Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Author: Ian Welsh Page 10 of 445

Acknowledging the Human In Each Other

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On April 15, 2026

20 Comments

I’ve spent a lot of time around doctors and nurses and low level bureaucrats.

Way too much time.

I’ve learned a couple things as a result, however.

  • You get the best care from doctors or service from anyone else when they feel you as a human.
  • The best way to get them to feel you as human, is to feel, and act, as if they are human.

Ian’s rule of doctors is as follows: all the best doctors really care about their patients and are upset when their patients die or are hurting.

Obviously my experience is not “study wide” but it’s far more than most people and I have literally never had a good doctor who didn’t attach to me on a human level.

Now some people are just like this: they treat everyone as another human. When you do so, there’s a queer acknowledgement that the other person is like you: they have feelings, thoughts. They hurt sometimes. They matter.

But most people don’t, because that acknowledgment of others as human means you open yourself to care, and when you care you can be hurt thru the other person. (You can also, and people forget this, experience great joy and happiness thru other people. One of the four Buddhist emotions which are trained is “happiness for other people’ being happy.” After all, no matter how shit your life is there’s always someone whose life is going great.)

Jobs where you see tons of people in trouble going by, there is a temptation to shut down. To treat them as objects and simply do your job by the book. It’s self protection. But, again, in my experience, for whatever reason, if the care isn’t there, in most jobs where the real tasks is helping people, if you don’t care, you don’t do a good job. It shouldn’t be that way, maybe. If you do all the right things without giving a damn, it should be the same, right?

But it isn’t.

There’s a tactical level here. I made a connection with one doctor who injured himself by asking about it and following up. Of course, if I hadn’t actually cared that he was in pain, just asking would have meant nothing. In another case I had a doctor spill out his problems with his daughter. He was a good guy, and had always been a good doctor, but after that he took extra care of me.

But the tactical level isn’t important, it’s an outgrowth of the correct attitude. We’ve all met people who we know care about us the second we meet them. Some of them are the true Saints of the world: those who genuinely care for everyone. Others, we just made an instant connection.

But it’s this care that matters most. If you care about others, most of them (there are always exceptions) will be aware of it, even if only subconsciously, and they will reciprocate, again, often without even realizing they’re doing so.

Of course the best way to do this is to just care about everyone, at least somewhat. If I’m aware someone I don’t know well is unhappy, I’ll usually try and be kind to them even when I’ll never meet them again. Why not? I  take particular care with people like service workers, homeless people, janitors and so on. These people are regarded by most as human appliances (janitors, service workers) or as unpleasant human trash (the homeless.)

They don’t get a lot of kindness or care, so a little goes a long way.

We’re all human. We all can suffer. And we don’t have anything but each other. This is true between us and animals too, in a different way. Not human, no, but they feel pain, many of them feel love, and we are lesser if we do not see the bond of consciousness between us.

Generally, as I used to write a lot, the right thing to do is the right thing to do. For you, and for everyone around you.

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Ceasefire Talks In Pakistan Fail

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On April 12, 2026

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Not precisely a surprise, given they sent Kushner, Witkoff and Vance to negotiate. Apparently Vance talked to Trump six times and Iran says that the negotiations were going OK until Netanyahu called Vance, then suddenly it seemed like the American delegation was negotiating for Israel.

More to the point, the US wanted the Strait open and for Iran to give away its enriched uranium, and Iran said “if you can’t win it in war, why should we give it to you in negotiations?” After all the damage inflicted on Iran, they need a lot of revenue to rebuild.

I remain convinced that Israel has child rape blackmail on Trump.

Meanwhile Pakistan has been moving planes to Saudi Arabia, which sure looks like a stab in the back to me, and Israel continues to bomb the shit out of southern Lebanon, wiping entire villages off the map, though it seems like Hezbollah is doing a fair bit of damage to them in return. Israel learned nothing from Ukraine and doesn’t even have cope cages on their Merkava tanks.

