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His ideas are very emotionally attractive but I think he falls down in two big areas. 1. The degree to which compliance with intellectual property laws constrai

by causi 4y ago

His ideas are very emotionally attractive but I think he falls down in two big areas. 1. The degree to which compliance with intellectual property laws constrains certain societies. Sure, China can't domestically produce bleeding-edge chips without using Western intellectual property, but Zeihan thinks withdrawing permission to use that property will make the Chinese industry flail and die. More likely they'll just steal it. 2. That nations will go back to high seas piracy and active trade disruption the way they did two hundred years ago. He mentions repeatedly the US no longer operates the type of navy required to patrol the ocean ("we don't need ten carriers, we need a thousand destroyers") but at the same time says the only thing stopping half the nations on earth from attacking the trade routes of the other half is the US navy. Personally I doubt anyone will decide it's worth the international scorn to actually do that even if the lack of the US navy makes it physically possible.

rapsey 4y ago
> Zeihan thinks withdrawing permission to use that property will make the Chinese industry flail and die. More likely they'll just steal it. Bleeding edge chips are a giant international effort requiring tech from Europe, US, Taiwan and Japan. China has been cut out from that market and simply stealing and starting up all of it domestically is just not realistic. It is a decades long task needing hundreds of billions. > Personally I doubt anyone will decide it's worth the international scorn to actually do that even if the lack of the US navy makes it physically possible. Failed states don't have the ability to control their population and they can turn to piracy like Sudan.
- causi 4y ago
  Bleeding edge chips are a giant international effort requiring tech from Europe, US, Taiwan and Japan. China has been cut out from that market The more isolated economies are the less of a difference it makes. How much would your ability to contribute to the economy be damaged if you had to use a phone/computer whose performance was five years out of date? I'm guessing not a lot.
  - jfim 4y ago
    For general development not that much, but for cutting edge machine learning research, it would be a pretty significant hit.
mrleinad 4y ago
They've been trying to steal it and produce it themselves for years. Are they somehow going to get better at it now? Nobody cares about international scorn unless you target someone who matters or that someone who matters cares about. During the pandemic planes were legally and openly highjacked and their contents stolen because the country needed it for their population and nobody batted an eye and there was no international scorn. And I'm not talking about Somalia, I'm talking about first world countries.
dirtyid 4y ago
>he falls down in two big area He falls down frequently when trying to integrate the politics in geoPOLITICS. Which is half the model. Apart from US, he's an generalist that's not a subject matter in other major/minor countries to make useful extrapolations from. There's a reason he's not invited to any prominent think tanks to talk - he's a former Stratfor marketting man trained to sell reports/analysis/books to wealthy Murican exceptionalist crowd. Zeihan's arguments are more based off geography and demographics, with a dusting of politics. He'll never finish writing his books if he had to actually delve deep into relevant politics instead of making course conclusions from reading a few maps and pyramid charts. Distilling some of his US vs PRC arguments to essence, On paper: US blessed with most miles of connected, sheltered riverways, has deep shores for ports, geographically protected and access to two shores. Meanwhile PRC: dangerous rivers must be linked through huge expensive infra effort/bribes between provinces or PRC collapses. PRC would trade networks would disappear without USN and can be contained via island chain. Reality: US waterways under developed after billions of army corp engineer dollars, still only good for bulk cargo, affected by climate induced draught. PRC has highest miles + utilization of interior waterways by far. US has shitty ports, PRC plurarity of largest advanced ports in the world, because country with good infra capabilities can dredge/engineer, and no one needs 100,000 deep ports. Both countries do resources transfters between interior regions for political stability. PRC leeching off USN =/= dependant, PLAN blue water surface fleet can easily take over her own leg of global anti piracy duties. Increase advancedment in conventional long range strikes = fortress America will be vunerable and the underpinnings of US primacy will be gone, likely in the short term, if not already. Sufficient technology at scale (politics) has power to invalidates advantagages/disadvantages of geography. Or the big one on demography. On paper: PRC will collapse in the next/previous 1/2/5/10 years due to crippling pop pyramid. Reality is for purpose of cultivating "super powers" - how Zeihan ostensibly frames his analysis - PRC probably has the _best_ demography in perhaps human history in terms of great powers competition. Greatest collective + abundance of high skilled talent is being generated for high tech / high value development (around OECD combined, more than US can generate and absorb via immigration). Like how Asian tigers kept growing after their demographic collapse. Meanwhile declining net population = less import dependencies which enhance strategic posture. Demographic dependencies ratios get mitigated by some of the highest house hold savings rate with little expectation for onerous safety nets supported by more industrial automation capacity than next 15 industrial powers combined. On the flip side American primacy is sustained by being able to, develop/maintain unrivalled military, attract talent in numbers that are competitive, and do so while preseving social serenity, welfare/QoL, which I arguely she's doing poorly/failing at. In many ways, politics > geography and even demography, especially for large countries with excess people.

