Got to put my plug in for Elixir. Built on the legendary Erlang runtime, looks like Ruby and secretly a Lisp under the covers. The Ecto database library blows every other ORM or tool I have ever used out of the water.
Regarding mutability, I would argue the runtime has everything you need like software transactional memory, pleasant I/O and the best exception handling you could imagine
Greetings comrade, I don't have a specific resource I can think of that addresses your question head-on so I'm going to take a crack at it myself and then share what resources I can find and recall.
I think it is probably challenging to understand because there are a number of counterintuitive principles that build on each other.
I think it's fundamental to understand monetary policy, the foreign exchange markets and the bond markets, then hopefully it will be clear to explain how they constrain state action.
So first monetary policy. All national currencies that exist today are administered by a central bank that literally has the power to create and destroy any amount of money at any time. Currencies used to be "backed" by another asset, meaning in principle they could be exchanged for some amount of silver or gold if you took the paper notes back to the issuer. This hasn't been true for decades, which is why many people call these "fiat currencies" because they literally have value because the governments say they do. The natural next question is: why don't governments just print unlimited money to buy whatever they want and never have to levy taxes? According to "monetarist" theory if you have an increase in the money supply without a corresponding increase in available goods and services, that will lead to an increase in prices across the board which is also known as inflation. This was once a great debate in economics, but my understanding is that this is universally accepted now because the historical record is unambiguous.
Now we can talk about foreign exchange markets. It gets very confusing to try and think about buying and selling money with other money, but it's a very important part of how the world works. The main reason individuals and businesses buy the currency of another country is to do business with them in some way. (Travel, invest, import products etc.). The main reason governments (acting through their central banks) buy foreign currency is to hold as reserve so they can make big moves to stabilize their own currency in the event of a crisis. The reason governments care about the stability of their currency relative to others is because when their currency is "strong" (meaning increasing on average in value relative to other currencies) it makes their exports less competitive and when it is "weak" this causes inflation in the local economy.
Very important side note to squeeze in between here is that ever since the end of World War II (The World Anti-fascist War), the dollar has been "the reserve currency" which causes the US to have what has been called "the exorbitant privilege". It's not an exaggeration to say that the United States has been getting fat from consuming the surplus value of the entire world.
This all ties into the government bond market. Bonds are denominated in the national currency which is why this all connects together. Imagine a large European manufacturer, say Volkswagen. 12 months ago, you might have chosen to have bought one-year US bonds as part of your financial operations. These bonds have around a 3 and 1/2% interest rate, sounds great right? No, you're absolutely fucked because over the past 12 months the dollar has lost more than 10% of its value against the Euro. So not only has your bond investment actually lost value in real terms, but now your cars are 10% more expensive for US customers because of the exchange rate alone not even counting the tariffs and now having the highest energy prices in the world.
Now we're finally ready to talk about economic coercion with some examples:
Many believe that US/Israel did a targeted dump or short sale of the Iranian currency which is called the Rial. Whether they did or not, there was a rapid 20% decline in the relative exchange value of the Rial, which then caused inflation and exacerbated cost of living concerns in the populace, which was the stated reason for the big protests we recently saw.
The US has been conducting a unilateral illegal economic war against Cuba for over 70 years now. They don't physically blockade the island (with some exceptions), Rather they make it essentially impossible for the Cubans to interact with the dollar financial system. Because the dollar is the reserve currency it is also used for a huge percentage of international transactions (it used to be nearly 100%, now no one is really sure). Because of this, The US has historically been able to force countries to choose trade with United States or Cuba and obviously everyone chooses the US.
The Europeans collectively hold a huge percentage United States government bonds. Something I didn't mention earlier is that if everyone starts selling us bonds than the interest rate will go up. This will directly increase the amount of money that the US has to pay in interest on the debt. In extreme cases, this can feedback into a debt doom loop, which I personally believe will be the ultimate fate of the United States
I tried to make it as short as I could, hopefully I didn't leave out any important detail. Please ask any questions.
I promised a source, this is a recent video from a pretty decent finance creator that touches on a lot of these issues: https://youtu.be/5DQNu67zGsI
China is buying lots of gold on global markets but they also have a lot of gold production that never enters the world market.
The best thing any of us can do to end dollar dominance is to dump dollar denominated assets as quickly as possible. Not only is this the exact way to to reduce the purchasing power of the dollar, there is a huge web of complicated secondary effects that can magnify such declines into an existential collapse.
Arguably it's the only card the Europeans have left and why Trump (apparently) backed down on Greenland.
Not arguing that he's a Leninist but in terms of building industrial and national might over decades under constant attack from the West, Putin:
Rebuilt the RF from the "shock therapy" of the 90s into a true sovereign great power. Brought the oligarchs under the control of the state and out of politics. Rebuilt the partnership with the Chinese. Western defeat in Ukraine is now a fait accompli, Russia will get all of their "maximalist demands" and more. They will likely reclaim all three of the Black Sea jewels founded by Catherine the Great. Very world-historical-figure to me
To many in the West, democracy requires the existence of multiple parties capable of containing within them different visions for the future of society and giving expression to different opinions. In this view, the state is a neutral arbiter and the principle of “one person, one vote” guarantees equality of democratic participation.
This is a nice ideal, but it obfuscates the role of class power. In such a system, it is very easy for the dominant class — the class with the most financial and organizational power — to determine political outcomes in its own interests, capture the state, and prevent any democratic challenges to its rule. Indeed this is precisely what occurs under capitalism. The result is that the state serves as an instrument of capitalist class rule. Its institutional arrangements and political customs serve to advance and secure the domination by one class over another. “Order” and “stability” moderate class conflict in the interests of preserving the power of capital and preventing the emergence of a political system that serves working people.3 In effect, liberal democracy facilitates the consolidation and operation of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Impressive showing in the Speedrun Lenin in Two Paragraphs Challenge
Authoritarian see-see-pee imprisoning democracy-loving water in an endless cycle of resuse, instead of Correctly using it all up with flood irrigation and data centers like God intended
For the right price you can select from a broad menu of has-beens to fly to your country and flatter you to your face