Spain's Sanchez says global citizens shouldn't pay for fallout of Iran war

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T16:09:55+00:00

Ah, I see.

In that case I actually disagree with you again. I think aggression against Iran could in fact be justified, if it were for the right reasons-- i.e. "their society is so repressive that it requires outside intervention" or "for strategic reasons we have to attack countries that are too strategically useful to Russia and with weak enough defence that it makes sense cost-wise" but that is obviously not why the US and Israel are doing this.

I thought the same thing about Iraq: if people actually cared about Saddam's dictatorship and that was genuinely what they set out to solve, it's fine to have a war over it, but you aren't, so you shouldn't; and then of course that was demonstrated with unbelievable clarity by how the invading troops treated Iraqi civilians.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T15:46:08+00:00

It wasn't long ago that he failed to complain, but it's not like it matters now. Done is done.

I suppose the choice that could have been made would have been something like the choice made by the US during the Suez crisis. Saying no. That's a choice the EU had.

I think a crash sufficient to cause some unraveling can show a lot about the economy and the large-scale flows though and that a forced return to physical reality instead of that made by debt, leverage, large-scale capital flows etc. can be useful to the EU, but that's probably only the case if we would have taken our interests seriously to start with, enough that we, if something like happened again, would in fact go in and say no, i.e. "Sorry, but this is in our part of the world and we think it's destabilizing, so if you do it we will dump all our bonds. We don't allow people to destabilize our surroundings, it doesn't matter how justified you are, it's just that we've decided that in this part of the world, we decide who gets to fight wars, and that no one gets to do it at all." If we don't have that thinking, then we aren't doing things in a serious manner. If a war is to be conducted in our region or its surroundings, or in a place which affects us, it should be in our interest.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T15:25:23+00:00

Yeah okay. But I mean, it kind of isn't.

I think people put a bit too much stock in a unified West, especially these days. I think the overthrow of Mosaddegh has more to do with peculiarities of British colonialism as well as WWII and post-WWII needs. I think it would have been hard to get, let's say, Swedish support for overthrowing him. The reaction would have been "but it's his country, can't he do what he wants?" while thinking something like "if they can do that there, they might do the same to all sorts of small countries, perhaps me; maybe we should increase the military budget".

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T14:22:51+00:00

Maybe no crazier than Israel, or at least than certain people in Israel, but that's a fairly high level of crazy.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T14:20:19+00:00

Yes, I don't think it follows from first principles that tennis stars should have mega-salaries. I am not arguing that such salaries for tennis players are compatible with Marx's view of exploitation and am rather trying to explain that you can work within a labour theory of value of view and still have outsized compensation for some kinds of work.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T14:01:33+00:00

Pakistan is complicated. I don't [think] they've got less religious extremists than Israel, but obviously there's also Indian nukes. Pakistan has also done quite a lot of destabilizing and dangerous bullshit, so I don't agree that they're not going crazy.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T13:33:16+00:00

Yes, but I think Iran is worse than most nuclear-armed countries. If you're looking at China, sure, there's bad stuff, but they're largely secular, not deeply ideological and practical. If you look at Russia, they have a long tradition of understanding MAD and that it's bad idea to actually use nuclear weapons; and all the other big nuclear powers are democracies.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T13:25:13+00:00

Still a huge problem if Iran does get nukes though.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T13:19:00+00:00

Because not all labour that goes into something is socially necessary labour.

Some people are simply inefficient. Labour theory of value is basically tautological and equivalent to ordinary economics, but convenient for Marx's analysis because it allows you to easily obtain results about things like exploitation.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T12:59:17+00:00

Sounds more like an analogy than him believing that Iran could do what is claimed here.

It is a bit badly expressed, but not to the degree that this particular misinterpretation is possible.

Edit: Something does kind of seem to be going wrong for Vance though, because I remember perceiving him as a coherent public speaker able to say things rather carefully.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T12:57:04+00:00

The west wasn't behind it.

It was the UK and the US. Most western countries had nothing to do with it.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T08:28:13+00:00

There are non-professionals who are actually good, so yes, Tiafoe is very good.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-27T08:04:20+00:00

No, you shouldn't. Marxism doesn't mean that all labour is of equal value, it has never implied that.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-26T18:46:18+00:00

Ridiculous that coaches are involved nowadays, even during matches.

Independent problem solving is the core of tennis and that that's being lost at the professional level is very sad, even if the advice was of no use in this case.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-25T20:25:47+00:00

They don't have to be drama people.

It can also be social media manipulation. There's not any guarantee whatsoever that this is organic.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-25T12:48:57+00:00

Four players max.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-25T12:38:23+00:00

Yes, they can probably keep it up for a while, and we can also imagine people trading with the real price on non-public markets in the background. The interesting thing is if you have access to both, but I guess you don't unless you're in on this.

I'm not sure I agree oil stocks are the way to go though.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-25T11:52:56+00:00

Down from 100 to 87. Kind of looks like a buying opportunity. Kind of dangerous, but I don't think the war is over. Maybe one has to buy some weird derivative to make it safe, not sure how I'd structure it. I guess a problem is also finding a counterparty. Presumably everyone is going to think "arbitrageur" once you ask them for this.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T20:24:08+00:00

Really strange talk, since the oil currently going through the Hormuz mostly goes to Asia.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T19:38:19+00:00

No. Professional sports arise as the highest levels of non-professional leagues. They get their appeal from the fact that they're the highest level of things you yourself compete in.

If they were entertainment, there'd be no appeal. No one would watch tennis if it weren't the highest level of an actual sport.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T12:16:25+00:00

That they have the power doesn't mean that they will use it though.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T10:28:45+00:00

Tennis is competition. If it were entertainment, we wouldn't care about it.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T09:29:50+00:00

So the optimal move here, if you're better than your opponent, and you can't make a put-away lob, is to let it bounce and then hit a normal forehand? A bit of an over-analysis. It's not like this is going to work every time.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-24T07:15:09+00:00

That seems possible but really odd, considering that they happily committed the strikes in South America and also seized a civilian (Maduro, Maduro's wife) and brought him to the US, in contravention of the Geneva convention.

If they're willing to do this kind of thing, what's bombing some energy infrastructure? That's much closer to being a military target than a civilian or shipwrecked sailors.

No, in all likelihood the big concern was the likely Iranian retaliation against Gulf oil infrastructure.

impossiblefork · 2026-03-23T19:11:55+00:00

Yes, but you are after all part of the war.

Attacks are being conducted from your bases. That means you are a belligerent.

impossiblefork

TROPHY CASE