I’m not sure if Iran should have accepted the ceasefire or not. On the pro-side, they’re not getting bombed and the Strait is still closed and they have time to dig out damage around their underground mountain bases. On the negative side, Israel gets to pound Lebanon and Hezbollah, and the US is able to bring in interceptors and weapons stripped from the rest of the world, getting ready for the next round. And, of course, Pakistan used this time to reposition military to Saudi Arabia, and Iran doesn’t want a war with Pakistan.

That said, Pakistan’s taking a real risk here, domestically, ninety percent of Pakistanis support Iran, and the country is one spark from a revolution anyway. The army, of course, will gun down any number of civilians to retain control, but even so…

Israel’s losing pieces of the world, however. South Korea’s Prime Minister criticized Israel, and as Trump says all trade will be cut off with Spain because it won’t let the US uses bases in its territory to attack Iran, well…

What, exactly does Spain need from the US which it can’t get from China?

And as for South Korea, well, Iran lets friendly nations tankers thru the Strait? US hegemony was based, in part, on its control of oil. If it can no longer guarantee its allies the oil they need, why should they remain allies? South Korea is one of the first to make this calculation, but it won’t be the last.

This is probably why Trump is considering blockading access to the Strait himself, but countries will start sending military escorts, especially China if he does, because many countries are going to have serious problem: no cars on the road, no fertilizer for farms, no diesel for tractors, no bunker fuel for ships crises if this goes on much longer. Plus, of course, Ansar Allah will then shut the other Strait.

However much they may be scared of the US, however much they may be trained to be vassals, East Asian countries NEED Gulf Oil.

And if the US fires on escorts, well, that’s how World War III starts.

A complete clusterfuck. The only available courses appear to be a US military coup or a revolution, neither of which seems likely. If Congress wasn’t completely compromised, they’d have already impeached Trump, so there is no legal solution.

Or the US or Israel may nuke Iran. This is already being normalized, with Mark Levin suggesting the situation is similar to Japan: drop a couple nuclear bombs to convince them to surrender.

The difference is that Japan had already lost the war conventionally, and Douglas MacArthur, among others, thought that they would have surrendered with the nuclear bombing. Iran has not lost conventionally, and they have retaliation ability against Israel. They can:

  1. Destroy the desalination plants that provide 80% of Israel’s drinking water;
  2. Hit the Dimona Nuclear reactor causing a containment breach which would make Israel uninhabitable; or,
  3. Make dirty bombs with their 60% enriched uranium. One gets thru, and Israel is, again, uninhabitable.

Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. I hope someone has forced this knowledge on both Trump and Netanyahu. So far the Iranians have fought a very moral war, as such things go, but if they get nuked, one of those thirty-two mosaic commanders is going to retaliate hard.

Really tiresome watching the world’s stupidest people screw everything up because many of them felt the need to rape girls in houses rigged for video by the Mossad.

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Open Thread

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On April 11, 2026

13 Comments

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American Profits Are One Of The Causes of American Decline

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On April 9, 2026

15 Comments

Stumbled upon this chart of US corporate profits vs. corporate taxes. The important part isn’t the taxes, it’s the profits. (Note that this is nominal and doesn’t include inflation adjustment, not that American inflation numbers mean anything anyway.)

Now let’s look at another chart. This one of his how much profit companies that produce actual products (aka. not finance, insurance and so on) make per dollar of GDP added.

Notice that the long term rate through the “good” period of American prosperity (where there was a huge middle class and wages rose at the same rate as productivity) is pretty steady, and never goes above about 13cents to a dollar. It starts rising around 76 (Carter, who was very neoliberal)and continues a sustained rise, with a huge spike after Covid.

What you see in America are constant fears of inflation. Every single BLS adjustment to inflation rate measures that I am aware of since 1980 has had the net effect of reducing stated inflation. The real inflation rate in America is massive.

Meanwhile, in China, the constant fear is deflation.

Why? Because China has competitive markets and America does not. Barriers to entry are high, and everyone is looking for high profits thru barriers to competition. American firms took economic studies that showed that in competitive markets profits were low and spent all their time trying to make markets un-competative so they could have high profits. This mostly meant capturing government, because it is government regulation and enforcement which keeps markets competitive.

