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I'm currently reading Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World by Peter Zeihan. [1] The book discusses the upcoming world order from a

I'm currently reading Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World by Peter Zeihan. [1] The book discusses the upcoming world order from a geopolitical perspective and gives original insight into potential developments. For example, I wasn't aware the US Navy has been securing the maritime shipping lanes, thus boosting global trade; and if that stops, well, you can imagine the implications. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Disunited-Nations-Scramble-Power-Ungoverned/dp/0062913689 https://www.amazon.com/Disunited-Nations-Scramble-Power-Ungo...

sremani 6y ago
Zeihan and George Friedman are really good. After getting perspective from reading them, prepared to be annoyed by geopolitical commentary on HN.
- dang 6y ago
  Generic dissing of other commenters just adds noise to HN. If you know more than others, why not share some of what you know so we all can learn? (Edit: I originally wrote "one of the worst ways to add noise". That was overkill; it gets worse.)
  - plainOldText 6y ago
    I beg to differ. The comment was perfectly reasonable in my view. I also learned about someone new, namely George Friedman.
    - dang 6y ago
      You're talking about a different part of the comment.
  - sremani 6y ago
    It is a qualitative analysis done by an enthusiastic amateur (me). You may disagree, and it is perhaps noise. Who knows!
    - dang 6y ago
      I'm not sure either that I understand this or that my point was clear. The part of your comment that added information was fine. It would have been better to add even more information, for example if you had macroexpanded "really good" into what specifically is good. Generic dissing of other commenters is one of the most common tropes that appears here. Repetition, and especially repetition of indignation, are the things that most lower the quality of the site, and therefore most to be avoided.
dotnetcore 6y ago
if you look at cargo ship over time. we are building bigger and bigger cargo ship while everyone's blue water navy have been diminishing. it will be interesting if U.S. exit the global stage and stop patrolling the ocean. are we going back to colonialism era where everyone build up a navy to escort goods or we are at the point that we can trade goods peacefully without a strong Navy escort.
magicsmoke 6y ago
The USN is way overkill for dealing with pirates. It's sized to deal with other national navies. The USN promises not to blockade foreign nations (most of the time) and fights those that would not purely out of altruism, but because if they can convince would be competitors that they don't need to build a navy then the USN doesn't need to get into expensive naval arms races.

sremani 6y ago

Zeihan and George Friedman are really good. After getting perspective from reading them, prepared to be annoyed by geopolitical commentary on HN.

dang 6y ago
Generic dissing of other commenters just adds noise to HN. If you know more than others, why not share some of what you know so we all can learn? (Edit: I originally wrote "one of the worst ways to add noise". That was overkill; it gets worse.)
- plainOldText 6y ago
  I beg to differ. The comment was perfectly reasonable in my view. I also learned about someone new, namely George Friedman.
  - dang 6y ago
    You're talking about a different part of the comment.
- sremani 6y ago
  It is a qualitative analysis done by an enthusiastic amateur (me). You may disagree, and it is perhaps noise. Who knows!
  - dang 6y ago
    I'm not sure either that I understand this or that my point was clear. The part of your comment that added information was fine. It would have been better to add even more information, for example if you had macroexpanded "really good" into what specifically is good. Generic dissing of other commenters is one of the most common tropes that appears here. Repetition, and especially repetition of indignation, are the things that most lower the quality of the site, and therefore most to be avoided.

dotnetcore 6y ago

if you look at cargo ship over time. we are building bigger and bigger cargo ship while everyone's blue water navy have been diminishing. it will be interesting if U.S. exit the global stage and stop patrolling the ocean. are we going back to colonialism era where everyone build up a navy to escort goods or we are at the point that we can trade goods peacefully without a strong Navy escort.

magicsmoke 6y ago

The USN is way overkill for dealing with pirates. It's sized to deal with other national navies. The USN promises not to blockade foreign nations (most of the time) and fights those that would not purely out of altruism, but because if they can convince would be competitors that they don't need to build a navy then the USN doesn't need to get into expensive naval arms races.