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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

"The financial crisis remains the most influential event of the 21st century."

Uh... I think 9/11 may disagree. The financial crisis didn't spawn wars and ISIL.

While I get where you are coming from I would argue (and anybody alive and paying attention to the region during the 1990s would likely agree) that 9/11 was a symptom of the ongoing issues in the Middle-East (largely due to fallout from colonization and Cold War politics), and not a causal event. That is not to say the response to 9/11 didn't throw gasoline on the fire.

You could say the exact same thing about the financial crisis when it comes to being a symptom rather than a causal event.

That would be fairly US centric view there are a lot of countries that were not touched by 9/11 but very few (if any) not affected by the financial crisis.

I think the argument would be that 9/11 has had follow on effects on global politics.

The financial crisis had a broader reach around the world than 9/11 did.

9/11 made it harder for me to fly, but the financial crisis cost friends jobs.

I would say that losing a job is better than being bombed (in reference to the wars mentioned by the parent). Naturally, it all depends on your perspective. If you were in a safe nation, then losing a job is a big deal. Of course, the financial criss was a financial crisis because all of the money poured into tech and commodities and not much else. Given the tech-focused nature of this site, our perspective is going to be skewed by that time being one of the most prosperous periods ever (the late 90s probably has it beat).

9/11 main impact is cementing USA image as unlikable, cowardly, irrational jerk of a country that can happily ignore international community and start two wars (three, if you count fake "war on terrorism") because of one random act of vioilent human stupidity.

Global cultural impact of 9/11 and what followed is huge.

And crisis... You can always make more money.

Many people in the US never travel internationally and don't really follow international politics. If you are from the states stay within the states, why would you care if other countries think the US is a bully and a jerk? Outside of knowing someone who went to war after 9/11, 9/11 probably didn't affect your day to day much after a year or two. I imagine this is the case for many people in the midwest and south.

If you were a factory worker in Indiana, it probably hurt a lot to lose your job in the recession and see your home value plummet. If you were supposed to retire in 2008, you also saw your 401k plummet as well. You may not have even fully recovered your net worth at this point. That would be something that weighs on you everyday.

I agree that in US, subprime lending crisis and what followed had more impact than 9/11. I was arguing with previous commenter that claimed that financial crisis had more impact globally than 9/11.

> one random act of vioilent human stupidity

There's a definition of terrorism i've never heard before, probably for good reason.

For me human stupidity is just fifth natural element that occasionally causes its own kinds of natural disasters.

Terrorism is one of those, but also is negligent greed or general recklessness or other things. All those cost lives and cause property damage.

When you frame it like that you can get out of atavistic mindset of ascribing agency to random things and vengfully looking for reasons why god of oceans hates you. Then you can focus on researching best ways of mitigation and prevention.

9/11 didn't really spawn ISIL either.

ISIL is really a function of the Arab spring, spawned by a general popular Arab uprising, which was spawned by a singular uprising in Tunisia, spawned by a single man committing suicide, spawned by Manning's blind cable releases.

The financial crises was global, and nearly brought the American economic system down, I don't think people realize how close we came to serious disaster. The President handed out 1 Trillion dollars in 'magic dollars' to quelch the system it was crazy. It affected everyone in the world. Almost every American was directly affected.

9/11 surely the biggest geopolitical event.

>spawned by Manning's blind cable releases.

Genuinely curious, do you have any good sources that explain how the cable releases triggered this set of events? I understand that Manning/Assange have jeopardized some US intelligence efforts (and lives), but not aware of any greater fallout beyond a handful of compromised operations and deaths (no small feat, but smaller than ISIL).

I'm going to have to see some more flesh on those bones, too. This is a curiously strong claim about bright-line causality in a very large, very messy series of events with many actors.

The leaks 'lit' the Arab Spring which had a lot of momentum, and ISIL is an artifact of the Arab Spring. Obviously conditions were there. The later is not in much dispute, the former just not more widely known.

https://psmag.com/news/tunisian-activist-describes-mannings-...

https://medium.com/@ifikra/chelsea-manning-and-the-arab-spri...

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-l...

I thought that ISIL is more an artifact of the power vacuum brought about by the 2nd US invasion of Iraq. Admittedly, I'm not an expert in these matters, but wasn't the void in Iraq a factor in ISIS's uprising?

The Manning leaks helped spawn the Arab Spring for a set of upside down reasons. Manning had no understanding of what he was doing, nor could anyone expect the outcome. Moroever, the leaks did not show the Americans 'being evil' to the world, in fact, just the opposite: the leaks showed thousands of professional diplomats doing their mundane jobs in a difficult and complicated world. Given how many cables were leaked, and that nothing explosive came out of that making the Americans look particularly evil is a real testament to the professionalism of the American diplomatic corps.

What the cables did however - was demonstrate to regular Arabs how deeply corrupt their own leaders were. Basically, they saw the Americans trying to appease, nudge, console, 'do the best they could' with some corrupt folks.

I'm sorry to not have direct sources, it was years ago when I was abroad, paying attention to all of this. Edit: I added a couple of sources below, it's not a conspiratorial view.

Oh, that's pretty cool then. At least it informed people about how bad their leaders were.

ISIL was more created by the US occupation of Iraq and our subsequent disbanding and forced unemployment of the Sunni dominated military, a misguided attempt at a clean slate by the Bush adminstration's incompetence. This gave a large population of people with military training and easy access to weapons a lot of idle time and nothing to do but stew under occupation, add the historic animosity between the new government led by Shiites was a recipe for unrest.

Your Arab Spring argument is nonsense - ISIL was around in various names before the Arab Spring. A simple look at the calendar for the events shows this.

Not really.

ISIL and the various other groups from whence they came had no material presence until the Syrian uprising, which was part of the Arab spring. They were a small band of angry nobodies before that.

