The Demoralization is just Beginning

It’s wrong in so many ways, that it actively reverses reality.

I believe the core payload is the idea that America was already fading, and that it was in decline agains China / Asia.

My suspicion is the goal is to kill the idea of dynamism, feed off of the malaise people are feeling.

The intellectual payload is simply a barb for the emotional payload to be distributed.

To be clear, I am talking about the ones who get the limelight, no all of them, in general.

Specifically, to have this level of control, you basically have to go full-totalitarian and rule with iron fist, and sustain this rule even as The Economy pushes back, in form of unrest, civil war, revolutions, military coups, as well as sabotage or direct attack by foreign forces. Yes, all this is part of the economy too. And, if you somehow manage to keep control in spite of all that, you'll quickly see the rest of the world, with its uncontrolled economy, zip past you in terms of wealth and power, and find yourself at its mercy.

Fundamentally, people want to trade; they both need this to survive and want it to improve their lot. If you make trade hard for them, they'll invent workarounds - alternate currencies (see e.g. use of dollar in the soviet block to work around rationing), barter, smuggling of goods; if you crack down on it, they'll conspire to depose you - and yes, even your military and security personnel, at every level, would like to make the lives of themselves and their families better too. There's only so much blood you can spill before you run out of people to kill, or out of goodwill of people doing the killing. And, as history shows, The Economy will win anyway.

As for sane, free, democratic countries - there's shit all you can do there, as the economy will push back through support of the voters and other politicians, strongly limiting the kind of decisions that are possible to implement. Try to make too big a changes, you'll get sidelined and removed from position of power.

1. Hyperfinancialization was a huge mistake (e.g. a house should not be an investment)

2. ZIRP was a huge mistake: revenue matters, the current SP500 P/E ratio is insane. [1]

3. Manufacturing matters if you want to keep the blue collar people engaged economically. It's bewildering how US Democrats turned their back on their political base, the proletariat.

[1] https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings...

Now, what he gets wrong. China is also doing hyperfinancialization, just slightly different. Their housing market is crazy with tofu constructions and mostly empty cities. And they got already the Evergrande collapse. China also over-invests to take over markets, for example BYD is kind of a gigantic ponzi scheme [2].

[2] BYD’s Financial Time Bomb: A Replica of Evergrande's Collapse in the Making https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpTWsBRIQs

As many other people said, Trump is making a huge mistake on tariffs. He should be putting tariffs on the completed products but not on the supply chain. Block subsidized EVs but not the small parts for industry and make Europe do the same. This would prick the Chinese manufacturing bubble.

And about importing talent, the system needs an overhaul. The H1B system is completely rigged and most of it brings cheap consultants for jobs easily sourced locally. Improve local competition. But bring the high earners. Make H1B for say 300k and up salaries for a minimum 5 year contract. And they should have a very strict English test, I'm fed up with people who don't bother to learn basic English because they live in bubbles of their country (and I'm foreign).

Also, and this is probably controversial, make some Singapore-style limits on who immigrants can live with and marry, forcing very different cultures assimilate. No more ghettos of very different cultures fighting each other. See how that's turning up in Europe. Before you call me a n*zi, Soviets did something like that, too.