Comment by simorley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simorley | Hacker News Reader

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> First, how in the world did the Japanese invasion of Manchuria show that the elites weren't caught by surprise by 1929? I mean, you've listed two events, and one came after the other, but that in no way demonstrates that the elites had advance knowledge of 1929.

When a global war is planned, the money tends to flood out of speculative consumer goods because that money is needed to fund wars. Why do you think the markets collapse in 1929? Everything was running smoothly and it all crashed down just before the start of the greatest war in human history.

> Second, the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero.

Japan has been a US "vassal" since the 1850s. We used Japan as an attack dog to protect our interests in china/east asia and of course to keep the russians at bay. If you are interested, go read about a bunch of black ships sailing into tokyo bay in the 1850s. Sure, Japan got off leash for a few years, but we corrected such "misbehavior" rather brutally. The idea that the "the west" had no influence over japan is laughable.

> I notice that you don't name any of these "elites", just "not Bernie Madoff".

I imagine the elites are people who I will never hear of. I don't know. The people who decide to sanction cuba, venezuela, etc. The people who decided to open trade relations with china in the 1970s. The people who decided to invade iraq. Certainly the people didn't decide any of it. Certainly madoff didn't either, but that's my assumption.

> You're sounding more and more like a conspiracy-theory nut case. If you've got an actual case, you need to do a better job presenting it.

What is "conspiratorial" about saying the elites set up any system - national or international. Who do you think set up the global order? Aliens? The people? Who do you think sets up governments? Who do you think starts wars. Who do you think artificial man-made systems are created and broken down.

Resorting to silly ad hominems doesn't make you look great. I'm not saying there is some crazy "conspiracy" for the elites to collapse the system to turn humans into batteries. I'm saying that artifical human systems are created by elites and usually broken down by elites. The exceptions being natural causes.

All right, let me try saying the same thing in a way that isn't an ad hominem: You're coming from the starting position that the elites control and decide most everything. For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing.

For example, Japan. Yes, I know about Perry. That doesn't mean that the US was running Japan's foreign policy 80 years later. Where is your evidence that the US-imposed vassal status lasted much past the Meiji Restoration? (Yes, they were open to trade after that. That doesn't make them a vassal.)

Or the crash of 1929. Where is your evidence that elites pulling money out to fund WWII was the cause of 1929? The conventional position is that it was a speculative bubble crashing in the normal way that such bubbles crash, through mechanisms that are fairly well understood. Where is your evidence that the standard narrative is wrong?

You think elites set up the system. I agree with that; they do. (Who else is going to set them up? If you've got the power to set up a system, you are, by definition, one of the elite.) Where we differ is that I think things are much more chaotic than you do, and therefore that the elites have much less actual control.

> You're coming from the starting position that the elites control and decide most everything.

No. Just the systematically important things. Obviously they aren't concerned about every minutiae.

> For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing.

What other starting point is there? Who else but the elites create systematically important institutions? Also, you are really asking for the impossible. It's not like the elite come out and say, "we are the elite".

> For example, Japan. Yes, I know about Perry. That doesn't mean that the US was running Japan's foreign policy 80 years later.

That's quite a walk back from "the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero.". You just jumped from one extreme ( no influence ) to running the whole show.

> Where is your evidence that the US-imposed vassal status lasted much past the Meiji Restoration?

Other than the fact we currently occupy japan? Can't tell whether you are being serious or not. We are the ones that allowed Japan to have korea.

"Back in 1900, Roosevelt had written, 'I should like to see Japan have Korea.'"

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html

We are the ones that limited japan's naval growth via the washington naval treaty. You can read up on that yourself. As I said, other than those few years where japan "rebelled", they've been a vassal. Don't ever remember us or anyone else freeing them from vassalage.

> Or the crash of 1929. Where is your evidence that elites pulling money out to fund WWII was the cause of 1929?

All crashes are a result of the elites creating the environment whether money flows out of the markets. Naturally they'd be the first to pull out which causes others to and so forth. What else could it be?

> The conventional position is that it was a speculative bubble crashing in the normal way that such bubbles crash, through mechanisms that are fairly well understood. Where is your evidence that the standard narrative is wrong?

Right. Who creates the environment of speculative bubbles? Are they fairly well understood? Funny how we keep getting speculative bubbles and financial crises. Unless you think the markets are natural entites and not artificial man-made creations. Does mother nature naturally create a stock bubble? Does mother nature naturally pop it? Or do you think it's because your friend stop funding his 401k?

> You think elites set up the system. I agree with that; they do.

But you said you disagreed with me from the very start. "For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing."

> Where we differ is that I think things are much more chaotic than you do, and therefore that the elites have much less actual control.

What's chaotic? Things seem remarkable stable. So elites have the power to create a global order but they don't have the power to control it? Makes sense. Once again, so chaos starts wars? Chaos invented the lie about iraq wmds?

Nevermind who created the 2008 financial crisis. Who do you think fixed it? You? Me? Or did the elites come up with a plan to prop up the markets? We can never have any definitive proof because it's the nature of this business. But my educated seems more correct rather than your "conventional wisdom". Good day.

I stand by "the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero".

> Other than the fact we currently occupy japan?

We have bases there. We don't currently occupy Japan. There's a difference. The occupation ended in 1952.

But even if we did currently occupy Japan, that started in 1945, and so has absolutely nothing to do with how much influence we had over their foreign policy in 1931.

You apparently are serious, but your arguments make no sense.

Yes, we limited their naval growth with the Washington Treaty. We pushed them into it against their will, because they considered an arms race against the US to be a worse outcome than the treaty. That still doesn't show any evidence that the US elites were dictating that Japan would invade China in 1931.

> All crashes are a result of the elites creating the environment whether money flows out of the markets. Naturally they'd be the first to pull out which causes others to and so forth. What else could it be?

Overleveraged buying of stocks that aren't going up any longer leading to margin calls? What else could it be?

> Who creates the environment of speculative bubbles?

Prosperity creates earnings, which makes stocks look undervalued, which makes people buy them, which makes the stocks go up. When that happens for long enough, people buy them because they've been going up. That makes the stock go up more. When that happens for long enough, people buy stocks with borrowed money, because it's been going up for so long that they expect that it's certain to continue to do so. And that makes the price go up even more, which makes even more people buy it on borrowed money. Eventually, the price stops rising because the banks won't lend any more, and then people start selling, and it collapses in a panic.

At what point do you think the elites are making that happen? More, were deliberately making that happen?

I don't agree with your starting point, which is that the elites currently control things to the degree that you think they do. I agree that they set it up; I disagree that they still have the level of control that your ideas imply.

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