Menger

Calling a spade a spade is good - and that applies to each of the bad actors (individuals or institutions) in current conflicts. Attributing aggression to “the Russians” as a people comes close to the same category error as the snippet at the beginning of this thread “but for her people being slow in thought and backward”. In my view, the category error is between a people (the Chinese, the Russians) and the culture and historical system (imperial). Perhaps I am splitting hairs in this instance, but the mantra I often resort to is “culture matters, race not at all”. There is an unfortunate reversion in our current culture of identity politics to invert that - to assume that one culture is no better or worse than any other; and that somehow race is important. The reversion is back to the imperial mindset of the snippet. Woke mindset is an intellectual and moral cultural regression. We as a people can do better than that.

That seems to me the default for all systems of empire and all systems of tribalism. Nothing special about Russians there. They are an empire - like the others. Like China. The mistake we make is thinking they are a nation state. Like the UK. It is the imperial nature of Russia that caused both Kissinger and Obama separately warned against the escalation in the Ukraine. Know your enemy.

I wouldn’t single out the Russians. There is not an empire in the whole of human history that has not been expansionist. Human history is the ebb and flow between the two poles of tribalism and empire: the one gives way to the other, back and forth, the world over. The birth of the nation state in Western Europe (and the Westphalian system that it became) is an historical anomaly and alien to much of the world relative to endless tribalism and empire.

Certainly not the attitude we would condone today. That said, I suspect not too different from the attitude of any other modern empire - whether Russian, Ottoman, Japanese or indeed (if we go a little back, or forward) Chinese. Empires tend to have a relatively high opinion of the mother/fatherland and a condescending view of the barbarians outside. Just look how the EU looks at us! 🤣 Not to mention how DEI considers those who dwell outside its walls. Empire (old or new) not a good model.

Agreed. Similarly, auction houses have a patina of reputation, which presumably they are keen to maintain in their lot descriptions as justification to the sellers for the premiums they charge. I am usually more likely to buy TPG graded for the same reason (as I always buy over distance) and crack them out on arrival if they are keepers. None of these methods are risk free though. Only risk management. It can be a perilous hobby. 🤣

Just adjust your bids. Everyone else will. Increasing fees does not increase gross prices - it just redistributes the shares of gross price as between vendor and auction house. In effect, the vendor will pay the increased fee - not you. If the auction house has (through its marketing and reputation and wot not) increased gross prices more than the fees - everyone is a winner 👍 If not, the vendor loses out. Not buyer.

Buyer pays market price. Seller gets market price less all deductions, taxes and wot not.

I did not mention Seller’s Premium - but Seller pays that too (if any). Buyer’s Premium is technically paid by Buyer but effectively paid by Seller as it is a cost deducted from the market price of Seller’s coin. That is why it makes little sense for Buyers to bemoan Buyer’s Premium rates and every sense for Sellers to do so (if they feel the rates don’t represent the value the auction house brings - through its reputation, market presence, photography, bidding system and wot not - in other words the increase in market price).

Buyer’s premium is a misnomer as it is paid by the vendor. Vendors need to consider BP carefully to assess whether it correctly represents value added by the auction house. Buyers can be indifferent as they don’t pay it anyhows.

It attracted a single bid and hammered at the starting price of £3000. I am not convinced the one that sold for £3600 in the Portland collection (St James’s) was the lesser coin - but I do think it’s price (which started from an estimate of £750 -£1000) was a spike caused by two competing bidders (it was the spectacle of the auction). I kept my powder dry today and hope to find a better example one day.

Yes indeed. This is why I am skeptical that woke (the shift of the left away from class activism to activism based on race, gender, sex or other myriad immutable characteristics) is mere “political correctness”. Any facet of a person can be converted into a group identity. The personal becomes political; and the political becomes total. No division between public and private. Precisely what the classical liberals abhorred in the total state - totalitarianism. Let’s hope it is a mere millennial fad.

Not sure. Sounds like post-modern gobbledegook. “Power relations” and wot not. Perhaps a good basis for a gnostic cult, but I think individual rights (irrespective of race, gender, sex or religion) have proved a better basis for western society.

Agree. Sounds like classical liberalism (individual rights irrespective or race, sex or gender ; not group rights based on race, sex, or gender). So more John Steward Mill or Martin Luther King than Foucault or Derrida. In other words, the antithesis of woke.

Was their philanthropy based on racial, sexual or gender criteria?

A further clarification may be in order: the term “woke” reportedly originated on the left. However, it is now predominantly used (largely as a pejorative) by everyone except the left. That is the use I am seeking to explain. From the perspective of the left, “woke” is a nothing burger, devoid of meaning, mere “political correctness”, or perhaps universal truth. Like fish in water might be unaware of water.

