[noemon]

^Your entire posture is pro-CCP and pro-Putin.

[Patrickov]

Who do you think is going to stop Xi Jinping?

What had been done to stop Adolf Hitler.

[B0ycey]

What had been done to stop Adolf Hitler.

Given the age of nuclear weapons, do you think that remains an option? Or are you happy to play in ashes?

[Patrickov]

Given the age of nuclear weapons, do you think that remains an option? Or are you happy to play in ashes?

The question is moot because I actually think I am going to die either way.

In this case I only care whether justice is served.

What I believe is that even if you are not willing to war China will eventually war you.

[B0ycey]

The question is moot because I actually think I am going to die either way.

Well it isn't moot because it isn't just about you. It would be easier if HK wasn't legally Chinese. But it is and as such the US doesn't have the right to fight this war for you. They also don't have the ability the same way China would be unable to liberate Hawaii if they asked them for help. Geography matters. Which then goes down to refugee status. That is why it exists. Many people around the world are in peril too. The means to protect them all isn't there so that is why this remains an option for some. Use it or fight. But don't expect the impossible.

[Patrickov]

Well it isn't moot because it isn't just about you. It would be easier if HK wasn't legally Chinese. But it is and as such the US doesn't have the right to fight this war for you. They also don't have the ability the same way China would be unable to liberate Hawaii if they asked them for help. Geography matters. Which then goes down to refugee status. That is why it exists. Many people around the world are in peril too. The means to protect them all isn't there so that is why this remains an option for some. Use it or fight. But don't expect the impossible.

My point is "even if you are not willing to war China will eventually war you."

So it's ultimately about you.

Well, that is unless you are pro-China.

[late]

My point is "even if you are not willing to war China will eventually war you."

So it's ultimately about you.

Well, that is unless you are pro-China.

You're not thinking like a Go player. Most of the time, China is.

They plan on expanding their hegemony incrementally, waiting for our empire to collapse.

[B0ycey]

My point is "even if you are not willing to war China will eventually war you."

This comment was an attachment hence why I never addressed it. China won't have the ability to defeat the US but they do have the ability to defend themselves. I also cant see them doing a needless war for the simple matter they have been tactically astute so far without going to war against the West and I expect that to continue whilst they are winning the 'game of Capitalism'. But on the notion that China decide on MAD for whatever reason, there is no need to bring this forward for the sakes of goal that is an impossibility.

[noemon]

They plan on expanding their hegemony incrementally, waiting for our empire to collapse.

That is wishful thinking.

[late]

That is wishful thinking.

America is an empire in decline, China is on the rise.

Thanks to Trump, they have already expanded their influence in Asia. We will eventually have to cut military spending, it's not sustainable at these levels. They're ready and waiting for that.

[blackjack21]

^Your entire posture is pro-CCP and pro-Putin.

It's actually a pretty dispassionate analysis of why the US is not in a position to push a moral authority argument. In fact, it's not even partisan. As I pointed out, George W. Bush was bested by Putin in Georgia. Russia was able to invade Georgia, helping South Ossetia and Abkhazia break away from Georgia. Then, Putin bested Barack Obama, taking the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine without firing a shot.

Just because you don't like people doesn't mean they are stupid. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are many things, but they are not complete idiots that are regularly outsmarted by the US establishment. If anything, the nations they lead have been giving Washington insiders headaches for decades now.

Much of this could be laid at Bush's feet, because the US isn't configured to fight a two front war on a win-hold-win basis as was the case during WWII and the Cold War. We simply don't have that kind of military configuration, and US adversaries can figure that out rather easily. However, as we know, the US is run by a permanent un-elected political establishment who has not seen fit to reconsider its ill thought out strategy over the last two decades.

What had been done to stop Adolf Hitler.

A world war with 10s of millions dead? That's what you want? That may happen. Be careful what you ask for. I'm certainly not interested in anything like that.

The reality is that America's adversaries are not going to take a moral lecture from Joe Biden's henchmen. That's something the establishment should have seen coming, but clearly they didn't.

Chinese Official To Secretary Of State Blinken: USA "Not Qualified To Speak To China From A Position Of Strength"

“Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues,” Blinken said. “The United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be.”

Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi delivered a nearly 20-minute lecture in response, where he denounced the "international community" and "so-called rules-based international order" as the "United Nations-centered international system" and a tool of the U.S.

Do you see the problems here? The "rules-based international community"? Ok then. By what rules does the US have troops in Syria? It's not the UN. It's not NATO. It's not the US Congress. By what authority do US military leaders lie to the president of the United States about how many troops the US has in Syria? Given their screwing around with ballots, where do the establishment get the moral authority to call so and so a dictator? By what basis is Julian Assange being charged with espionage? He's not a state actor. He didn't infiltrate the CIA or the DoD. He's not a US citizen and owes no duty of allegiance to the United States. He simply published what was given to him by someone else. By what authority do US state governors order people to shelter in place or arrest and detain people without trial if they don't adhere? By what authority do US governors order churches shut down yet permit casinos, liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries to open?

While the establishment seems utterly unaware of it, there are many Americans in addition to millions of people around the world who no longer see the US government as a moral actor and a general force for good in the world. Frankly, we have a lot of problems.

Given the age of nuclear weapons, do you think that remains an option? Or are you happy to play in ashes?

My allusion was just to a conventional fight. I just don't think people have the stomach for that kind of thing at present.

America is an empire in decline, China is on the rise.

China's demographics are set to take a huge slide. They are the fastest aging nation in the world. So their economy will likely stagnate as Japan's has for the last 30 years.

Again, I would suggest reading George Friedman's "The Storm Before the Calm" or Peter Zeihan's "Disunited Nations". That's not a suggestion you should agree with their conclusions, but they have some interesting analysis about how they think things will unfold in the next 10 years or so, and it's not pretty.

Thanks to Trump, they have already expanded their influence in Asia.

Trump didn't underwrite the Belt and Road initiative. In fact, Trump put up tariffs against Chinese imports--the only president to do something like that since the Reagan administration. Trump just nixed the TPP, because these trade deals have gutted US manufacturing and led to an elite that hates Americans in the Midwest and South.

[late]

China's demographics are set to take a huge slide. They are the fastest aging nation in the world. So their economy will likely stagnate as Japan's has for the last 30 years.

Again, I would suggest reading George Friedman's "The Storm Before the Calm" or Peter Zeihan's "Disunited Nations". That's not a suggestion you should agree with their conclusions, but they have some interesting analysis about how they think things will unfold in the next 10 years or so, and it's not pretty.




Trump didn't underwrite the Belt and Road initiative. In fact, Trump put up tariffs against Chinese imports--the only president to do something like that since the Reagan administration. Trump just nixed the TPP, because these trade deals have gutted US manufacturing and led to an elite that hates Americans in the Midwest and South.

The elderly are a problem for every developed economy. I'm guessing China will be willing to ignore it, and let them pass without spending a lot on it. Like Japan before them, they will spend on automation, and unlike Japan, they will bring in skilled workers to help fill any gaps.

I will see your Calm and raise you the Rise and Fall of American Growth:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rise+and+fall+of+american+growth&i=stripbooks&crid=949WY242F1NA&sprefix=rise+and+fall%2Cstripbooks%2C170&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_4_13

While Friedman is optimistic, Zeihan is pessimistic. So which is it?

Zeihan is closer to Rise and Fall, but I would have to read it to try and separate the wheat from the chaff. The basic argument is correct, but it looks like he is taking it too far. Now I am going too far, I would need to read it, not sure I want to. Speaking of Rise and Fall, I may need to buy it, it's going to take months to read, and no library is going to let me have it that long.

Where in hell did you get the idea I thought Trump underwrote the BRI? TPP was already dead when he became president. Trump massively screwed up Asia, that was horrible, but then most of what he did was. You need to do some homework on this stuff.

[blackjack21]

I will see your Calm and raise you the Rise and Fall of American Growth:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rise+and+fal ... doa-p_4_13

Done. I probably won't get to it fully until the week of April 4th.

The elderly are a problem for every developed economy.

Yet, they could be an opportunity. Most medical spending, for example, is on elderly people. However, it's so often used to treat symptoms.

Without having cracked it yet, I can already tell you some of why I think I may disagree with aspects of Rise and Fall of American Growth is that so much of the economy now is information and not industrial goods. Computing is cheap, and distributing apps globally is very cheap now. On a computing power basis, it is in fact deflationary.

