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

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

#41

Post by Hendrikto »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #22
tmountain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The America First agenda is predicated by isolationism. You have a demagogue with whom nobody is willing to say "no" and an army of self serving sycophants lined up to try and win favors. The political messaging is all built around zero sum language and arguments, and toughness is demonstrated by punitive measures taken against any allies deemed "weaker" than the U.S. (basically everyone). Those who know where this w…

> Those who know where this will lead are unwilling to speak up and the rest follow. They did speak up. And they lost the popular vote. Democracy is only as good as its voters. A country is only as good as its people. Replace good with productive/sane/not corrupt, etc.

If you do not get votes, it’s not the voters who failed, it is you.

If politicians got that through their heads, and started trying to convince voters on their own merit, instead of simply trash-talking their opponents and telling people they voted “wrong”, they would start to get things done again, and we could actually solve real problems.

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

#42

Post by rayiner »

mrweasel wrote: post #4

Largely the US isn't losing control, it's giving it up willingly. For what reason, no one knows yet.

Why should we control the world? It’s very expensive running an empire, and all it has accomplished is getting people around the world to hate us. Do you know how much people in my home country hate Reagan and Nixon (who opposed our independence because of some stupid alliance with Pakistan against Russia)? Much more than they hate Trump.

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

#43

Post by aatd86 »

mrweasel wrote: post #4

Largely the US isn't losing control, it's giving it up willingly. For what reason, no one knows yet.

I'd posit that it is trying to wrestle it back actually. It lost it when their industries went abroad. From a global perspective this is good because it makes peace more sustainable if the world is interlinked and interconnected. National interests being distributed all over. Alignment of incentives. The issue is that it is not without friction. People's interests don't align so flawlessly.

The knee-jerk reaction is protectionism but it is too late. The other parts of the world have caught up. And that is normal and sound. It rebalances the world. It is a new equilibrium. This is just the natural way for most closed systems where there is a gradient.

What is weird is that it is almost like watching a movie. Meaning that the current technological push into AI, energy and robotics is likely to spearhead us into a whole new kind of economics (post-money/post-work kind of). And probably requires to open the system (find new territory beyond the existing). The point is that it will probably offset the current protectionist trend.

Wondering how AI will affect governance...

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

#44

Post by skywhopper »

squidbeak wrote: post #35

There's a very real chance the USA will get lucky and find a new means of economic domination through its AI companies and the looming space build-out. Its self-destructiveness right now, flouting longstanding alliances and truckling to its enemies, would ruin it in any other moment in its history. But in these unusual circumstances, it might not matter.

Nah, AI is a massive money pit, and Starship has proven to be a dead end. The real tech revolutions of the moment are in energy production and storage and health care advances like mRNA and GLP-1. The US is actively self-sabotaging on both energy and health care at the moment.

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

#46

Post by pjc50 »

01284a7e wrote: post #31

"The Iraq War, launched in 2003 – resulting in over 100,000 deaths" Isn't this an extreme low-ball estimate?

The Lancet had numbers around 600k, but that included the wider context of deaths due to the temporary collapse of society, medical services, electricity supplies, ongoing violence and insurgency, and so on.

The long consequence of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions was providing Russia with a pretext for its own interventions, from the various caucasus states to Syria to Ukraine.

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

#47

Post by pfdietz »

squidbeak wrote: post #11
pfdietz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because it's not worth the expense. Vanity is a hell of a drug, but it has its limits.

A large part of the lifestyle Americans enjoy is owed to its control of the world.

How is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun?

The benefits would seem to flow to those countries that would have been swallowed up without Pax Americana.

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

#48

Post by OgsyedIE »

jnmandal wrote: post #19

Without entering (and winning) some kind of major conflict, this was always going to happen. Two things are important to think about. 1. Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute. (For a good treatise on this, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ). The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position. 2. Great nations/empires ge…

An important caveat to #2. Rising populations can only be leveraged into more power if they can be channeled into import substition. Countries where import substitution is suppressed can not gain power.

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

#49

Post by watwut »

next_xibalba wrote: post #18
mrweasel wrote: post #4

Largely the US isn't losing control, it's giving it up willingly. For what reason, no one knows yet.

You cannot separate monstrously expensive calamities like Vietnam or Iraq from the military-industry complex that is the foundation for the U.S.’s role as the defender of the west. So many thousands of lives lost or ruined, trillions spent. To say nothing of the millions of foreign civilians killed and maimed. The American people are sick to death of it. Some politicians smartly harnessed that sentiment.

> The American people are sick to death of it. Some politicians smartly harnessed that sentiment.

Except that MAGA cheers on new wars. They prefer "ministry of the war", they like the threats to annex Canada and Greenland. They enjoy fishermen boats being destroyed and want to bomb Venezuela.

This is not about distaste toward foreign wars. This is about wanting more of them, wanting more torture and wanting more violence. This is about wanting to feel and appear more manly and getting there via more violence.

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

#50

Post by mattmaroon »

pfdietz wrote: post #39
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to. I don’t agree with Trump about much but he’s correct that the other liberal democracies have been more than happy to have us foot the bill for keeping the wolves at bay while looking down on us for doing it.

> It’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to. That's just explaining why it's not worth the expense.

Well, it’s worth it, we just can’t.
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