A metaphor

In post-apocalyptic fiction, the thing that destroyed the world often looms over the ruins. It builds its armies and makes its plans, and in time, it will flow forth again and purge what’s left of humanity.

In post-apocalyptic fiction, there’s often a faction who’re trying to grab as much power as they can within the ruined world. They’re selfish and cruel, but they frame themselves as pragmatists, trying to at least protect themselves even if they can’t help anyone else. At best, they’re completely oblivious that the world’s destroyer is coming back. At worst, they falsely think they will be spared if they prove useful. Either way, all they do is get in the way of the people who’re actually trying to stop the threat.

I propose that if the queer community sometimes looks like a nuke hit it, it’s because TERFs and ace exclusionists are post-apocalyptic power-grabbers, and the looming force they’re completely inequipped to deal with is Christian fundamentalism.

Why I don’t trust Keynesians

I once had an economics teacher who talked about protectionism in Latin America. Local industries would claim that they couldn’t compete with international corporations, and they asked governments to set up tariffs or import limits or such. They would always say that they needed time to develop, after which the protections could be removed. But over and over, they would bribe and bargain their way into extending protections indefinitely so that they would never have to compete.

Could the local industries ever develop to the point where they could compete internationally? According to my teacher, that was the wrong question to ask. They never did compete internationally, so whether they could was irrelevant. The pattern of protectionism was what mattered.

(This teacher’s family rose out of poverty due to trade with the US, so she tended to be very pro-US trade in ways that clashed wildly with my other teachers.)

Keynesians say that a government can save during a surplus and spend during a deficit. But imagine a scenario where the government decides it has so much money, it must be in a surplus and need to save some. Does that seem like something that would actually happen? No matter how well the economy is doing, there’s always more to pay for than money to pay for it with. So if you think you can spend your way out of a deficit, then you’ll keep spending and spending and spending, and the question of “what to do during a surplus” doesn’t come up.

(no subject)

Guardians of the Flame hasn’t really aged that well, if only because it’s so much the quintessential “trapped in a magic RPG world” story that its basic structure feels like a parody now. But one thing I will give it over modern isekai is that unlike them, it absolutely despises slave traders. That’s actually what the title means—the “flame” is the belief that slavery is wrong and needs to end, and the protagonists fan it by freeing slaves and killing slavers. I’ll take that over whatever the fuck Shield Hero is doing.