China wants competitive markets in most sectors, except those which provide public goods. They are aggressive about it. Chinese firms compete on quality and price and often engage in price wars, so much so that sometimes the government steps in to stop them from driving themselves bankrupt. Last time I checked the the EV manufacturing market I found over a hundred companies. The competition is savage.

So Chinese companies have low prices, “over production” and constantly introduce new models and products to try and either increase quality or price. Tesla goes years between new models, Chinese companies sometimes introduce multiple new models a year.

Everyone wants to get a share of high US profits, that’s one reason why money floods into the US. But US companies have become uncompetitive. They keep effectively shrinking: more profits, sure, but only by slowly, then quickly, destroying the companies. This is why the US has 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, if they let them in at all. And now they’re losing their foreign markets, as Europeans and Canada start letting in Chinese EVs.

The story is similar in most industries. America and Europe can’t compete. Period. Because instead of trying to be competitive, they’ve tried to create non-competitive markets and then soaked their customers as hard as possible. This works, till there isn’t any competition, or until you destroy your customers, who are also your employees, because US companies have also been keeping wage increases for everyone except executives and a few key employees (used to be programmers, but they’re about to get it in the neck) below price increases.

And this is how you wind up with 50% of all spending being done by 10% of the population, making most of America’s population economic cripples. It’s why you can’t afford tickets to a rock concert or a sports game, even though those were once solidly middle class pursuits and affordable to the poor.

This is a specific example of a general rule that you can always extract more profit if you’re willing to drive your company or your country into the ground.

About 20 years ago I wrote an article titled “there was a class war. The rich won.”

They’re still winning, but by doing so they have destroyed America’s place in the world, and indeed, the entire West’s. Hundreds of years of Western dominance are coming to an end because these greedy bastards wanted high profits for fifty years, and didn’t care what they did their country or most of their fellow citizens.

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Twenty-One Simple Facts About the Iranian War

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On April 7, 2026

40 Comments

Update 3: Attacks continue on Lebanon and Iran, from Israel. Iran let two ships thru, then closed the Strait again. The original announcement from Pakistan said that Lebanon was part of the ceasefire, but then Israel said it didn’t, and now Trump says the same.

As ceasefires go, this isn’t one. I’ll probably write a new article when the situation becomes more clear, but so far the “Israel has Trump on a leash” hypothesis looks strong and the “Iran will not agree to a ceasefire” point looks like only needs to be modified to “no ceasefire is possible until Israel is beaten into the ground.”

Update: I’ll leave this up, but there’s a ceasefire, which I didn’t expect. Three possibilities:

1) Iran is getting the deal it wanted, and won the war.

2) They’re making a mistake.

3) Quite possible that Israel blows the ceasefire up.

Update 2:

This is Iran’s statement, if Trump did agree to all of this Iran just won:

In this plan, America is fundamentally committed to guaranteeing non-aggression, the continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, the acceptance of enrichment, the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, the termination of all resolutions of the Security Council and the Board of Governors, the payment of Iran’s damages, the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic Resistance of Lebanon.

However Israel has said they will not cease attacks unless Iran opens the Hormuz, and they will continue attacks in Lebanon. In principle the agreement is between the US and Iran, and doesn’t include Israel, so Iran could just re-target all the drones and missiles which would have been used to America and Gulf States to Israel. Given Israel appears to be withing a few days of running out of interceptors, I think it’s clear who’d win that. I hope they do, and don’t abandon Lebanon. If they do, we’ll see how much control Israel has over Trump.

 

First, the war was started by America and Israel, not by Iran. There was no threat from Iran. This makes starting the war a war crime, the same crime for which many Nazis were hung at Nuremberg.

Second, there is no evidence that the Iranians had or were trying to get nuclear weapons. This is the consensus of the American intelligence community, who were under ferocious pressure to find otherwise.

Third, every person who condemns Iran without noting that that America started the war discredits themselves.

Fourth, every person who condemns Iran’s attacks on Gulf States without noting that the reason those states are being attacked is that they allow the US to launch attacks from their territory, discredits themselves.

