimes around the world, by force if needed.

The US isn't going anywhere. In fact China has serious structural problems that may make all this conversation pointless. But there needs to be some sort of pathway for the global south to move forward. If that involves having China rise up and then countries accepting that all they can do is play the US and China off of each other to get the best deals out of them then thats still a step forward. If climate change comes to pass it may not even matter. The US and the West is the cause for the majority of the historical pollution yet its the unprepared global south that will bear the worst brunt of climate change. So the best I am advocating for is that the global south take one step forward and hope they don't end up five steps backwards in the long run.

>The GP says that they don't want to prop up foreign lifestyles because the middle class in the US is struggling but isolationism in the 21st century will not make things better for the US middle class. Nor for middle class of any other country really, although the GP doesn't care about those.

As to improving the middle class, we need to understand the structural reasons why they are sinking. Decades of erosion to US institutions has led to a situation that can only change if things get really bad and the citizens really demand change..or the US elite are challenged with some real competition. I dont see how it can happen naturally in the US anymore. Every time people get fed up, there is a "release valve" or a distraction in the form of crumbs offered to people so that enough settle down or fixate on something else. We saw it after the "Occupy Wall Street Protests" with the beginning of the culture wars as well as the passing of Obamacare which eliminated the most barbaric provisions of health care in the US. It is not meaningful change but it calmed people down. This method will lead to decades of the elite retaining their leverage. I dont want to see my life pass before my eyes and no real reform ends up happening.

In terms of the second method of having the elite being challenged, We saw in the cold war how the US system had to prove itself and that led to a strong taxation on the wealthy, good institutions, positive movement for the middle class, all to show the Russians that the US led system is the best. There currently is no forcing function to return to that situation at this time.

> It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much worse, just by reading a history book.

What is the relevance of this to the content of the comment you are replying to?

> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems?

Reminds me of this scene in Wag the Dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwgPnYVg74Y

"The war of the future is nuclear terrorism. It is, and it will be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst to perhaps their own governments, have blah blah blah blah blah. And to go to that war, you have to be prepared."

If you believe that the progress is achieved when the masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating condition of the American middle class will naturally help it. What's the point in this accelerationism with allies as casualties then?

> We saw in the cold war how the US system had to prove itself and that led to a strong taxation on the wealthy, good institutions, positive movement for the middle class, all to show the Russians that the US led system is the best.

I don't think anyone sane thinks that Russians or Chinese masses have it better in economic terms. In fact, the message of Russian propaganda including its American extension is that everything sucks everywhere.

>I don't think anyone sane thinks that Russians or Chinese masses have it better in economic terms. In fact, the message of Russian propaganda including its American extension is that everything sucks everywhere.

Uh did I say anything of the sort?

When the Cold War was going on the communist system was initially out producing and out maneuvering the US but eventually the fallacy of a communist (and subsequently fascist takeover of the government) made it inevitable that it was going to fail.

However during this fight between the two powers, the US saw great advances in the prosperity and rights of its middle class. As the USSR started to fall, we saw the beginnings of corporate takeover of all layers of the US government and it really accelerated after the USSR fell. You are making this argument that the US had it so good while ignoring how it got so good and also failing to acknowledge why it has declined so much over the last few decades. If you don't buy my argument then I challenge you to provide an alternative explanation.

What are you smoking? Have you not seen the list of all the governments that have been "removed" by the US? Most recently Pakistan which was a year ago

[1]:https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cyph...

[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

>If you believe that the progress is achieved when the masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating condition of the American middle class will naturally help it.

Thats what we have seen historically. People always demand improvements. The leadership of this country hasn't actually done it until they really have a pissed off populace at their doorstep. I wouldn't believe it if it weren't for the historical precedent.

>What's the point in this accelerationism with allies as casualties then?

Americans should be first in line when it comes to who the government serves but if you just look at the US government's actions vs other governments in the west, the US government clearly does not have their citizens interests first and foremost.

Think of all the rights and regulations the EU(or hell even many third world countries) have vs the US.

It manifests itself in so many ways:

Some easy examples demonstrating small issues as well as big ones:

1. EU countries mandate physical addresses for VOIP number registration. US spends years not implementing its half assed regulations Result: Americans are drowning in spam calls

2. EU negotiates drug prices as a government and refuses to pay more than a specific %. Companies would rather get something vs nothing from the EU market. US despite being the largest market, refuses to negotiate as a government even though they have a universal health program(for seniors only but thats a different issue). Result: American made drugs are sometimes up to 10x more expensive in the US than elsewhere. A vial of insulin in EU: ~9$ USA: ~99$

3. US sends its Navy to patrol world seas, ensuring flow of goods. Result: EU does not meet required 2% of NATO spending and instead funnels that money into social services like subsidized colleges. Result: US citizens either drown with a lifetimes worth of college debt or take a chance in the Military for subsidized college after giving up 4+ years of their young adult life serving their military contract while EU citizens graduate debt free and take a gap year traveling instead.

