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In4ser

Junior Member

Opinion: Luxury goods: Europe’s joke on the world​

The old continent profits from the cultural insecurities of other regions

Search online for the Bulgari Serpenti watch. Gold, steel and diamond in construction, one model coils around the wrist three times, in case someone misses it on first or second glance. Or consider the Gucci Marmont Matelassé shoulder bag. It has two big “G”s on it in gold and — that being insufficient gold — a gold chain. A third item for our delectation might be a Givenchy T-shirt. You can tell it is Givenchy because it says “GIVENCHY”.

I am no arbiter of taste, so it is with some hesitation that I make the following argument. This stuff is tat, isn’t it? It is a naïf’s idea of glamour. Like paying for a Twitter blue tick, wearing it conveys the opposite of status: neediness, impressionability.

There are lots of bad arguments against the booming European (in truth, Franco-Italian) luxury goods sector. No, it isn’t immoral. LVMH employs people and pays taxes. Nor does it matter that US tech is more “serious”. All economies have their specialisms, their comparative advantages. Is Europe meant to neglect its own until it builds a Silicon Riviera or whatever?

All these complaints avoid the central issue: the intrinsic ghastliness of the products. And the ease with which Europe can foist them on extra-European markets. I don’t suggest that LVMH boss Bernard Arnault laughs at America and Asia behind his hands. But he must know that he can put out almost any trinket and find a paying audience. In his place, I would be drawling ideas into a Dictaphone at 3am, just to see what can be got away with. “Gilt phone charger . . . ivory kennel . . .”

The luxe boom tells you more about world politics than another Henry Kissinger interview will. Such as? The “global south”, wherever that is, has a more complex attitude to its old oppressors than it often pretends. Yes, there is suspicion, much of it warranted. There is superiority, much of it earned. (How could a Singaporean not find western Europe static?)

But there is also the opposite: an undue but ingrained deference to Europe on certain questions of taste. VS Naipaul wrote about the postcolonial urge to “mimic” the metropole. This once meant Anglicising things: accents, manners, names. A childhood memory of mine from Nigeria is “Oxford bread”, which I am sure was just bread.

As poor countries sprouted a commercial overclass, their mimicry took the form of consuming the “best” Old World brands. But it comes down to the same thing: self-doubt, at the national and cultural level. The luxury trade isn’t evil. But it is sad. There is something pathetic, in the original sense of the word, about a certain kind of global luxe living: marble floors, white furniture, champagne flutes, too-strong fragrances, restaurants with handbag stools. It is not the visual naffness. It is the imitation of an aesthetic that is held in ironic disdain in its home market.

As poor countries sprouted a commercial overclass, their mimicry took the form of consuming the “best” Old World brands. But it comes down to the same thing: self-doubt, at the national and cultural level. The luxury trade isn’t evil. But it is sad. There is something pathetic, in the original sense of the word, about a certain kind of global luxe living: marble floors, white furniture, champagne flutes, too-strong fragrances, restaurants with handbag stools. It is not the visual naffness. It is the imitation of an aesthetic that is held in ironic disdain in its home market.

No, be honest, let go of embarrassment, and admit that Europe is playing a very remunerative joke on the world. More power to it. Here is the other geopolitical lesson of the luxe boom. Don’t write off the old continent. Tourism, luxury, football: nowhere enchants foreigners so profitably. The idea that Europe is a pleasure palace, not a wealth-making machine, assumes it can’t turn the one into the other on a lasting basis.

“Do you know anyone who buys this stuff?” asked a (British) friend last month, when the luxe trade was in the news. I used to.
Soho. 1996. Fake, stolen or imperceptibly damaged luxury goods are being sold from a crate. Your columnist and his associates have to buy fast or what these vendors call the “feds” will turn up. We “score” a Dior watch, Versace jeans and a belt from Moschino (which we pronounce Mosh-een-o). Over time, the dream comes true: no item on our persons is without a famous logo.
I desired these marques because I was 14 and a considerable idiot. To think I also saw where the world was going.

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That's why I only buy jewelry based upon the weight per precious metal and the only reason I'm even buying them is to wear them through TSA because otherwise, you have to declare currency and monetary instruments over $10,000.00 (which seems a lot but I suspect it won't be once USD depreciates in the coming years).
 

tokenanalyst

Brigadier
Registered Member
South Korea appear to be most comfortable as the foremost vassal bulldog of whichever hegemonic power holds sway. My most ardent hope is that these Coreans become this millenniums version of the khitans and are subsumed completely into China proper.

unfortunately many Asian women exhibit narcissistic traits of wanting such western luxury baubles to show off to their friends and elicit jealousy. Woe to the husband who inevitably gets caught up in such games of narcissis.


chinese semiconductor industry is like the terminator, it just keeps coming and never stops, eventually, china will conquer CPU and like the CPU in terminator 2, will go on to conquer the world.
If the only options are between Death and Difficult Road, a Difficult Road is mostly preferable.

These technological sanctions have been a really bad inconvenience for companies in the top of the supply chain like Huawei but for companies in the bottom of the supply chain, companies that had been ignored for years or decades it has really push their sales up, they have received more money for R&D, they have got more attention from investors, less outside competition and are more willing on investing to increase manufacturing capacity.​
 

BoraTas

Major
Registered Member
It's hilarious that the Col writes with such arrogance that ...

