Imagine if US spent all that effort changing itself and improving the lives of the people living in US. Maybe it could be half as good a country to live in as China today. 😂
But why would it do that, that'd be silly. The system is working fantastically for those who run it
If the US had embraced FDR's vision of democratic socialism instead of letting Capitalists be unfettered Capitalist, I think we would have more people be way better off then China today since we wouldn't have out-sourced anything to China to begin with (Unions and DemSocs wouldn't have allowed the outsourcing.)
Thing is that US did embrace FDR's vision and then capitalists dismantled it. As long as the country is ruled by capitalists then socialism is never going to be a long term option. You might get brief periods of sanity, but people at the top will work hard to revert these gains back.
I'm aware, but that's why it's a whatif. And honestly the Capitalists got way ahead of the Socialists before the 30's so Communism was never going to take root as long as the "evil" USSR existed. The best we could have hoped for was a more robust FDR style Social Democracy which has a high probability of leading to what you are saying.
But who knows, maybe things could have been different. Maybe Karl could have moved to Texas in the 1800's and the communist revolution could have kicked off once oil was discovered.
I'm sure history could've played out in many different ways. Capitalists at the time were smart enough to realize that they would have to give workers concessions to avoid a Soviet style revolution. It's not clear that the current crop of capitalists have that level of self awareness. The whole green new deal thing Bernie was proposing was a necessary measure to keep the system going in my opinion. Yet, the idea never got traction with the ruling class and things continue to spiral out of control now.
not sure what you are talking about, as far as i know(!), the states have communism well integrated. free university, free housing, free medical treatment, free retirement, you just have to enter the military community, they will even protect you for free with all they have from international sues for war crimes you commited. all of above is "as far as i know" only. so to speak, AFAIK "communism" by itself is not the "enemy" of the GOV of the states and has never been, maybe it is just something they do not want >you< to profit from ;-)
"Electoral interference" is illegal, but "shaping and changing the PRC" is just business.
We also saw something that really stood out, which is that the PRC believed the United States was in terminal decline — that our industrial base had been hollowed out, that our commitment to our allies and partners had been undercut, that the United States was struggling to manage a once-in-a-century pandemic, and that many in Beijing were openly proclaiming that “the East was rising and the West was falling.”
Sullivan can't get away with this. He can't just say a banger line like this and continue on without addressing it.
Some more absolute bangers in an earlier talk from Sullivan where he admits that the whole free market bullshit they've been promoting can't actually compete with what China is doing. It's an absolutely incredible read, Sullivan claims that the American economy lacks public investment, as it did after World War II. And that China is actively using this tool.
last few decades revealed cracks in those foundations. A shifting global economy left many working Americans and their communities behind.
The People’s Republic of China continued to subsidize at a massive scale both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, as well as key industries of the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies. America didn’t just lose manufacturing—we eroded our competitiveness in critical technologies that would define the future.
He also opined that the market is far from being able to regulate everything, and "in the name of overly simplified market efficiency, entire supply chains of strategic goods, along with the industries and jobs that produced them, were moved abroad."
Another problem he identified is the growth of the financial sector to the detriment of the industrial and infrastructure sectors, which is why many industries "atrophied" and industrial capacities "seriously suffered."
Finally, he admitted that colonization and westernization of countries through globalization has failed:
Much of the international economic policy of the last few decades had relied upon the premise that economic integration would make nations more responsible and open, and that the global order would be more peaceful and cooperative—that bringing countries into the rules-based order would incentivize them to adhere to its rules.
Sullivan cited China as an example:
By the time President Biden came into office, we had to contend with the reality that a large non-market economy had been integrated into the international economic order in a way that posed considerable challenges.
The People’s Republic of China continued to subsidize at a massive scale both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, as well as key industries of the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies. America didn’t just lose manufacturing—we eroded our competitiveness in critical technologies that would define the future.
In his opinion, all this has led to dangerous consequences for the US led hegemony:
And ignoring economic dependencies that had built up over the decades of liberalization had become really perilous—from energy uncertainty in Europe to supply-chain vulnerabilities in medical equipment, semiconductors, and critical minerals. These were the kinds of dependencies that could be exploited for economic or geopolitical leverage.