I can go on for literal dozens of examples. I specifically chose to go from small to big to show that the problem is systemic and permeates all aspects of American life. In many ways the American system is one giant scam and they only people benefiting are people who have managed to survive in the upper echelons of the income stratosphere or are foreigners.

If the US changed its focus to be more inward, it can focus on rebuilding manufacturing which would increase jobs availability and give more power to workers which would lead to other rights for the common man such as demanding more from the government to help US peoples among many other examples.

That's like telling a woman with a beating husband that it's better to stay with him because the other men are worse.

>Is making myself a nice sandwich and watching a movie because I find it pleasant "force"?

To the chicken, turkey, pig, or cow that died to make the meat in your sandwich, definitely yes.

If you live in a world where it simply isn't possible for some reason for the woman to not have a husband at all, it makes perfect sense.

the mental gymnastics it took to write this hot take must be "force" too

What do you mean by "post-WW2 world order", in this case? Without that, it's hard to even make claims about what happens when the US stops "enforcing it" with. Does the US simply stop pouring in development aid into countries? Does it stop attracting world-class talent into research institutions, and eventually industries? Does it stop having significant heft in trade negotiations because of that?

On one hand, there are specific things that the US _could_ stop doing: not selling arms left and right, and bombing third countries. Maybe you might not call that a meaningful change in the "post-WW2 world order" – but we'd argue that's the case, since it has been a consistent feature of the post-WW2 world order.

It's also a very big leap to assume that the middle class of any country would suffer after whatever is assumed here happens. Why would you assume that Russia and China not be interested in that? Moreover, why would you assume that Russia and China would _not_ want "trading, industry, technology and education" in the absence of great power competition?

I am partial to that argument, at least in the interwar period the US masses and intelligentsia were enamored with the USSR for it was new and the atrocities were not widely known, so we got the New Deal. I don't think that applies to the post-WW2 period and the fact that the US was the only industrial nation left unscathed was the real prosperity driver.

But it is all moot in the world of today where the US competitors are not providing alternatives for people to strive for. Russian propaganda of "everything sucks" works wonders to keep Russians docile and it will work wonders to keep the US middle class down as well, ending Pax Americana will do nothing to change that.

> the US government clearly does not have their citizens interests first and foremost

I disagree, Americans just vote for that. Yes, we can talk all day long about the two party system, winner takes all, the electoral college and unfairness of everything being decided on the margins, but when the rubber hits the road, talk is cheap, action is what matters and a solid half of Americans has been consistently voting for the US government to put the interests of rich people first. The US as a whole is a beneficiary of globalism and it's on the Americans to decide how to distribute the gains, allies are not at fault.

I think based on your last sentence:

> Who else would do this and not screw over everyone else even worse? Russia? China?

It's important to say which country you're residing in now.

What's the opportunity cost on watching a movie with a sandwich over 'continuing research to help cure cancer?'

You're forcing people to endure cancer while enjoying a sandwich and a movie.

Are you suggesting that I am a cancer researcher (I'm quite sure I'm not), or that a cure for cancer hasn't been found because researchers are lazy?

At least there is a logical path in that claim (if we ignore that I didn't specify that there was meat in the sandwich...I do eat a lot of plain tomato sandwiches, but not exclusively, so I do to some degree drive demand for animal slaughter)!

I think it's kind of neat that we got from Palantir to sandwiches... I wonder if Palantir's software supports mapping metaphysical causality like this, because bizarre metaphysical causality is the root cause of war in the first place!

I think his argument is more that threat of communism forced America to take many compromises for the common man. Once the great threat of USSR fell, that pressure practically no longer exists.

While Pax Americana does have some benefits (but not for everyone), taking examples from history is worse than useless when nuclear weapons have completely changed war.

China might be eyeing Siberia for all its space and resources, but unlike in the modern era, the chance that they will declare war on Russia is basically nil.

It even predates nukes when you look how WW1 and WW2 had only losers (nothwithstanding those that didn't let war touch their territory, like USA). But I guess that we were too "dumb" to figure that out before nukes.

And still are, Russia is getting an example of it in Ukraine right now... speaking of, what "rules" ? Russia just went and completely ignored the Budapest memorandum (while Ukraine is regretting deeply they didn't keep at least some nukes).

You're the one who directly took us from Palantir to sandwiches, in a clear attempt to distract from the core subject of manipulating humans on a mass scale without using "force"

Guilty as charged.

Do you think this is necessarily a bad thing?

You have to be joking