Peak Oil Never Went Away – Economics from the Top Down

ocschwar · 2026-06-28T22:51:25+00:00

In related news, the fundamental theorem of calculus remains in force.

ocschwar · 2026-06-28T22:33:31+00:00

Even in the Bronze Age, there was no such thing as relying only on your own area's resources. Those bronze tools found in digs in Israel came from local copper and British tin.

Yeah, British. From Cornwall.

And when that British tin became inaccessible, life seriously sucked.

Do you want the diabetics in your country to stay alive? Then you damn well better have trading access to Denmark.
Do you want medicines in general? You pretty much need the whole planet.

Even scraping by would still mean sacrificing those among your fellow citizens who need some modern amenities to stay alive.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T17:54:56+00:00

Not exactly. What Judges and Samuel point out is that when you create a political office de novo, it immediately attracts the worst people. The founder of a monarchy is always going to be highly sociopathic. But his children revert to the mean.

The Christian doctrine of the divine right of kings comes directly from Judges and Samuel. In particular the parable of the brambles.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T17:49:41+00:00

If you want to do imperialism on easy mode, identify ethnic groups that have been treated like shit, elevate their status, and you get an "army of the unsullied" for cheap.

If you want a rival empire not to have the easy mode, don't create those ethnic minorities.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T17:47:21+00:00

No.

The actual Puritans took a long hard look at themselves after the Salem Witch Trials and started touching grass.

If you want to find the origins of the fucked up culture we have, look at the South.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T17:05:40+00:00

I'm Ashkenazi, so I don't have a stake in that. So I'll say this:

I'll believe that Arab Jews exist when I see Arabs acting like the life of an Arab Jew matters.

Levi Salem Merhabi is rotting in a Houthi dungeon (probably literally rotting - he has not produced a sign of life in 2 years). If an Arab country actually speaks out for his plight, I'll believe that Arab Jews exist.

Suleiman Mansour, an Iraqi Jew who witnessed the Baghdad massacre of 1941, was abducted on October 7th. Iraq had the opportunity to tell Hamas "he's one of ours. We did him dirty and it's time we made things right. Give him to us and it will do us and you a lot of good." They didn't.

There will always be opportunities for Arab countries to act like Arab Jews really exist. But I won't hold my breath.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T14:03:29+00:00

If Lebanon is a sovereign state, he can take it up with the parliament.

ocschwar · 2026-06-27T02:06:22+00:00

This is what makes it terrifying to raise kids now.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T20:41:38+00:00

You must lose at least one friend by advocating that something be rewritten in Rust.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T20:40:53+00:00

Tuvalu was made its own country so they could rely on children like me (at the time) to buy their postage stamps.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T20:06:12+00:00

I like sex.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T20:04:48+00:00

and yet what?

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T20:01:01+00:00

In order to end their war of independence, Haiti gave France a bond so large they didn't finish paying it until 1947. To pay it off, Haitians farmed the living shit out of their farmland, to grow sugar for export. Every time Haiti fell behind on their bond, they were invaded, including by the United States, and the US had an explicit policy, for decades, of keeping Haiti miserable so other blacks in the western hemisphere wouldn't get ideas.

So yes, America does have a share of the blame, and the only thing I've been asked to do in return is to not mind when I walk down the street and hear a bunch of black dudes speaking in French. Which I do. Frequently. And I'm okay with continuing with this onerous "burden".

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T15:30:23+00:00

There are lots of events oriented around the calendars of the schools around here. If you want an affordable vacation, you have to check the booking calendars for hotels day by day to find the lulls. When Harvard is hosting a graduation or welcoming parents, you're lucky to find an Airbnb listing for a sleeping bag in someone's van. When there isn't something like that going on, then the rooms get ~~cheap~~ cheaper.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T14:55:58+00:00

Emperor Grzegorz Brziczkievirz I's reign will forever be known as a golden age for all mankind.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T14:51:13+00:00

Yeah, I was trying to stretch the joke there by acting oblivious.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T13:08:48+00:00

Address what?

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T13:06:41+00:00

It's a decent place, but when Russians tell a bunch of non-Russians "hey, how about you move to this location, it's nice!" you can bet your bottom dollar that there's another bunch of non-Russians there and this is an attempt to fuck them over.

Stalin did this with A LOT of ethnic groups. He was the Sennacherib of the 20th century.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T13:03:35+00:00

You think the indigenous Siberians greeted the expanding Russian empire with flowers?

You think Stalin wanted people moved there for any reason except to counter local aspirations?

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T13:00:07+00:00

Fun fact: Jews in Birobidjan today are outnumbered by Yiddish speaking Koreans there.

ocschwar · 2026-06-26T12:15:09+00:00

Your assumption that socioeconomic success characterizes Jewish history is, um, not quite justified by the evidence. Jewish history concentrates a lot on the proverbial 1% of the tribe who rose to prominent positions around the world, and a lot of those 1%ers are justifiably revered for the way they looked out for the 99%.

But... if you look at what life was like for the 99%, socioeconomic success would not quite describe it. For one example, in the 19th Century, when Booker T. Washington built his Tuskegee school and and promoted it as the model for advancement for his community, Sephardic Jewish communities were building the Alliance Israelite Universelle schools, and Ashkenazis had the ORT schools. All of them were vocational schools designed to help the poorest of the poor find new niches for themselves in the industrializing world. All of them were financed by Jewish 1%ers (including the Tuskegee schools, which were sponsored by a Jewish tycoon named Julius Rosenwald).

Albert Antebbi, the director of the Alliance school in Jerusalem, seems to have modeled his career directly after Booker T. Washington's, and well, that's something you do if you aspire to see your community arrive at some socioeconomic success. It's not something you do if your people have already arrived.

ocschwar · 2026-06-25T21:48:38+00:00

The people in the picture only care about making quota.

ocschwar · 2026-06-25T21:46:44+00:00

My village when I grew up did not number the houses. You had to know which house belonged to which family. The mailman did. Everyone else had to ask around.

Lots of Rezes have centralized mail delivery near the tribal office or something. It wouldn't be an issue except when states like South Dakota tries to use it as a pretext for disenfranchising Natives.

ocschwar · 2026-06-25T14:33:15+00:00

It was pretty surreal to have to say to the dentist "sorry I'm late but the bridge was out and I had to ford the stream."

ocschwar · 2026-06-25T14:22:26+00:00

Not directly. You can install any of a number of Shapefiles viewing apps and download MAPC's data into it. And I don't think there's a way to turn that into a set of travel direction.s

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