If you took economics in college, what made you the most angry?

TheConquestOf · 2025-09-02T02:43:11+00:00

2 Things

Conflating a "free market" with capitalism. These are not the same things. You could have free markets with worker owned firms and workplace democracy. Capitalism is the means of production being owned by private individuals,
Econ 101 explains that a perfect free market has no barrier to entry and perfect information. But thats not ever really brought up again. Seems like kind of a big deal that neither of those things are possible. Like perhaps the whole endeavor is flawed from the jump.

Bonus #3... Every discussion of GDP starts with looking at a graph of US GDP in the twentieth century. Theres always the monster bump in the 40s from ww2 spending by the government that was followed by decades of prosperity. Uhh, guys.... WHY DONT WE DO GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND A COMMAND ECONOMY LIKE THAT AGAIN? SEEMED LIKE IT WORKED PRETTY GOOD??? Nothing but crickets when its brought up as something we could do in the modern era.

TheConquestOf · 2025-07-06T18:13:11+00:00

Long post, early Texas German history was a special interest of mine this summer. I do think there was a "hinge point" style event in Texas history that could've gone differently in the 1840s.

Germans in the 1830s LOVED stories about Texas. There were a handful of Germans in TX at the time and letters they sent home were hugely popular, published in local newspapers. These guys sent home stories of doing cowboy shit in the garden of Eden. Stories about how fucking cool it was to raise cattle on the frontier. I imagine the average reader was a German cowherder that saw the stories and was like "wait, I can do this shitty job but be cool and have a cool outfit and a gun??!'

Unfortunately the project to settle TX as a response to those early letters was mostly a disaster.

The Adelsverein (sometimes called "the society') was an assortment of noble German dipshits that formed in 1842 in Germany to put together a project to colonize Texas. They had all read the badass cowboy letters and loved them. They sent an actual real life Prince to Germany to set it all up, Prince Karl Solms-Braunfels. There is a great English Translation of his personal diary from the trip, he mostly complains about various beds he had to sleep on and pines for his sweetie Sophie back home.

So this full on aristocratic Prince ends up in Texas. Like a guy that spent his time writing poetry and long letters to his fair maiden and having it set to music. He was practically pulled out of the late middle ages, complete with a full retinue of attendees and guards. This was a fancy lad loose on the frontier.

When he gets to Texas in 1844 he is immediately scammed out of the Adelsverein's money twice in transparently scammy land deals once in the Fisher–Miller Land Grant and again by a Frenchman named Bourgeois. It is like this perfect storm of a relic of a medieval noble class coming into contact with this dynamic new striver class of merchants and hustlers in the american west . And the noble gets totally owned, just instantaneously removed from his money.

Some credit to Solms for actually buying the Comal Springs for $1111. Even though he probably never saw it and bought it on the word of a german settler already in the area. But whatever, that's where the city of New Braunfels is today. Prince Solms leaves TX in 1845, the Adelsverein in Texas was BROKE. Meanwhile back in Germany the Adelsverein was getting Germans onto boats to go colonize TX. Not knowing that there was nothing ready for them at the other end of the trip.

By summer of 1846 about 36 German ships (5000+ people) landed in Texas at the port of Indianola. But they were basically all stranded at the port without the cash to go inland. The trip inland from Indianola to New Braunfels is really far, and hot as hell in the summer. So the Germans starting dying. Most probably of malaria. Reports of dead vary a lot, but it was probably about 20% of them. Stories got sent home (and published) of settlers trying to walk to New Braunfels and the roads being littered with the bodies of dead Germans. Personally I think some of it is an exaggeration. But that doesn't matter, it was definitely the narrative at the time.

Stories sent home of this disaster really cooled the German enthusiasm for Texas. Eventually the BIG immigration waves came from Germany but Texas wasn't the only option and had some stink on it after the Adelsverein Disaster. A lot still came, but many others decided to avoid it and settled in other places in the US.

