Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

Really, what exactly are folks asking the United States to do here? Give more money or weapons? Sure we could give even more, I support that. I'm quite hawkish on both Russia and China.

But I don't think that giving more money and arms tips the scales enough for Ukraine to force Russia out. So where does that leave us? The EU isn't going to do anything militarily about the situation. As the PM of Poland said, 600+ million Europeans are asking 300+ million Americans to defend them from 180+ million Russians. Something doesn't seem right. That doesn't mean the Trump Administration has handled this well. I'll give them to the extent that it is genuine that pursuing peace, if possible, is what we should do. But it also doesn't mean that all of the political grandstanding and TRUMP MAN BAD is getting us anywhere either. Has he handled our alliances poorly, yea I think so. Are our allies leaving and forming new alliances? No, not in any material sense. Does Europe need to step up and spend to defend itself, absolutely. It also doesn't mean President Trump needs to be an asshat either. Some ways self-destructive, other ways not.

If you think those principles have worked pretty well, then the question is how to maintain the culture that produced this successful society. This is something Silicon Valley folks should easily understand! You guys screen people endlessly for "fit." Would you want a large number of folks who grew up in IBM's corporate culture to come work at your startup?

It's relatively meaningless unless a transaction on stock takes place.

Imagine if everyone holding shares of the top 8 companies decided to sell them simultaneously. That market cap wouldn't last the evening.

If you are British American, then yes. Otherwise, no.

> If you are born here, what does it matter?

Empirically, yes it does! https://www.rorotoko.com/11/20230913-jones-garett-on-book-cu... (“The Culture Transplant debunks the view that immigrants fully assimilate in a generation or two. This is something my fellow economists know—we have vast empirical literatures showing that, for instance, you can partly predict people’s savings behavior just by knowing which country their parents or grandparents came from.”).

You can look at the data and see that about 50% of the difference in levels of social trust between people in Italy and Scandinavia are reflected in the descendants of immigrants from those countries to the U.S., even after generations. You can then use your eyes to look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see more social trust and less corruption in the former than the latter. You can even tie cultural background back to concrete social indicators! Parts of the midwest settled by Dutch settlers perform better on versus metrics than parts settled by Germans. Parts of the country settled by Puritans outperform nearly everywhere else in terms of good governance and low corruption.

> America is not a startup. It is not even a company.

Culture matters even more in a country than a startup! Startups hire high-IQ people that focus on discrete problems that are amenable to scientific analysis. Voters in democracies must confront a wide range of issues that are not amenable to scientific analysis, and consist of average people who are not capable of such analysis anyway. That means the person’s gut reactions, arising from their culture and socialization, matters even more. For example, most people simply can’t understand numbers on the scale of the federal debt, but cultures differ significantly in their attitudes towards debt and savings. It’s imperative to have a body politic that has pro-adaptive cultural attitudes.

>,It’s a country who was built inherently by immigration.

That’s like saying the country was built by people who drink water. Immigrants from where? The country that exists reflects that it was built by British settlers, with greenfield development by Germans and Scandinavians in the Midwest. If the country had been built by my ancestors in Bangladesh, I assure you, it would look very different than it does today.

For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nakedly corrupt administration in our lifetimes. (Let's skip the part where we have to talk specific examples of his corruption - you know it, and I know it.) And now you are spouting ignorant anti-Italian stereotypes and acting like you care about corruption. Your inconsistency of values is utterly unpersuasive so far.

> The country that exists reflects that it was built by British settlers, with greenfield development by Germans and Scandinavians in the Midwest.

That does not include me, so if I were an immigrant today you would not let me in. If you were an immigrant today, would you let yourself in?

Surely you see the hypocrisy in that, especially if you consider yourself a valuable member of society. Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to be a great American if you're not British, German, or Scandinavian. And that's been true for millions and millions of non-British/German/Scandinavians through all of American history.