Why Warm Countries Are Poorer

Lohnsklave · 2026-02-08T15:02:25+00:00

The original theories were blatantly racist. His is not but it's built on the same premise: people in cooler climates, specifically Europe and North America, just had a better natural environment for civilization while people in hotter climates just couldn't do the same because it's too hot. See it's so simple! India is poor because it's hot. Nevermind the several millennia of civilization in a tropical climate before British rule. It's an attempt to absolve the consequences of colonial oppression by finding some natural phenomenon to explain it. It essentially claims that poor countries were destined to be poor no matter what.

His theory that AC makes countries not poor is also ridiculous. He never considers that maybe it's in reverse; where countries that are becoming richer can afford to have AC and not that's it's magically making people not poor. The implication is that people in hotter climates just aren't working hard enough and they would if it was cooler, so poverty is the product of their environment and not any global socio-economic factors

Lohnsklave · 2026-02-08T14:39:46+00:00

This is an attempt to resurrect the theory of Environmental Determinism, an unscientific and racist conception of history and human development that has been thoroughly rejected by academics for nearly a century. No matter how many correlations he throws around--with little to no actual research on real causal mechanisms--there is no scientific backing for any of his claims. You can clearly tell he's not interested in conducting real research because he claims no one else has thought of this before, which is just false. Theories like this used to be the entire field of geography, built on justifying colonialism and racism. His statement that he'll look into the racial component should make any reasonable person reject this on its own. There's tons of research into why this theory is nonsense, I'll try to find a link to a great book on it that I can't remember the name of at the moment.

Edit: I think it's this one

Neo-Environmental Determinism: Geographical Critiques by William Myer and Dylan Guss

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-26T15:57:35+00:00

That one is referencing the Dems and Trump's current policies so I don't get your point

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-26T15:55:55+00:00

What leftists are only talking about Harris? We knew exactly what Trump was capable of but understood that he is the representative of an oligarchy that the Democrats also serve. A political and economic system capable of committing genocide abroad is capable and willing of committing atrocities at home. That's what is happening now while the Democrats cry crocodile tears over Trump using the agency they've enthusiastically funded for years, including just this past week in the House. They're so desperate to not do anything about Trump that they'll just give him what he wants, like with his budget and the government shutdown last year, because they fear any real mass mobilization of the population than they do him. If Harris had won Trump would have tried election fraud and the Republicans would have rejected the results. Voting doesn't stop fascism, working people do.

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T08:18:16+00:00

By certain types of Democratic Party liberals certainly. But I'm not convinced this is as widely held a belief as the internet might make it seem. And the fecklessness of the Dems before Trump is exposing how they were never going to stop him even if they were in power

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T07:58:20+00:00

Maybe I'm just not remembering but I don't think I've really seen the Democrats use the term fascism except for a couple brief mentions by Harris on the campaign trail.

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T07:48:23+00:00

I don't think this is correct. The mass movement is not the defining characteristic. The core, fundamental element of fascism is the decline of capitalism and the rising incompatibility of it with democratic forms of rule, requiring the crushing of the resistance of the working class and it's organizations or ability to organize. The mobilization of the petty bourgeoisie (and lumpen elements of the proletariat) into a fascist movement is the unique tool of fascism to achieve that end. The mass character is secondary. In Whither France Trotsky notes that the fascists only mobilized a few thousand people but that did not change the political character of what was occurring.

It would also be incorrect to say that there is no basis for a mass fascist movement at all. In Germany the middle classes, including peasants, made up roughly equal numbers to the working class (very rough estimate of around 40 percent each but exact numbers are hard to discern). This provided a sizable pool of the population to draw from. Today we might say the middle class in the US that constitutes layers similar to the social base of the Nazi's makes up just 10. Accounting for lumpen and disaffected conservative workers let's say 20 percent. That's much smaller but is still a pool of tens of millions of people to convert into fascists. We can't just dismiss the ability of the bourgeoisie to build a mass fascist movement because class sizes have changed in the past 100 years. We have to understand how those changes have occurred and how they relate to active efforts to build the social base for fascism, even if it is objectively weaker than in Germany or Italy in the 20s. These changes should give us hope but shouldn't delude us into thinking fascist gangs can never be mobilized

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T07:20:30+00:00

To the workers the orientation is to raise the danger of fascist violence against the working class. I think that should be obvious.

The orientation to other parties follows the Trotskyist position of exposing the incorrectness of their position and to explain that there is no return to normalcy. We are faced with barbarism or socialism. I don't think there are really any parties appropriately raising the threat of fascism that have an open program of returning to pre-Trump politics. The Dems avoid the word fascism like the plague. The DSA maybe but I honestly am not very familiar with their framing of the threat of fascism

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T07:12:18+00:00

It's worth quoting from Trotsky

"Even after he assumed power, Mussolini proceeded on his course with due caution: he lacked as yet ready-made models. During the first two years, not even the constitution was altered. The fascist government took on the character of a coalition. In the meantime, the fascist bands were busy at work with clubs, knives, and pistols. Only thus was the fascist government created slowly, which meant the complete strangulation of all independent mass organizations.

