Molson Hart

Hey @gsvigruha I started reading False Dawn. Is there more to the book's message beyond "Globalization and free trade are not a naturally occurring process and require a great deal of centralized int'l governmental support"? I ask because it's a pretty dense read...

Really? Weird I didn't find it dense at all...Or what do you mean by that exactly? Anyway to your point, yes: economies are here to serve humans' needs not the other way around and then goes on to explore what does this mean in Asian European USA etc capitalism. 1

I just felt like the prose was way more complicated than it needed to be. It seemed like words outnumbered meaning like 100 to 1 whereas Taleb is like 10 to 1.

What would you say is Hungarys Nash equilibrium when it comes to govt? I saw that orban was reelected.

There is (and always have been) a huge Budapest/countyside divide. Beyond that I think the myth of a good king/enlightened leader is ingrained in the society. People select an authoritarian so they have someone to rebel against later. Its not an equilibrium.

The debate whether to belong or rather be like to east (russia these days) or west (france or germany) goes back literally a thousand years. So I'd say its usually between those two types of systems with west winning 75% of the time.

One last point: some of the trends are universal. The old left lost much of its worker/rural base partially due to globalist/neoliberal policies, so now they are unelectable. This happened pretty much in every european country + usa though usually to a lesser extent.

You mean workers that would've supported the old left have immigrated to richer european countries? Sorry, I'm unclear about whether democracy is an equilibrium in Hungary? You feel like eventually someone like Orban will break with democratic norms and eventually become Putin?