These issues have become associated predominantly with the left (just like identity politics) and just as climate denialism, Covid minimalism, anti-lockdown, anti-vaxer and Putin sympathizing are terms used (predominantly on the left) to describe the contrary positions on these issues, associated predominantly with the right. Clearly this is not absolute (Trump was big on the Covid shots; Boris Johnson was big on net-zero and Zelinsky) but then neither is identity politics limited to the left (the Tories have been implicated in woke as much as anyone). If is just a question of what is characteristic. We can guess Trudeau’s or Jacinda Ardern’s or Starmer’s position on these issues, just as we can that of Desantis or Farage or Georgia Meloni. As we noted before, there are two prongs to “woke”: the shift of the left to identity politics; the shift of corporations (and establishment) left. That is how a corporate (say, Pizza Hut) hypothetically pandering to any one of these issues (e.g., the Zelinsky pizza, the net-zero pizza, the trans-pizza) might be described as “woke”. I am just explaining use of the term for you; not seeking to justify it.

Sounds about right. I do sense though (more generally) that elitists tend to see populists as somehow “tricking” the masses (rather than giving them what they actually want); just as populists tend to see the elitists as implicated in a premeditated conspiracy (rather than incompetence). I think the one underestimates the intelligence of the other; and the other overestimates.

A con man Trump may or may not be, but that is a separate question as to whether he is “populist”. Trump was well ahead of the curve on China, the southern boarder and “forever wars”. Trump’s position on these three issues was contrary to the establishment position (in the media and both parties), but resonated with the working classes (what Americans call “middle classes”). This combination is what makes Trump “populist”. So “populist” might be contrasted with “elitist”: the establishment position (aka “leave it to the experts”) or woke policies generally (“leave it to the social scientists/universities ”). One can be a con man (or not) and “populist”, just as one can be a con man (or not) and “elitist”.

I thought I gave an explanation as to what woke means. Two prongs: left shift to identity politics; corporate shift left. On the left, this is a shift from obsessing about disparities between the bourgeoisie and working class to disparities within the bourgeoisie based on race, sex, sexual orientation, “gender” and other supposedly immutable wot not. In corporations, it is the shift to work policies and marketing focused on the same identity politics, as well as other leftward reorientations from climate emergency, to zero covid and the notion of a U.S./NATO/EU led world order. So Biden’s support of Zelinsky is not “woke” - but if Pizza Hut were to produce a pizza in the colours of Ukrainian flag that would be “woke”. Biden’s focus on “equity” (celebrating group identity based on race and sexual orientation or, say, disabilities; and seeking to eradicate disparities in outcome between such groups) is however “woke”. As to “populism”: yes, Trump (unlike the Republican establishment) is clearly populist, as is Farage (but not the Tory establishment). One of the great ironies is that some issues that were hitherto hallmarks of liberalism (such as free speech and a restrained foreign policy) have become “populist”. God help us. Anyone got a better definition of “woke”?

Again, I think it is in the shift of the left from class politics to identity politics. This applies to the Anglo-sphere generally, most acutely to the US but also the UK. Blue collar to white collar. Working class to upper middle class. This is why the parties of the left have become the parties of the big banks, corporations, professions (always teachers, but now also lawyers and doctors) and even big oil; whereas the right has become populist. Big business is now also “Blairite” (globalized but regulated economy) and has also embraced identity politics and middle class activism through ESG and diversity. The shift to “woke” describes this shift of the left from class to identity politics and the parallel shift of big business to the left. What was mere insufferable “political correctness” on the left has in parallel mutated into the intolerant cancel culture and authoritarianism of “woke”.

The left (and much of the establishment) have long been “politically correct” but they only recently became “woke”.

That is a different question from mine. I think the answer is that use of the word became widespread at the same time as the political shift by the left from class to identity politics and the contemporaneous shift of corporations to the left. So it has emerged with the phenomenon that it describes. Of course, its widespread use emerged in the US. It coincided with the shift from the unifying message of Obama’s first campaign in 2008 (“Yes we can!”) to the more militaristic battle cry of the “rainbow coalition” adopted by the second campaign in 2012 (“Forward!”). That is about when the left consummated its shift from blue collar to white collar. We have not looked back since. The meaning of words generally is primarily a matter of currency through usage and so this seems no different.

What other word can better be used to capture the shift of the left from class based politics to identity politics? (And the parallel shift of corporations, professions and the middle class to the left?).

This may be a difference in perspective. Iain McGilchrist looks at it in terms of left-brain and right-brain perspectives: from the one, things can appear more binary when stripped of the context and nuance that comes from the other. This may be an inherent problem with top-down technocracies where certain narratives are treated as “fact”. The dichotomy between the theories of the “experts” and the real life experiences of the people being analogous to the left and right brain. This then creates division between those that have faith in that narrative as “fact” and those that see a different perspective or a broader picture. McGilchrist argues that a structural shortcoming of the left-brain is that is it is unable to perceive the nature of the right-brain.

I have always thought the “agree to differ” conclusion to discussion misplaced; and that point of discussion is not necessarily to “change viewpoints”, but perhaps to sharpen one’s own ideas by articulating them and testing them against the quality of feedback. Moreover the back and forth can be entertaining. So while it may not stop people disappearing down woke rabbit holes with bad ideas, open debate may also serve to keep a sizable minority sane.