The big problems as I see them are that we don't seem to have any goals towards big economic breakthroughs in the delivery of medical services. See, the reason I complain about something like the lack of replacement organs is that it's technically, but not yet economically feasible. Using stem cells, we could grow you a new liver, pancreas or kidneys. Lots of elderly people are on dialysis for example. We can replace knees and hips, but not organs except from donors at this point. We don't even need to use 100% your own DNA. We just need to figure out what your system is not going to reject.

We do have some really cool nascent technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 for gene editing. For example, they cured a gal with sickle cell anemia with gene therapy.

The limits to that kind of growth are people smart enough to build a system like that so that you don't need the smartest people in the world to staff such a system--that you make it available to people of ordinary intelligence. There is a reason that JavaScript is the most popular programming language, followed by Python, right? It takes quite a bit more brainpower to work in statically typed languages, deal with concurrency, memory management, etc. It takes much more skill to be a surgeon than to be a lab technician. Yet, we could really take some serious leaps if we had substantially more thoughtful politicians than we have.

While Friedman is optimistic, Zeihan is pessimistic. So which is it?

Both. What I think Zeihan hits on is that consumption-led growth isn't going to do well in the future, except in places with stable or growing demographies. So that's places like the US, Mexico, maybe Argentina, and some African countries. However, as I'm pointing out above, major medical breakthroughs that counteract some of the negatives of aging would be a fairly natural market opportunity.

George Friedman actually kicked a bunch of people like me off his erstwhile board at Stratfor, because while we subscribed to his service, we also sometimes disagreed with him. For example, before the Iraq War was launched I had said that the US could invade Iraq from Kuwait without the 4th ID and without a significant air campaign. His retort to me was, "logistics is not a stock on NASDAQ." Since that time, his analysis has incorporated a lot more of an economic input. So he clearly boned up on it quite a bit.

Both he and Zeihan point out that China and Germany have export led economies. Any significant decline in consumption of the products they export necessarily leads to a significant recession. Both are aging economies selling into a largely aging world.

Speaking of Rise and Fall, I may need to buy it, it's going to take months to read, and no library is going to let me have it that long.

I thought you had. I just bought it. We'll see how it goes.

Trump massively screwed up Asia, that was horrible, but then most of what he did was. You need to do some homework on this stuff.

What specifically do you think he should have done? He recrafted a trade deal with South Korea. Obviously, that's not going to make them happy. However, under Trump both the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Theodore Roosevelt have docked at Da Nang. 84% of the Vietnamese have a favorable view of the United States. The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have all conducted joint military exercises with the United States. Japan is buying F-35Bs and reconfiguring helicopter ships to make light carriers with F-35Bs. There's no doubt that Trump's tone and demeanor alienated people, but I don't think quite to the extent of Xi Jinping's tone. For example, the recent violence in the Himalayas between India and China is something not widely covered in the US press, but it sure is felt in New Delhi.

The reality is that the US cannot continue to boost China's economy and contain it too. China was a backwater until the US invited them into the WTO. Do you remember who was raising all the human rights and labor union questions? Nancy Pelosi. The US will have to disengage and rely a lot less on imports from China if it is to contain China's aggression.

Remember why Nixon worked to open China? To thwart the Soviet Union. China is the bigger threat, and we will likely need Russia in a containment relationship as well. So alienating them is not without opportunity cost.

[Godstud]

Still pretending that you aren't infatuated(nay, obsessed) with Trump and aren't one of his cultists, @blackjack21??

You might as well be sucking on Putin's nips the way you fawn over him. You and Trump had that much in common.

[noemon]

It's actually a pretty dispassionate analysis of why the US is not in a position to push a moral authority argument. In fact, it's not even partisan. As I pointed out, George W. Bush was bested by Putin in Georgia. Russia was able to invade Georgia, helping South Ossetia and Abkhazia break away from Georgia. Then, Putin bested Barack Obama, taking the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine without firing a shot.

Just because you don't like people doesn't mean they are stupid. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are many things, but they are not complete idiots that are regularly outsmarted by the US establishment. If anything, the nations they lead have been giving Washington insiders headaches for decades now.

If entitlement was cleverness, toddlers would be geniuses.

