John Martin

John Martin

Muzzling the Dragon

Muzzling the Dragon

A declining Chinese economy should be more a cause for celebration than despair

How reliable are China’s GDP numbers? In a country where delivery drivers with fake licenses can fill up their fake-brand motorbikes with fake petrol before delivering fake products to their customers, one would be forgiven for questioning the government’s official data. In most countries GDP is the sum of all produced final goods relative to their price, China ostensibly adopted this approach in line with UN guidelines in 1994 but when scrutinised the data appears somewhat suspect.

An Oligarchy, If You Can Keep It

An Oligarchy, If You Can Keep It

American decline is real, the only question is whether it’s terminal

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

  • Plutarch

Of all popular pastimes in American political punditry, comparing modern events to those of Ancient Rome has to be among the most cliched. Ever since Edward Gibbon published his definitive works on the Roman Empire in the 1790s, Rome has been the baseline for all great empires to compare themselves to. Google Ngram reveals that British publishers in the 19th century went through a phase of comparing themselves to late Antiquity. Americans adopted this legacy in the 1940s and have continued the habit into the present day. In many such books, America is compared to the early Roman Republic, skillfully beating its opponents through industrial power and advanced engineering, only to be corrupted by wealth and political infighting. The parallel portends that American democracy will inevitably come to an end and be replaced by some kind of imperial superstate. This same trope has been conjured up by science fiction writers like Orson Scott Card and Harry Turtledove. Its enduring popularity means that political pundits are constantly on the lookout for a Julius Caesar-like figure. The same analogy was made by New York’s Public Theater a little too obliquely in 2017 by having Caesar depicted as a large blonde man with a red tie during his assassination.


Why Autocracy Reclaimed Russia

Why Autocracy Reclaimed Russia

Explaining the resurgence

It will be very easy for future historians to look back on modern Russia and determine that the road to its authoritarian resurgence was inevitable. That all the signs were there from its very inception. The now-obvious parallels with the Weimar Republic make the case all the clearer. In the now familiar parallel, a defeated empire is weakened and down on its knees, beset with an economic crisis and a break up of its former territory. A narrative then emerges that it was betrayed, stabbed in the back by weak internal elements, and needs to use territorial conquest to reclaim its natural global position.


The Loneliest Dictator

The Loneliest Dictator

Xi Jinping's tenureship has been a global disaster

It was only a short time ago that ­covid-19 seemed to be a death-send to democracy and a gift to dictatorships. Watching the tables turn in the last few months is a reminder of how fast global trends can change.

For the last two years, it appeared to be western states suffering from political crises over the pandemic, but as the vaccine rollouts continued and people returned to work, life began to take on some semblance of normality. While in the autocratic world from Tehran to Moscow, strongmen have used the pandemic to shore up their power, making increasingly bad decisions as a result. In Russia's case, the calamitous invasion of Ukraine, and in China’s, a dogmatic zero-covid policy that has set the country on a path to economic turmoil not seen since the late 1980s.


The Rough Estimate Podcast

The Rough Estimate Podcast

So we know reading isn’t for everyone. It takes time, you have to click on a website, and who has the time for that. We like writing our ideas about topics and we wanted to make them more accessible, so we decided to jump on the podcast bandwagon like everyone else.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1uLdbtxnyM3AhOK6f38PpD

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCA2S4igiDg&t=215s

Itunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rough-estimate/id1608843631?ign-itscg=30200&ign-itsct=podcast_box_link

The Psyche's Hinterland

The Psyche's Hinterland

The search for modern spiritualism in an age of reason

If there is one thing that we can learn from the 21st-century entertainment industry, it is that modern people have a near insatiable appetite for ancient myths. Our digital screens are filled with all kinds of mythic beings adapted from historic literature. Not only Gods but wizards, angels, demons, and many other magical entities. Myth making is present in almost all popular forms of entertainment from fantasy novels, movies, and video games. Aside from Western culture, fantasy entertainment is popular in other parts of the world. Retelling epic narratives from India, China, and even the Middle East. The enduring strength of such myths is all around us, but probably most evident of all with superheroes.

