301–310 of 418 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn’t an option in the USSR, either.
The "peripheral" countries mentioned in the GP were nations or at the very least distinct semi-national entities before the USSR. States in the USA have no effective history before being a part of the USA.
The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they…
I agree. The super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long time now https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep... > They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected…
I'm not rich, but I live in rural Canada. So I have the possibility of being cut off from power, and during intense storms days or even weeks. I have 6 months of canned food, the logic being that I may have company, or I may need to care for my neighbours during time of need. And if there's no power (heat), your daily intake of food can double or triple.
So I buy canned food on sale, save money, and also have insurance. It's saving me money by buying in bulk on sale.
Do I think I will be cut off for weeks? No, not really. But it can happen, and yet this costs me nothing except pondering what I should do. It's just sensible. Just like when one buys insurance, you don't plan to have your house destroyed, but you buy house insurance, because it can happen.
So I really see no evidence of "knowing something will happen" or even "expecting it to", when I see someone with millions of dollars in spare cash, buying insurance.
In fact, if you have $1B, and no 'escape plan', what the hell is the money even for?! I'd think ensuring your future would be a big part of it a good use case, right?
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> It'd take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in a matter of weeks. There is some truth to this. Other examples of crossing the line and breaking long-term trust would be: To Canada: Statements about Canada last year. To Europe: The idiocy around Greenland earlier this year To the Middle East: Current events.
I do wonder how far certain acts could go in rebuilding the trust. Ie real actual legal liability. Line up anyone who did insider trading, the doge guys, the big mouths in the big house, and put them through a zero tolerance military tribunal. No bullshit kangaroo court where they're let off with a slap on the wrist because they're rich. I mean strip every last one of these motherfuckers of everything they're worth.…
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I beg to differ. The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes. First was the abominable low productivity in oil/gas and agricultural sectors from 1950s through 1980s. Then came the corruption of Brezhnev era. Andropov tried to get some reforms going: first against corruption and then some Chinese-style economic changes. But Andropov died very quickly. Eventually came Gorbachev- who had good intentions. Unf…
| The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal causes. I wouldn't take the time to argue otherwise, although it's a question of what's considered an "internal cause." Afghanistan comes to mind. But generally, yes, absent any external pressure, the internal mismanagement still would have had the Soviet system in a very bad way and collapse would have been a matter of time. So we're not particularly in disagreement…
I had to look up Jeffrey Sachs (0). He was an adviser-that is all he did. He did not impose anything on Yeltsin or Russia.
I agree that American decline will not resemble Russian collapse. Their commonality is both declines have internal causes. But other than that there isn’t much in common.
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Take a drive on an interstate highways. Whenever I take an Uber/Lyft to the airport I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US. US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that.
> I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US. > US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that. So why do so many people want to keep coming here?
The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they…
> Calculation of unemployment […] Define "unemployment". There are six (U-1 to -6) ways of classification in the US: * https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm * https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-... * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unemployment.asp And the fact that they're different between the US and other countries, and between other countries and other-other countries is well recognized;…
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
If you can dismiss 15% of them because they're not actively looking, or being a full-time parent, or disabled, I think it's missing the bigger picture that I would guess almost all of them want to work and have income, but can't due to things that we can fix as a society. Instead we divert to a 5% number that feels like "don't look over here" strategy. It's also entirely not capturing underemployment, which I imagine is a huge issue too.
The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has screwed things up. Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting. The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing what they…
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedo...
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We were speaking about economics. But I’m sorry anybody who thinks World War III has started has had their brain warped by propaganda even worse. You probably didn’t mean to illustrate my point but you did perfectly. World wars happened when large numbers of countries had mutual aid agreements that were triggered. Those largely don’t exist anymore outside of NATO. See how literally nobody is putting troops on the gro…
I will start by stating that none of the media landscape is referring to it as World War 3. That is a conclusion I made myself. Further I think “the economy isn’t as bad as it could be so everything else that doesn’t directly affect me is propaganda and all the problems right now in the world are perfectly fine” is the ultimate propaganda. You’re essentially saying “shut up you’re still alive just be okay with the wo…
"Further I think “the economy isn’t as bad as it could be so everything else that doesn’t directly affect me is propaganda and all the problems right now in the world are perfectly fine” is the ultimate propaganda. You’re essentially saying “shut up you’re still alive just be okay with the world state even if it’s not desireable”."
I didn't say any of that or anything vaguely similar. Merely the idea that the economy is getting better while the life of the average American is getting worse is mostly propaganda. (It's certainly true in some ways for many and many ways for some, propaganda works best when it's rooted in something true and obvious.)
You know I am sure that Russia and other adversarial nations have millions of people and bots trying to make you hate your country. If you were them, wouldn't that be your main message? Your country is going to hell in a handbasket. You'd have a hard time finding a country where a whole lot of people would disagree.
Great empires fall from the inside. The thing that scares me more about the future than anything is just how good our enemies have gotten at stuffing our heads with distrust and fear of our own country and the people in it. There's no way I could tell you that you're patient zero (or in this case, I guess patient 100 million) that you would be happy about, but there it is.
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“Climate change safe” for the rich: - Hard to reach by land (not vulnerable to migration waves) - Not so small there will be incredible deprivation if sea trade volume plunges (this rules out the vast majority of island nations) - Not badly overpopulated - Correct latitude (not too close to the equator) - Stable liberal democracy (so they probably won’t take all your stuff) - Unlikely target for outright conquest in…
> Stable liberal democracy Isn’t it precisely these stable liberal democracies where we have the most “the rich aren’t paying their fair share” rhetoric?
Their worst-plausible-case in a liberal democracy (barring state collapse into something else) is they lose a teensy bit of their stuff. Nowhere near all of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the US. > US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to admit that. So why do so many people want to keep coming here?
The Uber drivers I talked have their families back home. That is how we end up comparing airports. That tells you where third world people see their future.