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Life at the End of American Empire

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Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#61

Post by standardUser »

ip26 wrote: post #52
standardUser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in the top 10-15 is great. But that ranking comes with a price tag roughly double the other highest ranking nations. Not to mention the financial ruin and bankruptcies experienced by some survivors, and the financial pressure experienced by virtually everyone that has to engage heavily with our healthcare system. And there are other metrics to consider. The US is 35th in life expectancy and falling farther behi…

I've heard before that it's a split distribution. The quality of healthcare & outcomes in the US is some of the worst in the world, if you are poor. It's some of the best in the world, if you are rich. Or so I've been told. For example I was taught that a big part of why our maternal mortality is high, is because new mothers who are poor do not or cannot follow up with their doctor in the days after release from the…

Absolutely. If you slice up the demographics in the right way you could find very large populations in the US that have among the best health outcomes anywhere in the world, such as the entirety of New England.

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#62

Post by elfexec »

CalRobert wrote: post #23
Animats wrote: post #7

"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for mi…

The US has had plenty of moral lapses in its military adventures, but one suspects that the powers of the past 500 years would have been far more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians.

> The US has had plenty of moral lapses in its military adventures, but one suspects that the powers of the past 500 years would have been far more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians.

Simply not true. There was a reason why european wars were fought in the fields and not in cities/population centers in the past. Also, past powers tended to conquer nations/cities in order to subjugate the population for exploitation. After all, humans were valuable resources back then. It is very rare that a military/government/nation would simply choose to exterminate the inhabitants of a continent ( 100 or so native nations that were wiped out ) or set entire cities full of civilians ablaze ( dresden, tokyo ) and nuke two civilian cities ( hiroshima, nagasaki ).

Pretty much the US and our side kick britain are the only ones to be guilty of the first two. We are still the only ones guilty of the 3rd.

But precedents being set, your assertion is likely to be truer in the future. I suspect that in the next 500 years, powers would be more willing to obliterate entire nations without concern for civilians, especially if technology and automation make humans a less valuable commodity.

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#63

Post by foogazi »

_bxg1 wrote: post #47
taylodl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's keeping you from considering those other societies now? Why wait until you're starting a family?

It's good enough right now as a healthy, single, affluent working adult. Or at least, it's not bad enough to consider leaving behind family and friends. But if I had to think about a child's future, as well as my own increasing healthcare needs later in life, combined with the fact that the societal problems are only getting worse the longer time goes on, the equation may well work out differently.

But if it’s good for you now, wouldn’t it be good for your kids at that same stage in the future?

I think about this too - The grass seems cheaper & healthier on the other side sometimes, but the economic advantages of the US are impressive

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#64

Post by remarkEon »

Animats wrote: post #7

"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for mi…

This analysis is only partially correct, but it echoes what is the (mostly) prevailing wisdom of the last couple years about "what went wrong".

To start, we actually did have a success: Gulf War I. It was an overwhelming victory, with extensive enemy casualties and minimal allied losses. It's strategic significance was not what it did to the US position in the Middle East however, but rather what it did to the General Officer Corps after the fact. All of the Cold War battle drills had worked exactly as planned (giant tank battles in open terrain, with CAS on station to mop up any stragglers). If you think for a moment about the kind of conformation bias that proliferated after that, then not having much of a post-game in the following wars makes a little more sense.

Also, we didn't really impose "our" system of government on Germany and Japan, but rather grafted aspects of it onto their existing infrastructure, occupied them for a long time to ensure that those aspects were set in stone over a generation, and then essentially kicked them out of the nest when they were ready to fly in orbit around a US-led Bipolar world.

Thus, the difference with Iraq II and Afghanistan after the invasions is not that we "botched" it, but more so that the coordination mechanisms in place in societies like 1940s Germany and Japan didn't exist in Iraq and Afghanistan (I'll caveat this by saying this is much more true for Afghanistan than it is for Iraq. Iraq had a mostly modern economy, with functional hierarchies of government and civil service, but was very cultrually distant from the US in ways that set it apart from Germany and Japan). Meaning, it was just straight up easier to do these kinds of things in Germany and Japan, overwhelming victory aside. I don't think I need to go into a detailed history of Afghanistan to illustrate why.

The real "problem" is that we don't have a clear understanding of what the hell we should be using this military for anymore, after the Cold War ended.

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#65

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jariel wrote: post #57
MarcScott wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not presenting rebuttals for any of the arguments. You're just disagreeing. Could you offer explanations of how the war in Vietnam was not a clear defeat, or how a healthcare system could be measured in a better way than citizen life expectancy?