"As a former tank commander ... I am confident for one simple reason: Ukraine will follow the Western ideology of manoeuvre warfare in a combined arms context, while the Russians will follow Soviet doctrine, relying on attrition and numbers. The Russians will find that the armour of Western tanks is far more resilient than flesh and bone, they will die in great numbers, and they will lose."

"Getting this form of warfare right takes intelligence and training. You need the right equipment, and effective doctrine. The Ukrainians have this. I estimate that their tank brigades have had around eight weeks to perfect combined arms warfare, around the same time I would have allocated to train the Royal Tank Regiment under my command to be an effective combined arms fighting force."


So in other words, the Ukrainians have had sufficient training.



and now it seems like the Brits are getting thrown under the bus by their NATO compatriots ...

“They were trained by the British and they’re playing Light Brigade,” the officer added, referring to the 1854 disaster at the Battle of Balaclava when misreported orders sent British cavalry into massed cannon fire."

"The Ukrainian high command’s principle military advice has come from British officers embedded at headquarters in Kiev."


So it wasn't a case of the Ukrainians failure by using NATO equipment with Soviet doctrines.
It's squarely the Brit's fault!

and if you really want to add insult to injury ...

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claims a leak that the British disallowed the AFU to use Challenger tanks in the opening stage of the counteroffensive. o_O

Yes, the fat lady hasn't sung yet and yeah, all the above are media soundbites that may be true ... but are probably not. I nonetheless find it interesting how they link up given they are all within 24hrs of each other. It's going to be an interesting week.
The competence of any military in mobile mechanized warfare should be doubted. There have been no successful examples since the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet Union. What I see is modern militaries are way too obsessed with the lethality, and the survivability of individual vehicles. Leading to small, low mobility and logistics heavy forces. This is especially true for the cold war and contemporary NATO forces. By all definitions, the Soviet Union was more considerate of operational scale mobility. The weight and sizes of vehicles were kept as low as possible deliberately. A lot of vehicles could be airdropped and almost all non-tank fighting vehicles were amphibious. There was more bridging equipment in Soviet Army than any NATO army on a relative basis. They had tracked AFVs available to a way higher proportion of their army compared to NATO. Examples continue...

This claim here, which claims mobile warfare was a Western approach and that the Soviets relied on human waves is just a regurgitation post WW2 Nazi copium. After WW2 ex-Nazis came up with a lot of excuses for why the war was lost. These people weren't shut up because their arguments were useful for the 1950s anti-communist propaganda.
 

supercat

Major
"As a former tank commander ... I am confident for one simple reason: Ukraine will follow the Western ideology of manoeuvre warfare in a combined arms context, while the Russians will follow Soviet doctrine, relying on attrition and numbers. The Russians will find that the armour of Western tanks is far more resilient than flesh and bone, they will die in great numbers, and they will lose."

"Getting this form of warfare right takes intelligence and training. You need the right equipment, and effective doctrine. The Ukrainians have this. I estimate that their tank brigades have had around eight weeks to perfect combined arms warfare, around the same time I would have allocated to train the Royal Tank Regiment under my command to be an effective combined arms fighting force."
This is beyond Cold War mentality and arrogance. This is delusional.

LMAO - notice the map was from 2021, more countries have joined BRI since then:
3Vwhwj0.jpg


China is not the Soviet Union. The US can keep dreaming.

Good.
At a breakfast meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, diplomats from France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands were among those expressing concern about “national security” references von de Leyen’s chief of cabinet, Bjorn Seibert, made in a presentation, according to five diplomats and others party to the discussion.
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Fedupwithlies

Junior Member
Registered Member
This is beyond Cold War mentality and arrogance. This is delusional.

This is like a C-average student trying to talk down to an A-average student.

Which is actually the general gist of things these days in the west. If you're asian and you get good grades obviously you're cheating. If you're white and you get bad grades its because the school system doesn't recognize your genius.

Fucking christ.
 

Strangelove

Colonel
Registered Member
It will be another broken promise and a pile of excuses.


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The G7 Wants to Copy China’s Homework. Beijing Is Fine With That.

With the component of realist international competition removed, the G-7 and China actually share many hopes and desires for global development.

By Wang Wen June 09, 2023

China’s foreign ministry was rightly outraged by the G-7’s communique from last month’s summit in Hiroshima, Japan. A section titled “China” reiterated a number of the West’s anti-China cliches, suggesting Beijing was not committed to peace and equality in its global development goals.

It is thus ironic that, after reading the entire 19,000-plus-word communique, that I found that many of the G-7’s hopes and desires for the world appear to have been lifted directly from official documents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

For example, Article 1 of the G-7 communique states that it hopes to “strengthen our partnerships with African countries and support greater African representation in multilateral forums,” which is precisely a key goal of China’s foreign policy. Over the past few decades, Chinese foreign ministers have made a habit of making an African country their first destination for each new year.

Article 8 of the G-7 communique talks about “addressing potential risks to the stability, resilience, and integrity of the monetary and financial system,” which exactly matches one of the three major domestic development objectives proposed by China in 2017.

.............

Over the past 10 years, China has signed cooperation agreements under the BRI with 151 countries, raising more than $700 billion for infrastructure and other cooperation projects. The G-7 communique, meanwhile, meekly reads, “We reaffirm our shared commitment to the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) and working together and aiming to mobilize up to $600 billion by 2027.”

I can only hope this better-late-than-never gesture doesn’t end as yet another broken promise and a pile of excuses.
 
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