391–400 of 483 posts
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The takeover of government functions by multinational corporations is a cyberpunk trope. See any of William Gibson's fiction from the early 80s.
WALL-E: entry-level cyberpunk?
I’ve been following Zeihan since his first book. I’m yet to find a credible counter argument to his theses. And he’s being proven right at an alarming pace this year. So far this year we’ve had: - A land war in Europe - Food insecurity in the developing world - Breakdown of supply chains and shipping routes - Nation states resorting to seizing each other’s ships (see Greece-Iran issue recently). Everything that he ha…
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You can't argue with demographics because, outside of immigration, it is physically impossible to change them in the short term. Even if e.g. Korea somehow managed to get a fertility rate of 10 tomorrow, it would takes many decades for that generation to begin to contribute to the economy as a class of high-skilled laborers. No matter what Korea does, absent implausible levels of immigration, they are still set for f…
To me, this is one of America's superpowers. America is quite unique in the world by being so significantly multicultural, and increasingly so. It can tune and balance its demographics with immigration. It is especially good at attracting the best and brightest from around the world, because there is a realistic, and well trodden path, of not only fully integrating yourself and your children into American society, bu…
Haven't read the book, but for those who don't know who Zeihan is, his work follows two threads of post-WWII history: 1. Deglobalization; and 2. Depopulation The article focuses mostly on deglobalization, but depopulation is in the horse pulling the cart. Many are familiar with the deglobalization idea from the last US presidential administration. The current administration kept those tariffs, and abided by the previ…
> Their populations will shrink with mathematical certainty. Yeah you know why? Because both parents sitting in offices 8 hours a day have no means of looking after their kids. And a mother giving birth needs to return to work in a few months time, else she there's no pay. Oh and neither parent can give up work to raise these future adults because living expenses are too high. I don't know why everyone is so surprise…
Anyone else excited for de-globalization and slower economies/development? I can't think of any negative consequences of these. On the other hand, these seems to be positives for me: - less diversity - less multiculturalism - less polarization (due to 2 above) - hopefully more inward progress looking/more defensive nations and less invasive nations - slower tech/innovation, people can catch up with life, lawmakers ca…
As someone who grew up in an environment of multiculturalism, I’ve really appreciated the richness, friendship, and intellectual stimulation it’s brought into my life. I’d be quite hesitant to take that treasure away from the children of tomorrow. People sometimes talk about this deep-seated immutable tribalism people supposedly have, but I find a lot of it comes from leadership that espouses that thinking.
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> Their populations will shrink with mathematical certainty. Yeah you know why? Because both parents sitting in offices 8 hours a day have no means of looking after their kids. And a mother giving birth needs to return to work in a few months time, else she there's no pay. Oh and neither parent can give up work to raise these future adults because living expenses are too high. I don't know why everyone is so surprise…
This is a popular theory on reddit, but it's not true. Birth rates are extremely low even in countries that paid parents to stay at home with kids and generally have good work culture. You would also expect birth rates to be lowest among people working 2-3 low-wage jobs, which is also not true. As financial stability and safety increase, birth rates go down. That's the only common driver of it. Historically, children…
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Somalia has a government.
On paper, not in practice
Unlike most of HN I'm not an expert on modern Somalian politics - could you describe more about how Somalias current central government only exists on paper?
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He's not incorrect on that point. Huawei sources its SoCs from Taiwanese and American fabs, which is why the trade war has absolutely gutted their bottom line. HiSilicon licenses chip designs, adds their specific stuff on top of them, and has the chips fabbed by TSMC.
He's incorrect in that he thinks the destruction of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry during an invasion by the mainland would be a minor inconvenience for the US but an insurmountable obstacle for China.
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Any sovereign nation would be better. Mexico, China, India, Hungary, Croatia, Singapore, Switzerland… USA is a zombie nation state that is more like a colony than a functional nation state.
Ok, I'll bite: A colony of what ? Who's the imperial power, here?
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WALL-E: entry-level cyberpunk?
One thing about WALL-E that bothers me is: this was a civilization that mastered interstellar travel, to the point where it was trivial enough for vacations. They seriously couldn’t come up with a better plan than burning all the trash? Just send it to the sun lol
I imagine that same would be true of trying to move trash to the sun.
Fun fact, it takes more fuel to send a mass to the Sun than it does to send it to Pluto[0].
[0] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/its-surprisingly-h...