Why would it behove me to validate a position when the author clearly could not bother himself? He offered no evidence for many of his claims, certainly nothing to support his line of reasoning that 'life expectancy is short ergo health care is bad'. Every verse a canard. These kinds of articles pop up every year or so in the New Yorker, NYT, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy - I have (we have) been reading them since I w…

A couple of unrelated comments:

> Why would it behove me to validate a position when the author clearly could not bother himself?

The author wrote a book. This article is an excerpt. (It's really an ad for the book.) You can't expect it to give the whole case for the author's position; the book does that. This just gives a flavor of where the book is going.

Why should you do different? Maybe because you want us to believe you. (I'm talking about your original post. This post clearly shows that you bothered to validate your position.)

> That the Americans were not able to quell subsequent local [Iraqi] violence and insurgencies isn't a failure, I don't think anyone could have done this.

I think we could have. It just would have taken an occupation on the level of what we did with Germany and Japan - maybe 300,000 to 500,000 troops for 10 to 15 years, rebuilding a functioning government, training politicians in how to function within that government, training the population that they could resolve disputes within the government system, and that they now had something worth keeping. We didn't want to do that; we tried to occupy Iraq "on the cheap", and the result was disastrous.

> America has many problems, but it's not 'in decline', far from it.

I think that the "decline" is in political will. The American people are no longer willing to accept a war of mass casualties. They aren't willing to restrain either politicians or corporations. They don't view the nation as an "us", but rather as an "us" and a "them", at war with each other. That may be a less disastrous decline, and more reversible, but it's still rather concerning.

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#66

Post by falcolas »

juanjmanfredi wrote: post #59

I share frustration with many of the issues that the author discusses. But I disagree completely with his thesis. I am profoundly optimistic about our future. The individual liberties provided by the Constitution empower each of us to speak our minds, share ideas, and start/join movements. We have the power to elect our representatives, and have an independent judiciary to push back against corruption. The average qu…

> no other country can compare to ours in terms of diversity of thought

So long as your thought is within culturally accepted norms. Otherwise, American companies will happily chase you completely off the internet, sometimes with the force of American law (it’s frankly scarier when they do it without being forced by law).

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#67

Post by toohotatopic »

Animats wrote: post #7

"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for mi…

The Soviets were kicked out by the Taliban. How could a democracy be started with them? How can you make the Iraqi fractions live together if there is oil money to be distributed? How do you conquer Russia if they have nuclear weapons and still plenty of tanks?

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#68

Post by danans »

toohotatopic wrote: post #67
Animats wrote: post #7

"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for mi…

The Soviets were kicked out by the Taliban. How could a democracy be started with them? How can you make the Iraqi fractions live together if there is oil money to be distributed? How do you conquer Russia if they have nuclear weapons and still plenty of tanks?

> The Soviets were kicked out by the Taliban

The Taliban got their weapons and training from the US, all funded by the Saudis, orchestrated by a congressman [1] and oil heiress from Texas. The history is well known at this point.

> How could a democracy be started with them?

Democracy was probably never a goal in the effort, certainly not for the Saudis, and not for the Taliban or the US either. Weakening the USSR through bloodshed and drain of resources.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson_(Texas_politi...

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#69

Post by solotronics »

ocschwar wrote: post #53
Animats wrote: post #7

"Any single defeat can be attributed to particular and ad hoc circumstances, but America is unique among the world’s dominant powers of the past 500 years in its repeated failure to achieve military objectives over decades. Those failures are even more extraordinary because they occurred in the absence of a rising military rival and as America’s ability and willingness to produce and pay for the weapons needed for mi…

I'd say the US's first total loss was the Civil War. The North didn't really win. 100 years of Klan terror should be enough proof, not to mention the continuing rule of the South by landowning oligarchs who keep the place a festering corrupt shithole.

This wasn't even remotely what the Civil war was fought over. It was a struggle against the Federal government system from DC imposing themselves over states rights in the South. Also, you might get more reception for your ideas if you don't paint half the country as a "festering shithole". The majority of Americans don't live in the ivory towers of NYC and San Francisco.

Re: Life at the End of American Empire

#70

Post by celticmusic »

ProAm wrote: post #29
fbonetti wrote: post #15

It’s funny that the author on one hand acknowledges that the government sucks at everything it does, whether it’s education, infrastructure, or health insurance. He also acknowledges that the federal government has a tendency to constantly engage in costly foreign wars regardless of who happens to be in office. Yet his proposed solution is to give the government even more money and even more power.

I think a good way to balance or engage better performance out of whoever is in office is to completely rid the federal tax. All people will pay their state tax, and the local/state government will be responsible to provide the federal government money out of the state pool. I think it will drastically change 1) how much the federal government can spend 2) What it gets spent on because the states would much rather ke…

it would definitely shift the power balance back to the states. As it is, a large portion of the power the federal government exhibits over the states is threatening to withhold money.
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