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What Will Happen in the 2020s

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451–460 of 692 posts

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#451
post #340

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

China is good at things we are really bad at: building up modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for election cycle driven politics in other countries).

Also good at giving death penalties for white collar crime.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-27/china-sen...

Keep up America!

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the author’s expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren’t about to trust them to keep their promises on cryp…

In theory the US could add Guam and Puerto Rico... but how would that ever be politically viable? There's no way this is going to happen if one party in a two party system knows it will lead to their doom.

Isn't the point of the electoral college that they can and are reassigned Isn't the point of the electoral college that they can and are reassigned values for each territory periodically? periodically?

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#455
post #279

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

Yeah, the worst thing that could happen to China now is that Li Xinping lives a long life. We have seen over and over in history that an individual dictator fairly quickly diverges from rational paths.

Many patterns have been observed in nature, until an exception occurs that breaks the pattern.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time is running out: please help the Internet Archive today. The average donation is $45. If everyone chips in $5, we can keep our website independent, strong and ad-free. That's right, all we need is the price of a paperback book to sustain a non-profit library the whole world depends on. We have only 150 staff but run one of the world’s top websites. We’re dedicated to reader privacy so we never track you. We never…

Why do they need 150 people to run a non interactive site? I'm not against anything about them but if they want donations, their way of expense should be clearer.

"Non-interactive site" wtf, do you even know the trickery you have to do in JavaScript files to remotely work outside their intended domains? Or how hard was to create a working playable copy of hundreds of old games? Or how much people you need to handle an ever-growing data storage (e.g everyday bigger than the day before) while making it available over internet?

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#458
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is good at things we are really bad at: building up modern infrastructure fast and at reasonable cost, investing in long term projects (payoff in decades so meaningless for election cycle driven politics in other countries).

Also good at giving death penalties for white collar crime. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-27/china-sen... Keep up America!

Extreme (death penalty) sentencing for corruption is generally not something you see in regimes that have highly effective regimes of anti-corruption enforcement.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#459
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too. People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even b…

Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what. The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.

I think you're right, but there might be another way. What if there were a Tesla-like company? Tesla didn't just produce cars that are better for the environment, they made them awesome in every other way as well.

I imagine that meat will eventually be replaced by lab-grown meat that had been engineered to be as delicious (or moreso!) as the highest grade beef, but perhaps more healthy & cheaper. The fact that it would be better for the environment and animal rights needs to be listed as a benefit, but not the focus.

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