Fifth, Iran has clearly stated that all the Gulf States have to do to stop being attacked is to stop allowing attacks from their territory and stop allowing Americans to have bases there.

Sixth, by both international law and by common sense, if you allow attacks on a third country from your country, you are a co-belligerent, whether or not your own military is involved. This matters specifically because the closer air power is to where they’re bombing, the more often they can bomb. The bases also matter because they hold (or did, till the Iranians destroyed most of them) communication and radar systems which aid America.

Seventh: If the Bushehr nuclear plant has had missiles land as close as the auxiliary building. The Russians have taken the threat so seriously that they have withdrawn their technicians. It is on the coast and if there is a containment breach, given the prevailing winds, fallout will contaminate the Persian Gulf. This will end desalination, which is how the Gulf nations get almost all their drinking water. It is also likely that the radiation will make the UAE and parts of Oman uninhabitable. All the oil from those regions will never be usable again.

Notice that such a containment breach will damage America’s allies far more than Iran. The map above is only partly accurate, the winds change and often blow south or west and not just southwest. Iran does have blocking mountains which should protect it quite a bit, but radiation is nasty stuff.

Eighth: Iran is capable of entirely destroying Israel. If nuked and possibly in the case of a containment breach, the majority of their arsenal will continue to exist. It is almost all hidden in deep underground mountain missile bases. In such a case Iran can retaliate by:

  • Destroying Israel’s desalination plants, which provide 80% of the drinking water;
  • Hitting the Dimona nuclear reactor and causing a breach would render Israel (a very small country) uninhabitable; or,
  • Iran has enough 60% enriched uranium to make dirty nuke bombs and send them by missile. Once again, this would make Israel uninhabitable.

Iran does not need nukes to destroy Israel. It can do so any time it chooses and this is a fact which American and Israeli planners seem to discount. Iran is a fairly ethical nation as nations go, and they also don’t want to kill Palestinians and Lebanese. But there are 32 Mosaic commanders. If Tehran is nuked, well, all it takes is for one of them to decide to get revenge.

Ninth: At this point Iranian missiles are getting thru a lot, because interceptor stockpiles are depleted. Claims of high interception rates are as believable as similar Ukrainian claims.

Tenth: it is not possible, absent perhaps dropping many nukes, and perhaps even then, to take out Iran’s ability to launch missiles. And even then if any are left, well, it won’t take many to wipe Israel off the map.

Eleven: Iran is not going to sign a ceasefire deal, because they know that Israel and the US will keep assassinating their leaders and eventually launch another war. Well, I was WRONG. I suspect Iran’s making a mistake, but we’ll see. Iran is saying Trump accepted their 10 point proposal, if so Iran won the war and this ceasefire makes sense.

Twelve: There can be no peace deal which leaves the US any bases in the region, because the US is, to use the delightful Russian phrase “agreement incapable.” The US has never kept any agreement it didn’t feel like keeping and it certainly won’t do so with Iran. Any promises to never attack again and stop assassinations cannot and will not be trusted by Iran’s leadership. This means Iran must win the war decisively, in a way that makes it as difficult as possible for the US to attack again (no bases in region) and Israel too scared to do so because they know any attack or assassination will mean immediate and savage retaliation.

Thirteen: The Iranians have included Lebanon and Hezbollah in their demands: Israel will have to withdraw from Lebanon and stay out and not bomb it ever again. Again, this is a maximal goal and requires a complete victory.

Fourteen: Iran is never giving up control over the Strait of Hormuz. This is especially true now that their industry and civil networks have been hit hard. They will need a lot of money to rebuild. They have also said they want reparations. I don’t think that will happen, but I could be wrong. The more damage the US and Israel do, the more Iran is incentivized to use Hormuz as a lever to get money.

Fifteen:  A side effect of this war is that weapons stockpiles have been drawn down from the entire world. There was  never any possibility of the US winning a war with China, there is no longer any possibility of even fighting such a war.

Sixteen: None of the weapons being used up can be replaced in any significant numbers without Chinese materials, and even if China cooperates it will take at least a decade to rebuild credible stockpiles.

