Aaaaand I was 100% WRONG About China

[JasonBlack]

Recently I've been reading the works of the demographer and geopolitical polymath Peter Zeihan. In the interest of avoiding polemics and alarmist cries of Armageddon, I should start by clarifying that he identifies as a "Small d democrat". Sure, he is on the more libertarian end of the Dems because he likes things like free trade and making business deals rather than war, but none of his work covers anything to do with race, nationalism or anything else more talked about in social conservative circles. Most of his data comes straight from government statistics provided by the military, the BLS and various international geopolitical statistics, so, while those have those limitations (which he often talks in great detail about), little of where he sources his information would be biased in favor of my own views on various social issues. 

With that out of the way, here are some stats from his various works that highlight why I was completely wrong about China:
1) China imports 85% of their energy, most of which has to pass through the Persian Gulf.
2) Xi Jinping has one of the most complete cults of personality in recent history. So much so that he has more or less executed anyone for providing even the most trivially inconvenient news. As a result, he no longer gets....any reasonably accurate news or updates on world events whatsoever. 
3) China has less than a 1/3 the global average of arable land per capita. 
4) China's military is an army of combat virgins, who haven't really seen any real combat since 1975 with the zenith of the Vietnam War. 
5) As a result of the 1 child policy (and sex-selective abortions), China's breeding age population has the worst gender imbalance of just about any country in recorded history. 
6) Even by their own estimates, recent data has conclude that they've overcounted their population by at least 100 million. 
7) With regards to agriculture, China spends more per calorie of output than any other country on the planet.
8) The most liberal estimates claim that China's population will be cut in half by 2070 on account of how severe their aging crisis is. More recent estimates put that number as close as 2050 (ie, a net loss of....650,000,000 people in the coming 3 decades).
9) Wages in China have already risen 15 fold since 1999. That sounds great...until you realize it's driven primarily by severe labor shortages. 
10) Of the few breeding age males and females they do have, their current cultural setup more or less isolates them, leading to even lower prospects for demographic recovery. 
11) What little agricultural output they do have is dependent on chemical fertilizers of which they are by far the world's largest importer of. 
12) Most of those chemical fertilizers arrive via, wait for it.....trading ports in the Black Sea. 
13) Just because they are the archetype of a net exporter of manufacturing goods does not mean that they aren't a net importer of virtually all of the most important and expensive raw materials inputs required for production. 


tl;dr: they...are...toast. More so that just about any great power of the last 500 years. What your takeaways from this will depend largely on your personal beliefs, but personally, I'm happy to watch those communist fuckers burn in hell where they belong, and you can rest assured, I will be grabbing the popcorn to watch this shit show for at least the next decade. 


For those of you interested, Peter's four books are 
- The Accidental Superpower
- The Absent Superpower
- Disunited Nations
and just recently
- The End of the World is Just the Beginning

In the meantime, if you want an example of what he talks like/how he thinks, he has several quality interviews on youtube, of which this is one such example (as you will quickly see, he handles this issue with a lot more compassion than I have any desire to).

[Eric the Green]

Well, China has been an autocratic empire for about 3000 years or more. So I don't think they are going to fall apart on that account. But they are and always have been vulnerable to periodic civil war, and more-recently revolution-civil war.

Being a libertarian, I doubt Zeihan is right about very much here. Sounds like exaggeration to me.

The idea that they import 85% of their energy, mostly from the Persian Gulf, seems absurd given all their coal plants and their huge solar energy farms. The assertions of poor agricultural output seems strange considering most of their population still pursues agriculture. The assertions of such a drastic population decrease and related assertions are ridiculous.

But, if even a bit of his claims are true, it would seem unlikely that they will be the overwhelmingly greatest superpower in the world. But we in the USA sure have been making their prospects for becoming #1 easier over the last 40 years with the policies that your author believes in!

[pbrower2a]

One of the dangers to a despotic regime in modern times is that it needs a neurotic split between technological competence to support productivity to make a potent war machine, have seductive propaganda, and mollify people with a consumer economy while keeping people numbed on political issues. Thus for a modern economy it needs an educated workforce but people unwilling to challenge the numbing reality of the police terror, bureaucratic hierarchy, and numbing politics. An attempt to modify the order (think of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika) to be more democratic is to bring to question the need for the political apparatus of the System.

If Founding Fathers of the United States said that a nation could not be both ignorant and free and supported mass education simply to make democracy viable, a sophisticated populace might be incompatible with a dictatorship. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that began with a generally well-educated populace had to degrade education to an elementary level except on technical skills, which explains such disparate tyrannies in Nazi Germany, Communist Czechoslovakia, Castro's Cuba, Pinochet's Chile, and Putin's Russia. Tyrannies that began with a largely-illiterate populace (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, Apartheid-era South Africa [for blacks]. Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, promoted mass programs of literacy but made sure that people could not do subtle thought.

Even a study so apolitical as mathematics, mechanical entineering, or agronomy requires rational thought, and rational thought easily detects the inadequacies of fascism, Marxism-Leninism, and systemic racism. Tyranny depends heavily upon the argument of the appeal to fear (as in, obey the Ayatollahs or die horribly), but this fear degrades life -- and people know this well.

So far as I can tell, all tyranny entails contradictions which the system can never resolve. Government responsive to the People through free elections that accepts a free-wheeling intellectual life is far more competent at facilitating the creativity that underpins the economy of intellectual property (and the most advanced societies have it as a big player in the economy) of the post-industrial world. Orwell sees the ideal person to the tyrannical and exploitative order of his nightmarish Oceania as someone who can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and see nothing wrong with that. Just consider that even in the United States, the communities that depend heavily upon intellectual activity for their active economies are less likely to support Donald Trump, and the people with the silly MAGA hats seem highly uncreative and unimaginative.

