Pill Pod 178 - Diego's Death Threats
Added 2024-08-10 04:15:13 +0000 UTCI had no idea what to call this because we cover... a lot. Everything from the theology of liberalism, to Diego's meeting with RFK, his plan for Latin America, then Adin Ross and how Twitter got weird. Although our talks with Diego are never short or focused, this one goes hard.
Comments
Whitewashed bukele is a trend for Mexican influencers, the pushback from Diego when questioned was very telling
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2024-09-07 00:22:16 +0000 UTCDiego is extremely exhausting to listen to, both in Spanish end English. He mostly just saturates the conversation with a bunch of stolen ideas and loosely related concepts to basically say nothing. And yes, Armesilla is a standard reactionary tankie that on top of that believes Mexico should be grateful for Spanish conquest. He is kind of a transphobe as well. I will not cancel my patron subscription for Diego, but he is not a very honest personality in my opinion. Important to note that a lot of his initial content had not attributed ideas from Pills and other sources. He even has a boom in which he quotes philosophers without attribution. A very obnoxious person.
Federico Ivan Compean Revuelta
2024-09-07 00:14:52 +0000 UTCYea it still kinda sucks though. I've tried it and idk, the only reason that would have any appeal to me is if I wanted to game again. And if I did, I would just dual boot. Otherwise, I'd just get Mac. Windows is pure pain and suffering. Linux is heaven, Mac is purgatory, and windows is hell
Revoloisier
2024-08-29 03:55:31 +0000 UTCNa, he's essential. I miss Matt McManus tho
Revoloisier
2024-08-29 03:53:51 +0000 UTCListening to Victor is very painful, but worth it for Diego and Pills
Das Boy
2024-08-29 00:12:52 +0000 UTCRegarding what happened to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. There are two twists here: (1) there was some development from Japans rule. On top of this, Taiwans death rate in 1950, per UN, was about half that of the mainland. Koreas death rate I think was similar, although it's difficult to compare around 1950 bc of the turmoil and war, and recovery afterwards US aid for them came in two forms. First, ofc is the obvious funding, either directly or buying material from them for wars. In the Korean war, for example, US purchases from Japan effectively amounted to a marshal plan there Second is more important: the postwar global economy was the Breton Woods system. This system was an attempt to regulate capitalism to avoid a great depression style crash. And that more or less meant the US playing a large role in who could export to the West, and not. Which for most countries meant they had to attempt industrialization via import substitution industrialization (ISI), where they hope that domestic demand could fuel development. Often this failed (and often that was bc of a failed land reform kept peasants very poor). However, bc of cold war imperatives as "containment fortresses", certain countries got exceptions - basically could export to the USA with little to no limit. And industrialization could be fuelled by American consumer demand, not anemic domestic demand. Such countries are basically evident today: you don't see many Italian fiats or French renaults in USA. You do see Korean kias, Japanese Toyotas, and German Volkswagens. Germany, South Korea, and Japan got special export exceptions to the USA, allowing them to fuel industrialization harnessing this exceptional bonus (Taiwan I know less about, but I imagine there were similar concessions here. It was also much better off in 1950 than, say, Korea, even besides the Korean war). On top of that, the rulers of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea pursued a very similar structure as in ML countries: land reform put agriculture largely in govt power (in South Korea, land reform was actually initiated by dprk soldiers), allowing them to sell food to workers cheaper than market prices; 5 year plans targeted govt subsidies to industries that had export growth potential. The big difference between say South Korea and Maoist China, was (1) Korea had to import about 30% of it's food during the mid 1960s to mid 1980s (idk where it's at today); Maoist China couldn't do anything like that on that scale, due to issues w West. (2) Korean workers, in general, had much worse working conditions. Working 16h shifts was typical, and in demand seasons, even 24h shifts could happen. There was little medical treatment available to workers during this period (at same time, Maoist China had medical access for workers, and less work loads). These horrible conditions lead to the famous union and student uprisings in the 1980s. Since then, these "Asian tigers" have shifted a lot of labor operations to SE Asia, where it's cheaper, which helps continue the overall high GDP. The thing is, not every country could do this, that was the whole point of Breton woods. In the 1970s, part of what caused the "stagflation" was that several third world countries were achieving higher relative income compared to the West (largely the oil exporting ones). The Volcker shock, when US fed reserve Paul Volcker sharply raised interest rates, made sustaining debt levels in third world unsustainable. That lead to the crashes around the world, followed by IMF "structural reforms". The Asian Tigers however had decent finances bc of their special trade relationship w the USA. So they got hit less hard (altho they did get hit somewhat in the 1990s). Most countries in the world CANT do the tiger route, bc the tiger route is a special path made by the USA. The USA won't allow the whole global south to become developed however, as it means the relative impoverishment of the imperial core (1970s stagflation was a taste of that).
