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The world, including the US, will be poorer and less safe if the US moves to zero sum geopolitics and mercantilism of 19th century. And the losses will be burde

by omnee 2y ago

The world, including the US, will be poorer and less safe if the US moves to zero sum geopolitics and mercantilism of 19th century. And the losses will be burdened on everyone else other than the very rich elites. Indeed, even a short review of America's own history would be proof of this.

idle_zealot 2y ago
Even the rich will be worse off. Just relatively less so. It's utterly irrational, but that's what happens when a population feels disillusioned with the status quo, and capital does all it can to push that unrest in any direction but reducing wealth inequality. Turns out the next easiest outlet is to appeal to humanity's worst tendencies, resulting in the rise of fascism. This will play out over and over in liberal democracies so long as they abide a large wealth gap. It's anyone's guess whether we'll figure that out before there are no democratic states left.
- omnee 2y ago
  The status quo in western countries of giving absolute primacy to the needs/demands of capital above all else has indeed failed. The share of national income going to the middle and working classses makes this obvious. Yet, this is not being resolved. Instead, the very same groups that have benefitted from the status quo have managed to acquire power on the back of a disaffected populous, and they hold a fundamental belief that multi-lateral institutions/geopolitics do not act in the US's (or their) economic interest.
_heimdall 2y ago
How did we actually escape the zero sum game that is economics? Oil, lumber, plastics, steel, human labor, electricity, etc are all still finite resources. It seems like we've been playing in a much larger zero sum game, and that allowed us to gain temporarily profit from that much larger game. We can't escape it though, only finite resources have economic value.
- pasc1878 2y ago
  Because we found something to addd on to each of them. Oil - nuclear power - renewable energy Lumber - is renewable Plastics - use less (packaging) and more renewables - but yea this is limited and we need all oil for this. Also recycling. Steel - recycling Human labour - animal power - engines - for thought - computers then AI? Electricity - renewables - fission. There is a lot of leeway if we don't waste the resources and ingenuity and discoveries have made it a non zero-sum game.
  - rainsford 2y ago
    A related point I've heard here is that we ultimately only get one shot at bootstrapping ourselves into a truly advanced civilization no longer entirely reliant on finite resources. If we screw up the transition and expend those finite resources, especially fossil fuels, before we move beyond them, we won't have enough foundation left to try again. Nuclear and renewables might replace fossil fuels, but if you run out of fossil fuels before nuclear and renewables can pick up the slack, you're doomed to regress to a pre-energy society and it will be impossible to get back to a point where nuclear power is achievable without cheap fossil fuel energy. The key here for me is that treating economics like a zero sum game now makes it significantly more likely we end up at a place where it really is zero sum because zero sum thinking is nearly always short-sighted by definition, and getting to the next level requires more strategic thinking.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      > no longer entirely reliant on finite resources I've never quite wrapped my head around what that looks like. What resources could we possibly use that aren't finite? Maybe we don't hit max utilization for a while, that happens after large innovation jumps, but there's always a cap in natural resources somewhere.
      - rainsford 2y ago
        That's a valid point. On long enough timescales, even stars will burn out. But the cap I was thinking of was less in terms of capacity and more in terms of longevity. There's an upper limit to how much energy we can generate with solar panels on Earth for example, but we'd be able to sustain that capacity for a long, long period of time. On that kind of timescale, it's far less likely we run out of energy before we can move to a new alternative (perhaps an alternative planet). You're right that no resource is infinite, so maybe the better way to phrase it is resources where we won't run out of them before we are unlikely to need them again.

by omnee 2y ago

idle_zealot 2y ago

Even the rich will be worse off. Just relatively less so. It's utterly irrational, but that's what happens when a population feels disillusioned with the status quo, and capital does all it can to push that unrest in any direction but reducing wealth inequality. Turns out the next easiest outlet is to appeal to humanity's worst tendencies, resulting in the rise of fascism. This will play out over and over in liberal democracies so long as they abide a large wealth gap. It's anyone's guess whether we'll figure that out before there are no democratic states left.

omnee 2y ago
The status quo in western countries of giving absolute primacy to the needs/demands of capital above all else has indeed failed. The share of national income going to the middle and working classses makes this obvious. Yet, this is not being resolved. Instead, the very same groups that have benefitted from the status quo have managed to acquire power on the back of a disaffected populous, and they hold a fundamental belief that multi-lateral institutions/geopolitics do not act in the US's (or their) economic interest.

_heimdall 2y ago

How did we actually escape the zero sum game that is economics? Oil, lumber, plastics, steel, human labor, electricity, etc are all still finite resources. It seems like we've been playing in a much larger zero sum game, and that allowed us to gain temporarily profit from that much larger game. We can't escape it though, only finite resources have economic value.

pasc1878 2y ago
Because we found something to addd on to each of them. Oil - nuclear power - renewable energy Lumber - is renewable Plastics - use less (packaging) and more renewables - but yea this is limited and we need all oil for this. Also recycling. Steel - recycling Human labour - animal power - engines - for thought - computers then AI? Electricity - renewables - fission. There is a lot of leeway if we don't waste the resources and ingenuity and discoveries have made it a non zero-sum game.
- rainsford 2y ago
  A related point I've heard here is that we ultimately only get one shot at bootstrapping ourselves into a truly advanced civilization no longer entirely reliant on finite resources. If we screw up the transition and expend those finite resources, especially fossil fuels, before we move beyond them, we won't have enough foundation left to try again. Nuclear and renewables might replace fossil fuels, but if you run out of fossil fuels before nuclear and renewables can pick up the slack, you're doomed to regress to a pre-energy society and it will be impossible to get back to a point where nuclear power is achievable without cheap fossil fuel energy. The key here for me is that treating economics like a zero sum game now makes it significantly more likely we end up at a place where it really is zero sum because zero sum thinking is nearly always short-sighted by definition, and getting to the next level requires more strategic thinking.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    > no longer entirely reliant on finite resources I've never quite wrapped my head around what that looks like. What resources could we possibly use that aren't finite? Maybe we don't hit max utilization for a while, that happens after large innovation jumps, but there's always a cap in natural resources somewhere.
    - rainsford 2y ago
      That's a valid point. On long enough timescales, even stars will burn out. But the cap I was thinking of was less in terms of capacity and more in terms of longevity. There's an upper limit to how much energy we can generate with solar panels on Earth for example, but we'd be able to sustain that capacity for a long, long period of time. On that kind of timescale, it's far less likely we run out of energy before we can move to a new alternative (perhaps an alternative planet). You're right that no resource is infinite, so maybe the better way to phrase it is resources where we won't run out of them before we are unlikely to need them again.