Contradictions do not harmonize; they conflict, and their conflicts often result in horrific conflicts in purges and wars. Something as basic as mathematics often resolves a question by establishing that the opposite idea is incompatible with more basic knowledge within mathematics.

[JasonBlack]

(08-27-2022, 09:13 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One of the dangers to a despotic regime in modern times is that it needs a neurotic split between technological competence to support productivity to make a potent war machine, have seductive propaganda, and mollify people with a consumer economy while keeping people numbed on political issues. Thus for a modern economy it needs an educated workforce but people unwilling to challenge the numbing reality of the police terror, bureaucratic hierarchy, and numbing politics. An attempt to modify the order (think of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika) to be more democratic is to bring to question the need for the political apparatus of the System.

If Founding Fathers of the United States said that a nation could not be both ignorant and free and supported mass education simply to make democracy viable, a sophisticated populace might be incompatible with a dictatorship. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that began with a generally well-educated populace had to degrade education to an elementary level except on technical skills, which explains such disparate tyrannies in Nazi Germany, Communist Czechoslovakia, Castro's Cuba, Pinochet's Chile, and Putin's Russia. Tyrannies that began with a largely-illiterate populace (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, Apartheid-era South Africa [for blacks]. Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, promoted mass programs of literacy but made sure that people could not do subtle thought.

Even a study so apolitical as mathematics, mechanical entineering, or agronomy requires rational thought, and rational thought easily detects the inadequacies of fascism, Marxism-Leninism, and systemic racism. Tyranny depends heavily upon the argument of the appeal to fear (as in, obey the Ayatollahs or die horribly), but this fear degrades life -- and people know this well.

So far as I can tell, all tyranny entails contradictions which the system can never resolve. Government responsive to the People through free elections that accepts a free-wheeling intellectual life is far more competent at facilitating the creativity that underpins the economy of intellectual property (and the most advanced societies have it as a big player in the economy) of the post-industrial world. Orwell sees the ideal person to the tyrannical and exploitative order of his nightmarish Oceania as someone who can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and see nothing wrong with that. Just consider that even in the United States, the communities that depend heavily upon intellectual activity for their active economies are less likely to support Donald Trump, and the people with the silly MAGA hats seem highly uncreative and unimaginative.

Contradictions do not harmonize; they conflict, and their conflicts often result in horrific conflicts in purges and wars. Something as basic as mathematics often resolves a question by establishing that the opposite idea is incompatible with more basic knowledge within mathematics.

This is all correct, but this it's largely coming from the perspective of human rights, quality of life, psychological health, etc. The stats I'm sharing here are more....this is why China will not exist in any recognizable form within the decade.

[JasonBlack]

(08-27-2022, 04:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, China has been an autocratic empire for about 3000 years or more.

China has been autocratic for 3000 years, but that doesn't mean this was a single continuous autocracy. They have collapsed multiple times throughout their history. For example, part of the reason why Asian moms and grannies fall into the tiger mom archetype is that there are still people with living memory of their own family having to cannibalize each other to survive under the famines induced by Mao.

Quote:So I don't think they are going to fall apart on that account.

Neither do I. They're going to fall apart on account of crumbling demographics, food shortages, resource dependencies and other issues

Quote:But they are and always have been vulnerable to periodic civil war, and more-recently revolution-civil war.

Agreed.

Quote:Being a libertarian, I doubt Zeihan is right about very much here. Sounds like exaggeration to me.
The idea that they import 85% of their energy, mostly from the Persian Gulf, seems absurd given all their coal plants and their huge solar energy farms. The assertions of poor agricultural output seems strange considering most of their population still pursues agriculture. The assertions of such a drastic population decrease and related assertions are ridiculous.

He gets almost all his data from readily available government databases. "He's probably not right because he's libertarian" is a character assassination.

Quote:But, if even a bit of his claims are true, it would seem unlikely that they will be the overwhelmingly greatest superpower in the world. But we in the USA sure have been making their prospects for becoming #1 easier over the last 40 years with the policies that your author believes in!

actually, the policies that he wants are...probably more in line with what you want. I would rather let most of Eurasia burn and focus on America. He wants something akin to a Breton Woods 2.0

[sbarrera]

I watched the video. Zeihan paints a dark picture of the world post-globalization/free trade. China could lose 500 million people?? The U.S. must stop Russia in Ukraine to avoid nuclear escalation?? Eep.

I didn't expect it but the interviewers mention Strauss-Howe theory toward the end, though Zeihan brushes it off. It's too bad, because he is talking about the end of globalization and the end of financialization which is exactly what The Fourth Turning predicts.

I've seen posts/interviews from him before but haven't read his books, though I do have "The Accidental Superpower" on my list. I will get to it hopefully before too long.

[JasonBlack]

(08-27-2022, 08:29 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I watched the video. Zeihan paints a dark picture of the world post-globalization/free trade. China could lose 500 million people?? The U.S. must stop Russia in Ukraine to avoid nuclear escalation?? Eep.

I didn't expect it but the interviewers mention Strauss-Howe theory toward the end, though Zeihan brushes it off. It's too bad, because he is talking about the end of globalization and the end of financialization which is exactly what The Fourth Turning predicts.

I've seen posts/interviews from him before but haven't read his books, though I do have "The Accidental Superpower" on my list. I will get to it hopefully before too long.