Revoloisier
2024-08-26 02:39:17 +0000 UTCChina did pull millions out of poverty tho, it was under Mao however. The reason it appears that millions were pulled out under Deng is that under the ML relations of production, wage income, when adjusted to USD and applied against "universal poverty metrics", was at poverty levels. What isn't accounted for is that under ML relations of production, most basics are guaranteed either as a public service or accounted for in your wage - such as housing, medicine, and food. So applying liberal (in the technical sense, not the slur) poverty metrics to an ML system doesn't make sense. In fact, in the first 15 years of Deng's Reforms, which liberalized China's political economy in many ways, actual poverty (that is, access to food, housing, and medicine, among others) skyrocketed, although some intervention has gradually reduced this since. Yet according to "absolute poverty" metrics, it appears that poverty fell after Mao, bc wages were rising. But this doesn't account for how actual access to housing, medicine, and food changed. It just assumed that $1.00 a day (or it's various adjustments since the metric introduced in the 1990s) represents, objectively and globally, "absolute poverty".
Revoloisier
2024-08-25 22:11:11 +0000 UTCI mean, Windows basically solved the problem of "doing anything technical is better on Linux" by fucking swallowing the whole of Ubuntu to provide a (much slower) linux command line within itself. Is this the capitalist world machine capturing unexploited territory? I might have to start a communist Linux themed yt channel.
Lonza75
2024-08-18 21:30:43 +0000 UTCExcuse me, I would like to interject for a moment. There actually ARE Linux flavours that are easier to use than Windows and require 0 costumizations. On top of that, you get more speed, less memory, better os design, no built in trackers and (should you choose to become part of the intellectual 1%) true costumizability. Anyway, I'll be here believing the OS bit was just for laughs to protect my KDE/arch user ego. Farewell.
Lonza75
2024-08-18 21:16:33 +0000 UTCDiego is definitely entertaining and I think he brings interesting topics to discussion. The problem is that he talks in this tone that makes you feel that if you disagree with him or challenge his points, you're a soft moralist liberal, while maintaining an aura that he's completely open for debate. It does sound the kind of attitude developed from years of excessively debating right wing brain rot online, but it kills more nuanced conversations when dealing with people from the left (in a broad sense). He accuses his opponents of moralism, which is antithetical to a pure materialism with no hints of idealism, and talks about how his goals are practical and empirical, like reducing poverty, illiteracy, and child mortality. I guess those are objective because quantifiable? But it still hides the fact that it's an ought disguised as an is. I share this goals, but I don't hide that this stems from a moral standpoint. If you believe that these are worth pursuing, it's probably from viewing the dignity of human life, or the importance of progressing society as a whole. The other option would be to see those are natural outcomes of a deterministic society and wishing to accelerate this machine, and I believe there would be a hell lot of argumentation needed to prove that poverty reduction and improving healthcare are the natural deterministic outcome of human societies. Diego's attitude reminds me of his Brazilian buddy, the historian and YouTuber Jones Manoel, who was in the Brazilian Communist Party until being kicked out in yet another leftist schism. They do have decent enough reading of current events, I appreciate their concrete efforts of organizing social movements and protests, but they ultimately fail to gain traction to effect large scale changes because of course they have not enough resources to fight against Capital. But then they are left with this grand standing about following the Chinese example and dying on the hill of defending Maduro, Stalin, and Mao online, which in the end are a futile exercise. It's as you called it, being the armchair great leader of a fantasy revolution.
Sabataí
2024-08-15 14:29:56 +0000 UTCI love you guys but I prefer boring and true, honestly… self-doubt and humility is better IMHO, Diego sounds at times like he is stuck at the start of the Dunning-Kruger curve! … still entertaining I agree but not the reason why we listen to you guys Pills , thoughtful and deep is why we listen, not shallow and loud. It’s just a thought !