During the Syrian uprising, those groups coalesced and came to power, taking territory, getting funding, bringing in foreign fighters. Even if they had origins elsewhere, 'they came to be' during this time, in Syria.

Iraq materially comes into the picture later, when Obama withdrew American forces form Iraq, which enabled then Iraqi PM Malaki to purge government of Sunnis, deepening the rift between Sunni/Shia, as you mentioned.

Then ISIL effectively came into Iraq - as the local Sunni tribes in Iraq turned their back on their own antagonizing government, and allowed ISIL in.

If Obama had of left 10K troops in Iraq, behind the wire, giving him enough leverage with the Iraqi PM so as to be able to contain the Sunni/Shia animosity (as they had done up until that time) - then there would have never been any ISIL incursion into Iraq and the state would have remained intact.

Whatever we think about the 2003 invasion, there is no amount of 'US competence' which would completely disable small groups of dudes from forming some degree of insurgency. Any country invading any other always faces this kind of opposition.

Without Manning's cables, there wouldn't have been an Arab Spring, without that in Syria, none of us would have ever heard of ISIL. I'm not promoting or defending Manning, just indicating the course of events.

You seem to be linking the rise of ISIL to the Arab spring and ruling regime's corruption, without listing any related factors. ISIL was able to scale the way they did because they already controlled a good amount of territory in neighboring Iraq, which was in full-fledged civil war since at least 2006, a conflict in which the US spent significant amounts of the 'magic money' you mention.

It’s from the opinion column. Not sure of his economics credentials. So take it for what it is, an opinion piece.

Reading further into the article, this wasn't my only "wait, what?" moment...

At least in Western societies the financial crisis will have a much bigger impact than 9/11. A lot of people learned that the system that was supposed to reward people that do the right things does not work that way and lost faith in it. That enabled the rise of nationalist parties, Trump, Brexit and others. We will see how things will work out but I think there is a good chance that the world will change a lot in the next decades because the financial crisis made clear that the system doesn't work for the regular guy.

From my reading of right wing media, it seems like terrorism and immigration are much larger contributors to the rise of nationalism.

I am not that much into conspiracy but I think economic anger and pain is being redirected against "others" by powerful people. Trump is a good example for this. Same in silicon valley. Instead of going against income inequality people talk about diversity, LGBT and other things that don't threaten the power and income of the owning class.

I don't think working class people actually care that much about income inequality. But I do think they care about competing for jobs with people who don't even speak the native language. And I do think they care when they see things on the shelves at Walmart which are now made in China, but which used to be made at the local factory.

FWIW. Just my read on the situation.

I think they care about feeling secure in their life. I think most people do that. In the current economy they don't feel secure so you can explain that with foreigners, capitalists or something else.

I'm not into conspiracies either but just follow the money. Who is endowing universities with billions of dollars? And what types of social issues / humanities do these universities teach to kids and which ones due they tend to ignore?

If you're economically trapped in a precarious position, shouting about immigration and terrorism (by the Other) is far more effective at scaring people into falling in line.

It is lifeboat "reasoning" at the tribe level.

The issues the working class has with large scale immigration are legitimate. Econ 101: adding more supply of some thing (labor) will reduce the price of that thing (wages).

Another econ 101: some group taking an increasing share of a more or less fixed pie will cause others to get less.

They're separate issues. It is not coherent to argue that one problem isn't a problem because another problem exists.

You are 100% right. What I tried to say is that some powerful people are trying to channel economic anxiety into explanations that don't threaten their own power. Being angry about immigration or diversity doesn't really threaten billionaires but being angry about inequality does.

So of several problems the propaganda machine picks the most convenient.

> Econ 101: adding more supply of some thing (labor) will reduce the price of that thing (wages).

Econ 201: Immigrants are consumers too. Adding more demand for some thing (consumers of products) will increase the price of that thing (wages of producers).

Almost everyone agrees that growing the economy is good. When a child is born, we don't lament how that infant will be driving down wages when they reach adulthood.

There is nothing different about immigrants. They are full participants in all sides of the economy.

The real reason that immigrants are a threat to American workers is because they will accept shittier jobs. They drive down quality of the average job because they are more willing to suffer. But that's not a problem with immigrants, it's a problem with our worker protection laws and how they are enforced. Neither immigrants nor non-immigrants should have to pee in cups to avoid leaving the assembly line, work full time without benefits, have unreported workplace-caused injuries, etc.

Do you really believe that you can vastly increase the labor pool without it having adverse effects on labor? Even when you have natural experiments like the Black Death, which reduced the population of Europe by approaching 50% and tremendously improved the prospects of labor? So much so that it ended feudalism.

> Econ 201: Immigrants are consumers too. Adding more demand for some thing (consumers of products) will increase the price of that thing (wages of producers).

Immigrants are always consumers; they also tend to nearly universally be workers. So, they're not increasing demand for products in isolation; they're also increasing the supply of workers.

"wars and ISIL" are a big deal for the < 1% (0.4) of Americans serving in the military, and for the people living in these countries dealing with armed insurgencies, but 2008 had an impact on hundreds of millions of Americans beyond taking off their shoes at airports.

> I think 9/11 may disagree

Only in the US, which is arguable. Every person in the US is affected by the 2008 events every month. 9/11 is hardly a blip in most of the US, outside of the lukewarm media attention about tangentially related eventualities.

Americans get very upset when they don't opt-in to risk and end up being exposed to violence unwittingly, but that's life. It's no more or less tragic than when you get diagnosed with cancer. 40k people die in car accidents each year. 5-10k die of a terrorist attack almost 20 years ago. It's immoral to worship one single tragedy that pales in comparison to those ongoing. I live with the solace that those who are born after 9/11 will have a saner perspective.

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