I want to send him an email at some point to explain to him how S&H Theory works. I think the theory has recently gotten a bad reputation among certain academic circles because new recruits have been misusing it. In short, the bulk of people who read the 4th Turning are
1) Businessmen looking for a model they can quickly apply to financial decisions.
2) Lay folk who read about the works of "doomsday prophets" expecting some crystal ball predictions for how things will get better

In other words, people who have neither the curiosity, nor the patience to understand the causal mechanisms on the level of first principles. As a result, the theory gets dismissed as esoteric pop psychology, rather than being recognized for its utility for understanding a range of sociological phenomena regardless of what age of history we are in.

[sbarrera]

(08-28-2022, 07:18 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: In short, the bulk of people who read the 4th Turning are
1) Businessmen looking for a model they can quickly apply to financial decisions.
2) Lay folk who read about the works of "doomsday prophets" expecting some crystal ball predictions for how things will get better

Can confirm based on Twitter users who post about the 4th Turning. The interviewer bringing it up to Zeihan is clearly in category 1) since it's on a trading channel and he even asks for investment advice. I would add that there are lay folk who just seem excited about impending doomsday without looking for any predictions about things getting better.

[pbrower2a]

(08-27-2022, 07:07 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-27-2022, 09:13 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One of the dangers to a despotic regime in modern times is that it needs a neurotic split between technological competence to support productivity to make a potent war machine, have seductive propaganda, and mollify people with a consumer economy while keeping people numbed on political issues. Thus for a modern economy it needs an educated workforce but people unwilling to challenge the numbing reality of the police terror, bureaucratic hierarchy, and numbing politics. An attempt to modify the order (think of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika) to be more democratic is to bring to question the need for the political apparatus of the System.

If Founding Fathers of the United States said that a nation could not be both ignorant and free and supported mass education simply to make democracy viable, a sophisticated populace might be incompatible with a dictatorship. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that began with a generally well-educated populace had to degrade education to an elementary level except on technical skills, which explains such disparate tyrannies in Nazi Germany, Communist Czechoslovakia, Castro's Cuba, Pinochet's Chile, and Putin's Russia. Tyrannies that began with a largely-illiterate populace (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, Apartheid-era South Africa [for blacks]. Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, promoted mass programs of literacy but made sure that people could not do subtle thought.

Even a study so apolitical as mathematics, mechanical entineering, or agronomy requires rational thought, and rational thought easily detects the inadequacies of fascism, Marxism-Leninism, and systemic racism. Tyranny depends heavily upon the argument of the appeal to fear (as in, obey the Ayatollahs or die horribly), but this fear degrades life -- and people know this well.

So far as I can tell, all tyranny entails contradictions which the system can never resolve. Government responsive to the People through free elections that accepts a free-wheeling intellectual life is far more competent at facilitating the creativity that underpins the economy of intellectual property (and the most advanced societies have it as a big player in the economy) of the post-industrial world. Orwell sees the ideal person to the tyrannical and exploitative order of his nightmarish Oceania as someone who can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and see nothing wrong with that. Just consider that even in the United States, the communities that depend heavily upon intellectual activity for their active economies are less likely to support Donald Trump, and the people with the silly MAGA hats seem highly uncreative and unimaginative.    

Contradictions do not harmonize; they conflict, and their conflicts often result in horrific conflicts in purges and wars. Something as basic as mathematics often resolves a question by establishing that the opposite idea is incompatible with more basic knowledge within mathematics.

This is all correct, but this it's largely coming from the perspective of human rights, quality of life, psychological health, etc. The stats I'm sharing here are more....this is why China will not exist in any recognizable form within the decade.

But... China is remarkably stale in its cultural life. The Chinese are importing much of their culture (whether legitimately through purchase or illegally through theft) of manga and K-pop from countries obviously culturally related to China. The Chinese diaspora worldwide is on the whole more creative in art, music, and literature where overseas Chinese have nothing to fear from their governments for expressing something 'inconvenient' to the government. China is good at antiquarian activities, as those can be treated as alien in time and ideology.

Could democracy survive in a politically-decentralized (federal), pluralistic China?

[Eric the Green]

(08-27-2022, 08:29 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I watched the video. Zeihan paints a dark picture of the world post-globalization/free trade. China could lose 500 million people?? The U.S. must stop Russia in Ukraine to avoid nuclear escalation?? Eep.

I didn't expect it but the interviewers mention Strauss-Howe theory toward the end, though Zeihan brushes it off. It's too bad, because he is talking about the end of globalization and the end of financialization which is exactly what The Fourth Turning predicts.

I've seen posts/interviews from him before but haven't read his books, though I do have "The Accidental Superpower" on my list. I will get to it hopefully before too long.

It should be obvious that globalization cannot end, and will keep growing. It is nationalism that is obsolete. The world federation is the future, but not yet at the end of this 4T. Next saeculum, circa 2165. To say that the fourth turning predicts the end of financialization seems way beyond possibility.

It is neoliberalism that needs to end; Reaganomics needs to go. Neoliberalism is what is wrong with those two trends. The ONLY thing wrong with them. And tyranny is a current trend too that needs to be reversed, of which Putin is the chief promoter and actor. He needs to go, along with the other tyrants. But how much is accomplished about this in the fourth turning is in question.

I see China as undergoing change in the mid-2030s. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile reversing the trend toward destruction of our climate is job one of THIS fourth turning. Our survival depends on this, which is why it is the crisis of this 4T. Neoliberalism is the chief culprit in this, and has to end. Reagan was wrong! Government is part of the solution; not the problem!

http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

[Eric the Green]

Please watch again, and get it:





Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...ge-monbiot

[Eric the Green]

(08-27-2022, 07:21 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-27-2022, 04:19 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, China has been an autocratic empire for about 3000 years or more.