Nacho
2024-08-15 07:06:17 +0000 UTCSame re "tired", and it's a shame Diego doesn't get any pushback from anyone over this. And it's funny that not even libVic called him out, given that he's usually so nonchalant about not having a radical bone in his body and how he's always disparaging "twitter communists" every other episode. I'd be fine with the "freeing the workers against their own will" thing if it actually did free them, but it always ends up becoming an overtly authoritarian state still maintaining capitalist relations in the end, and justifying it with some reactionary reading of dialectical materialism. And btw I handed in a thesis on right-wing authoritarianism this year, so I can't adequately describe how triggered I got for a bit when Diego's like "what even is authoritarianism? I can't even describe it." Well, then, look up some research on the topic motherfucker, holy shit. But this is also standard tankie fare: to downplay the word so they can avoid having to come to terms that when the state polices your every move and cannot tolerate any deviance to its norms, it's bad, actually, and literally the opposite of any notion of freedom worth contemplating.
anacidcommie
2024-08-15 07:03:00 +0000 UTCThanks for this comment. Valid all around.Diego is more internet-brained than we are, which leads both to unboring content and some of these rhetorical strategies... I assume they're developed while debating braindead libs or extremist right-wingers doing the same thing. Problem is I don't know shit about what Latin American countries *should* do or much about geopolitical debates for that matter, and it was not within the planned scope of the episode. That said, didn't he say that his stance about the chinese model was not conditioned on its morality, but on its ability to raise the living standards of a billion people without capitulating to American interests? This is another topic I don't have much to say about because World-armchair-general is a position I'm profoundly uninterested in, but from what I heard his position was "that could work", not "those guys are the good people". In any event, it was not dry, which is the side we choose to err on
Plastic Pills
2024-08-15 00:49:01 +0000 UTCAgree. Tired of "communists" that are fine with sacrificing work conditions, freedoms and balance of powers in the name of an ideal state that somehow never happens because of Washington' schemes. Surprisingly it's never their own working conditions that they are willing to sacrifice. I thought we moved away from the "We have to free the workers against their own will" type communism that always ends up way worst for workers.
Kelen
2024-08-15 00:14:25 +0000 UTCThat Bukele rounded up 1 percent of El Salvador’s population, violating their constitutional rights with little evidence, is alarming. That y’all just backed down from the issue after his smug accusation that you are just “soft liberals” is also a little troubling. Diego’s really interesting, but way too dogmatic. I really hope you will keep pushing back on this guy.
Liz Harris
2024-08-15 00:13:52 +0000 UTCSame with the hands pastries from Belgium, they do exist but have no link to colonization and come from a local folktales from the middle age, as can been seen on the coat of arms of the city. The "they eat hand to celebrate colonization" narrative comes from random blog posts and Twitter accounts. Soon we will learn that France should be nuked because they eat babies of poc? That was a minor inaccuracy but the China/South Korea segment was riddled with mistakes, inaccuracies and wild takes that should have been challenged way more.
Kelen
2024-08-15 00:05:05 +0000 UTClinux calvinists rise up
N0THANKY0U
2024-08-14 17:06:31 +0000 UTCDiego's always entertaining, and very well read, which makes it such a shame that he pulls out standard tankie npc talking points like "China pulled millions out of poverty", like that's not lifted directly from IMF/World Bank ideology to justify capitalism. China has some of the worst inequality and working conditions in the world, not exactly a worker's paradise. China is a manufacturing centre for western multinational conglomerates: it's an important cog in the global neoliberal machine and it's no closer to communism than the US is. Jinping saying that the market is a "slave" to the state is pure ideology: all institutions are subservient to capital, whether the economy is heavily regulated by the state or not. Surplus value is still being appropriated and private property is privately owned, so it's still a thoroughly capitalist nation. This is ironically very basic Marx. Further the idea that long term radical goals are things like literacy, life expectancy etc is liberal bullshit, statistics that only concern reforming the status quo. The actual communist goal is a transition away from capitalism, a systemic abandonment of the logic of value production and capital expansion, and the reason for this are the pressing environmental crises we're dealing with, which has no time for any fantasies of some vanguard party taking over the state and one day magically negating itself because of the supposed commitment of state actors. This is, again, ironically very idealist. This is not how power works, and it's not how systems work either.
anacidcommie
2024-08-14 16:47:50 +0000 UTCI think I heard some guy call that Feed Brain
Ashley H
2024-08-14 03:21:59 +0000 UTCSeeing the excommunication of that Olympic breakdancer is the sports metaphor come to life
Jack
2024-08-14 01:29:54 +0000 UTCNo matter where our values lie, and even if only second or third hand, we all have some toxic mechanisms of twitter permanently embedded in our psyche now
Alex B
2024-08-13 19:55:55 +0000 UTCMore Borges would always be welcome with me. Umberto Eco too
Alex B
2024-08-13 19:55:18 +0000 UTCyeah the thing about edmundo gonzalez asking netanyahu to bomb venezuela sounded like party propaganda to me and i wasnt able to find any sources confirming it. if someone told me that happened i would definitely be very skeptical.
