While looking at people in the context of their times is a challenge I disagree about applying this to American black slavery in the way that you do. Serfdom was a terrible institution, but not to sa… (View Post)

My feeling is that other countries freezing Trump assets is mostly proposed by the US internal opposition. Trump is the democratically elected leader of the US, it makes no sense for us to sanction h… (View Post)

My reading was that Japan would have transitioned later than it has in actual history (end vs mid 20th century), not that actual Japan is not a democracy. (View Post)

You overstate it a bit. 80% is really at the upper end of the estimates, and the credible range is usually given with a lower limit of 40%, not 60%. There is also a fair bit of reasonable criticism o… (View Post)

Yes, agreed. There where just interesting technical asides, as you were also being technical. That is why I led my third point in the original post on the topic as "the first two items are besid… (View Post)