China has been autocratic for 3000 years, but that doesn't mean this was a single continuous autocracy. They have collapsed multiple times throughout their history. For example, part of the reason why Asian moms and grannies fall into the tiger mom archetype is that there are still people with living memory of their own family having to cannibalize each other to survive under the famines induced by Mao.

Quote:So I don't think they are going to fall apart on that account.

Neither do I. They're going to fall apart on account of crumbling demographics, food shortages, resource dependencies and other issues

To use a common phrase, China is "too big to fail." It won't fall so soon after its modern peak just a few years ago. But it may undergo revolution in the mid-2030s. We'll see just how far it goes.

Quote:

Quote:But they are and always have been vulnerable to periodic civil war, and more-recently revolution-civil war.

Agreed.

Quote:Being a libertarian, I doubt Zeihan is right about very much here. Sounds like exaggeration to me.
The idea that they import 85% of their energy, mostly from the Persian Gulf, seems absurd given all their coal plants and their huge solar energy farms. The assertions of poor agricultural output seems strange considering most of their population still pursues agriculture. The assertions of such a drastic population decrease and related assertions are ridiculous.

He gets almost all his data from readily available government databases. "He's probably not right because he's libertarian" is a character assassination.

But a true one; but it's not as much about character, as it is about held belief. Libertarianism is even more-corrupting than social conservatism. Reagan was wrong. Government is part of the solution, not the problem. The points I made about China are obviously correct.

Quote:

Quote:But, if even a bit of his claims are true, it would seem unlikely that they will be the overwhelmingly greatest superpower in the world. But we in the USA sure have been making their prospects for becoming #1 easier over the last 40 years with the policies that your author believes in!

actually, the policies that he wants are...probably more in line with what you want. I would rather let most of Eurasia burn and focus on America. He wants something akin to a Breton Woods 2.0

We can't let the world burn. The world is burning from this "let things happen" ideology. We are all interdependent, and we are one world community, like it or not. The climate crisis is just one proof of that. It requires global cooperation to solve. Covid is another proof of that. Technology is yet another. The rise and fall of imperialism is another. Western colonialism made the world one, but now after the world wars The West is not ruling the world anymore. All regions and all races and nations are rising up and have their place, and borders cannot be walled off. The nationalists, trumpists and social conservative/America Firsters don't like it. It is a matter of them learning to adjust.

[JasonBlack]

(08-28-2022, 02:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To use a common phrase, China is "too big to fail." It won't fall so soon after its modern peak just a few years ago. But it may undergo revolution in the mid-2030s. We'll see just how far it goes.

"Too big to fail" applies only to fiscally broken systems insofar that they have the coercive (usually military) clout to force others to give up resources in order to continue to fund the status quo. Most likely, what we're going to see is a sharp recession over the remainder of the 2020s, followed by one or both of the following
1) rekindling of nationalistic zeal, culminating in an expansionary, Russia-esque war campaign
2) Internal revolution, similar to what you just described, but probably a bit sooner (say, 2026 to 2031 if I had to give an approximate date).

Option 2 would likely take a bit longer, as the Chinese have the military to pacify their own people for a few years, but an external conflict would go into effect sooner.

Quote:We can't let the world burn. The world is burning from this "let things happen" ideology. We are all interdependent, and we are one world community, like it or not. The climate crisis is just one proof of that. It requires global cooperation to solve. Covid is another proof of that. Technology is yet another. The rise and fall of imperialism is another. Western colonialism made the world one, but now after the world wars The West is not ruling the world anymore. All regions and all races and nations are rising up and have their place, and borders cannot be walled off. The nationalists, trumpists and social conservative/America Firsters don't like it. It is a matter of them learning to adjust.

If that's what you want, then your best bet is voting for 90s/2000s style neocon (probably from among your generation's ranks).....but no one else outside the billionaire globalists wants to continue policing the world.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting a wall. Outside of the most populist 20% or so of the right, neither is anyone else. I'm not even suggesting protectionism. What I'm saying is that the global system of "free trade" enjoyed by most of the world today is made possible only by the Breton Woods agreement. More specifically, we gave the world a choice at the end of WWII:
1) If you join us, we will give you
- aid to rebuild
- preferential trade terms
- protection of all oceanic shipping routes courtesy of our navy.
2) And in return, you must
- stop fighting each other
- adopt the US dollar as your reserve currency
- purchase your oil in US dollars
- give us free reign to set global security policy as we see fit

There is no question there have been a lot of abuses here (I assume we can agree on that much), but the point is, we aren't seeing trade deficits and lower wages by coincidence, nor were the seeds of this trend sewn during the Reagan Administration. What we are seeing was by design ever since Bretton Woods was agreed to in 1944.

What I'm proposing is simple: we need to stop being the security force for the entirety of the world's oceans and re-negotiate obscenely disadvantageous trade deals in favor of terms that will better serve our national interests.

tl;dr:
1) The internecine wars of Europe only came to an end when America stepped in and made them stop via Bretton Woods and various accompanying treaties.
2) The current expenses levied to police the current system and trade deficits incurred to encourage cooperation never really served the US's best interests.
3) Even if we pretend for a moment that they did, the Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas of 1991, rendering the initial motivation for the arrangement obsolete. The oldest Gen X were barely 30, the oldest millennials around 10 (I was but a 5 month bundle of joy). As such, conservative Gen X and millennials have no interest in defending this system, while liberals of all generations never wanted this level of world policing in the first place.

[pbrower2a]

(08-28-2022, 02:00 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Please watch again, and get it:





Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...ge-monbiot

Neoliberalism is of course a definition of human nature and aspirations in the "market". It perfectly fits a 3T after the collapse of the Idealist 'voyage to the interior'. Generation X (at least the first wave unless committed to some extant agenda such as the interests of one's ethnic or religious group) accepted that if there was no other purpose in life, then there would be wages and consumerism. Reactive/Nomad types are more likely to gamble, and neoliberalism is a gamble,  and most lost with lower wages, higher rents, and lesser public services). 

