> You're coming from the starting position that the elites control and decide most everything.

No. Just the systematically important things. Obviously they aren't concerned about every minutiae.

> For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing.

What other starting point is there? Who else but the elites create systematically important institutions? Also, you are really asking for the impossible. It's not like the elite come out and say, "we are the elite".

> For example, Japan. Yes, I know about Perry. That doesn't mean that the US was running Japan's foreign policy 80 years later.

That's quite a walk back from "the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero.". You just jumped from one extreme ( no influence ) to running the whole show.

> Where is your evidence that the US-imposed vassal status lasted much past the Meiji Restoration?

Other than the fact we currently occupy japan? Can't tell whether you are being serious or not. We are the ones that allowed Japan to have korea.

"Back in 1900, Roosevelt had written, 'I should like to see Japan have Korea.'"

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html

We are the ones that limited japan's naval growth via the washington naval treaty. You can read up on that yourself. As I said, other than those few years where japan "rebelled", they've been a vassal. Don't ever remember us or anyone else freeing them from vassalage.

> Or the crash of 1929. Where is your evidence that elites pulling money out to fund WWII was the cause of 1929?

All crashes are a result of the elites creating the environment whether money flows out of the markets. Naturally they'd be the first to pull out which causes others to and so forth. What else could it be?

> The conventional position is that it was a speculative bubble crashing in the normal way that such bubbles crash, through mechanisms that are fairly well understood. Where is your evidence that the standard narrative is wrong?

Right. Who creates the environment of speculative bubbles? Are they fairly well understood? Funny how we keep getting speculative bubbles and financial crises. Unless you think the markets are natural entites and not artificial man-made creations. Does mother nature naturally create a stock bubble? Does mother nature naturally pop it? Or do you think it's because your friend stop funding his 401k?

> You think elites set up the system. I agree with that; they do.

But you said you disagreed with me from the very start. "For those of us who don't share that starting point, you aren't giving nearly enough to be convincing."

> Where we differ is that I think things are much more chaotic than you do, and therefore that the elites have much less actual control.

What's chaotic? Things seem remarkable stable. So elites have the power to create a global order but they don't have the power to control it? Makes sense. Once again, so chaos starts wars? Chaos invented the lie about iraq wmds?

Nevermind who created the 2008 financial crisis. Who do you think fixed it? You? Me? Or did the elites come up with a plan to prop up the markets? We can never have any definitive proof because it's the nature of this business. But my educated seems more correct rather than your "conventional wisdom". Good day.