121–130 of 133 posts
Greed, gluttony, spread of cancerous culture, lack of social justice and many more
Doom and gloom has been selling for decades. Don't buy it.
I think you've gotten the wrong takeaway message from "The boy who cried wolf story". At some point, there were indeed wolves, so dismissing the chance of them because of fradulent/failed prior warnings turned out to be a mistake. Plus, in 2022 it's more accurate than ever. Though of course, Rome didn't decline in a day, either...
Even if we transition to a multipolar world order and renewed great power competition, America will still be the strongest and most secure global power. It has hegemony in the western hemisphere through its enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine; it is protected by the two largest oceans; it has historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to two regional powers on both sides of the ocean (UK and Ireland in Europe, Australi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The book "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail" by Ray Dalio compares the rise (and decline) of the American "world empire" to prior world empires. Why should I put much stock in historical analysis done by a "American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager" [1]? My gut feel that someone like that probably has so much other stuff on his plate that the analysis woul…
Ad hominem
No, I didn't say he was wrong because of who he was. I have suspicions that he might be over-hyped, and I was asking questions about that.
And if that's wrong, I have literally a million self-published books that you really ought to carefully consider, lest you be guilty of "Ad hominem."
Even if we transition to a multipolar world order and renewed great power competition, America will still be the strongest and most secure global power. It has hegemony in the western hemisphere through its enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine; it is protected by the two largest oceans; it has historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to two regional powers on both sides of the ocean (UK and Ireland in Europe, Australi…
Oh, it has the largest too -- the US Air Force.
It's just the second largest air force in the world belongs to the US Navy.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-a...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good, US has been spending unfair share and has been the nanny of the world. One thing I agreed with Trump policy was this inward-looking aspect - no more stupid wars, no more pulling the weight of NATO and no more nation building in ME. Note that these policies were bipartisan - Bushes and Clintons/Obama supported them and spun the military industrial complex slot machine. What Trump did was very much in the stark c…
> Good, US has been spending unfair share and has been the nanny of the world. Do you really believe the US has been doing that selflessly? I mean, it's OK to no longer want to be an imperialistic nation. The feeling I get from people with that kind of message, though, is that they usually don't want to lose the benefits of being hegemonic. They just don't want to pay the upkeep for it.
An interesting thing here is the central role played by energy in this analysis; this article was before the fracking boom (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#/media/File:US_Crude_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_Upper-Bound_Peak_..., which shows the US fracking boom, though not the recent decline) and before the last factor of 8 or so decrease in the cost of solar panels made them cheaper than fossil fuels in much of the world. So it predicts Iran and Russia will be "energy kingpins" in 02025, which doesn't really seem to be in the cards.
Maybe China will be an "energy kingpin"—it could cover the Gobi with PV panels and run HVDC, which might be outside the state capacity of countries like Perú, Saudi, and Libya which control vast desert territories on paper. But, so far, despite installing more PV capacity than the entire rest of the world, China's PV capacity factor is a disappointing 13%, compared to 29% in California, so it's apparently making terrible choices about where to site its solar farms. (Still better than the 10% you get in Germany or the Netherlands.)
For the last 2500 years the "world's reserve currency" has been gold, except for the last 77 or so. That could easily happen again. Bitcoin was kind of gunning for that position, but China's thoroughgoing rejection of it forecloses that possibility for at least a generation, and Bitcoin could easily cease to exist in that time.
Although the knowledge of this article's author about computer security seems to come from Hollywood, the computer security situation is indeed extremely grave, and as more and more things become digital, any state that doesn't take it seriously and take effective measures to improve the situation is likely to be destroyed. Presently, that means every state in the world.
It's true that when financial and military collapse comes, they are likely to come very quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotcha. The article itself doesn't go into the global power aspect, but I was looking at it through the lens of implications. Mainly, how the trade deficit has made us particularly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and how the domestic knowledge to produce certain vital things (like chip manufacturing) has been gutted. Confidence in the US and it's ability to deliver on it's obligations also diminishes as the de…
The implication of the article, though, is that eventually the regime will end, and the structural factors that force the US in trade deficits will end. This will allow the dollar to finally be devalued, and the value of exports to rise, resetting the ability for the US to build its industrial base. Also, the notion that domestic knowledge on how to build things like chips has been gutted is just flat out false. Inte…
Even if we transition to a multipolar world order and renewed great power competition, America will still be the strongest and most secure global power. It has hegemony in the western hemisphere through its enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine; it is protected by the two largest oceans; it has historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to two regional powers on both sides of the ocean (UK and Ireland in Europe, Australi…
Quoted post unavailable.