Unlike casino gambling (which has grown during the 3T) in which gains and losses are strictly individual, the collective gamble that many countries made on behalf on behalf of neoliberalism has been a net loss. We work longer and harder for less but pay more while economic elites get richer and more powerful. It's hard to feel sympathy for people who went to the casino and blew their car payment or at lest the funds for their auto insurance and have nothing to show for it other than unpaid bills. 

We are in a 4T, and so far we have done badly something that Americans have done well in a 4T, which is to divest themselves of bad habits from the 3T. In the last completed 4T Americans had to give up much to ensure that they would not have the victorious Axis taking much more. So we drove less; people car-pooled in commutes to do war work; we had rationing that gutted any possibility of conspicuous consumption. After all, some people were sacrificing far more as Americans, and most of us got a clear indication that Britain, China, and the Soviet Union were enduring far greater hardships -- before one even contemplated what was happening under Axis occupation. Maybe the perception of danger does far more to change attitudes than does 'mere' ugliness. We are obliged to sacrifice on behalf of landlords, plutocrats, executives, and giant farms instead of on behalf of our soldiers. Sacrificing greatly on behalf of economic elites responsible to nobody is easier, and at least those elites offer some mind-numbing, soulless entertainment. 

I'll say this of the crappy entertainment: it bores the Hell out of me. 

As Monbiot says, neoliberalism is a solution only for extracting large, quick profits for a few. It cannot save the world from itself. We need at the least Zero Population Growth if we are to avoid the calamities of Malthus' "population checks" of war, plagues, and famines. We need to find purpose in life other than conspicuous consumption, and for us to recognize conspicuous consumption as the trap that it is we must reject the mass atomization inherent in neoliberal ideology and practice.

[Eric the Green]

(08-28-2022, 04:18 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-28-2022, 02:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To use a common phrase, China is "too big to fail." It won't fall so soon after its modern peak just a few years ago. But it may undergo revolution in the mid-2030s. We'll see just how far it goes.

"Too big to fail" applies only to fiscally broken systems insofar that they have the coercive (usually military) clout to force others to give up resources in order to continue to fund the status quo. Most likely, what we're going to see is a sharp recession over the remainder of the 2020s, followed by one or both of the following
1) rekindling of nationalistic zeal, culminating in an expansionary, Russia-esque war campaign
2) Internal revolution, similar to what you just described, but probably a bit sooner (say, 2026 to 2031 if I had to give an approximate date).

Option 2 would likely take a bit longer, as the Chinese have the military to pacify their own people for a few years, but an external conflict would go into effect sooner.

Quote:We can't let the world burn. The world is burning from this "let things happen" ideology. We are all interdependent, and we are one world community, like it or not. The climate crisis is just one proof of that. It requires global cooperation to solve. Covid is another proof of that. Technology is yet another. The rise and fall of imperialism is another. Western colonialism made the world one, but now after the world wars The West is not ruling the world anymore. All regions and all races and nations are rising up and have their place, and borders cannot be walled off. The nationalists, trumpists and social conservative/America Firsters don't like it. It is a matter of them learning to adjust.

If that's what you want, then your best bet is voting for 90s/2000s style neocon (probably from among your generation's ranks).....but no one else outside the billionaire globalists wants to continue policing the world.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting a wall. Outside of the most populist 20% or so of the right, neither is anyone else. I'm not even suggesting protectionism. What I'm saying is that the global system of "free trade" enjoyed by most of the world today is made possible only by the Breton Woods agreement. More specifically, we gave the world a choice at the end of WWII:
1) If you join us, we will give you
- aid to rebuild
- preferential trade terms
- protection of all oceanic shipping routes courtesy of our navy.
2) And in return, you must
- stop fighting each other
- adopt the US dollar as your reserve currency
- purchase your oil in US dollars
- give us free reign to set global security policy as we see fit

There is no question there have been a lot of abuses here (I assume we can agree on that much), but the point is, we aren't seeing trade deficits and lower wages by coincidence, nor were the seeds of this trend sewn during the Reagan Administration. What we are seeing was by design ever since Bretton Woods was agreed to in 1944.

What I'm proposing is simple: we need to stop being the security force for the entirety of the world's oceans and re-negotiate obscenely disadvantageous trade deals in favor of terms that will better serve our national interests.

tl;dr:
1) The internecine wars of Europe only came to an end when America stepped in and made them stop via Bretton Woods and various accompanying treaties.
2) The current expenses levied to police the current system and trade deficits incurred to encourage cooperation never really served the US's best interests.
3) Even if we pretend for a moment that they did, the Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas of 1991, rendering the initial motivation for the arrangement obsolete. The oldest Gen X were barely 30, the oldest millennials around 10 (I was but a 5 month bundle of joy). As such, conservative Gen X and millennials have no interest in defending this system, while liberals of all generations never wanted this level of world policing in the first place.

It seems you may be putting too much emphasis on the Breton Woods agreement. The internecene wars came to an end because the Allies put an end to them and because Europe could see what condition they left themselves in. Imperialist rivalries came to an end too as The West was stripped of its colonies in the subsequent years.