Seventeen: Iran has pushed the Americans back significantly. Their sortie rate has dropped, and they are running out of stand-off munitions. That means they have to fly closer and risk their planes, and if they insist on using Gulf bases they risk planes being destroyed on the ground, as has already happened.

Eighteen: Carrier groups have been forced back to maximum range. They are no longer the Queens of the Sea, and it is not credible that they could be used against China or Russia, both of whom have longer range missiles and in the case of China, enough to simply deplete the entire carrier group’s interception missiles.

Nineteen: Barring the use of nukes, Iran will win this war. The longer it takes and the more damage that is done to them, the more they will use their control of Hormuz and their ability to hit any Gulf State, to obtain the needed reconstruction funds and assistance.

Twenty: Internationally this war is the end of the American global Empire. Everyone knows how to defeat them now. They will retreat to the Americas and try and push around local states. China and Russia are big winners, Europe’s deindustrialization will accelerate and Europe will continue its descent into a meaningless backwards and poor region.

Twenty-One: The economic impact of this war, even if it stopped today, would be bad enough to cause a major worldwide recession. If it continues, we will see economic devastation which will last for years. There will be famines. There will be brown outs and blackouts. Jet travel will only be for the wealthy. International trade will crater due to lack of bunker fuel and most goods will rise in price and/or become rare, how much so depending on where you live. Price increases will be much higher than necessary in the Anglosphere, in particular, as oligarchs use the excuse to jack up prices even more than they need to and governments do nothing to stop them. The AI bubble is most likely toast. Oh, and prices of all devices with chips in them are about to soar throught the roof.

***

This was and is a stupid war which neither Israel nor America should have ever fought. It is an endless series war crime, with deliberate and extensive attacks on civilians and repeated genocidal threats. It has demolished what little credibility remained in the West, as leader after leader condemns Iran and somehow leaves out that America started the war and that Iran’s attacks on infrastructure were retaliations after their infrastructure was hit. It is going to cause economic catastrophe, kill millions from hunger and power disruptions, and if Trump goes completely insane it could lead to the end of Israel and Iran both.

I’ve always said the stupidest war in history was World War I, the “Great War.” But this one may wind up taking the crown.

Finally, if the US had a functioning government, Trump would be impeached or removed under the 25th amendment. It does not, and this war has made that clear. There is no possibility of making deals with America and the only sane policy for every nation in the world is to disengage economically and militarily as quickly as they can while trying to avoid an American attack.

(A small laugh after a grim post)

 

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Trump Really Messes Up Smart People

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On April 6, 2026

29 Comments

Smart people can’t handle Trump. He say something, or does something. On the face, it seems stupid, so they go into pattern matching over-drive, looking for a reason.

You see it with the “they’re attacking Iran to screw up China’s access to oil and because America has so much oil and natural gas now.”

Well, yes, but the US is near peak unconventional oil and natural gas, production will soon start declining and the collateral damage from the Iran war is so severe it’s going to send the US into a recession so severe it’ll look like a depression, because it isn’t just about oil, it’s about fertilizer and helium and supply chains being completely wiped out.

It might be that this is Trump’s “plan” and it’s just a stupid plan, but if that was it, he’d have drawn back when it became clear that the attempt to replace the Iranian government with a compliant one, a la, Venezuela, had failed.

Or we have this:

I’ve been following Marins for a while, and she’s a smart gal. But that’s the problem. Smart people look for patterns, and assume people have goals that make sense to them.

Trump doesn’t have goals like that. You just have to listen to his word salad speech. He’s incoherent, almost certainly suffering from dementia, and to the extent he has goals they are goals like “feel good” and “have people praise me” and ‘never be seen to lose.” I dislike psychoanalyzing public figures, but he’s almost certainly a narcissist

Smart people can’t handle this. There’s got to be a smart plan hidden somewhere in the word salad.

