11 ms·

As I recall the crux of the argument is that the U.S. is well positioned to weather upcoming turbulence of the 2020s - 2030s. The exact amount of turbulence is

by xcom86 4y ago

As I recall the crux of the argument is that the U.S. is well positioned to weather upcoming turbulence of the 2020s - 2030s. The exact amount of turbulence is where I'm less clear but as I recall it's: demographic (falling birth rates, aging societies); climatic (obviously); political (the book was written BEFORE Russia's invasion); and maybe a few others. One of the interesting bits is how weak China is with their aging society and diminishing view of technology. Anyway, I think the book is _generally_ on target and personally I have a much more optimistic view of the U.S.'s prospects over the next century. But that being said there will be black swan events and potentially seismic shifts from processes and technologies already in the pipeline: AI and CRISPR being forefront in my mind.

mc32 4y ago
Speaking of black swans. One decently sized meteor strike could cause lots of destruction. Imagine Tunguska in a populated region.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  That is a lot like a hurricane or tsunami. The rest of the world seems able to ignore those. Unless of course it hit (e.g.) TSMC.
mooreds 4y ago
Here's the "about page" for the book these maps are drawn from: https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/ https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/
thoughtstheseus 4y ago
The book focuses on strong US demographics, commodities, food, energy, security and supply. Few countries globally have this. Globalization meant you could relay on other countries for pieces you are missing. A reduction in globalization creates pressure in countries without “self-sufficient” capabilities.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
The major political consideration of zeihan's is that us security overwatch is ending. The thesis is that the economic-political relationship in the US empire of the late 20th c is reversed: most empires used military power to be economically extractive (inclusive of the US in the early 20th c); during the cold war the US empire flipped: it used economic power in the opposite direction to 'bribe' countries into a political alliance against the USSR (evidenced by how the US has the lowest international trade to GDP ratio in the alliance); note how the us didn't have a mercantilist relationship with any of the countries it invaded (Korea exploits the US, Vietnam, Serbia, even Iraqi oil goes to a French company) If you believe this thesis then in the coming years, and you believe the US will decouples/is decoupling from internationalism (I have been convinced), then his prognostications seem reasonable. A lot of the arguments (demographics e.g.) are pretty hard to argue against.
- petercooper 4y ago
  I enjoy his work, though I occasionally find contradictions. He says the US has favorable demographics through having plenty of millennials and suggested the UK was not so lucky, but they look roughly the same to me? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:UK_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#/media/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... Germany and China, on the other hand, both do have a huge drop off from the baby boomer generation onward and I wonder how they'll cope with that.
  - StrangeDoctor 4y ago
  - throwawaymaths 4y ago
    Not that I have a perfectly photographic memory, but I can't recall him ever presenting the UK pyramid chart in any of his presos.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
michaelwww 4y ago
Hey! A fellow optimist. There aren't many of us around as far as I can tell, except I think there a lot of closet optimists who don't speak up because the dominant paradigm is to shout "we're all going to die!" to wake people up so they will some action. This wears off when repeated too often, so I think it has the opposite effect. For those from other cultures who aren't very familiar with Western parables, there are two about this: "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Chicken Little"
- qwertygnu 4y ago
  It feels wrong to be happy that me and my country are going to (maybe) be (relatively) ok when the shit (that we threw) hits the fan for many other people and countries.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    It’s okay to feel relief you can put your oxygen mask on before helping those nearby put theirs on.
    - iforgotpassword 4y ago
      ...even if you're the one who made the plane crash in the first place.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      It's going to be more like you put on the only oxygen mask in your seat row but you're the reason why there aren't more and also the reason why we need to use the masks in the first place.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        No single person — no single nation, even — bears quite that much responsibility for climate change, let alone the other things. Too many people did too much for too long, the blame is diffuse over all of us. But yes, we are a bit short on metaphorical oxygen masks.
splintercell 4y ago
Your claim is incorrect that it was written before Russia's invasion. The publication date is in June 2022.
- DennisP 4y ago
  That one, yes. But Zeihan's 2014 book predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine by the end of 2021. Missed it by two months.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Didn't Russia invade Ukraine in early 2014? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Yes, his 2014 prediction was that they would invade the rest of Ukraine by end of 2021.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bnralt 4y ago
I think it's understated how well the current U.S. centered alliance has worked. I've never seen a name for it (G7 Alliance, maybe?), but it's broadly Western Europe, U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. There's no one treaty uniting all the countries, but there are many overlapping treaties and alliances, and they tend to act in concert (if you look at which countries have sanctioned Russia during the recent war, it's almost entirely this group). This group also has a massive amount of people, wealth, knowledge and productive capacity. And though the U.S. is the linchpin and definitely the most powerful member, members are free to disagree and no one member calls the shots. It's also interesting, because there doesn't seem to be any competing power block. People talk about things like BRICS, but that's little more than a conference between countries that don't share much in common and often are rivals as much as friends.
- WaxProlix 4y ago
  > I've never seen a name for it FWIW, this aligns pretty well with the OECD nations [1]. Might be a good starting point. 1 https://www.oecd.org/about/document/ratification-oecd-convention.htm https://www.oecd.org/about/document/ratification-oecd-conven...
- seydor 4y ago
  It's the American alliance, one world bound by trade under the US navy and military. But now the pax americana is threatened by at least 2 adversaries
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Probably the most stark fact within that group is how the US has very deliberately abandoned most of its population to all the storms blowing through. That the worst-abandoned reliably vote to be abandoned just tells us how effective systematic propaganda has become, and how thoroughly the 0.01% controls it. Directing the attention of the rest of the world's underclass has been an afterthought, but that is changing.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  The alliance doesn't work for Europe. The original population in Western europe got irrevocably replaced by liberal politics. And now Europe is losing big with the Ukrainian conflict while being the main target in the case of a nuclear war. The party winning is the Anglosphere. They have been doing well ever since keeping Europe dysfunctional.
seydor 4y ago
It's on target regarding the current events, but he doesnt seem to heed his own message: deglobalization and the return to national (or something new?) identities is bad news for america which is a global empire. It's also good news for cohesive, homogeneous states. We seem to have entered at the end of the current globalizing cycle quite fast with russia's invasion, and other wars will follow.
- DennisP 4y ago
  The benefits the US gets from globalization come at significant cost: huge military expenditures plus a hollowing out of manufacturing and other local jobs, leading to a lot of social unrest. Globalization wasn't something the US did for its own sake, but as a way of bribing the world to help them contain the Soviets. Nevertheless, the US will find the end of globalization somewhat unpleasant for a while. But unlike most of the world, the US is self-sufficient in food and energy, faces little direct military threat, and its largest trading partners are on its borders. In relative terms, the US stands to come out well ahead. Being less homogenous is also an advantage. Almost every advanced country has terrible demographics. The less homogenous you are, the more you're able to attract immigrants to fix that. Despite periodic discontent, the US has long welcomed immigration and benefited by it. On top of that, US demographics aren't that terrible in the first place.
  - seydor 4y ago
    > to help them contain the Soviets. Why would they want to contain the soviets if not to benefit from global trade? The benefits outweigh the costs very much, thats why they did it. Surely the US stands to come out safe, it is a very safe country, but if it won't be richer anymore, it will also stop being an immigration hotspot. Immigration, globalization and empire building go hand in hand, and the past century was America's turn. But this construction seems to be dissolving.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      I think you're drastically underestimating how much the US feared an expansionist USSR during the Cold War, and the worries just after WWII that the Soviets might just roll across Europe. If things play out as Zeihan expects, the US will be a bit less rich, but will be far better off than anyone else in the world.
toss1 4y ago
Supporting this was the one chart that caught my eye as I skimmed - Total Private Credit - at the very bottom row. The caption on the massive outlier line literally going off the chart at the top right is China: "No country has survived a credit build this large or fast. Ever.". Perhaps a totalitarian society will allow them to do so, but saying "It's different this time..." has a very poor record