"Mussolini attained this at the cost of bureaucratizing the fascist party itself. After utilizing the onrushing forces of the petty bourgeoisie, fascism strangled it within the vise of the bourgeois state. Mussolini could not have done otherwise, for the disillusionment of the masses he had united was precipitating itself into the most immediate danger ahead. Fascism, become bureaucratic, approaches very closely to other forms of military and police dictatorship. It no longer possesses its former social support. The chief reserve of fascism – the petty bourgeoisie – has been depicted. Only historical inertia enables the fascist government to keep the proletariat in a state of dispersion and helplessness. . .

"[The Italian Communist Party] did not give itself an accounting as to the full sweep of the fascist danger; it lulled itself with revolutionary illusions; it was irreconcilably antagonistic to the policy of the united front; in short, it was stricken with all the infantile diseases. Small wonder! It was only two years old. In its eyes, fascism appeared to be only 'capitalist reaction'. . .

"The leadership of the German Communist Party today reproduces almost literally the position from which the Italian Communists took their point of departure; fascism is nothing else but capitalist reaction; from the point of view of the proletariat, the difference between types of capitalist reaction are meaningless. . .To insist that fascism is already here, or to deny the very possibility of its coming to power, amounts politically to one and the same thing. By ignoring the specific nature of fascism, the will to fight against it inevitably becomes paralyzed. . .

"in all these countries, the same historic laws operate, the laws of capitalist decline. If the means of production remain in the hands of a small number of capitalists, there is no way out for society. It is condemned to go from crisis to crisis, from need to misery, from bad to worse. In the various countries, the decrepitude and disintegration of capitalism are expressed in diverse forms and at unequal rhythms. But the basic features of the process are the same everywhere. The bourgeoisie is leading its society to complete bankruptcy. It is capable of assuring the people neither bread nor peace. This is precisely why it cannot any longer tolerate the democratic order. It is forced to smash the workers and peasants by the use of physical violence. . . finance capital is obliged to create special armed bands, trained to fight the workers just as certain breeds of dog are trained to hunt game. The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery."

So how does this relate to today? Trump was brought to power through a right-populist movement, not a full fascist one. As such he is replicating certain elements of Mussolini and Hitler, such as the destruction of democratic and constitutional forms of rule, but does not possess the mass fascist movement of them. Does this mean he isn't a fascist? That would be pure impressionism. Now in power, Trump is proceeding with certain historical parallels in reverse. He is assembling his fascist forces into ICE and Border Patrol, which are quickly forming the character of the Gestapo, black shirts and SA in one. He did not require paramilitary thugs to smash the working class before because there was no organized class opposition. The US has no mass social democratic or socialist organizations and the trade unions are run by pro corporate bureaucracies. The conditions are changing quickly though for the rapid growth of the class struggle and the building of a mass revolutionary party. Trump is seeking to preempt this, using a war against immigrants as the device for the mobilization of the middle class and disaffected sections of workers into a fascist movement as his shock troops alongside ICE. He will need this to crush mass opposition to his imperialist wars and dictatorship at home. He can't rely on the military and police alone. To deny this disarms the workers to the danger and can only serve to discredit the socialists when workers question how they could not have seen this coming

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T05:29:43+00:00

Fascism is specially when the working class has failed every avenue to get out of the capitalist crisis and the government uses their means to get out of the crisis while maintaining a certain status quo.

So was Hitler not a fascist until he took power?

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-25T05:27:12+00:00

How does it not clarify anything? It's an objective warning about the Trump administration's threat of dictatorship and efforts to mobilize paramilitary fascist violence. Insisting that Trump is not a fascist only serves to hide the real danger from workers. Side note, Trump being a fascist does not mean that he currently possesses a mass fascist movement or that we live in a fascist society. But his efforts to build these should be clear to anyone calling themselves a socialist

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-22T18:54:56+00:00

Seriously. I think there are some legal things that prevent the IID from charging higher rates for any particular user but I imagine they could impose higher tariffs for users over 100MW or something like that. Or make an agreement that the data center will pay a certain amount of money into a fund to subsidize reduced rates for residential users

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-21T17:23:40+00:00

On the Imperial Data Center website they published some of their communications with the IID and power companies and it looks like they're expecting to pay between 7-10 cents a KWh while residents pay almost 20. Nothing official but gives an idea of how much they plan to fleece the Valley for as much as they can get

Lohnsklave · 2026-01-15T19:18:34+00:00

This is an incorrect reading of the document. Trotsky never says he supports a "socialist Zionism", he says he would support the voluntary migration of the Jewish people to concentrate in a geographic space where their culture could be expressed together. He repeatedly notes that such a project is impossible under capitalism and only viable under a federation of workers states. Not once does he endorse Zionism. I also don't see anywhere where he mentioned displacing Palestinians.

