We experience ourselves and our surroundings through our consciousness, and yet it is such a mysterious thing. Since we know consciousness only through our own experiences, we find it natural and easy to point out at things that make us special - like our ability to use language and our complex reasoning patterns - and then somehow extrapolate that these things that make us special are intimately connected to our ability of experiencing consciousness.
But, unless I am very mistaken, there is literally no evidence to support this hypothesis. It is a conjecture that we’ve made up because it is easy to believe it. We start from the position that we agree that we humans are conscious - and then other systems have to somehow prove their consciousness… Despite our inability of proving that humans experience consciousness!
Personally, I am of the view that the phenomenon of consciousness is a lot more widespread than we currently imagine. It find it hard to believe that that we are so special, and that it was necessary for humans to evolve until this magical phenomenon of “consciousness” began to take shape.
I think the main reason of the “default assumption” that only humans have consciousness is that we ourselves are human, and we are only able to prove our own consciousness. Culturally, at least in the Western worldview, humans are framed as equal. This means that we feel comfortable saying that other humans have consciousness as well, but start to get a little antsy about saying that “lesser” creatures have that same experience.
The thing is, we can’t actually prove our own consciousness. I know that I am conscious, because I am me. But I can’t prove that to anyone else, and no one else can prove to me that they are conscious. We use pragmatism here and make the choice to accept each other’s consciousness, because if we are not pragmatic we are pulled right into an existential crisis.
We are happy to apply this pragmatic view to each other, but not to other beings. Other beings are expected to prove the impossible before we let them into the consciousness club.
The reason I say we can “prove” our consciousness is not because we can prove it to others, I mean we can prove it to ourselves because we can experience it. Anything outside our current consciousness, however, is not available with such ready belief. For everything else we must be taught to trust that it is true, even if it is impossible to have absolute proof of it.
To be fair… We have created societies, developed uniquely complex languages across the whole world and then managed to learn each other’s languages, we write books and online posts to transmit knowledge through generations, we have managed to take over a good chunk of the earth and destroyed most of the nature in it, and we can develop technology like no other species… We have even gone to space! I do think we are pretty special in many ways. Not everything is good, but we are still special.
Consciousness, though? I suspect that the underlying phenomenon is fundamental. I don’t think that there is an ‘on/off’ switch that gets triggered only after some information processing threshold is exceeded. But maybe it does, we have no way of measuring this. All I can say is that my guess can’t be much better or worse than any other guess.
We’ve got three cats and a dog. The dog is my partner’s first personal pet. He talks a lot about how amazing their personalities and intelligence are now that he’s lived with his own animals for a few years. They definitely think, dream, and understand way more than we give them credit for. Hell, dogs can understand over something like 150-200 words, and we barely use more than that in normal speech. More and more were finding animals have accents, octopus have cities, etc. I just kind of see us as a louder echo of many of these things. Unfortunately one of those things that does set us apart is that we forget we’re part of the same world that they are.
this humans are so special bias drives me up a wall. we’ve been through several iterations of this. oh other animals do feel emotions, oh other animals do dream, oh other animals are altruistic, oh other animals also use language… like, anybody with a pet and a good bond with them could have told you most of that.
Hard agree... Learning to communicate well with a cat teaches you most of this, and the rest becomes obvious when you realize how individual their personality and behaviour is compared to others of the same species.
I think it should also be considered that if we have consciousness then it has to evolve at some point. And if it something complex, and in this case I'm sure it is, then it's going to takes millions of years minimum to evolve. Unless someone think consciousness developed when humans, neanderthals and our other relatives evolved from whatever relatively recent ancestor, then where consciousness began is going to have to be pushed back. The further it's pushed back the more animals there are with consciousness.
Ultimately it's up to the brain and our brains aren't that different from other animals.
And here again, come the misinformed people putting words into an article they didn’t read to justify their misinformed viewpoints. I will add this as a Hongkonger—
Everything in the article is more or less true. Before the handover of Hong Kong to China, Hong Kong’s minority of Europeans were much more active and prevalent (because they had a disproportionate amount of political power and controlled a lot of the wealth). After the handover, this special status went away and naturally, the Chinese majority took over the Government. Through the decades, Chinese investment and the power of the Chinese economy have wrestled away economic hegemony from Western companies, although American and European money still holds a lot of power in Hong Kong. Infamously, after US President Donald Trump put HK Chief Executive Carrie Lam on the sanctions list, the banks closed her accounts and she was forced to receive her salary in cash.