Ichabod
2024-08-13 17:26:29 +0000 UTCim not offended that you are platforming diego, but i am extremely offended by what you said about linux.
Ichabod
2024-08-13 15:32:46 +0000 UTCThere are platforms that show that data for sure (e.g. open secrets) but I just can't find those numbers. Otherwise I second the selection process hypothesis (highest fundraising capability * avg. voter acquisition cost = suitable candidate)
hoppi
2024-08-12 20:30:07 +0000 UTCIdk how he specifically arrived at that number, but I immagine both the donated amount and the number of votes is public information. Now are these the numbers for the current or the last election? I suspect the latter
Jonas Ludvigsen
2024-08-12 20:16:31 +0000 UTCReally fucking glad it’s not just me on this front, thank you both.
anacidcommie
2024-08-12 16:25:12 +0000 UTCThanks, I felt this too. Coming from Latin America, I do see the point of many of the things he puts forward, but every one of those is coated with some unhinged thing that goes unchallenged, as he makes it seem "obvious" through a mix of charisma and rhetoric.
Sabataí
2024-08-12 06:30:40 +0000 UTCIs it just the weird takes that get rewarded? As far as I know your Zizek trans episode is the one with the most engagement. And I think Patreon is a different environment than Twitter, so why would it still get a disproportionate amount of comments?
Ashley H
2024-08-11 22:59:34 +0000 UTCSpent yesterday afternoon reading the theses on feuerbach and the introduction to Durkheim’s book trying to compare and contrast. Still working on it but I’ve realized that perhaps for Pills there is a big issue in Marx’s thesis 10 centering around humanism. And I have no clue how to parse the difference between civil society and social humanity, but I think Durkheim is talking about humanity, except he has a different idea about essence.
Jack
2024-08-11 13:25:47 +0000 UTCDiego is entertaining, no doubt, but too much of what he spews goes unchallenged because he acts a bit like a bully either by his extreme Whataboutism or by his extreme irony , I understand he is your guest Pills but a bit more of a challenge is needed with guests who think they have it all figured out (they do not!) specially on the China front. China would not be in conflict with Vietnam, India, Philippines, etc if they were as Diego imagines does no one remember Tibet? Or the extreme debt China has pushed on many poorer countries just like the IMF?, has he ever been to China ?
Nacho
2024-08-11 07:45:18 +0000 UTCI’m sure the Eco stuff would blow my mind if I knew the first thing about computers. As per adin ross, Harris tried to get on a stream with Kai Cenat and he said no lmao. Besides that Diego is far too sophisticated for me to do anything but sit back and listen. Except towards the convo about Marx putting economics at the bottom and Durkheim putting religion. I’ve heard Chris cutrone’s account of how Marx’s move was to show alienation in a different way than the young hegelians who were focused on religion. Marx knew he could start at any form of sociality. I asked Chris if Marx ever talked about knowledge and he directed me to read the Theses on Feuerbach.
Jack
2024-08-10 14:51:24 +0000 UTCJust came here to say emphatically and with great digestive pride, I EAT PUMPKIN. FAIRLY REGULARLY. Amazing episode, listening whilst I make my breads. Japanese trains are for the most part silent spaces. It may be coercive, but I think it's peaceful and most people would benefit from observing silence ritualistically/periodically during at least one daily, *communal* activity.
ageOfBumFires
2024-08-10 11:52:55 +0000 UTC"It's platforms all the way down ..."
secretasiandan
2024-08-10 10:11:01 +0000 UTCWhere does Diego have the 8$ and 14$ number from though for the vote acquisition cost?
hoppi
2024-08-10 09:05:56 +0000 UTCWe can not have enough Diego on the podcast
hoppi
2024-08-10 05:56:41 +0000 UTCAlways love hearing Diego
idlesum
2024-08-10 04:21:54 +0000 UTC