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The Innovation Pendulum

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The Innovation Pendulum

An authoritarian resurgence may just be signalling the end of a technology cycle

On an unrecorded day in 1938 a Soviet economist was sentenced by his government to life imprisonment in an old monastery town east of Moscow. But in this case the condemned didn’t end up serving much of his sentence because on the same day of the ruling, Nikolai Kondratiev was taken to a park on the outskirts of the city, and executed by firing squad.

The Softest Authoritarians

The Softest Authoritarians

South East Asia’s competing political models

As I write this article — while sitting in a cafe in downtown Saigon — a few streets away a group of protesters have just been re-sentenced to prison for advocating publicly for freedom of speech. Rather strangely this is something that their country’s own constitution includes among its citizen’s rights, but of course these rights only really apply under certain circumstances.

At the same time, just over 1000 kilometres to the north, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is ending their annual congress in Hanoi. Giant LED screens attached to office buildings are now showing the overweight, balding party leader solemnly explaining the great job that the party has done containing the coronavirus in Vietnam.

Art's Golden Ages

Art's Golden Ages

How art periods rise and fall

The trope of the rise and fall of civilisations has been around as long as the first Greek historians put pen to paper. The idea that Empires conquer, expand, grow decadent, and collapse is embedded in the human psyche. It makes sense to most people that artistic development should follow a similar pattern. But when examined closely, artistic development seems to follow quite a different path. There are times when states emerge with little to no artistic development, and times when art styles flourish in empires that are on the decline. What then accounts for the emergence of different art styles at different times?

The Mirror, the Snake, and the Sword

The Mirror, the Snake, and the Sword

Explaining the democratic recession

The Roman Goddess Iustitia stands blindfolded. She holds a sword in one hand, a mirror in the other, and stands on top of a serpent. Iustitia was in charge of executing laws and held the sword to deliver swift execution for lawbreakers. The mirror she holds up to criminals so that they can see their sins reflected, and the snake represents the evil which is kept at bay by her actions.

The blindfold was put on her by another Goddess, Fortuna, the goddess of luck, so that Iustitia could not see her mischief. Iustitia is known to us now as Lady Justice. Her likeness stands on top of the Old Bailey in London, as well as courts throughout the world from Brazil to Japan. To us she represents the rule of law, the idea that all people in a society live under the same rules, and are punished equally no matter their status or standing.

Red Terror and Big Data

Red Terror and Big Data

How the Chinese government spreads global authoritarianism

On the 17th March 2018, the Chinese president was sitting with his back to his party delegates, about to undertake the most important action of his entire life.

He got up from his red chair, walked slowly across the red carpet, with red flags towering over him, and carefully placed two red pieces of paper into a polished red box. Accompanied with melodic applause and marching music, he quickly looked up at the crowd of photographers, gave them his characteristic half-smile half-grimace, and returned to his seat.

His red papers would be followed by thousands of others, men dressed mostly in black suits with grey ties, some wearing traditional minority clothing, often followed by a nervous bow or a nod to the cameras. The result was announced a few hours later, with 2,958 for, two against, and four abstentions. And with that Xi Jinping became China’s first president for life, effective immediately, at a congressional session where most had been expecting him to announce his successor.

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

The Crimes of Tedros Adhanom

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as well as being the first WHO director without a medical degree, also has a somewhat political background compared to his predecessors. On his online biography, the WHO lays out his qualifications as Ethiopian Minister of Health from 2002 to 2012, impressive stuff.

Aside from his medical credentials, Tedros happens to be a member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which is an organisation about as peaceful as its name suggests. Founded as a communist revolutionary party that came to power in 1991, it led a guerrilla campaign against the Mengistu dictatorship and formed a coalition with two other ethnic parties after his exile.

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Is the Wuhan Coronavirus a Bio-weapon?

Unravelling the conspiracy

In a now widely circulated 2018 interview with Chinese state TV, military scientist Chen Hu was asked about the capabilities of an engineered bio-weapon. Hu described the effects of such weapons as ‘devastating’ and ‘equaling that of an atomic bomb’. He then went on to appeal the need for creating defensive capabilities against such events.

A year after he gave that interview Dr. Chen was dead at age 57. In his obituary the numerous achievements of the scientist were outlined, among them the fact that despite being a military doctor, he had helped develop groundbreaking research using CRISPR gene editing; specifically the mice embryos that had been given an engineered resistance to HIV in 2017.