Nonetheless, the white minority in Hong Kong were still active from a cultural and economic standpoint, but they are leaving. These are the reasons—
Hong Kong is autocracising. The exercise of Government power is becoming more and more arbitrary, no longer constrained by a rigid set of guarantees and restrictions. People (not limited to just Westerners) are no longer confident that the Government of tomorrow won’t decide to strip away the freedoms they’ve enjoyed, arrest them for their political views, or seize control of their businesses. China is imposing its political ideals on Hong Kong, and China’s system only works if you have complete trust that the Government has your best interests at heart. Hongkongers, both Chinese and otherwise, especially those educated in the West or in Hong Kong’s Western-style universities, tend to follow the Western liberal tradition of not trusting the Government. Hence, they feel threatened when the Government starts stripping away the elements of the liberal democracy they expected, and they don’t feel safe in Hong Kong.
Yes, people see things like the Chinese national being played on TV four times daily and new laws being passed making it illegal to criticise the Chinese flag or whatever and they think “This is bullshit, why does the Government care about that?” And yes, people do think that even if you can criticise the Government doing things you don’t like, the Government doesn’t care about your criticism in the slightest and there’s nothing you can do about it. They feel neglected and left without a voice. All you can do is complain about it over tea with your friends. People think that if you start a protest or political movement critical of the Government, you will get arrested for some trumped-up reason and the police and bureaucracy will harass you.
Living in Hong Kong is losing the advantages it once had over other cities. For the educated professional, there’s no reason to stay in Hong Kong instead of chasing higher salaries and lower costs of living in Europe or America. And plus, since that demographic is overwhelmingly liberal, they feel that the way Europe and America are governed is closer to their own political views, and they feel safe in the legal guarantees afforded by those countries’ constitutions. I made a salary of 2,500 USD = 20,000 HKD a month working in IT as an intern in America with no experience. Hong Kong employers baulk at the prospect of paying me 20,000 HKD a month now. Meanwhile, I can easily find a job in now the USA with my qualifications now paying 40,000 HKD/month equivalent. Hence, brain drain. It made no economic sense for me to stay in Hong Kong.
I will, however, give a brief mention of the fact that this article mentions the exodus of white people, but it is important to note that there is also more than ever a growing minority of South Asian people (Indian subcontinent, Indonesia and Malaysia, &c.). I think it is pretty racist to not count those people as contributing to the internationalism of a city. Nonetheless, these people tend to be employed in an exploitative system of domestic labour rather than participating as genuine equals. They do not enjoy the same rights as Chinese Hongkongers or white Hongkongers and labour laws do not afford them nearly the same protections. They form an underclass, something that Hong Kong likes to sweep under the rug. More Hongkongers than will admit are openly racist to them; a slang term for an Indian person is a homophone for “a worse [person]”
I would assume that being poorer both limits their voice when raising issues and makes their ability to leave harder. It sounds like the non white minorities are major victims and hit with a double whammy here. I suppose that happens a lot in history but I agree that it should be pointed out here as well.
Most non-white minorities employed in Hong Kong are still paid wages high enough to sustain their families back in their home countries. But there are few legal protections for them. Most labour laws don’t apply to them. Just as an example, the Minimum Wage Ordinance doesn’t apply to domestic workers. They are paid a pittance compared to those who employ them (just a few thousand HKD a month) and cannot survive if they aren’t given the free room and board by those who employ them.
Still, there is a vibrant culture. Just walking down the streets of Sham Shui Po you can see them congregating in the streets, around the Western Union office, or Jollibee on their weekly one day off. There are also places like the Chunking Mansion in Tsim Tsa Tsui, which some people have called a “Kowloon Walled City 2.0”, but that is false; it’s a thriving centre of South Asian culture in Hong Kong. There are probably other places too that I just don’t know of.
Ah, being America; you're the bad guy when you interfere in other countries and you're also the bad guy when you don't interfere in other countries. The same people criticizing America for not doing anything today will turn around and start criticizing America for what they did, no matter what it was, if they get involved tomorrow. Everything you touch is your fault and everything you don't touch is also your fault.
Maybe, just maybe, America shouldn't be expected to insert itself into a Sudanese civil war. Maybe, just maybe, Middle Eastern and African powers should come together to deal with humanitarian crises in their own region and America should be, at most, a partner providing assistance only if and when requested.
That’s not true. Tankies love to shit on the US for “meddling” in Africa when a lot of the time its providing funding and weapons for regimes where the opponents are funded by Russia/Wagner/China. Depending on which way the wind blows, the US is either “overthrowing a legitimate regime” or “restoring the democratic process”.
It’s a no win. Africa is too weak to stabilize by itself after centuries of meddling, and if the US goes hands-off, Russia and China will just economically enslave them via predatory loans, like how neoliberal policies economically enslaved South/Central America to the US. I’d trust the US installed people for their own populace over Chinese/Russia installed people, given the respective human rights records of all involved.