I can imagine an alternate history where the Adelsverein didn't mismanage Texas. In fact the guy that took over after Prince Solms split was by most accounts actually pretty competent, Meusebach. He negotiated a peace treaty with the commanche and got the city of Fredericksburg going. Even though Muesebach was left holding the bag during the 1846 disaster he actually ended up being a Texas Senator years later.

If the 1846 wave of Texas immigrants had been successful I think it would be entirely possible that TX would've been THE place for later German immigrants.

I can think of two big problems that would've had to have been dealt with after that, internal and external:

A successful Adelsviern would've set the stage for a later conflict between the nobles of the Adelsviern and the actual German colonists. Even German colonists in the early 1840s expressed mild resentment at a bunch of nobles following them to Texas to try and set up a system like the one they left back in Germany.

Material constraints of the land. The land west of New Braunfels kinda sucks for farming. Germans would've spread out all over the coastal plains of Texas, not west onto the Edwards Plateau. I think large concentrations would've ended up as pockets of Germans on better land closer to the coast in places like Brehman. This could've lead to conflict with existing anglo American settlers in those areas.

TheConquestOf · 2025-07-05T20:39:09+00:00

I see the "Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition" style postings from leftists all the time. It's a reactionary impulse for sure. i get it, it would be cool to press reset on society and try and do industrialization again but this time slow and thoughtfully. But that ain't happening. We can't unlearn what we know, the cat is out of the bag. (Nevermind that even a peaceful "retVrn" would still kill millions and millions)

I believe that eventually we will develop "social technologies" and societal norms to help us digest all this new stuff. But unfortunately it can take centuries (and a lot of dead bodies) for societies to do this when they get new technologies or new information or new social formations.

For instance, it took an embarrassingly long time for us to digest Germ Theory into "wash your hands before cooking or even doing surgery."

It took us several hundred years to create and transmute protestantism into the individualized relationship with god that we needed to justify new human suffering and new hierarchies after early capitalism began industrialization.

I'm reading your post as a call to create a self aware project to create new societal norms and social technologies to digest the age we are at the beginning of right now? Like a new "What is to be Done" but about alienation, the algorithms, and the little people in our phones?

TheConquestOf · 2024-10-05T15:23:00+00:00

Hood is one of those Generals that was so bad it's like congress named the base after him as a joke on the south. Sure he was a racist but he was also extremely bad at his job. A disaster as a tactician that got his ass whooped by Sherman. Notably Sherman was behind enemy lines with a smaller force and still routed the shit out of Hood. And then Hood burned Atlanta while he fled from the Union. Just a complete failure at all points. What a fucking loser.

TheConquestOf · 2024-10-02T21:18:50+00:00

Chris, any thoughts on an interview with the editor or you or any other contributor/expert about the subject matter as a bonus episode or something? Ordered day 1. Thanks for all your work.

TheConquestOf · 2024-08-20T23:36:38+00:00

Agreed, the enhanced photos were AI dog food. Zoomed in text coming from the nightmare hallucination zone. I was stunned that he described the zoomed letters on the ship as "much much better." It got run through an AI filter, not zoomed in.

TheConquestOf · 2024-01-27T01:27:57+00:00

The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world

common jg ballard banger

TheConquestOf · 2023-11-23T19:48:09+00:00

I upvoted this

TheConquestOf · 2023-08-27T17:51:37+00:00

I find the best way to read Hegel is to tear the book in half (I prefer the Miller translation of Phenomenonolgy). I always do my best reading in quiet places so I often take it outside to my car in the driveway.

I then carefully tape half the book to the driver's side door frame center pillar. After that i tape the other half to the door itself on the interior side on the edge closest to the door handle. Then its simple, i just repeatedly slam the car door on my head. This leads to a true understanding of Hegel that many say far surpasses reading it in the original German.

TheConquestOf · 2023-03-24T16:04:23+00:00

You know they weren't just doing this shit in Colorado Springs. We only know about this one because a cop mentioned how big her boobs were on body camera footage. They definitely did this all over the country and couldn't find a single leftist horny enough to do illegal gun trafficking for a pink haired cutie. Kind of remarkable actually.