by xcom86 4y ago

mc32 4y ago

Speaking of black swans. One decently sized meteor strike could cause lots of destruction. Imagine Tunguska in a populated region.

ncmncm 4y ago
That is a lot like a hurricane or tsunami. The rest of the world seems able to ignore those. Unless of course it hit (e.g.) TSMC.

mooreds 4y ago

Here's the "about page" for the book these maps are drawn from: https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/ https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/

thoughtstheseus 4y ago

The book focuses on strong US demographics, commodities, food, energy, security and supply. Few countries globally have this. Globalization meant you could relay on other countries for pieces you are missing. A reduction in globalization creates pressure in countries without “self-sufficient” capabilities.

throwawaymaths 4y ago

The major political consideration of zeihan's is that us security overwatch is ending. The thesis is that the economic-political relationship in the US empire of the late 20th c is reversed: most empires used military power to be economically extractive (inclusive of the US in the early 20th c); during the cold war the US empire flipped: it used economic power in the opposite direction to 'bribe' countries into a political alliance against the USSR (evidenced by how the US has the lowest international trade to GDP ratio in the alliance); note how the us didn't have a mercantilist relationship with any of the countries it invaded (Korea exploits the US, Vietnam, Serbia, even Iraqi oil goes to a French company) If you believe this thesis then in the coming years, and you believe the US will decouples/is decoupling from internationalism (I have been convinced), then his prognostications seem reasonable. A lot of the arguments (demographics e.g.) are pretty hard to argue against.