Anyways, while 2003 onwards was a huge fuck up and absolutely abhorrent, Desert Shield/Storm was incredibly justified defending an ally under armed occupation and still gets shit on by Tankies.
One man’s humanitarian mission to shut down a warlord is another man’s mission to overthrow a regime and install US-friendly government.
Stop trying to make tankie work, it’s not really a thing since everyone uses it in different ways and means different things. North Korea, Russia and especially China would be tankies, since they use tanks to oppress their people like authoritarians do.
2003 onward was shit, but before that with what they did in south and central America was pretty shit too. They also always fund the group that will let them grab the ressources, it’s never about which group has the best moral position or what’s best for the local population. There’s better ways to help than funding a civil war, wars that are usually orchestrated into being by them anyways.
Being against American imperialism does not equal being a tankie and I resent the implication. Not everyone that disagrees with you is a tankie.
Don’t worry, I’m sure Wagner will come to help “restore the peace” and the Chinese will “lend a hand” by lending them a Chinese police force.
Europe needs to step up to the plate more, we can’t carry the entire team with one arm while the other arm deals with a moron who rolled a nat 20 on charisma and a nat 1 on intelligence. That, and his band of morons. Maybe we could back in the day when we had a well-educated population and politicians that didn’t get into slapfights over whether or not they look manly by causing the government to shut down. But not now.
It’s the Republican Party in general. Specifically because they’ve largely suborned themselves to Trump’s insanity, because they think they can control him and cement themselves into power. If you remember last time, that didn’t work at all.
Richard Pryor had a classic bit about a wino looking down on a junkie. It’s actually classic addict behavior for one user to find reasons they are better than their peers.
We’ve done that for 70 or 80 years. Like the saying goes, “do what you love, and you’ll eventually become a global hegemon, weilding your influence like a club and keeping your boot on the neck of the majority of the planet, both economically and militarily.”
Maintaining an empire is hard work. You gotta pick a random little country to kick the shit out of once in a while or else the other little countries start getting ideas. /s
The US government is a major factor in determining what gets done about global warming. If the USA gets locked into antidemocratic fascism and climate change denial it will exacerbate global warming everywhere. That’s what the Republicans promise.
Yeah - there’s certainly a spectrum, but I maintain the statement “Islamist extremist are fashist too” is an incorrect whatabboutism, particularly when directly comparing with the Israeli government.
It’s the Economist, so there is a paywall. See below for the article content:
In the autumn sunshine Kyiv looks glorious. The leafy streets are full of life: café terraces bustle and hipsters throng the bars of Podil, a trendy neighbourhood. The odd air-raid siren aside, the main signs of the 18-month-old war with Russia are rusty tanks turned into makeshift war memorials and the various men in uniform enjoying some leave with their loved ones.
To Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top soldier, the scenes of children eating ice cream and men presenting flowers to their sweethearts are satisfying. “This is what we are fighting for. I just want people to have a normal life in the whole of Ukrainian territory,” he says. The critical word is “whole”: Ukraine’s counter-offensive has not yet produced the results he and others had hoped for. Russian lines have not crumbled. Almost a fifth of Ukrainian territory remains in Russia’s hands. In the war of attrition that looms, it is not clear which side has more staying power. In part, of course, that depends on a second uncertainty: in what quantities the military and financial support supplied by Ukraine’s allies will keep flowing as the war grinds on.
A break in the clouds
For all its superficial normality, Kyiv is awash with apprehension. Ukrainians know that Russia has been stockpiling missiles and drones to attack their energy infrastructure when temperatures drop. They know that the supply of volunteers has dried up, and that men are being conscripted to replace casualties at the front. And they know no end is in sight: a year ago 50% of them thought it would be over within a year. Now only 34% believe that. Whereas Vladimir Putin, Russia’s dictator, does not care about the lives of his own troops, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, presides over a democratic society which does. “It is not just about de-occupation [at any cost]. It’s about de-occupation, but not losing a lot of lives,” he recently told The Economist.
The prospect of an attenuated struggle has started to seep into Mr Zelensky’s speeches. “We need to learn to live with [the conflict],” he told Ukrainians recently. “It depends on what kind of war. We are prepared to keep fighting for a very long period of time…[while] minimising the number of casualties. Like in Israel, for example. We can live like that.”
A war of endurance, however, will require big changes in military planning, the economy and society more broadly. The heroic improvisation and decentralisation of the early part of the war will no longer suffice. On the military side, Mr Zelensky has initiated a clear shift by installing a new minister of defence, Rustem Umerov. Like almost all Ukrainians, he has a personal stake in the war, as a Crimean Tatar, an ethnic group persecuted for Ukrainian sympathies since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. But, he says, “Ukraine is not about emotions, it is about a system, logistics and industries.”
