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This situation we're in is making me really uneasy. WW2 was preceded by tariffs and a freezing of global trade, which messed up the German economy too much, pus

This situation we're in is making me really uneasy. WW2 was preceded by tariffs and a freezing of global trade, which messed up the German economy too much, pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism. Nazism was a response to a perceived foreign threat that "did a lot of damage to our people, and it's time for us to be the best". Say the trade war ends up badly and the Chinese debt bubble pops. How easily can the mainlanders be convinced that it's "the West", in particular America, fucking with them, as they already believe is the case in Hong Kong protests. Then collectively mobilize into a military response, starting a process that will take tens of millions of lives. We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world.

cynicalkane 7y ago
> pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism The hyperinflation of the early 20s has a lot of sticking power in the mind, but it was the severe deflationary crisis of 1929-32 that immediately preceded the rise of Nazism.
- sverige 7y ago
  The hyperinflation helped create the chaos and sense of social disorder that made the Nazis' appeals to tradition so powerful for a certain segment of society. I don't think they would have been able to gain such broad tacit support without that chaos and the fear it created. That support was already in place when the financial pendulum swung the other way.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Let's not forget that the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic was, in large part, intentional. They printed money to pay the Versailles reparations, and to inflate them away. Obviously it escalated out of control, but they weren't mere innocent victims of external events.
- H8crilA 7y ago
  Serious debt crises are always eventually handled by printing money. Or, more precisely, the crises keep on going till the authorities decide to print money. It is only a question of "when". This can happen in a variety of ways, for example in the Great Depression it was handled by devaluing the dollar against the gold (Executive Order 6102 and the follow ups), in 2008 it was handled by QE. There is such a thing as excessive money printing, though. See Ray Dalio's book "Principles for navigating big debt crises" which analyzes 48 debt crises across the world, a few of them in great detail and establishes a general framework of the way those play out.
- roenxi 7y ago
  In a sense all hyperinflations are voluntary because a key part of the dynamic is governments creating truly vast amount of new money. That being said, the Treaty of Versailles was said to be a pretty obviously punitive treaty. Famously quoted as a "Carthaginian peace" [0]. The Germans needed a party that would stand up and say they weren't going to try and honour the treaty. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Certainly. It was the French, particularly Foch who insisted on punitive, and later claimed it was too lenient. Keynes wrote a famous book "On the Consequences of Peace" roundly criticising the settlement. Essentially Versailles set in train the events that led to WW2, Nazi party notwithstanding. Ironically toward the end of WW2, the Americans promoted the Morgenthau Plan that would have barred Germany from nearly all industry, putting them back to an agrarian age and made Versailles look relatively trivial. It almost certainly extended the war. Thankfully once it became widely known it was replaced with the Marshall Plan.
    - Fnoord 7y ago
      The German series "Babylon Berlin" [1] is a fictive series about the Weimar Republic before the Nazis got to power. Berlin Alexanderplatz is apparently also about Berlin the 1920s. It is from 1980, by famous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The entire miniseries is ~15,5 hours long. I have yet to see it before my death... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(miniser...
deleted 7y ago
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Aeolun 7y ago
> We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. That’s cool, but I think the people in HK want to live too. If the fear of upsetting someone always prevented us from acting when warranted we wouldn’t get anywhere.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. There's a hell of a lot of people out there that would risk their lives for other people's freedom. You might not personally know any (they don't tend to come from the kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds that most of HN comes from) but they're there.
verttii 7y ago
Nobody is waging war against China over HK. There may be blood shed but that'll be the HK locals', not any foreign nation. I don't see how this could anyhow escalate beyond HK. China can hate the USA as much as they want but from all I can see they have no intentions on waging war with the US over something as minor as HK is for them.

cynicalkane 7y ago

> pushed it into an inflationary debt crisis and eventually created Nazism The hyperinflation of the early 20s has a lot of sticking power in the mind, but it was the severe deflationary crisis of 1929-32 that immediately preceded the rise of Nazism.

sverige 7y ago
The hyperinflation helped create the chaos and sense of social disorder that made the Nazis' appeals to tradition so powerful for a certain segment of society. I don't think they would have been able to gain such broad tacit support without that chaos and the fear it created. That support was already in place when the financial pendulum swung the other way.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Let's not forget that the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic was, in large part, intentional. They printed money to pay the Versailles reparations, and to inflate them away. Obviously it escalated out of control, but they weren't mere innocent victims of external events.

H8crilA 7y ago
Serious debt crises are always eventually handled by printing money. Or, more precisely, the crises keep on going till the authorities decide to print money. It is only a question of "when". This can happen in a variety of ways, for example in the Great Depression it was handled by devaluing the dollar against the gold (Executive Order 6102 and the follow ups), in 2008 it was handled by QE. There is such a thing as excessive money printing, though. See Ray Dalio's book "Principles for navigating big debt crises" which analyzes 48 debt crises across the world, a few of them in great detail and establishes a general framework of the way those play out.
roenxi 7y ago
In a sense all hyperinflations are voluntary because a key part of the dynamic is governments creating truly vast amount of new money. That being said, the Treaty of Versailles was said to be a pretty obviously punitive treaty. Famously quoted as a "Carthaginian peace" [0]. The Germans needed a party that would stand up and say they weren't going to try and honour the treaty. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Certainly. It was the French, particularly Foch who insisted on punitive, and later claimed it was too lenient. Keynes wrote a famous book "On the Consequences of Peace" roundly criticising the settlement. Essentially Versailles set in train the events that led to WW2, Nazi party notwithstanding. Ironically toward the end of WW2, the Americans promoted the Morgenthau Plan that would have barred Germany from nearly all industry, putting them back to an agrarian age and made Versailles look relatively trivial. It almost certainly extended the war. Thankfully once it became widely known it was replaced with the Marshall Plan.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    The German series "Babylon Berlin" [1] is a fictive series about the Weimar Republic before the Nazis got to power. Berlin Alexanderplatz is apparently also about Berlin the 1920s. It is from 1980, by famous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The entire miniseries is ~15,5 hours long. I have yet to see it before my death... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Alexanderplatz_(miniser...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Aeolun 7y ago

> We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. That’s cool, but I think the people in HK want to live too. If the fear of upsetting someone always prevented us from acting when warranted we wouldn’t get anywhere.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>We're all people, please never forget that. The single thing all of us want is not to be drafted into the military and give our lives in a service of some dogma, bleeding out to death on a street in some remote corner of the world. There's a hell of a lot of people out there that would risk their lives for other people's freedom. You might not personally know any (they don't tend to come from the kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds that most of HN comes from) but they're there.

verttii 7y ago

Nobody is waging war against China over HK. There may be blood shed but that'll be the HK locals', not any foreign nation. I don't see how this could anyhow escalate beyond HK. China can hate the USA as much as they want but from all I can see they have no intentions on waging war with the US over something as minor as HK is for them.