After the Marshall Plan, Europe rebounded quickly. That meant that a free trade policy with the defeated and exhausted nations after WWII soon was no problem to the USA, because The West's recovery put free Europe on a level playing field. Free trade becomes a problem for the USA, and a boon to others, only when we tear down regulations and trade barriers with developing countries to where the bosses can outsource and take advantage of cheap labor. This happened starting with Reagan and neoliberalism. This was one reason for factory shutdowns and job losses, especially in the Rust Belt. Europe has done very well, especially since it moved toward democratic socialism, while the USA ended that trend after the Great Society. As far as prosperity and commerce itself is concerned, free trade with free Europe was no problem at all, except that it allowed corporations to become multinational and thus less subject to national democracy.

But neoliberalism also hollowed out these industries, because the bosses were given free rein to pay their workers a pittance, cut their benefits, destroy their unions, end overtime, take away their pensions, and raise taxes on their social security money while lowering taxes on themselves, and concentrate lobbying and campaign funding power in their hands. Globalized free trade also made the corporations harder for democratic power inside countries to control and regulate. Thus the middle class is vanishing--- thanks to neoliberal (libertarian economics/Reaganomics) policies. It is not only about free trade per se, but all about corporate and wealthy ownership power. Reagan's libertarian economics policies are by far the leading cause of the decline of the middle class.





The world policing duty of the USA is one reason the consensus Keynesian economics ran into trouble in the 1970s. We spent too much money fighting in Vietnam. Stimulating consumer demand could not counteract this, and social spending decreased to fund the war. This also sparked rebellion at home, and all this resulted in the ascension of a more centrist, limited Keynesian system under Nixon, Ford and Carter. The war on poverty was first defunded to support the war, and then limited by the more austere and limited regime that followed. This trend further limited expansion of the middle class in the USA somewhat even before Reagan. Furthemore, Keynesianism could not anticipate the power over oil gained by OPEC, and their cutoffs motivated by American foreign crises (Yom Kippur War and Iran hostage crisis) primarily caused the recessions of 1973-75 and 1978-82.

It seems someone has to keep shipping lanes open, if we don't want greedy autocratic powers like China interfering with our global economy. If the USA is not to do it, then others should help or work together through the UN. But meanwhile the military industrial complex set up after the Pearl Harbor attack continued to function, sending the USA to war in Korea and Vietnam and later to Afghanistan and Iraq. US interests and Keynesian economics were hurt by this. We should pull back from such adventures; on that we agree. It increases our debt, and adds this debt excuse to neoliberal/Republican demands for less social and environmental spending. Neo-con is as bad as neo-lib. Meanwhile though, what social regulations continued in the 1970s, chiefly environmental laws and consumer rights, motivated the bosses to strike back and recruit a talented actor to run for president in 1980 who would implement the neoliberal "free-market" program they had developed and funded.

Meanwhile the Chinese autocrats have plenty of military and bureaucratic power to crush internal dissent. They have been doing it easily already. In the USA the government did not need any coercion to bail out the economic powers' failures in 2008. They just loaned and spent more money. China certainly can prop up its industries in a similar way, and being an autocracy they can exercize enough regulatory clout so their capitalists don't overindulge in speculation, which is what causes economic crashes and bank failures in the libertarian USA.

The demographic and agricultural conditions you and your author assert are flat-out false. The 1 child policy is gone, and most Chinese are still farming. China has plenty of minerals, coal and solar power. The Chinese have never been inclined toward foreign conquest and war. Their wars are internal. You can predict an earlier such internal conflict earlier than I do, but I have my astrological means to chart events. It's hard for me to forget the cycle involved, since my own birth virtually coincided with the birth of the People's Republic. It's the same cycle that corresponds to the saeculum, too.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:The demographic and agricultural conditions you and your author assert are flat-out false.
The 1 child policy is gone

Just because the 1 child policy is gone does not mean the effects on previous birthrates are. After all, it takes 20 years and 9 months to grow a 20yo worker, 40 years and 9 months to grow a 40yo manager, etc. Government programs cannot add more people to a given generation the way they can add to the bank accounts of those impoverished by bad policy.

Quote: and most Chinese are still farming.

farming with less than 1/3 the arable land per capita than the world average, and less than 1/5 the arable land per capita of the United States and insane reliance on imports of fertilizer from foreign nations (namely Russia and India).
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-inf...per-capita

Quote:China has plenty of minerals, coal and solar power.

Coal they primarily get from Australia and their solar power is not nearly sufficient to meet the needs of their population.

The Chinese have never been inclined toward foreign conquest and war. Their wars are internal. You can predict an earlier such internal conflict earlier than I do, but I have my astrological means to chart events. It's hard for me to forget the cycle involved, since my own birth virtually coincided with the birth of the People's Republic. It's the same cycle that corresponds to the saeculum, too.[/quote]

Quote:It seems you may be putting too much emphasis on the Breton Woods agreement. The internecene wars came to an end because the Allies put an end to them and because Europe could see what condition they left themselves in. Imperialist rivalries came to an end too as The West was stripped of its colonies in the subsequent years.

A time of peace, cooperation and rebuilding following a time of war is not an historical anomaly for Europe (that's basically what 1Ts are). What is an historical anomaly is the way they have stayed at peace for well over half a century. This has virtually never happened in 2000+ years of European history, and it only came about because America put down her foot and kept old conflicts from reemerging.

Quote:It seems someone has to keep shipping lanes open, if we don't want greedy autocratic powers like China interfering with our global economy.

We will likely see shared agreements to secure oceanic shipping routes, but without the hegemonic oversight of the United States, such measures will lack the consistency of the current order.

Quote:But meanwhile the military industrial complex set up after the Pearl Harbor attack continued to function, sending the USA to war in Korea and Vietnam and later to Afghanistan and Iraq. US interests and Keynesian economics were hurt by this. We should pull back from such adventures; on that we agree. It increases our debt, and adds this debt excuse to neoliberal/Republican demands for less social and environmental spending.