Mr Umerov, a 41-year-old former entrepreneur and investor, says his mission is to build the capacity of both Ukraine’s defence industry and its soldiers, so that Western allies see Ukraine not as a dependent always begging for aid, but as a partner, capable of shaping its own fortune. His previous job was managing the government’s property portfolio, and he wants to bring an efficient managerial mindset to his new role. Red tape must be eliminated. “Anything that can be digitised, needs to be digitised,” he says. He is not afraid to make waves: after two weeks in the job, he replaced six of his seven deputies.
An explosive legacy
When it was part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had a vast defence industry. Some 1.5m Ukrainians laboured in 700 military enterprises, including 205 factories and 130 research and development sites. Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s second president, ran the world’s biggest rocket plant in the city of Dnipro in Soviet times. A flagship factory in Kharkiv produced 900 tanks a year. But corruption and neglect after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 gradually killed these businesses.
Now Ukraine is rebuilding its arms industry almost from scratch. “Anything that can be produced locally, must be produced locally,” Mr Umerov insists. In part that involves reforming state enterprises, the job of Oleksandr Kamyshin, a former investment banker who used to run the state railway company and follows Western management fads. “The first hundred days of the war were about bravery. The next 1,000 days are about steeliness,” he declares. In June, three months after his appointment, Ukraine produced as many shells as it had in the entire previous year. In July it reached double that, Mr Kamyshin says.
Mr Umerov wants to encourage private arms manufacturers, which account for only 20-30% of the local industry. He says he is prepared to pay local firms in advance if they can demonstrate their ability to make useful kit. Many are struggling with a dearth of capable managers: the defence ministry is offering to help bring such people back from the front lines. Within five years, Mr Kamyshin predicts, private firms will produce 80% of local output.
One focus is on drones. Ukraine’s output of them has grown exponentially, albeit from a tiny base. “We will [produce] 120 to 150 times more drones than we did last year,” says Mykhailo Fedorov, the 32-year-old minister for digital transformation, who is co-ordinating the effort. The number of local firms in the business has risen from seven in December to 70 now, the vast majority of them private. To encourage this growth the government has eliminated tariffs on imported components and is buying drones at prices that allow margins of as much as 25%. “We can win in a technological war,” says Mr Fedorov. “We are getting help from countries with large economies and a greater level of freedom. Technologies like freedom and they like mobility. We have both.”
Mr Kamyshin wants Western military contractors to start localising their production, too. bae Systems, a British defence firm which makes lots of weapons supplied to Ukraine, has set up a local subsidiary, hoping to produce l119 and m777 howitzers, which are both in wide use at the front. Rheinmetall, Germany’s biggest arms manufacturer, is already repairing Leopard tanks in Ukraine and plans to open an armoured-vehicle factory soon. As Armin Papperger, its ceo, told cnn, “[Ukrainians] have to help themselves. If they always have to wait [for] Europeans or Americans [to] help them over the next ten or 20 years…that is not possible.”
Protecting such factories from Russian attacks will require ingenuity. “We will not have one Soviet-style hypergiant plant but many smaller plants spread across the country,” says Mr Kamyshin. Drones are proof of what is possible: Ukraine’s surging output of reconnaissance devices, Mr Fedorov says, has helped give it parity with Russia’s forces. Production of longer-range ones, which can hit targets in Crimea and deep inside Russia, is also growing. “It is an important historical moment,” he says, “when we are not simply receiving aid and hoping [that it will not run out] but when we are taking responsibility for our own lives in our own hands and starting to form our own capability.”
Ukraine’s growing drone industry also allows its armed forces to adopt new tactics, by taking the war inside Russia. One aim is to hit military factories in an effort to disrupt whole supply chains. Recent examples include an attack on a facility that produces decalin, a fuel additive essential for rockets, and a plant that makes circuitry for Kinzhal and Iskander missiles.
A second aim is psychological: to shatter the facade of normality the Kremlin tries to preserve, particularly in big cities such as Moscow. Airports there have had to suspend flights for brief spells almost daily in recent weeks owing to drone attacks on the city. (Mr Kamyshin says he would like to set up a shop selling t-shirts with the slogan “Moscow never sleeps”.)
Ukraine also has a third goal in its strikes on Russian infrastructure: to deter Russian attacks on its own infrastructure. Since Russia withdrew in July from a deal allowing exports of grain from Ukraine’s ports on the Black Sea, it has been bombarding those and other export routes and threatening ships calling at Ukrainian ports. Ukraine’s exports have halved as a result, doing yet more damage to an already stricken economy.