by causi 4y ago

rapsey 4y ago

> Zeihan thinks withdrawing permission to use that property will make the Chinese industry flail and die. More likely they'll just steal it. Bleeding edge chips are a giant international effort requiring tech from Europe, US, Taiwan and Japan. China has been cut out from that market and simply stealing and starting up all of it domestically is just not realistic. It is a decades long task needing hundreds of billions. > Personally I doubt anyone will decide it's worth the international scorn to actually do that even if the lack of the US navy makes it physically possible. Failed states don't have the ability to control their population and they can turn to piracy like Sudan.

causi 4y ago
Bleeding edge chips are a giant international effort requiring tech from Europe, US, Taiwan and Japan. China has been cut out from that market The more isolated economies are the less of a difference it makes. How much would your ability to contribute to the economy be damaged if you had to use a phone/computer whose performance was five years out of date? I'm guessing not a lot.
- jfim 4y ago
  For general development not that much, but for cutting edge machine learning research, it would be a pretty significant hit.

mrleinad 4y ago

They've been trying to steal it and produce it themselves for years. Are they somehow going to get better at it now? Nobody cares about international scorn unless you target someone who matters or that someone who matters cares about. During the pandemic planes were legally and openly highjacked and their contents stolen because the country needed it for their population and nobody batted an eye and there was no international scorn. And I'm not talking about Somalia, I'm talking about first world countries.

dirtyid 4y ago

>he falls down in two big area He falls down frequently when trying to integrate the politics in geoPOLITICS. Which is half the model. Apart from US, he's an generalist that's not a subject matter in other major/minor countries to make useful extrapolations from. There's a reason he's not invited to any prominent think tanks to talk - he's a former Stratfor marketting man trained to sell reports/analysis/books to wealthy Murican exceptionalist crowd. Zeihan's arguments are more based off geography and demographics, with a dusting of politics. He'll never finish writing his books if he had to actually delve deep into relevant politics instead of making course conclusions from reading a few maps and pyramid charts. Distilling some of his US vs PRC arguments to essence, On paper: US blessed with most miles of connected, sheltered riverways, has deep shores for ports, geographically protected and access to two shores. Meanwhile PRC: dangerous rivers must be linked through huge expensive infra effort/bribes between provinces or PRC collapses. PRC would trade networks would disappear without USN and can be contained via island chain. Reality: US waterways under developed after billions of army corp engineer dollars, still only good for bulk cargo, affected by climate induced draught. PRC has highest miles + utilization of interior waterways by far. US has shitty ports, PRC plurarity of largest advanced ports in the world, because country with good infra capabilities can dredge/engineer, and no one needs 100,000 deep ports. Both countries do resources transfters between interior regions for political stability. PRC leeching off USN =/= dependant, PLAN blue water surface fleet can easily take over her own leg of global anti piracy duties. Increase advancedment in conventional long range strikes = fortress America will be vunerable and the underpinnings of US primacy will be gone, likely in the short term, if not already. Sufficient technology at scale (politics) has power to invalidates advantagages/disadvantages of geography. Or the big one on demography. On paper: PRC will collapse in the next/previous 1/2/5/10 years due to crippling pop pyramid. Reality is for purpose of cultivating "super powers" - how Zeihan ostensibly frames his analysis - PRC probably has the _best_ demography in perhaps human history in terms of great powers competition. Greatest collective + abundance of high skilled talent is being generated for high tech / high value development (around OECD combined, more than US can generate and absorb via immigration). Like how Asian tigers kept growing after their demographic collapse. Meanwhile declining net population = less import dependencies which enhance strategic posture. Demographic dependencies ratios get mitigated by some of the highest house hold savings rate with little expectation for onerous safety nets supported by more industrial automation capacity than next 15 industrial powers combined. On the flip side American primacy is sustained by being able to, develop/maintain unrivalled military, attract talent in numbers that are competitive, and do so while preseving social serenity, welfare/QoL, which I arguely she's doing poorly/failing at. In many ways, politics > geography and even demography, especially for large countries with excess people.