Sometimes there is, but it’s never Trump’s plan, it’s the plan of someone who has some influence over him. But that doesn’t matter, however smart that plan is, Trump will fuck it up, because Trump will never leave someone else alone to execute, he’ll always interfere. There’s a smart plan for tariffs, for example, but that was not going to happen with Trump deciding tariffs on the fly and depending on which foreign leader he was upset with that day, nor with him insisting on undoing all the industrial policy Biden’s people (not Biden, but his people, because he would leave them alone to execute in many cases) had put in place.

Trump’s just an old, sick, stupid man with dementia and so evil that Jeffrey Epstein, of all people, wrote:

“recall ive told you ,, I have met some very bad people ,, none as bad as trump. not one decent cell in his body.. so yes- dangerous.”

There is no clever plan. There never was one. There never will be one. Trump has morally neutral virtues, or did, like the ability to manipulate people, a certain type of charisma and before his decline, massive amounts of energy. The primary difference between the first Trump term and the second is that his health has declined severely and his dementia is far more advanced.

But coherent plans? No. Trump, even when he was much younger and healthier, managed to drive a casino into bankruptcy.

A casino.

There is no plan and no, not even the deep state can carry out a coherent plan thru Trump. Even Netanyahu, who has him by the short-and-hairys, only has partial control, and certainly not day to day operational control.

If some random stranger talked like Trump you’d assume he was mentally damaged and you’d be right. His being President doesn’t change that.

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Open Thread

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On April 4, 2026

34 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

How To Read More

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On April 2, 2026

18 Comments

I see a lot of discussions about how to read more. Most of them are of the flavor of “I know broccoli and liver are good for me, but I hate how they taste, how do I eat more?”

This leads to people who are proud they read a book a month, or maybe a week, numbers that make actual readers, who often read a book a day, laugh. By the time I was ten, I was reading about fifteen books a week. (I know because I know what the library lending limits were.) I didn’t do it because it was good for me, I did it for fun.

Even in non fiction, find something you’ll enjoy reading. Love knights and chivalry? Plenty of books. Food or cooking? Same.  Seashells? Music? Math? Hunting? Anime? Weird esoteric shit like the different breeds of sheep or the history of whale hunting? Whatever it is, there are books on it. Probably many books, even for niche interests.

Then there’s fiction. I read fiction because I enjoy a break from being Ian and/or living in this particular world. That’s why I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but I read all genres, even some romance novels. The Regency romance novels of Georgette Heyer are often both funny and touching and you’ll learn a lot about Regency England without even realizing it, for example. (Try “The Corinthian” or “Friday’s Child” and stay away from her historical novels.)

The people who do a lot of anything either love doing it, or they’re doing it for money. (The ideal is both, but paid book reviewers are largely a thing of the past.)

If you want to be a better writer, read books by authors whose style you admire. Read the first time for fun, then re-read analytically, then write pastiches. Read a scene, put the book down and see if you can write the same scene the same way without looking.

Once you’ve done that with a few authors, try to write the a scene more than once, in each style. You can do the same with non fiction. It’s really hard to write like Machiavelli, for example. It sounds simple when you read it, but… no.

More instrumental advice. From 2018 to Covid, I wanted to get back into reading more as I’d gotten out of the habit. So I went to a coffee shop in a bookstore and didn’t take any screens except an e-reader. I’d sit and read for hours.

If you’re screen addicted, you may need to enforce some “no screen” time or set your phone so it only alerts you if key people call like your wife and ask them not to call unless it’s an emergency. Once Covid started up I read less, but I had the habit/enjoyment back.

Well, I never really lost the enjoyment. I still enjoyed it, but the dopamine twitch reflex of social media and so on had become an issue, not as fun overall, but it’s more immediate.

Reading books has a different “brain feel” than reading short form let alone social media. You just need to get a taste for it. It’s sort of stretchy — you get entire full stories or entire world models in ways articles can’t give you, let alone some social post or video.

That, I find, sparks a lot more ideas for me, and I LOVE the feeling of new ideas. Barbara Hambly once called it the the “cold clear ecstasy of intellectual discovery” and while I won’t say it’s the best feeling, it’s unique. Books really help get that.

If you want to read more: reduce your screen addiction and read books you’ll enjoy. Don’t treat it like forcing down liver and broccoli. Have fun.

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