Ukraine is trying to break the Russian blockade. Last month it established a new sea route, hugging the western coast of the Black Sea close to Romania and Bulgaria. If Ukraine can protect it, it could raise its exports to some 70% of pre-war levels. On September 17th, two ships docked at the port of Chornomorsk near Odessa to load almost 20,000 tonnes of wheat. Hours later Russia unleashed a barrage of drones and missiles at other nearby ports.
A sea change
Ukrainian strategists hope that, if they can threaten Russian ports on the Black Sea and strike at the military bases from which attacks on Ukrainian ports are launched, they may be able to keep Ukraine’s exports afloat. Earlier this month Ukrainian missiles damaged a submarine, a ship and port facilities at a Russian naval base in Crimea. It had decent air defences, but more distant Russian facilities may not be as protected.
The focus on protecting exports reflects a sense among Ukrainian officials that the economy will also need a drastic overhaul to cope with a long war. Ukraine received $31bn in financial aid last year and is on course to receive even more this year. But Serhiy Marchenko, the finance minister, assumes that such largesse will not be forthcoming indefinitely.
Meanwhile, military spending has leapt from 5% of gdp before the war to 26% this year. Even if the fighting stopped, spending might not drop much. General Zaluzhny says, “I want the Ukrainian army to be so strong that Russia does not even dare to look in our direction.” The shrunken economy is too small to generate sufficient tax revenue to pay for Ukraine’s security, Mr Marchenko notes, so the government will have to help it grow by improving the business climate and fostering industry.
The main concern for investors, says Mr Marchenko, is not physical security but the unreliable legal system, a problem that predates the war. Similarly, it is corruption rather than the damage done by the war to Ukraine’s infrastructure that most Ukrainians see as the main obstacle to recovery. The independent corruption-fighting investigators, prosecutors and courts that Ukraine has put in place are making progress, but the broader judicial system remains inefficient and unpredictable.
Perhaps the worst injury that the war has inflicted on the economy has been to prompt an exodus of 7m Ukrainians—nearly 20% of the pre-war population of 37m people. More than two-thirds are women, since men of fighting age are barred from leaving the country. The working-age population has shrunk from 16.7m in 2021 to 12.4m this year.
The call of the placid
To lure people back, the government is offering startup grants for businesses and subsidised mortgages for those rebuilding homes. But many of the departed have settled in richer, more stable places in the eu, found jobs and put their children in school. They are unlikely to want more upheaval and they may see more opportunity for themselves and their children in their new homes, whatever the security situation in Ukraine. A recent survey found that about half of those who have moved to Germany, at least, intend to stay there for the foreseeable future.
There is not just an economic cost to the exodus, but a social one as well. According to Olena Zelenska, Mr Zelensky’s wife, who heads a government mental-health initiative, there has already been a rise in the number of divorces “because women and children are abroad and men are here”. Mr Zelensky says there is a real risk that a war of attrition could accelerate an outflow of people from Ukraine, creating further economic problems and widening the gap between those who left and those who have stayed.
This is not the only source of social tension. Roman Hasko, a lieutenant from the 80th Airborne Assault Brigade, who volunteered in the first week of the war, says he feels disappointed to see the bustle of night-time Kyiv, having just arrived on leave from the front line near Bakhmut. “I see a lot of potential recruits. I have many free positions in my unit. Not all have been killed—some are wounded or sick…If we are talking about winning this war, these empty lines need to be filled.”
In the first weeks of the war men like Mr Hasko queued up to enlist. Now Ukraine is filling the ranks through conscription. Some young men who have not yet been called up are nervous about leaving home or passing checkpoints for fear of being dragooned. Many try to bribe their way out of military service and to leave the country illegally. Last month Mr Zelensky sacked the heads of all the regional military recruitment centres. He replaced them with soldiers with battlefield experience who had been vetted by intelligence services. Earlier this month the Ministry of Defence drastically cut the number of medical exemptions.
Ukrainians clearly have some concerns about how the country is being run. Approval of the army and the president remain sky high, but confidence in the country’s politicians in general is down from 60% in December to 44% in June. The share of Ukrainians who say the country is on the right track has also slipped (see chart). There is disquiet about corruption in particular.
But 76% tell pollsters they do not want new elections until the war is over. Support for Ukraine’s independence is the highest it has ever been, at 82%. Most do not complain about restrictions on movement or other wartime curtailment of civil liberties. “War has become part of a new horrific normal,” says Darina Solodova, a sociologist with the United Nations Development Programme in Kyiv.
