I see

Yea that makes sense

I think i know where to start now

I also suddenly understood nationalism alot more

what constitutes as human? and how far human rights spread

Economics came first, as economics is the whole of human interactions in which things are traded voluntarily @My Preferred Pronoun Is Sama

@Arch-Fiend "systems where the legitimacy of authority is through raw exertion of power, economy often comes first." i'll need a citation for this. the free and voluntary trade between consenting parts is antithetical to the raw exertion of power as exertion of power is involuntary and aggressive by definition.

I mean i was thinking what it really means to put america first

Putting the interests and desires of those within the confines of the nation-state USA above the interests and desires of those abroad

Yea but that comes into conflict with the free market more and more it feels like

I used to be a libertarian but i turned and never went back a few years ago suddenly

Only if you regulate what can come in and go out

@F.Pazuzu raw exertion of power is almost always in favor of economy because commonly valued wealth can easly be translated into a better war machine. however this is only with reguard to internal politics rather than external, a wealthy but low population group is going to have a hard time overcomeing a poor high population group. though high populations throughout most of human history have often been associated with strong economys. it was only at the point where technological progress began to become asymetrical on a global scale where high populations began to fall short of their economic impact, which was really only a short blip in anthropoligic history, though its a blip we are currently in.

🍿

Tbh "America first" can be as simple as cutting out systems that are overly generous to foreign countries and competitors

That wouod hurt the free market bad tho

It's not a free market

If the US ran a program where we imposed the same import restrictions as other countries put on our exports, there would be nothing in the US made in the PRC

there are a few instances in history where this is changed when unique circomstances present themselves, such as the case of the hun or mongal invasions where a high population of people with great individual power overcame powers around it who were technologically and economicly superior but highly centralized with a high dencity of noncombatitive populations that relied upon specialist citizines to defend them. though the mongal and hun also both attacked during times of extreme weakness in europe, china, and middle east

europe was suffering from the jihad, china was fragmented into 5 nations, 3 of which on its border with mongolia (they basicly betrayed all of china to let the mongols in to fight a war for unification for them but got double crossed) and the middle east was begining to suffer internal struggle between the caliphs. perfect time for the mongols who 99% of the time are simply tribal warriors who never get along with a population greater than 1000 people to suddenly unite an entire contanent of hundreds of thousands strong and have the largest military at the time with tactics that also favored soldier survival to basicly exhaust everyone around them into total collapse.

how does that correlate to economics being about the exertion of power?

but besiiiides that, money tends to dominate the monopoly of violence in human history

because the state uses violence to parasite off of those who produce

that problem is not production or the free exchange of goods between people, it's the state using violence to extort them to promote its own agenda

But without the state there can be no means of production

If this is "conquerors are often rich", that goes without saying. If this is "mercenaries are good" I'm gonna have to point toward Machiavelli and Italy

of course there can be means of production

There wouldn't be a state without means of production.

of course there would

You can have production without a state, but not the reverse

better your economy = better education, compounds your ability to extract resources as that feeds back into your economy, compounds technological progress as that feeds back into your economy, population expasion, specialization of labor. these factors allow you if you so choose to funnel themselves into military power except maybe extraction of resources but thats basicly what money is based on.

if you're alone in an island, and you manage to create tools to produce, you're creating the means of produciton

no state

Right, and you wouldn't have a state until multiple people are there, and you can provide for all of them sufficiently

your body is a means of production

You wouldn't have a state until a group of people band together to extort the others under the threat of violence

What if the state operates on general consensus for the purpose of rulemaking?

The state is parasitical by definition, it doesn't produce anything

I never said it did, that was the other guy

Okay there be no market without the state. There can be production

It doesn't matter, it's still based on the threat of violence, unless there are no consequences for those who go against the general consensus