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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#371

Post by Hikikomori »

baq wrote: post #253
jajko wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, and from this point onward, some other hegemons sound darn good compared to US. russia aint one, they simply lack competence for anything grander than petty squables at their borders. Everybody hates them, inclusing all former soviet bloc countries and only deal with them when they have to. Ie China is not doing sudden backstabbing of its allies, strongarming weak at their weakest point. In contrary ie…

Why do you present China as an alternative? I’d you’re a western country, the CCP is not a body you want anything to do with unless you’re desperate. They do not share western values. If you don’t ally with the US, you really, really want to be a separate center of power, because everyone who isn’t US wants to exploit you dry and admits it openly.

Most of the "protection" and for democracy stuff the US has been up to has been to protect their own corporate interests to extract resources from those countries, see all of South America and some of the middle east.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#372

Post by tomhoward »

maxerickson wrote: post #368
tomhoward wrote: post #355

There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, t…

That when you drain every smart/productive person away from every other country This is a ridiculous premise.

I edited that sentence to be less absolutist, but still, isn't this essentially what this article and many people are advocating? Attracting all the smartest and most productive people in the world to move to the US? How is that a mischaracterisation of the argument?

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#373

Post by cookiemonsieur »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #214
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China’s current government quite literally killed 30 million people under the cultural revolution and Great Leap Forward, and until 2015, killed all children past the first. China is not motivated by what makes economic sense. The party openly says this - the very fact corporations exist is a concession to not having achieved pure communism yet. The party openly hates the fact they need an economy, after having faile…

I swear, “Chinese collapse” has been on the news headlines since 2000s. At some point people need to give up on the idea that their system doesn’t work. Yes, it sucks from our perspective, because we would have less rights and freedom. But quality of life of an average Chinese has been increasing YoY, despite some hiccups. They obviously screw up big time (pandemic lockdowns, current above average youth unemployment)…

It's a coping mechanism that needs to be parroted to keep the people in the west from questioning the status quo. "Look china/russia/iran/india bad ! Sure, we're not doing well and your quality of life is eroding year on year but hey ! In china you can't question tienanmen square so there's that"

It's sad, but as long as people continue to believe in this mythology of "absolute freedom", it will continue to work.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#374

Post by tromp »

KaiserPro wrote: post #349

Going back to a gold standard will limit the money supply. This means that there will be less capital for building $thing. A gold standard means that when the economy gets overheated it pops, then contracts and you get deflation. This makes crashes last longer and harder. It requires greater fiscal discipline to overcome. The problem with the USA "empire" is that for a trading empire to work you need a plan, and stic…

Small typo fix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#375

Post by sph »

snowwrestler wrote: post #155
roenxi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Gold standard" is an idea every sane economist rejected decades ago. I don't think any sane economists have ever "rejected" the gold standard, it is known to work. Pretty much any empire ever founded was built on a gold standard. The US jumped away from it because they were going to go bankrupt and picked a system that put the pain off until a later date. Now, 50 years later, they appear to have lost the title of…

The gold standard works until it doesn't. Then the only option is to bail from it. That's why no one is on it anymore. It's not a sufficiently flexible currency.

That's revisionist nonsense.

The "issue" with gold standard is that you cannot compete with countries that can print money at will, which gives them the advantage NOW, even though they'll suffer massive inflation later down the line. How will you ever win a war when your enemy has infinite money? I guess people forgot what happened to Germany's economy after WWI. Your only hope is to be the one that wins the war, and gets all the booty and reparations.

Fiat economics is basically an infinite money glitch, indirectly paid by your very own tax-payers 30 years down the line. Of course no government wants to get rid of it. All I hear is the same Keynesian party line that keeps being parroted by modern economists and taxpayers alike.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#376

Post by elisharobinson »

tomhoward wrote: post #355

There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, t…

this assumes that a smart person would move to US 100% of the time. given the bipolar nature of US i doubt 100% of smart people would move .

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#377

Post by mentalgear »

Decoupling the Dollar from Gold (basically being able to print infinite money) opened the floodgates for all the FinScams that made up the last decades. Which ultimately led to an impoverished American Population and subsequent election of ignorant populist autocrats with no intent on fixing the broken system that brought them to power.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#378

Post by cookiemonsieur »

rat87 wrote: post #225
consp wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the any% speedrun I think I was going to see but definitely the top runner right now. While the USD is still the de facto reserve currency for some, many larger countries and blocks have made sure they are not reliant on it. Up to the point where weakening or strengthening the value of the dollar is far less than a power it used to be.

They are reliant on it. The US is still the currency used for trade. The world economy is tied to the dollar and outside of countries we've sanctioned no country has made large steps towards using something else because using something else would be more complicated and would cost them money

> They are reliant on it. The US is still the currency used for trade. The world economy is tied to the dollar and outside of countries we've sanctioned no country has made large steps towards using something else because using something else would be more complicated and would cost them money

What happens when you "sanction" a significant portion of the world because they don't share your "values" or want to play ball elsewhere ? Well guess what ? These countries will inevitably look at each other and form their own trade routes and alliances.

Unfortunately, no hegemony is eternal.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#379

Post by pfannkuchen »

intended wrote: post #357
pfannkuchen wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gold standard is also central planning. But, where the heck did I say anything about the gold standard? I’m referring to private banks issuing receipts for metal deposits, which can be freely sold or traded. This is the origin of currency, no? The exchange rate between everything and everything else naturally floats in such a system, so there is no central planning. > a working knowledge of economic history is cr…

But thats the heart of the gold standard. The only difference here being that you’ve described it before things like watering gold down, fraud, volatility, bank failures and the rest resulted in it coming under a single aegis. Issuing currency against gold is what the gold standard is all about. What do you think it was? And eggs are expensive, you should save them for later.

> Issuing currency against gold is what the gold standard is all about. What do you think it was?

This seems pretty reductionist in a way that ends up being quite lossy.

With the gold standard, I believe the conversion rate between the dollar and gold was set by the government, right?

With private bank currency, it is literally a voucher for a specific weight of gold. There is no exchange rate like there was with the gold standard.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#380

Post by foven »

tomhoward wrote: post #355

There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, t…

More to the point, when you write an article like this foretelling the doom of the american economy, why would you think you are able to brain drain any country? What stops the countries you are trying to drain from offering better incentives to stay?
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