Resistance to Russia’s aggression remains a unifying principle for the vast majority. “It is not the question of whether to resist or not, but who has done more or less for that resistance,” says Ms Solodova. Across Ukraine 42% say that even if Russia intensifies its bombing of cities Ukraine should keep fighting. Some 21% think that the conflict should be frozen without making any concessions to Russia. Only 23% think it is worth initiating negotiations. Even in the east and south, which have borne the brunt of the war, support for negotiations is relatively low, at 32% and 39% respectively. Only 5% of Ukrainians are willing to cede any territory to Russia and only 18% to forswear joining nato.
Research by the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, a think-tank in Cyprus, suggests that Ukrainians have become more optimistic about the future despite the war. Most believe that future generations will be better off. Ms Zelenska is not surprised: “People know what they are fighting for, not just what against.”
Link to Image: https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=960,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20230923_FBC677.png
In the first weeks of the war men like Mr Hasko queued up to enlist. Now Ukraine is filling the ranks through conscription. Some young men who have not yet been called up are nervous about leaving home or passing checkpoints for fear of being dragooned. Many try to bribe their way out of military service and to leave the country illegally. Last month Mr Zelensky sacked the heads of all the regional military recruitment centres. He replaced them with soldiers with battlefield experience who had been vetted by intelligence services. Earlier this month the Ministry of Defence drastically cut the number of medical exemptions.
Ukrainians clearly have some concerns about how the country is being run. Approval of the army and the president remain sky high, but confidence in the country’s politicians in general is down from 60% in December to 44% in June. The share of Ukrainians who say the country is on the right track has also slipped (see chart). There is disquiet about corruption in particular.
But 76% tell pollsters they do not want new elections until the war is over. Support for Ukraine’s independence is the highest it has ever been, at 82%. Most do not complain about restrictions on movement or other wartime curtailment of civil liberties. “War has become part of a new horrific normal,” says Darina Solodova, a sociologist with the United Nations Development Programme in Kyiv.
Resistance to Russia’s aggression remains a unifying principle for the vast majority. “It is not the question of whether to resist or not, but who has done more or less for that resistance,” says Ms Solodova. Across Ukraine 42% say that even if Russia intensifies its bombing of cities Ukraine should keep fighting. Some 21% think that the conflict should be frozen without making any concessions to Russia. Only 23% think it is worth initiating negotiations. Even in the east and south, which have borne the brunt of the war, support for negotiations is relatively low, at 32% and 39% respectively. Only 5% of Ukrainians are willing to cede any territory to Russia and only 18% to forswear joining nato.
Research by the Centre for Sustainable Peace and Democratic Development, a think-tank in Cyprus, suggests that Ukrainians have become more optimistic about the future despite the war. Most believe that future generations will be better off. Ms Zelenska is not surprised: “People know what they are fighting for, not just what against.”
At the first Republican primary debate on August 23rd nearly all the candidates spoke in favour of bombing the laboratories of drug gangs south of the border, which make fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, said he would send special forces into Mexico “on day one” in the (unlikely) event that he were to win the presidency.
Somehow, they think violence will solve the problem. All it will do is piss off a friendly neighbor, ruin any goodwill the US has in Latin America, and probably make the US an international pariah lol.
How these people consider that a win I will never understand.
It’s the Economists, so there is a paywall. See below for content:
Of the many worries that whirl around the minds of chief executives, few are more unsettling than the question of succession. Having toiled their way to the top of the corporate ladder, many bosses struggle to imagine relinquishing control and placing their legacy in the hands of another.
A growing number of America’s bosses have instead opted to defer the matter altogether. By the end of last year 101 s&p 500 ceos had held the corner office for more than a decade, up from just 36 ten years earlier, according to figures from MyLogiq, a data provider. Although some, like Warren Buffett, the longest-serving of the lot with 53 years on the clock, built the companies they run, most are hired hands. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, a bank, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, a software firm, and Chris Nassetta of Hilton, a hotel franchise, are among the many who have outlasted their predecessors. Such long-serving bosses have pushed the average tenure of s&p 500 top dogs up from six years to seven over the past decade.
Some bosses have become infamous for their reluctance to move on. Earlier this year Howard Schultz ended his third stint as boss of Starbucks, a coffee chain. Late last year Bob Iger took back the reins at Disney, a media giant, from his chosen successor, Bob Chapek. In July his two-year contract was extended until the end of 2026. The question of succession has long loomed over Mr Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway.
Of course, plenty of companies are well served by ceos who hang around. And with populations healthier for longer, forcing bosses out once they reach an arbitrary retirement age, as many firms still do, is unnecessary. Yet the lengthening tenures of America’s bosses is a cause for concern.
