4 ms·

> There would also be more wars. One of the big changes in the 20th century is that now every country is interdependent on every other, so going to war is even

> There would also be more wars. One of the big changes in the 20th century is that now every country is interdependent on every other, so going to war is even more costly for both sides, being cut off from half the world's supply chains. This is often repeated, and I believed it myself in the past as being self-evident, but the Russia/Ukraine war has changed my mind. Russia was selling gas, the west was buying gas. Other countries produced e.g. iPhones and Russians were buying them. It seemed to be a classic case of a situation where everyone loses if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway.

wwtrv 3y ago
> if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway. That doesen't mean that 10 additional wars wouldn't have happened otherwise. It's a bit like saying that safety standards don't matter because people still die in car crashes. Of course, you're right in a way. For the system to work you have to assume that states are governed by rational actors and that their citizens prefer having access to iPhones and other foreign goods (and not destroying their economy in general) over "fighting nazis/homosexuals/{insert idiotic thing}"... Russia's current account surplus finally became negative in the last few months so if that continues and their currency continues crashing, hopefully living standards for ordinary Russians will start decreasing at a faster pace and maybe they'll start thinking about regime change. Then again 2x more deaths during a single years than throughout the entire 10 year long war in Afghanistan didn't bother them to much so who knows...
boeingUH60 3y ago
One exception does not make the theory untrue. Consider sworn enemies like China and the US still trading with each other despite their soured relationship. And seeing how Russia has been severely weakened by Putin’s imperialist tendencies, other countries would be wary of repeating the same thing.
- Teever 3y ago
  It isn't trade that keeps the peace, it's MAD and the United States policing the seas.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Taiwan is a very real concern, and China makes non-trivial efforts to prep for an invasion. The middle east exploded after the Arab Spring, and major conflicts are popping off in Ethiopia, Sudan, and now Niger.
  - wwtrv 3y ago
    China would much prefer taking over Taiwan peacefully, constant threat of invasion while increasing trade ties between both countries make it more likely. As long as China is a credible threat Taiwan will never declare independence. That doesen't mean there is a real of an actual invasion as long as everyone knows that.
Melting_Harps 3y ago
> This is often repeated, and I believed it myself in the past as being self-evident, but the Russia/Ukraine war has changed my mind. Russia was selling gas, the west was buying gas. Other countries produced e.g. iPhones and Russians were buying them. It seemed to be a classic case of a situation where everyone loses if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway. I think you will find that this was an actual example until out outright invasion was made, because since 2014 the EU was buying gas (to the major benefit of Germany) while the US and UK who signed the Budapest Memorandum looked the other way in order to keep 'business as usual' going in the EU while hand-waving about the whole thing. Putin made the grave mistake that the West would capitulate to this once more and Kyiv would fall, instead it finally unified the West to finally see the threat for what it always was (Russia has invaded or outright attacked nations 7 times since '99). What you saw was the deterrence taking place, you probably just didn't realize how detrimental it was because you measured it's success in iphone sales rather than total casualties and displaced people (look at how Syria kicked off the current diaspora out of the ME and Africa). Personally speaking, Globalization did work to a limited extent for a while but the issue is that the Western powers enabled their corps to hallow out their domestic manufacturing Industry/workforce and benefit from labour/regulatory arbitrage and allowed it to have record profits: it ultimately funded these despots who felt all to comfortable relying on Western greed and fecklessness when it came to geopolitics. Cheap trinkets from China aren't worth living in a World with a nuclear capable despot thinking he can kick off WW3 if we don't indulge them at anytime because we rely on them for a broken supply chain, and it never was worth it despite the ability to rationalize this Stockholm Syndrome so many are under.
- brucehoult 3y ago
  Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). The Chinese and US economies are far more inter-dependent and the Chinese understand that war is unthinkable -- are are very annoyed at Russia. The Western response to Ukraine has also put China off the notion that they could quietly take Taiwan without anyone making a fuss. But this is very far from RISC-V. China has long since (5+ years) taken everything from RISC-V initially done in the West that there is to take. The ISA specification itself, gcc and llvm and Linux and things like that. It is far too late to change that. They have local git clones. At present China is contributing more to RISC-V than anyone else. For example they are doing almost all work on Android and all the parts that go into that, including things such as the Chromium browser. All their improvements go into public repositories that the rest of the world can access. Companies such as WCH and THead and StarFive are also at the forefront of RISC-V cores and chips that normal people can actually buy. WCH's $0.10 microcontrollers are really great (as are their $0.50 and $1.00 chips). THead's C910 core is not only in the highest performance RISC-V SoCs (TH1520, SG2042) and boards you can buy right now, it is also open source (https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910) with a permissive license so anyone can audit it, or take the design as a starting point. StarFive's "Dubhe" core will probably be available on SBCs in the next 6-12 months, and will be similar to Rockchip's RK3588, currently the fastest ARM chip available on SBCs.