The worst part is that we never even needed the oil reserves of the Middle East (the US has always been far more energy independent than the general public realizes). Much of such escapades were done on behalf of our European allies

[pbrower2a]

(08-27-2022, 07:07 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(08-27-2022, 09:13 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One of the dangers to a despotic regime in modern times is that it needs a neurotic split between technological competence to support productivity to make a potent war machine, have seductive propaganda, and mollify people with a consumer economy while keeping people numbed on political issues. Thus for a modern economy it needs an educated workforce but people unwilling to challenge the numbing reality of the police terror, bureaucratic hierarchy, and numbing politics. An attempt to modify the order (think of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika) to be more democratic is to bring to question the need for the political apparatus of the System.

If Founding Fathers of the United States said that a nation could not be both ignorant and free and supported mass education simply to make democracy viable, a sophisticated populace might be incompatible with a dictatorship. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that began with a generally well-educated populace had to degrade education to an elementary level except on technical skills, which explains such disparate tyrannies in Nazi Germany, Communist Czechoslovakia, Castro's Cuba, Pinochet's Chile, and Putin's Russia. Tyrannies that began with a largely-illiterate populace (Soviet Russia, Mao's China, Apartheid-era South Africa [for blacks]. Libya under Qaddafi, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, promoted mass programs of literacy but made sure that people could not do subtle thought.

Even a study so apolitical as mathematics, mechanical entineering, or agronomy requires rational thought, and rational thought easily detects the inadequacies of fascism, Marxism-Leninism, and systemic racism. Tyranny depends heavily upon the argument of the appeal to fear (as in, obey the Ayatollahs or die horribly), but this fear degrades life -- and people know this well.

So far as I can tell, all tyranny entails contradictions which the system can never resolve. Government responsive to the People through free elections that accepts a free-wheeling intellectual life is far more competent at facilitating the creativity that underpins the economy of intellectual property (and the most advanced societies have it as a big player in the economy) of the post-industrial world. Orwell sees the ideal person to the tyrannical and exploitative order of his nightmarish Oceania as someone who can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and see nothing wrong with that. Just consider that even in the United States, the communities that depend heavily upon intellectual activity for their active economies are less likely to support Donald Trump, and the people with the silly MAGA hats seem highly uncreative and unimaginative.    

Contradictions do not harmonize; they conflict, and their conflicts often result in horrific conflicts in purges and wars. Something as basic as mathematics often resolves a question by establishing that the opposite idea is incompatible with more basic knowledge within mathematics.

This is all correct, but this it's largely coming from the perspective of human rights, quality of life, psychological health, etc. The stats I'm sharing here are more....this is why China will not exist in any recognizable form within the decade.

This fits my bias in favor of human rights, quality of life, psychological health, etc.  Of course I have a strong bias against tyranny in any form no matter how glorious the cause that supposedly justifies the brutality. . 

It is relatively easy to get material productivity by literally cracking the whip, as slave-owners well knew. This is obviously so in a brute-force economy in which physical effort is everything and more subtle inducements are unavailable. Nobody willingly gives a greater effort when that effort will result in no tangible benefit for him. Nobody wishes to work to a life-endangering pace with the danger of injury that will result in his abandonment to starvation.  

Note also that this is also not how to get any achievement that depends upon creativity or imagination. Economic rewards, good feelings about oneself, and the approval of others all serve better with lesser harm to the person ... and far more happiness. Threats work on people near the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's easy to motivate field hands at the plantation Tara (Gone With the Wind)  with the lash or its threat while consistently failing to recognize the humanity of the slave. It is not so possible to beat an adman into coming up with a successful jingle, and it is clear that a Mozart composes great music because such is the character of Mozart. 

Somewhere in between is the reality of most lives in our world at one point or another, the political and administrative culture best described as the velvet glove covering the mailed fist. Such is excellent for stifling dissent; people know enough to hold it in, put it into some well-guarded diary, or believe that anything less than unswerving obedience to the repressive order is insane or impossible. Supposedly the KGB had part of its training the showing film of a man being loaded alive into a furnace as a warning to anyone who would betray the KGB. Was the immolation real or fabricated?  It is not known.

[JasonBlack]

Quote:Meanwhile reversing the trend toward destruction of our climate is job one of THIS fourth turning. Our survival depends on this, which is why it is the crisis of this 4T. Neoliberalism is the chief culprit in this, and has to end. Reagan was wrong! Government is part of the solution; not the problem!

Our quandary over this issue isn't about if climate change is real or if we should do about it. From the get go, it's always been "is this particular solution tenable or sufficient?" 

The analogy I would is: Just as you want to end slavery for the sake of slaves, you want to end (man made) climate change for the sake of humans. Most of the measures I've seen from most liberals sound like the equivalent of shooting down the slave ship before the slaves even have a time to get to free land. The economy will never magically transition away from fossil fuels overnight. If you try too many aggressive bans too quickly to stop the engines of the economy, you'll just end up making everyone poor, potentially to the point of starvation. Halting climate change at the expense of ruining the standard of living of the entire developed world is a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.


Edit: Just after posting this, I found a recent news clip that perfectly illustrates my point. When faced with the potential for poverty and societal collapse...of course Germany switches back to previous sources of fuel. Developing countries around the world have felt pressure from the EU to try to phase out their own carbon emissions, but given recent events, they're clapping back and saying "You're turning back to fossil fuels because you have no way of avoiding poverty? Great, so how the hell can you expect us not to do the same when already live EVERY DAY in poverty and rely on these fuels for transport and agricultural inputs?"