petercooper 4y ago
I enjoy his work, though I occasionally find contradictions. He says the US has favorable demographics through having plenty of millennials and suggested the UK was not so lucky, but they look roughly the same to me? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:UK_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#/media/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... Germany and China, on the other hand, both do have a huge drop off from the baby boomer generation onward and I wonder how they'll cope with that.
- StrangeDoctor 4y ago
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  Not that I have a perfectly photographic memory, but I can't recall him ever presenting the UK pyramid chart in any of his presos.
- ncmncm 4y ago

michaelwww 4y ago

Hey! A fellow optimist. There aren't many of us around as far as I can tell, except I think there a lot of closet optimists who don't speak up because the dominant paradigm is to shout "we're all going to die!" to wake people up so they will some action. This wears off when repeated too often, so I think it has the opposite effect. For those from other cultures who aren't very familiar with Western parables, there are two about this: "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Chicken Little"

qwertygnu 4y ago
It feels wrong to be happy that me and my country are going to (maybe) be (relatively) ok when the shit (that we threw) hits the fan for many other people and countries.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  It’s okay to feel relief you can put your oxygen mask on before helping those nearby put theirs on.
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    ...even if you're the one who made the plane crash in the first place.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    It's going to be more like you put on the only oxygen mask in your seat row but you're the reason why there aren't more and also the reason why we need to use the masks in the first place.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      No single person — no single nation, even — bears quite that much responsibility for climate change, let alone the other things. Too many people did too much for too long, the blame is diffuse over all of us. But yes, we are a bit short on metaphorical oxygen masks.

splintercell 4y ago

Your claim is incorrect that it was written before Russia's invasion. The publication date is in June 2022.

DennisP 4y ago
That one, yes. But Zeihan's 2014 book predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine by the end of 2021. Missed it by two months.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Didn't Russia invade Ukraine in early 2014? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Yes, his 2014 prediction was that they would invade the rest of Ukraine by end of 2021.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bnralt 4y ago

I think it's understated how well the current U.S. centered alliance has worked. I've never seen a name for it (G7 Alliance, maybe?), but it's broadly Western Europe, U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. There's no one treaty uniting all the countries, but there are many overlapping treaties and alliances, and they tend to act in concert (if you look at which countries have sanctioned Russia during the recent war, it's almost entirely this group). This group also has a massive amount of people, wealth, knowledge and productive capacity. And though the U.S. is the linchpin and definitely the most powerful member, members are free to disagree and no one member calls the shots. It's also interesting, because there doesn't seem to be any competing power block. People talk about things like BRICS, but that's little more than a conference between countries that don't share much in common and often are rivals as much as friends.

WaxProlix 4y ago
> I've never seen a name for it FWIW, this aligns pretty well with the OECD nations [1]. Might be a good starting point. 1 https://www.oecd.org/about/document/ratification-oecd-convention.htm https://www.oecd.org/about/document/ratification-oecd-conven...
seydor 4y ago
It's the American alliance, one world bound by trade under the US navy and military. But now the pax americana is threatened by at least 2 adversaries
ncmncm 4y ago
Probably the most stark fact within that group is how the US has very deliberately abandoned most of its population to all the storms blowing through. That the worst-abandoned reliably vote to be abandoned just tells us how effective systematic propaganda has become, and how thoroughly the 0.01% controls it. Directing the attention of the rest of the world's underclass has been an afterthought, but that is changing.
Silverback_VII 4y ago
The alliance doesn't work for Europe. The original population in Western europe got irrevocably replaced by liberal politics. And now Europe is losing big with the Ukrainian conflict while being the main target in the case of a nuclear war. The party winning is the Anglosphere. They have been doing well ever since keeping Europe dysfunctional.

seydor 4y ago

It's on target regarding the current events, but he doesnt seem to heed his own message: deglobalization and the return to national (or something new?) identities is bad news for america which is a global empire. It's also good news for cohesive, homogeneous states. We seem to have entered at the end of the current globalizing cycle quite fast with russia's invasion, and other wars will follow.

DennisP 4y ago
The benefits the US gets from globalization come at significant cost: huge military expenditures plus a hollowing out of manufacturing and other local jobs, leading to a lot of social unrest. Globalization wasn't something the US did for its own sake, but as a way of bribing the world to help them contain the Soviets. Nevertheless, the US will find the end of globalization somewhat unpleasant for a while. But unlike most of the world, the US is self-sufficient in food and energy, faces little direct military threat, and its largest trading partners are on its borders. In relative terms, the US stands to come out well ahead. Being less homogenous is also an advantage. Almost every advanced country has terrible demographics. The less homogenous you are, the more you're able to attract immigrants to fix that. Despite periodic discontent, the US has long welcomed immigration and benefited by it. On top of that, US demographics aren't that terrible in the first place.
- seydor 4y ago
  > to help them contain the Soviets. Why would they want to contain the soviets if not to benefit from global trade? The benefits outweigh the costs very much, thats why they did it. Surely the US stands to come out safe, it is a very safe country, but if it won't be richer anymore, it will also stop being an immigration hotspot. Immigration, globalization and empire building go hand in hand, and the past century was America's turn. But this construction seems to be dissolving.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    I think you're drastically underestimating how much the US feared an expansionist USSR during the Cold War, and the worries just after WWII that the Soviets might just roll across Europe. If things play out as Zeihan expects, the US will be a bit less rich, but will be far better off than anyone else in the world.

toss1 4y ago

Supporting this was the one chart that caught my eye as I skimmed - Total Private Credit - at the very bottom row. The caption on the massive outlier line literally going off the chart at the top right is China: "No country has survived a credit build this large or fast. Ever.". Perhaps a totalitarian society will allow them to do so, but saying "It's different this time..." has a very poor record