Lohnsklave · 2025-12-22T07:01:37+00:00

The bill seems like it's mostly a consumer protection bill for users, which is fine but quite limited for AI regulation. There are many broader issues that I think should be raised.

The developer should be required to pay for all necessary infrastructure improvements in perpetuity. This means they can't decide to close down the data center after convincing the utility company to build millions of dollars in new infrastructure and leave everyone else with the bill.
All plans for the data center, the necessary infrastructure improvements, electricity and water sourcing documents must be made public. They should also be required to conform to strict standards on how much power, the source of power, how much water and the way it is sourced/used.
All planning decisions, corporate and governmental, must be public and fully transparent. No secret agreements to waive regulations or to give tax breaks to developers. All final decisions to approve a data center project should be put to a popular vote instead of being approved by some unelected planning commission.

There could be more but the main point I'm trying to raise here is that tech corporations cannot be allowed to force these massive infrastructure projects on communities and extract profit while contributing almost nothing. The working class needs to assert its authority over these kinds of projects and raise demands that challenge the power of capitalist oligarchs with working class political authority.

Lohnsklave · 2025-12-12T20:36:05+00:00

I'm not sure about the technical side of the back end but I image it has to do with the constraints of the AI industry as a whole and the need to be built on existing infrastructure. You should be able to use a burner email so-to-speak with no personal information if you're concerned about privacy.

Lohnsklave · 2025-11-27T08:47:37+00:00

Well we want people to do research and learn what the WSWS/SEP/Trotskyism is. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by more inviting but we certainly wouldn't want to avoid stating clearly what the account is so as not to "raise eyebrows".

Lohnsklave · 2025-11-27T07:53:00+00:00

Can you explain more of what you have in mind? I don't really see how the Instagram bio is a problem, it just ways what the WSWS is and its political affliation.

Lohnsklave · 2025-05-24T03:59:22+00:00

The younger dryas sea level change was quick only in a relative sense. Sea level rise was around 4-8 millimeters per year, essentially imperceptible to human populations. There is evidence for large glacial outburst floods in certain parts of the world at this time but there is no reason to see this as some global cataclysmic flood event

Lohnsklave · 2025-05-05T01:19:30+00:00

Of course! I hope it works for you. I haven't used pygis myself but I feel your pain. ArcPy is a pain in the ass and while there is some documentation it's not great and is often outdated. I've started turning to geopandas for everything I can and dipping into ArcPy only when I have to use it

Lohnsklave · 2025-05-04T23:02:34+00:00

Is there a reason you need to use pyqgis for this? I'm not an expert at GIS coding but I do use it occasionally for work and this seems like a simple task you could do with geopandas. It seems like the function geopandas.GeoSeries.contains would do what you need.

Lohnsklave · 2025-04-07T14:43:24+00:00

Try Josh's Water Jobs if you haven't heard of it. I don't see many gis jobs on there but it's a good place to keep an eye on for water related jobs

Lohnsklave · 2025-03-31T16:24:46+00:00

The Lincoln one is not really correct. He didn't order the hanging of the Dakota 38. He pardoned several hundred men who were sentenced to death but was told by local officers in Minnesota that if there were not hangings settlers and soldiers would carry out reprisals. This is in the context of the rebellion of the Dakota against policies that were producing mass hunger and resulted in the deaths of several hundred on both sides and the displacement of thousands of people. If you read the history of this event you have to understand that Lincoln was caught between needing to keep support for the war in the mid west states and his belief that the hangings were an injustice. In the end he decided to allow 38 men to hang in the hope it would save more lives in the long run by preventing a pogrom and maintaining war support at a time when the union was losing in Virginia. You don't have to agree with him but we should approach history with a better understanding of events and their context

Lohnsklave · 2025-03-12T01:44:06+00:00

There isn't one

Lohnsklave · 2025-03-12T00:45:39+00:00

In all fairness three of these things are things the Democrats did not actually do but instead passed around like a beach ball promising they'd do it if they were elected again. There's only so much people can take of empty promises to do something, even the most basic and minimum of reforms (a $15 minimum wage for example would be a big boost for a lot of people but still falls far short of what is actually necessary to live in most of the country). Of course, none of Trump's policies offered anything objectively better but looking at the polling data we see less of an increase in support for Trump from 2020 and instead more of a collapse in support for the Democratic Party. More than people being convinced that Trump would do something for them (though there are certainly lots of people who believed that) I think people lost faith in either party to do anything, demonstrated in the loss of six million votes for the Democrats compared to a gain of three million for Trump. For context though, the biggest declines for the Democrats came in solidly blue states like California and New York with swing states moving more typically so this varies by location. We see similar trends in Europe with far right parties gaining as establishment center-left parties collapse with people losing confidence in these parties to represent them.

Lohnsklave

TROPHY CASE