In 1991 Donald Hambrick and Gregory Fukutomi, then both at Columbia Business School, published an influential paper on the “seasons” of a ceo’s tenure. They suggested that, in the early years, performance improves as the boss learns the ropes, but later declines as they become more resistant to change and less engaged in the job. A paper in 2015 by Francois Brochet of Boston University and his co-authors sought to quantify that tipping-point in performance by studying the relationship between market value and ceo tenure among listed American firms. They found that ceo performance rose through roughly the first decade on the job before flattening off, then beginning to decline after around 15 years.
“Eventually you lose the oomph and the creativity,” says Bill George, a former ceo of Medtronic, a medical-technology company, who now teaches at Harvard Business School. That vigour is especially crucial when a company is in need of reinvention. Microsoft’s transformation under Satya Nadella into a cloud-computing giant at the vanguard of artificial intelligence may never have happened had Steve Ballmer, who led the business through a period of stagnation from 2000 to 2014, stuck around.
An extended stay carries risks even when a ceo’s long stint seems justified by stellar performance. Mr Iger delayed retirement three times during his original 15-year spell as Disney’s boss, leading a number of potential successors to try their luck elsewhere. Boards waiting to find a replacement ceo with experience comparable to the incumbent’s necessarily find it harder the longer they delay, notes Jason Baumgarten of Spencer Stuart, a headhunting firm.
Ideally, succession planning should begin the day the ceo starts, says Claudia Allen of kpmg, a consultancy. That involves building a pipeline of candidates, assessing their skills and developing a plan to fill gaps. Public spectacles like the six-year saga to replace Jack Welch at ge, a once-mighty American industrial giant, are best avoided. Separating the roles of chief executive and chairman of the board can help, too (appointing a lead independent director is seldom sufficient to keep in check an almighty boss with both jobs, let alone sack one). Two in three s&p 500 ceos who have been in the role for longer than a decade also chair the board, compared with two in five for the whole group.
Perhaps the most important rule for succession is to make a clean break. Bosses that hang around after their turn has ended do their successors a disservice. The most pernicious example of this is the ceo who stays on as “executive chairman”, a loosely defined title that gives its bearer the right to meddle in big decisions while shirking operational responsibility. James Gorman of Morgan Stanley will take on the title when he steps down as the bank’s ceo in the coming months.
Last year 15% of s&p 500 companies were presided over by an executive chairman. Some, like Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch, are founders eager to maintain a say over the companies they built. For the rest, the role may look like a handy way to smooth a transition. But it brings dangers. Predecessors may struggle to accept shifts in strategy, and confusion may reign as to who is ultimately in charge. During Mr Iger’s stint as executive chairman of Disney, he and Mr Chapek clashed over a number of big decisions, denting the new hand’s credibility.
Get an afterlife
That ceos find it hard to let go is unsurprising, and not only because power is seductive. Many struggle with the sense that, having reached their professional pinnacle, there is little left to do, says Mr George. Rather than retiring to a life of leisure, he counsels bosses to find ways to make use of their wisdom. Some may choose to sit on boards. Others, like him, may teach. Others still may try their hand at politics. Before his latest return to Starbucks Mr Schultz toyed with a presidential bid; Mr Dimon is being urged by some to pursue one. It is uncomfortable to accept that an organisation you lead will survive without you. But stepping down need not mean stepping into obscurity. Many of America’s bosses still have plenty to give—not least a shot for the next generation.
Hello all - this crisis has interested me since it started July 26th.
In addition to Western opposition, it looks like there is regional opposition from ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). However, there is definitely a lack of consensus as to how they should address the situation.
Adding to the concerns, Niger was/is also a major supplier of uranium and an important partner against islamic extremism in western Africa.
It also appears the coup is pro-Russia. Whether or not they are actually behind it remains to be seen, but they will undoubtedly capitalize on it.
On reading the latest criminal indictment of Donald Trump, this one for trying to overthrow a duly elected president, certain feelings return with renewed power, including that stomach-churning mix of wonder, dismay and exhaustion at the volume and absurdity of his lies about the 2020 election. But a surprising new sentiment stirs as well: nostalgia. American politics seemed so much healthier back then.
After all, in a political test without precedent since the civil war, the centre held. In fact, the right held. Mr Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, stood up to him, as did others within the White House. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, said Mr Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on the Capitol by “mob rioters”. That was a nice moment, in retrospect.
Even more inspiring, in states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, unfamous Republican officials honoured their own integrity, without recourse to any other authority, and rebuffed the pleas and threats of a president they believed in. “Nobody wanted him to win more than me,” said Lee Chatfield, the speaker of the House in Michigan, in a statement quoted in the indictment, handed down on August 1st. “But I love our republic, too. I can’t fathom risking our norms, our traditions and institutions.” He added, “I fear we’d lose our country forever.”