[pbrower2a]

(08-29-2022, 11:05 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

Quote:Meanwhile reversing the trend toward destruction of our climate is job one of THIS fourth turning. Our survival depends on this, which is why it is the crisis of this 4T. Neoliberalism is the chief culprit in this, and has to end. Reagan was wrong! Government is part of the solution; not the problem!

Our quandary over this issue isn't about if climate change is real or if we should do about it. From the get go, it's always been "is this particular solution tenable or sufficient?"

First of all, we need world-wide Zero Population Growth. Any population growth in any country will necessarily be from immigration. Second, we need to get off the heroin habit that is conspicuous consumption. We could live very well with the same material inputs per person that people knew in the 1950's. Remember: technology allows us to generally do more with lesser cost of materials. A hint: the typical reader-tablet, iPad, video-game unit, or even cell phone has more computing power than a refrigerator-sized mainframe computer in use in the late 1940's, and it obviously uses far less power. Don't let me get into a discussion of the extreme cost (by standards of the time) of the first color televisions. I remember selling televisions back around 1980, and people often chose a TV based upon the costly furniture surrounding the CRT. We need also give up the carnivorous part of our appetite... at least if we are to afford to keep carnivorous pets. (Maybe we will have good synthetic substitutes for meat. Cats will be delighted to get simulated mice and sparrows; dogs will love simulated mutton; and we humans will get to enjoy simulated everything from abalone to ... zebra? Solar power will have to supplant fossil fuels.       

Quote:The analogy I would is: Just as you want to end slavery for the sake of slaves, you want to end (man made) climate change for the sake of humans. Most of the measures I've seen from most liberals sound like the equivalent of shooting down the slave ship before the slaves even have a time to get to free land. The economy will never magically transition away from fossil fuels overnight. If you try too many aggressive bans too quickly to stop the engines of the economy, you'll just end up making everyone poor, potentially to the point of starvation. Halting climate change at the expense of ruining the standard of living of the entire developed world is a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

Slavery lasted so long as it did because it depended upon a lust for the economic benefits of economic superiority over helpless people -- so long, of course, as one is the master. American slavery lasted almost into the age in which the telephone, phonograph, electric light, and motion pictures were invented. It lasted almost into the time in which John D. Rockefeller II started building refineries. Know well that given the chance, economic elites bring it back if it is possible. Just look at the Hell that was Nazi Germany; despite the economic prowess and technical modernity of Germany, the Nazis were able to establish a slave system that ended only when the Allied Armies emancipated the slaves. Churchill and FDR both sought to have themselves together with an image of the first Great Emancipator. 

Slavery died because it could not underpin the more complex and flexible economy of the Union. The Confederacy failed because slaves fled the plantations for places that the Union Army had liberated. With the soldiers off in battle and slaves abandoning the plantations. Confederate agriculture could no longer reliably feed "Johnny Reb". Troops without food or running out of ammunition surrender.

Quote:Edit: Just after posting this, I found a recent news clip that perfectly illustrates my point. When faced with the potential for poverty and societal collapse...of course Germany switches back to previous sources of fuel. Developing countries around the world have felt pressure from the EU to try to phase out their own carbon emissions, but given recent events, they're clapping back and saying "You're turning back to fossil fuels because you have no way of avoiding poverty? Great, so how the hell can you expect us not to do the same when already live EVERY DAY in poverty and rely on these fuels for transport and agricultural inputs?"

No political figure dares risk another Great Depression, a certainty if the energy supply collapses. 

The developing world can avoid many of the costly failures of the advanced economies and the costly 'middle stages'. A country like India or Indonesia can avoid making some of the mistakes that the USA did. Leaded gasoline is one such mistake. Assuming that one could pump pollutants into deep groundwater without consequences is another.  Gas-guzzling vehicles is another. 

Real prosperity is not so much using more resources as it is the creation of experiences -- but those experiences all have material basis. So as Russia cuts off natural gas, coal returns in Europe.

[Eric the Green]

The reason Germany is using more coal, is because of Putin. This is a temporary condition, at least if Germany and the EU and the USA continue to support Ukraine and turn back the monster invader. It has to be done. Russia has cut off the gas supply on which Germany was too dependent. That was the mistake. But Germany is now ramping up renewables development too. It has a huge new wind farm being built in the Baltic. Maybe Germany will delay closing nuclear plants, but it doesn't seem to have uranium supplies right now to do that. France I believe is going back to more nuclear right now. Cutting off Russian gas needed to be done anyway as part of the sanctions regime. This gas shutoff was not a deliberate result of cutting it off in order to move away from fossil fuels. It happened because Germany is stepping up and doing its part to turn back the barbarian invader. It HAS to be done! And by the way, the Russians need to be forced to produce less gas anyway.

This goes along with your point. Transition is not an overnight project, and it takes time to build the alternatives. Catastrophes like the invasion of a democratic country by a rapacious tyrannical neighbor happen, and have to be handled. Droughts, themselves caused by climate change and fossil fuel use, can cut off hydro energy we already had too, like is happening in CA. So CA may delay closing a nuclear plant and restart some gas generators for a while. But if we were as dedicated to this energy transition as we are to complaining about high gas prices and blaming Biden for it, and even blaming inflation on him because of the bipartisan money spent to help people through the pandemic shutdowns, then we could get it done much faster than we are doing it.

And The West promised to actually help developing countries deal with the climate crisis, which poor countries suffer the most from and did the least to cause, but have not fulfilled this commitment. We in the West need to be more than just be an example and to preach. We need to fulfill our promises and get a Marshall Plan-like effort going to provide the world with renewable clean energy, and we need to give them aid when floods and heat waves and droughts wipe them out, since The West caused this problem for them in the first place.

https://youtu.be/HvD0TgE34HA?t=1800