My Time with the Alt-Right

My Time with the Alt-Right

Who they are and what they believe

Over the last few years there have been numerous articles of people who have “infiltrated” an alt-right group, and tried to expose its inner workings to the public. This will not be one of those articles. This is not an expose or an attempt to name and shame. I spent over a year with an alt-right group from 2017 to 2018 and wish to write an article that represents what members of the alt-right community worldwide actually believe in as factual a way as I can.

I first attended a meeting with an overtly alt-right group in 2017 in the Netherlands where I was living at the time. The Dutch elections were right around the corner, and in trying to find online news about the election, I found several videos from a group covering them in English from an alt-right perspective.

Why China Won't Reform

Why China Won't Reform

Facing up to the new threat

In 1994, US President Bill Clinton gave a press conference in China to discuss relations between the two countries, and the state of human rights development. Five years after thousands had been gunned down in the streets of Beijing and hundreds more killed in Tibet, they were looking less than optimal.

Ever the optimist though, Bill made it clear that although there were serious human rights abuses continuing in China, he was sure they were dreadfully sorry about what had happened in 89, and felt things were improving. Just like Korea and Taiwan, he said, it was clear that as Western products flooded into China, democratisation would inevitably follow. China even enjoyed most favoured nation status with the US all throughout the 1990s in an attempt to accelerate this process. Putting up with the show trials and labour camps were just the cost of doing business.

How To Protect Your Data Online

How To Protect Your Data Online

A Complete Guide to Digital Privacy

Privacy on the internet might seem like an incredulous sentence nowadays. Asking for privacy on the internet today is like asking for a way to never be captured on public CCTV, or to fly abroad without using identification.

Gone are the days of the anonymous free exchange community. Now, Big Zucker is always watching, and expressing the wrong opinion can lead to censorship, banning, or even to less kind internet users looking to dox you – meaning the publication of your personal details in order to disincentivise you from further expressing said opinions.

To even want privacy is to be immediately ridiculed. Don't you know the NSA or the 14 Eyes affiliates are recording everything you do, collecting information from every country with a windows computer and tracking your every move? If that wasn't enough, Google is busy recording every detail about your life and feeding it to their super-intelligent AI, Deepmind, who is being groomed to one day take over the universe and upload our brains to the quantum hive mind.

The Last Portrait

The Last Portrait

Modern art’s value deficit

“One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a coloured canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.”

 

Oswald Spengler, 1918

 

 

A hundred years ago when Oswald Spengler wrote those words in The Decline of the West, the downfall of Western Civilisation was self evident. The highpoint of European control over the globe would come a few years later after Britain and France took over the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. Later decolonisation would prove some of Spengler’s ideas right. Though this can largely be blamed on the following world war brought on by a government that had taken his book a little too seriously.

 

The clearest evidence to Spengler of the decline of the West was of course its art. The legacy of Renaissance art in Europe was now being replaced with monstrosities from the Fauves and the Cubists who were making paintings of formless colours and shapes. Combined with the primitive African and Native American styles of dress being celebrated by the leading designers of the day, this seemed to Spengler to signal the beginning of the end.

Should We Build the Next Particle Collider?

Should We Build the Next Particle Collider?

The search for the next frontier in physics

“China has an incredible opportunity to become the world leader here — don't waste it. A good example is to build the Great Collider that can lead high energy physics for the next fifty years.”

-Stephen Hawking, November 2016

 

The passing of Stephen Hawking in early 2018 deprives the particle physics community of one of its greatest and most respected scientists. It also occurred at a time when the future of particle physics looks very uncertain. After the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012, the search for new physics since has yielded very little, leading to concerns over what the next particle collider would even be looking for.

The Electric Brain

The Electric Brain

Is a trans-humanist future for humanity inevitable?

If you grew up in the early 2000s like I did, you probably feel like historical trends are catching up with your age. When I was young it felt like humanity had simply ceased to invent new things. Computers, TVs and mobile phones were just slowly getting thinner, and the internet was simply a convenient way to do homework. These technologies were refined every year, but so slowly that it was imperceptible except in hindsight like the hands of a clock. As a teenager, the only technology that seemed to me to show genuine progress was video games.