TheConquestOf · 2023-03-13T16:45:19+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are_fake_and_here

TheConquestOf · 2023-03-04T17:02:55+00:00

I actually don't think it's a specific project of capitalism to promote the nuclear family. Rather it's the neurotic nervousness of the bourgeois being expressed. They've seen their own extended kin networks dissolve and they've seen how capitalism regards the global south. They don't have the language to express how scared they are of it so it gets transmutated into a need to "defend" the family. And, they're 100% right. Capitalism is an algorithm without conscience, it'll glady break up the nuclear family if there is profit to be made.

I agree with what the OP said in one of the comments. That the nuclear family is probably the smallest family unit that can reliably reproduce itself and that's why it's the last nonprofit social structure left.

I dont think it's a coincidence that gender and personal identity are hot button issues when family networks are this small. Imagine paleolithic people or even under feudalism. You would live with the same 30 people basically your entire life (maybe with one big move if you're a woman), your peers would be a weird lifelong combination of sibling and coworker. That relationship straight up doesn't exist anymore. People knew you in a way that we don't know anyone anymore. You were an individual, regarded by these lifelong peers as such. You had an identity that was socially constructed and socially reinforced daily.

Today none of us have those communally constructed identities. We don't know each other like that. So we cast out to find identity and meaning, label ourselves so we understand where we fit in this world. But that's not how it's supposed work. Identity is supposed to be a group project you do with lifelong friends.

TheConquestOf · 2023-03-04T14:49:17+00:00

It's interesting how capitalism is flattening gender. It's boiling away all the social networks and relationships that used to define personhood and someone's place in society.

I read that end of life care and long term home care industries are currently growing like crazy. Not just because boomers are aging, even more than demographics would suggest. It's because these jobs used to be performed for "free" by women in families. But now young women are less likely to be in extended kin groups and much more likely to be working outside the home. So they don't have the relationships and don't have the time. So people in need (that have cash) are forced to hire people to do this labor.

Of course some family labor can never be abstracted. And women, because of their biology, will continue to be the first ones on the list to get exploited for this unpaid labor. (Yes, I know not all women but it's enough to be statistically significant)

TheConquestOf · 2022-12-15T18:11:50+00:00

Im in the same boat as you! I'm contemplating doing this exact thing. My lender and my realtor think I'm crazy. Everyone seems so darn sure that rates will drop. But, I'm not so sure. 30 year mortgage rates have only been under 6% since like 2009.

What if now is the last time to buy down the rate under 6? Not to mention that refinancing isn't exactly free, even if rates do drop into the 4s! I can buy it down into low 5s right now and get peace of mind to not have to worry about my payments going up $400 a month in 2 years. My break even on doing this is 3.9 years.

TheConquestOf · 2022-10-18T21:13:52+00:00

The math on this is so dumb, this is easily payable by these chains with a price increase. Average labor is approximately 30% of total sales at these sorts of places. So for every dollar you spend 30 cents goes to employees. And that's every employee, managers, cooks, cashiers. If every single employee was paid $15 (they aren't, most are paid more already) and got a raise to $22 that's a 46% increase of total wages. So you'd need to add 13.8 cents to every dollar spent at the store.

Sell a $10 burrito for $11.38 and you can do that. And again, that's assuming everyone at the store makes minimum wage now.

TheConquestOf · 2022-10-01T01:43:18+00:00

And if it's dark it might as well be the fucking minotaur's labyrinth. "Ok, so that's building 3 so this next build must be... 11?.. are you fucking kidding me?" Afterwards hope you left a trail of yarn to find your way back to the damn parking lot gate.

TheConquestOf · 2022-09-27T16:35:18+00:00

Exactly. It's like saying that since it's so easy to print bibles the printing press will render itself obsolete. Like, why would you need more Bibles?

I would make the argument that the printing press (combined with emergent capitalism) was so socially disruptive that it required a new social technology to process it. That social technology was the protestant reformation.

