Comments by Matías O.J.

Yes - as long as every single penny funding the event comes from the military budget.

You're right, let's close the box and remain completely clueless when the virus mutates naturally.

Source?

Back to the dark ages it is then!

This was very informative. YPF's history makes for interesting reading. I agree on everything except one thing: Latin-American self-defeatism.
I live in Chile and here people also justify any lack of civic spirit, bad governance, and even criminality with the idea that there is something in the latin ethos that's at the bottom of it. Many even claim that it is in our genes, in blatant disregard of everything we know about human genetics.
It's a comfortable excuse, but living in Sweden I see the exact same proportion of knuckleheads to thinking people, and this country is supposed to be one of the havens of working social democracy. I've come to the conclusion that in any country there is simply always a sizeable proportion of uninformed people who'd rather have nothing to do with politics or civic duty. That's just human nature. What they do have is a 500-year lead on developing and legitimizing public institutions to deal with that.
Sweden was a barely industrialized backwater in the early 1900s. Argentina was a future world power with an economy the size of some European countries. The difference if you ask me is that Sweden had a bunch of inherited institutions that could handle the transfer of power and solve problems without falling victim to political opportunism.
Meanwhile, we were busy alternating populist dictatorships and throwing mud at each other from two very well excavated trenches. Even to this day, poisonous partisanship makes any form of sensible political debate impossible, and unhampered nationalism is just a godsend for selfish politicians looking to cling on to power.
We need to learn how to approach politics with information and temperance, or we'll just continue getting strung along by the next charismatic demagogue looking to line his pockets.

That may be, but in the cost-benefit analysis multinationals make, unpredictable nationalization throws up a lot of red numbers. That's why multinationals that should be in Argentina headquarter in Chile instead. I guess we shouldn't complain but seeing Argentina make a mess of herself yet again makes me sad.

Perhaps manufacturing is not the best word. What I meant is that what gives us our security and lifestyle choices is the creation of physical stuff. Food, houses, cars, etc.

If we can produce a lot of food we could eat a lot more varied meals and feed a lot more people. That happened in the 20th century and it was known as the agricultural revolution.

If we can cheaply produce a lot of houses then everyone can have a house. Reducing the labor cost of something means we can have more of it for the same cost. That is a net win for humanity. There is less work in that area, but houses for everyone are cheaper and better.

Sadly, our current economic system seems to have caused efficiency gains to accrue at the top of the pyramid. Houses stay at the same price, factory workers are fired and someone's bank account in Switzerland grows bigger.

Saying that technology impoverishes people because of jobs going obsolete is a fallacy. Wealth concentration is what causes (relative) poverty.

Luckily, its is not work that produces wealth, its manufacturing. More efficient manufacturing means more wealth for all with less overall work hours needed. Now if a small group of people in key positions were allowed to capture all this excess wealth we'd have a problem, but...
Yeah, we have a problem.

Dear Sir,

Considering what the rise of US military power meant for developing countries during the latter half of the 20th century, I find this debate a bit curious.

The rising military power of China will likely change the current status quo, but I fail to see why it is worth defending from the perspective of developing countries like my own. The US did not act as a moral agent outside of its own borders, and China will most likely follow its example.

As an economics student, I agree. The study of economics sometimes feels like you're stuck between a catholic priest and an orthodox minister. I try to keep my reading as broad as possible in order to avoid succumbing to ivory-tower tribalism.

In case you are new here, Connect the Dots has about the same grip on reality as Kim Jong Un. Last month he declared Hitler had used AK-47's, oblivious to the fact that the rifle was invented in, well, 1947.
I like to think that Plato was thinking about people like him when he declared democracy a second-rate form of government.

The risk of people inflating and deliberately misinterpreting these studies is not a good enough reason not to do them. You can't establish that our biology doesn't play a role by refusing to study it.

As a Chilean citizen I can say that your comment has a serious and evident need of elaboration if it is to to escape the category of political bias itself.

"The big question is what percentage of the Syrian population want Assad to go."

Hmm lets see, Syrian army snipers have been confirmed to deliberately target children in urban areas. What the (bleep) do you think?

You can recommend your constitution all you want. Heck we might take a bit or two and adapt it to the 21st century if we feel like it, but I don't think a lot American countries are interested in joining a union with you.

You can ask, but don't be surprised if people aren't exactly thrilled. Might have something to do with a certain Central Intelligence Agency poking around in people's countries uninvited.

I find it hilarious that you are so ideologically stuck in the cold war that you bring up the US economy as if the article had anything to do with it. If you actually read The Economist you might find out they are critical about US economic policy too, and for not too different reasons.

It's pretty clear Kristina is just following a time-honored Peronist tradition of sacrificing the wealth of future generations to win the next elections. Economists in the 40s expected Argentina to become a world power due to its natural riches, but Argentinian politicians have screwed the pooch over and over and Argentinians seem content to continue being fed the same crap, somehow clinging to the belief that their country is destined to become great regardless.

Kirchner is even repeating an old trick from the murderous 1976 junta, distracting public opinion from economic mismanagement by inflaming nationalist-imperialist feelings about a territory whose inhabitants are 90% English-speaking.

Bravo. Being from south america I hear the "colonialism" fallacy get thrown around a lot. I don't think it means what the people that use think it means.

Argentina trying to annex an inhabited territory based on a dubious historical argument against the sovereign will of the Falklanders = Colonialism.

Military intervention aimed at stopping a tyrant from massacring his own people = Not colonialism.

I don't think Cubans want to be part of your union. Trade with it-sure, but Jefferson's quote looks borderline neo-colonialist in light of what became of the Monroe doctrine in the 20th century: An excuse to intervene in the sovereign affairs of every country in the Americas on behalf of US interests.
The Church report sums it up quite well:
"New loans for Latin American countries' internal national development programs would take time to bear fruit. In the meantime, the communist threat would continue. The vicious circle plaguing the logic of the Alliance for Progress soon became apparent. In order to eliminate the short-term danger of communist subversion, it was often seen as necessary to support Latin American armed forces, yet frequently it was those same armed forces who were helping to freeze the status quo which the Alliance sought to alter."
http://foia.state.gov/Reports/ChurchReport.asp
Change a few words here and there and you have the exact same logic used to defend continued British rule during your own war of independence.

...but the man has guts, is consistent and brave, delusional and/or incompetent. [Fixed that for you.]

The logical culmination of Ryan's plan is a beer hall putsch.

I find Connect The Dots hilarious, like some bumbling demagogue-in-the-making, spouting rambling tirades about "millions of dead" based on a complete lack of interest for facts. Were this a more mature site I'd tag his account for satire, but The Economist holds a surprisingly thin noosphere for such an esteemed publication.

What chills my bones is that history seems to prove that all it takes is a low literacy rate and an economic crisis to put an army behind men such as him.