Biden called your bro, Putin 'a criminal-killer', because he is, he poisons and gulags his political opponents and is playing Risk with no money. Same do the rest.

You could grovel before these people and falsely elevate them above their station with nothing but empty platitudes about headaches, or not.

[late]

1) Yet, they could be an opportunity. Most medical spending, for example, is on elderly people. However, it's so often used to treat symptoms.

2) Without having cracked it yet, I can already tell you some of why I think I may disagree with aspects of Rise and Fall of American Growth is that so much of the economy now is information and not industrial goods. Computing is cheap, and distributing apps globally is very cheap now. On a computing power basis, it is in fact deflationary.


3)Both he and Zeihan point out that China and Germany have export led economies. Any significant decline in consumption of the products they export necessarily leads to a significant recession. Both are aging economies selling into a largely aging world.


4) The reality is that the US cannot continue to boost China's economy and contain it too. China was a backwater until the US invited them into the WTO. Do you remember who was raising all the human rights and labor union questions? Nancy Pelosi. The US will have to disengage and rely a lot less on imports from China if it is to contain China's aggression.

5) Remember why Nixon worked to open China? To thwart the Soviet Union. China is the bigger threat, and we will likely need Russia in a containment relationship as well. So alienating them is not without opportunity cost.

1) Countries with national health care have an incentive to do preventitive medicine. The Brits are the best at it, but there's a lot of room for improvement. For example, copying the Netherlands approach to cycling would give us the same improvement to health they got.

2) Jeremiads are an American tradition. They are part of our impulse to reform, to make that more perfect Union. They are important, a proverbial flag to rally around. But when you get down to policy, they need to be placed in context. IOW, to do what works.

So... Rise and Fall has a LOT to offer, it's the most impressive economic text I've seen in a while. At the same time, he missed something obvious. China has enjoyed massive economic growth. Historically, this is nothing new. In the 1800s/early 1900s, we were the low wage country stealing jobs from the empire, Great Britain... So now we need to start the transition away from empire, and China needs to work at adapting to the reality that they are now a mature economy.

So here is some context.. trade wars are beyond stupid. They are as every bit as smart as driving your car into a bridge at 100mph. They are playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded. It's like sitting on a ton of dynamite, lighting the fuse, and start reading War and Pieces. You asked me about Trump, that deserves it's own thread because of all the crap I am going to have to explain. Not that you are likely to pay attention.

3) Every economy is going to get challenged. How well they fare will depend on how they respond to that challenge. And at doing what works, which is not always clear before you're up to your ahole in alligators.

But the basics never change. You need a skilled workforce, and that means topnotch education. We are lagging there, and it's not going to change. The countries that see their people as assets to be cultivated, instead of liabilities, will have an enormous advantage. That leaves us out...

4) It's a very delicate balance, or it was 4 years ago. Your thinking needs to evolve past the 1800s.

5) That was funny. That ship has sailed, and it's not coming back, not even after Putin.

[Heisenberg]

Do you see the problems here? The "rules-based international community"? Ok then. By what rules does the US have troops in Syria? It's not the UN. It's not NATO. It's not the US Congress.

Watching weak, flabby phrases like "rules-based order" and "international norms" become common parlance over the past decade has been hilarious.

I guess it's because even the Anglo-American foreign policy establishment has enough of a sense of shame to realise it can no longer get away with claiming to defend international law following the recent adventures in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

"Rules-based order", for God's sake. They sound like middle school hall monitors, rather than military superpowers.

[Russianbear]

Americans today have a remarkable choice between an irresponsible president and a president with dementia. In any case, they are an easy bite for Putin

[Potemkin]

Americans today have a remarkable choice between an irresponsible president and a president with dementia. In any case, they are both an easy bite for Putin

This seems to be the best America can do for leadership these days. It is clearly a nation in decline.

[noemon]

Americans today have a remarkable choice between an irresponsible president and a president with dementia.

Russians do not have any choice, which means that they are slaves instead of people.

And why should anyone care about the opinion of slaves anyway?

What do slaves know about politics? It's not a legitimate sport in your country mate.

It's like me trashing an ice-hockey team without ever having watched, participated or even heard about the sport, while at the same time being banned from playing it in my own country.

There is a name for it, it's called sour grapes.