Three years on, Mr Trump is in a stronger position, with a plausible path back to the White House—not despite his efforts to overturn the last election but because of them. He stuck to his lies, betting on his great gift for preying on others’ baser qualities. Even before Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Mr Trump, brought the new charges, Mr McCarthy was trying to discredit them as an effort by Joe Biden to “weaponise government”.
On news of the indictment, Tucker Carlson’s replacement at Fox News, Jesse Watters, tweeted, “This is all politics and very well co-ordinated.” He was alleging a plot by Mr Biden to distract people from investigations into his son Hunter, but he was more aptly describing a plot by Mr Trump, who made his talking-points clear: that this prosecution is politically corrupt; that his claims were free speech protected by the Bill of Rights; and that, in any event, he was not lying, because he believed the election was stolen—because, of course, as he still insists, it was. He may need only to persuade one juror that he believes that, and he has sold plenty of shoddy products before. He is already at work degrading faith in the law as he previously degraded faith in the electoral system.
Mr Trump’s political strategy is his legal strategy, and vice versa. They reinforce each other by reinforcing delusions about Mr Trump that most Republicans believe, according to polls, including that he is the victim of conspirators out to protect their privileges from his insurgent politics. Mr Trump’s climb into his dominant position in the Republican field began in late March after his first indictment, on business-fraud charges in Manhattan.
The multiplying felony counts against him—78 so far, with more probably coming—are consuming his campaign funds, and Democrats hope they will distract him from the campaign trail. This is wishful thinking. In 2024 the Trump trials will be the trail. They will focus attention on him and his message of fearless challenge in the face of persecution.
What might break the spell? A conviction could shake even some Republican confidence that Mr Trump deserves to hold office again. But, as has been the case since Mr Trump’s political rise began, the surest protection against his return to the White House would be for other Republican leaders to tell the truth, as those state officials did after the 2020 election.
Some of Mr Trump’s long-shot rivals for the Republican nomination said the indictment showed Mr Trump was unfit for office. “Anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States,” Mr Pence said. But others fell in line or tried to sidestep the substance of the charges. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, did the critical-race theorists proud by attacking the interlocking power structures oppressing Mr Trump. “Washington DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” he wrote on Twitter. He called for systemic reform so Americans could move cases from Washington to their “home districts”.
The real reckoning ahead
These Republicans are making the same mistake as many Democrats in hoping that the legal system will, in the end, stop Mr Trump. After the attack on the Capitol, Mitch McConnell, then as now the Senate Republican leader, held Mr Trump “practically and morally responsible”. But he voted to acquit Mr Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection, saying the matter was better left to the justice system. That was a fateful choice. Outsourcing the problem of Donald Trump has simply exposed more American institutions to his corrosive power.
Democrats have a tough duty to discharge, as well. They should be as zealous as Republicans in demanding rigorous investigation of Hunter Biden’s business dealings. No evidence has surfaced suggesting President Biden profited from his son’s trading on the family name, and there is no moral equivalence between the younger Biden’s influence peddling, or illusion-of-influence peddling, and Mr Trump’s attempts to subvert democracy. But excusing Hunter Biden’s ugly practices and minimising his lawbreaking serve Mr Trump’s agenda by eroding faith in the impartial application of justice.
Mr Smith’s spare statement to the public on August 1st was a bracing reminder of all that was vulnerable on January 6th, and of the bravery of the law-enforcement officials who protected it. “They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States,” he said. Now the rule of law is at stake, too, and it is up to politics to come to the rescue.
Haha, this is the most Western, Neoliberal headline ever, which also is extra funny that it comes from The Economist. Anyone that’s had a relationship with an animal knows this. Seems intuitive with things like Buddhism. But, it’s a cool read for the science.
Anyone that's had a relationship with an animal knows this.
Only losely related, but I believe your anecdotal evidence lines up with my own as well. I adopted 2 cats last year and find myself more seriously considering veganism lately. Sure, I anthropomorphize a lot of their actions and behaviors, but I'm learning there's a lot more to animals than I previously thought.
They are family and more like us than we give them credit for even if we communicate in different ways. Pets are so rewarding if you give them the autonomy to be themselves.
Lmao, people are still taking this grifter seriously? Dude writes a book crying about trigger warnings, safe spaces, and statues of slavers being torn down and somehow I’m supposed to believe that actually he’s right this time?
It’s a pity I have a conscience because telling people what they want to hear seems to be lucrative.
And his theory of morality seems to be just an elaborate justification for how conservative viewpoints are equally valid (or even more valid, because it claims that conservatives care about all foundations equally, rather than some of them), or a long-winded “very fine people, on both sides”.
And the additional foundations that conservatives care about are all shitty reasons to support something (loyalty, authority, sanctity).
economist.com
Hot