Today, the United States produces only 4 percent of the lithium, 13 percent of the cobalt, 0 percent of the nickel, and 0 percent of the graphite required to meet current demand for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of critical minerals are processed by one country, China.
America now manufactures only around 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors, and production—in general and especially when it comes to the most advanced chips—is geographically concentrated elsewhere.
At the same time, according to him, the United States does not intend to isolate itself from China.
Our export controls will remain narrowly focused on technology that could tilt the military balance. We are simply ensuring that U.S. and allied technology is not used against us. We are not cutting off trade.
A nation of 330 million cannot control a nation that has 1 billion more people. Nations should also be free to choose their own destiny. A logical fallacy many in the West fall for is assuming the rest of the world wants to be like them and should be like them. If I have a 3000 or 4000 year-old civilization why should I take marching orders from a baby state that’s not even 300 years old like the US?
The British Empire and basically the world was controlled by a single city of ~1million. And besides the historical and current examples of smaller cities controlling much more land and people then they had themselves, the statement doesn't make sense. Why can't a nation of 330 million control a nation of 331million?
Those days are long past and were a historical anomaly. We live in a world where Afghanistan defeated the US-led coalition forces.
"... holding in one’s head multiple truths at the same time and working iteratively to reconcile them."
That sounds really hard, have you tried cognitive dissonance?
BRICS nations like China are desperately trying to move off the dollar, which is a major tool of US control. The problem is, nobody trust the Yuan, the Ruble, or any of their other fiat currencies. They can't trust each other, so the US remains the global currency hegemon. But that is a privileged position it basically only got because everybody else was blown up after the world wars. The US's position in this area will continue to erode.
There is a fantastic overview of how the US uses the dollar to control other countries and extract trillions of dollars from them while keeping them in a cycle of debt. The Human Rights Foundation https://youtu.be/7qRWurFaUD0?list=PLe0djdakvnFb0T-oZAeF49A-EZChise4n&t=14009 and another one on how France abuses its currency influence in Africa to keep the colonial legacy alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-u1Pjce4Lg&pp=ygUxaG93IGZyYW5jZSBjb250cm9scyBlbnRpcmUgZWNvbm9taWVzIGZyYW5jb2RvbGxhcg%3D%3D
What will replace it? My bet is on Bitcoin. A few smaller nations (Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador) have embraced it as a way to reduce the control the US has over their economies. The blowback from the world bank, IMF etc has been very telling. They do not like the idea of a country that doesn’t want to get stuck in a cycle of debt, restructuring, and subservience to the dollar. Throughout history, countries have had to choose between minting their own currency which many lack the political stability to do, or using the currency of another country as the expense of their own sovereignty. But now there is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a politically neutral currency that cannot be controlled by any nation state or even group of nation-states. It is immune to corruption and human error. It just works well to send money from A to B and nobody can cheat it. It's market cap is 850 billion dollars, that puts it in the top 25 countries by GDP. On par with Switzerland. Higher than sweden. Higher than Israel. Higher than vietnam.
Bitcoin's fiscal policy is clear and predictable. 21 million coins will be minted. No more, no less. And if you have a private key, you can spend your coins. Nobody else can spend them. It has kept that promise for 15 years. 365 days a year. 7 days a week. 24 hours a day. Without a single hour of downtime, bank holiday, or a single hack. And there's no reason to think it can't keep that promise another 15. The incentives and security mechanisms built into Bitcoin the past 15 are the same it will have the next 15.
Anybody can use Bitcoin with a cell phone and a halfway reliable internet connection. With Bitcoin lightning, you can send an international transaction in under a second for pennies in fees. No credit check required, no middlemen, no nonsense. It doesn't matter if your country doesn't have stable banking infrastructure or a government constantly devaluing your currency. And it does all of this with less than 1% of global energy usage, mostly from renewables, since miners tend to chase the cheapest electricity which tends to be made from renewables at off-peak hours.
