Those... look it's NOT hard to find data to show the death toll for the US, so why did you go with such horrible examples?

There is no widely agreed on figure for the number of people that have been killed so far in the war on terror as the Bush Administration has defined it to include the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and operations elsewhere. According to Joshua Goldstein, an international relations professor at the American University, the global war on terror has seen fewer war deaths than any other decade in the past century.

Like beyond how rough the numbers are: the wiki pages all include the total death counts, but those are both coalition wars and the total deaths are not broken down at all. This data exists, you can find it, but you can't find it there so why use it?

Similarly, the paper on jail deaths very much does not answer the question, as it is an analytical study on the impact of jail conditions on mortality and explicitly does not address the causal conditions of those deaths:

[...] health and mortality data for people who are incarcerated or in police custody have been shown to be “incomplete…incorrect… [and] anachronistic,”42 and jail data may underestimate deaths or contain inaccuracies related to causes of death. Finally, the associations found in the study do not suggest causality.

It is not hard to show what you want to show. By instead providing such poor quality sources, you undermine the credibility of your point to a spectacular degree. Like. Just use real numbers? Hell, it's not hard to find very reasonable estimates on death tolls from imperialism itself. But notoriously vague values from sources that explicitly clarify their own imprecision is just a terrible way to approach this.

For anyone wondering about the total, I didn't see the number of deaths in the jail article but Vietnam War and War on Terror high estimates for the total for all sides, including civilians comes to around 7 million.

I expected more tbh. That's rookie numbers, pretty sure Nazi Germany killed way more and even someone like Mao alone drwafs those numbers. Smdh USA are you even trying

Death toll in the jail article is ~1029 yearly, if its explicitly stated I didn't see it. That was calculated from the figures given (total pop 735k * death rate of 1.4/1000) (That number is wrong, as stated in the article the actual rate is likely to be slightly higher because they had to exclude a great many sources from their sample due to bad or questionable data).

It should be noted that those deaths aren't divided by cause: police muders, inmate violence, deaths from pre-existing conditions, lightning strikes, deaths from conditions exacerbated by the quality of care available in the prision, dying from old age, fatal infections from rusty stairs, deaths from food poisoning, fatal allergic reactions to bee-stings, suicides etc. are all lumped together because they're all relevant to the conclusions of the study, but aren't necessarily relevant here.

From cold hard rationale, Hayek and Friedman makes sense, but they do ignore reality that circumstances always change. Deregulation made sense at the time of 1970s oil crisis as the economy and welfare state stagnated, but we're now in the age of economic prosperity again, but the wealth is hoarded by the few and act as though austerity still matters.

Not entirely sure about why Friedman's claim that India was costing the British empire more to maintain, but it has also been repeated in many circles. I suspect that the data is not fully contextualised and repeated as if it's the absolute truth. An Indian historian countered the narrative, mentioning that if we include the period of private control of India by the British East India company, before India was formally taken over by the British state in 1858, the total wealth plundered from India is about $1 trillion. The term "loot" is Indian origin, which became part of the English language after East India's violent colonisation. When the British public found out of about the brutal occupation by a private company and were enraged by it, the British state took over the formal administration. But this only happened well after committing crimes against humanity, after a state-sanctioned plunder and massacre that made their private owners and their government enablers rich, while the cost of running another country is taken over by tax payers. It's an early example of "privatise the profit, socialise the cost".

Where I'd say Friedman is arguing in bad faith is that the obvious goal of colonialism is value extraction by force or coercion. He may argue that due to inefficiency or resistance it didn't actually produce significant wealth for Britain but the evidence shows otherwise.

That or he may argue that the East India Company (the origin of multinational capitalism) was not colonialism which would be divergent from historical consensus.

No, Capitalism will not make the Earth uninhabitable. It will kill very many things the longer it is part of our world, but you are subscribing to a liberal fatalist narrative that constructs the future as definitively destroyed because it does not resemble the world we live in. It's doomer shit that is painfully white.

How you got, "we don't need to end capitalism" I have no responsibility for. If I say it isnt infinitely powerful but must end as quickly as possible, what exactly do you think I'm advocating for?

Public ownership is the principle aspect of their economy, and a working class party has domination over their state. The large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned, with massive state owned enterprises forming the backbone of their economy. Private, cooperative, and joint-stock ownership covers mostly the small and medium firms, and the larger of these are heavily controlled and influenced by the CPC.

As for being "mixed," all economies are mixed, that doesn't mean we can't identify what the principle aspect of the economy is. Socialism isn't a "pure" mode of production, and neither is capitalism, you don't have X% capitalism, Y% socialism, etc. That's not how modes of production work.

Western countries have absolutely earned a lot of the criticism they get. Iraq, Libya, and the good ol' US of A's approach to the Middle East are pretty glaring stains, and Israel’s conduct has raised (justified) outrage, enough that even its own leadership now faces ICC warrants. Europe isn’t some angelic bloc either; it’s just that it does have legal and political structures (ECHR, ICC support, actual protest cultures, real accountability mechanisms) that at least give people tools to contest state violence.

None of that makes Russian aggression suddenly noble. Pointing out Western hypocrisy doesn’t magically turn Putin into a principled anti-imperialist. He’s running an authoritarian system that jails dissent, murders critics and wages a war built on territorial revanchism complete with deliberately targeting civilians.

If I have to choose between flawed democracies with internal pressure valves, independent courts and protest movements… or authoritarian states that treat brutality as a virtue, then I’ll stick to pushing the countries and systems I’m actually part of to live up to their ideals.

Hypocrisy is a problem, but open militaristic authoritarianism is way worse. The answer to western failures isn’t to excuse someone else’s.

Western countries have absolutely earned a lot of the criticism they get.

Yup, for instance they've earned the critism that they have no business claiming their opposition to Russia has anything to do with principles or morality.

None of that makes Russian aggression suddenly noble. Pointing out Western hypocrisy doesn’t magically turn Putin into a principled anti-imperialist.

Never said it did, so I can only assume you're saying this to attack a strawman.

He’s running an authoritarian system that jails dissent, murders critics and wages a war built on territorial revanchism complete with deliberately targeting civilians.

Which are all things that Europe both do and support when it's them and their allies doing it. What is your point?

If I have to choose between flawed democracies with internal pressure valves, independent courts and protest movements

All things that Europe emphatically does not represent when it comes to the middle east. Millions of Iraqis, Libyan, and Palestinians did not get to vote in your shitty rigged elections or get protected by your biased, billionaire owned courts when Europe decided to massacre them.

For that matter, Europe doesn't even grant those things domestically to people with actual leftist politics; the moment an actual leftist party attains any real viability, it's getting banned and it's leaders arrested. The moment you try to an effective protest movement that might actually affect change, you're getting beaten and arrested by armored storm troopers.

then I’ll stick to pushing the countries and systems I’m actually part of to live up to their ideals.

And by that you mean,: spruik them as righteous world police while demonizing their geopolitical enemies. You haven't achieved one iota of movement in pushing them to live up to their ideals and you've already moved on to declaring how much better they are then their enemies.

Let's be honest here; you're support for Europe comes from the fact that you personally benefit from their policies, not because their policies are more beneficial in general.

Hypocrisy is a problem, but open militaristic authoritarianism is way worse.

Mate, the hypocrisy is Europe's open support for militaristic authoritarianism! See, this is what I mean; you don't think open militaristic authoritarianism is a problem when Europe does it; you just don't like that the hypocrisy undermines Europe's self-granted Mandate from Heaven.

The answer to western failures isn’t to excuse someone else’s.

No one said it was, though you seem to be saying that the answer to Russian failures is to excuse the West.