wwtrv 3y ago

> if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway. That doesen't mean that 10 additional wars wouldn't have happened otherwise. It's a bit like saying that safety standards don't matter because people still die in car crashes. Of course, you're right in a way. For the system to work you have to assume that states are governed by rational actors and that their citizens prefer having access to iPhones and other foreign goods (and not destroying their economy in general) over "fighting nazis/homosexuals/{insert idiotic thing}"... Russia's current account surplus finally became negative in the last few months so if that continues and their currency continues crashing, hopefully living standards for ordinary Russians will start decreasing at a faster pace and maybe they'll start thinking about regime change. Then again 2x more deaths during a single years than throughout the entire 10 year long war in Afghanistan didn't bother them to much so who knows...

boeingUH60 3y ago

One exception does not make the theory untrue. Consider sworn enemies like China and the US still trading with each other despite their soured relationship. And seeing how Russia has been severely weakened by Putin’s imperialist tendencies, other countries would be wary of repeating the same thing.

Teever 3y ago
It isn't trade that keeps the peace, it's MAD and the United States policing the seas.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
Taiwan is a very real concern, and China makes non-trivial efforts to prep for an invasion. The middle east exploded after the Arab Spring, and major conflicts are popping off in Ethiopia, Sudan, and now Niger.
- wwtrv 3y ago
  China would much prefer taking over Taiwan peacefully, constant threat of invasion while increasing trade ties between both countries make it more likely. As long as China is a credible threat Taiwan will never declare independence. That doesen't mean there is a real of an actual invasion as long as everyone knows that.

Melting_Harps 3y ago

> This is often repeated, and I believed it myself in the past as being self-evident, but the Russia/Ukraine war has changed my mind. Russia was selling gas, the west was buying gas. Other countries produced e.g. iPhones and Russians were buying them. It seemed to be a classic case of a situation where everyone loses if there's war, but yet the war happened anyway. I think you will find that this was an actual example until out outright invasion was made, because since 2014 the EU was buying gas (to the major benefit of Germany) while the US and UK who signed the Budapest Memorandum looked the other way in order to keep 'business as usual' going in the EU while hand-waving about the whole thing. Putin made the grave mistake that the West would capitulate to this once more and Kyiv would fall, instead it finally unified the West to finally see the threat for what it always was (Russia has invaded or outright attacked nations 7 times since '99). What you saw was the deterrence taking place, you probably just didn't realize how detrimental it was because you measured it's success in iphone sales rather than total casualties and displaced people (look at how Syria kicked off the current diaspora out of the ME and Africa). Personally speaking, Globalization did work to a limited extent for a while but the issue is that the Western powers enabled their corps to hallow out their domestic manufacturing Industry/workforce and benefit from labour/regulatory arbitrage and allowed it to have record profits: it ultimately funded these despots who felt all to comfortable relying on Western greed and fecklessness when it came to geopolitics. Cheap trinkets from China aren't worth living in a World with a nuclear capable despot thinking he can kick off WW3 if we don't indulge them at anytime because we rely on them for a broken supply chain, and it never was worth it despite the ability to rationalize this Stockholm Syndrome so many are under.

brucehoult 3y ago
Russia is not that great an example because they don't actually manufacture anything at all that we'd miss, and we can quickly get gas and oil from elsewhere (and have done so). The Chinese and US economies are far more inter-dependent and the Chinese understand that war is unthinkable -- are are very annoyed at Russia. The Western response to Ukraine has also put China off the notion that they could quietly take Taiwan without anyone making a fuss. But this is very far from RISC-V. China has long since (5+ years) taken everything from RISC-V initially done in the West that there is to take. The ISA specification itself, gcc and llvm and Linux and things like that. It is far too late to change that. They have local git clones. At present China is contributing more to RISC-V than anyone else. For example they are doing almost all work on Android and all the parts that go into that, including things such as the Chromium browser. All their improvements go into public repositories that the rest of the world can access. Companies such as WCH and THead and StarFive are also at the forefront of RISC-V cores and chips that normal people can actually buy. WCH's $0.10 microcontrollers are really great (as are their $0.50 and $1.00 chips). THead's C910 core is not only in the highest performance RISC-V SoCs (TH1520, SG2042) and boards you can buy right now, it is also open source (https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910 https://github.com/T-head-Semi/openc910) with a permissive license so anyone can audit it, or take the design as a starting point. StarFive's "Dubhe" core will probably be available on SBCs in the next 6-12 months, and will be similar to Rockchip's RK3588, currently the fastest ARM chip available on SBCs.