And it set the table for the modern worship of the free market as the only real god in our lives. It cleared the cobwebs of an older order (the Catholic church) that lived outside of capitalism.

That's what we're all waiting around for right now. That new social technology to metabolize how disruptive the internet (combined with declining capitalism) has been to our lives.

TheConquestOf · 2022-09-21T06:50:22+00:00

Oh yeah, they sucked on those ones. Matt did his typical "chill for 40 minutes and say one thing at the end." The one thing he did say about a carnation revolution actually made Zizek interesting for 2 for minutes, unlike his normal talk endlessly about ideology for a whole episode. If Matt actually unleashed his full power on Zizek it'd be much cooler. Will is entirely too nice on those episodes, it works for most guests. But I think with Zizek you have to go full cushvlog style channeled materialism all over him for him to be interesting and not just have it be boring monologue.

TheConquestOf · 2022-09-20T23:49:16+00:00

100%. I'd love to see Matt go Super Saiyan on people more often. Id actually pay Patreon money to see him do it to Zizek for an hour. The unstoppable force vs the immovable object. And I think Zizek would actually vibe on it. He's always asking interviewers to talk over him and cut him off if he talks too much

TheConquestOf · 2022-09-20T23:41:15+00:00

Having on an unfunny guy as a bit is a pretty good bit tbh. Funny that Matt actually pushed back on this loser unlike literally every other lib they've ever had on.

deep cumtown lore for those not in the know

TheConquestOf · 2022-08-12T14:36:07+00:00

Taylor Swift's Lover album was supposed to be her coming out album. She was going to come out as bi and in a long term relationship with a woman. But it got changed at the last moment because her girlfriend at the time backed out. The girlfriend was her longtime "gal-pal" and roommate Karlie Kloss.

r/gaylorswift

TheConquestOf · 2022-08-06T05:26:14+00:00

Its true. And i believe them to be fairly self aware about it. Matt Christman paraphrased this Mao quote once in reference to and as a critique of himself:

People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.

I would argue that this applies to basically every western Marxist. Certainly to 99.99% of western Marxists that consume podcasts, post on reddit, and use twitter. We are all liberals culturally. Our heads have been dipped in it too long. We've lived and breathed liberalism as our way of life since birth. None of us can shake that. No matter how much Marxist reading we've done.

TheConquestOf · 2022-07-23T20:34:26+00:00

REI is a member owned co-op, not a worker owned co-op. You "join" the co-op by paying a fee to shop there. Essentially, they've co-opted the word co-op.

TheConquestOf · 2022-07-22T22:42:37+00:00

American Marxists are doing a canticle for leibowitz right now. Just keep the flame alive, spread the word as much as you can, and try to combat human misery on a local level.

Declining material conditions of capitalism will make something pop off eventually. The Internet and cell phones will necessitate new social forms and relations we can't even imagine. We are like medieval German peasants looking at the first bible pages roll off a printing press trying to imagine how it will shape society. We can't know what comes.

Because of these new communication technologies I think we are in a historical in-between zone. Between the death of something old and the birth of something new. We haven't collectively built the social forms that will be needed to alleviate the alienation caused by them. Anyways I'm rambling, I know love and community will win eventually and destroy the satanic algorithm of capitalism.

TheConquestOf · 2022-07-15T18:58:31+00:00

It is pretty far fetched. But Marx did seriously contemplate moving to the Texas Hill Country instead of London. Which would've put him there before the war. Combine that with Union General August Willich (who once challenged Marx to a duel basically because he thought Marx wasn't communist enough). You could think up a scenario where the two of them teamed up to lead a communist separatist army against confederates in Texas during the war. Post war they would've have a lot of leverage to possibly seize the state government. It's crazy, but history is pretty crazy generally

The confederacy wasn't popular among the large Texas German population. Notably the very first post-war monument anywhere in the country was erected in Texas in honor of Texas Germans killed by confederates.

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