17 ms·

The Demoralization is just Beginning

• Timber-6539 2y ago
  I have a better solution than what the author suggests. Accept that the American empire is on its last stages of a full on collapse. Every other empire before it eventually did anyway.
  • coolThingsFirst 2y ago
    Is this really true or just false panic?
• ackbar03 2y ago
  Huh. I didn't know geohot commented on geopolitics
  • selectodude 2y ago
    Would’ve been nice if he kept it that way. Good grief.
    • RajT88 2y ago
      I will happily read his hot takes over Musk's.
      • TurboTveit 2y ago
        Well he calls himself an "Elon swing voter", so their hot takes may be similar. https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/12/07/elon-swing-voter.html https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/12/07/elon-...
    • decimalenough 2y ago
      At least the site footer "A home for poorly researched ideas" is appropriate.
  • GuinansEyebrows 2y ago
    Wow, didn’t even notice this was him. Don’t meet your heroes, kids.
  • stale2002 2y ago
    He comments a lot on politics, actually. He just makes intentional efforts to obfuscate them, likely because they are controversial (yet weird. The weirdness may be a part of the obfuscation). My VERY TLDR of his political world view is that he thinks the current world politics are f'ed to an extremely serious degree, so much so that we are in "lets get rid of democracy" land, and I think he wants a technocratic authoritarian strongman/"hero" to enforce some sort of libertarian paradise. Its those controversial, obfuscated, and wacky ideas mixed with a healthy tech focus that leads to an entertaining read.
• chasd00 2y ago
  [flagged]
• ViktorRay 2y ago
  Steve Jobs told Obama something similar once. The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities. Basically give those workers a visa along with their diploma. Obama thought the idea was intriguing and mentioned it multiple times to his advisors. It never went anywhere though. Brain draining the rest of the world is one of the main reasons for America’s success. It is due to America being a nation of immigrants that we can do this.
  • nextos 2y ago
    > The idea was to provide worker visas to engineers who did well and graduated from good American universities Some EU countries offer scholarships to attract good foreign undergrads and grad students to their universities. The whole point is that they stay afterwards, and they try really hard to keep them. It's been proven to be quite economically profitable, see e.g. [1]. I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on, unless you have overcapacity and sell education services. But that would not make sense for top universities where there is a fierce competition for spots. [1] https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-studerende-bliver-i-danmark-og-tjener-millioner https://www.dtu.dk/english/newsarchive/2022/11/udenlandske-s...
    • toast0 2y ago
      > I've never understood what's the point of attracting good students if you don't want to keep them later on US schools attract international students because most will pay full tuition, subsidizing costs for local students.
      • lmz 2y ago
        i.e. they're mostly not looking for good ones, just paying ones.
      • j7ake 2y ago
        Not true at the PhD level
    • 2y ago
• nico 2y ago
  > The reason the banking industry is so big is that it is close to the source of the made up dollars. If currency is gold backed, you could imagine something similar happening to the mining industry instead. However, the mining industry is real! It uses steel and aluminum to build physical things This is an interesting thought. I don’t like mining too much, as it has a lot of negative externalities. But the comparison of the two industries and how money is created is something to think about
  • RealityVoid 2y ago
    I agree with his assessment as to what happens to the "source of value" but I think the gold standard is unbelievably stupid. At least crypto is no pretending to have any sort of intrinsic value and you know you get virtual value.
  • corimaith 2y ago
    The banking industry is big because global economies are big and business need ways to finance and issue debt. There's not a single tower or factory or mine or business I would imagine that has been financed via dome form of debt coming from elsewhere, because if we're waiting for raw cash to build things we'd be missing out of most business opportunities and the entire economy would slow.
  • stephen_g 2y ago
    Here's a thought experiment - would the amount of gold a country has be expected to correspond to the amount of money that country's economy needs? I believe the answer is - absolutely not. So we can set some conversion rate to get things started with the correct kind of corresponding amounts. Great. But - over time, both the amount of commodity available and held, and the amount of money the economy needs will shift. Can we expect the conversion rate to stay the same then? Again, the answer is no. That's why pegs to commodities (i.e. gold backed currency) or other currencies always fail eventually - they can start off fine but will always drift away and you either have increasingly large inflation or deflation when things don't match up (which ironically is exactly what the proponents of commodity-backing claim it prevents, but the history is pretty clear). It doesn't matter then about whether the mining industry is 'real' and if the financial industry is 'artificial', as interesting as the argument is. Practically gold-backing always tends to fail, so it's a moot point.
• jfengel 2y ago
  For his solutions: "Brain drain" is what we had been doing for the past 80 years or so. It worked great. We're specifically driving people away now. "Gold standard" is an idea every sane economist rejected decades ago.
  • EmpireoftheSun 2y ago
    I dont think Brin Drain is a win-win outcome in a globalized world. USA benefits but at expense of mostly poor nations sending their elite talent.
    • trhway 2y ago
      would this elite talent be that productive there like it is here? I don't think so. I think moving talent to the most productive environment is the win for the civilization as a whole.
      • lxgr 2y ago
        Only if there's something flowing back that amounts to more than crumbs falling off the edge of the table, i.e. ownership of what these talented people help build, not just salaries/remittances. Silicon Valley is actually pretty good at that, compared to e.g. academia in the US.
        • trhway 2y ago
          Technological and scientific progress flows back spreading around the world like the tide rising all boats.
          • lxgr 2y ago
            In a world without intellectual property rights and no entrepreneurial moats I'd share your optimism.
            • 2y ago
• coliveira 2y ago
  The big mistake of this kind of analysis is to assume that it depends only on the desires of the US. But other countries have agency too, they can also decide to be first class economies. The current status of China is due to its focus on achieving greatness. There's not much that the US could or can do to derail China from its achievements. Let's stop trying to block other countries and step up to work harder.
  • ryandamm 2y ago
    China has major structural weaknesses in its economy that are currently overshadowed by the US cr*pping its own and its allies’ pants. Specifically: there is not much of a home grown consumer economy; they have driven growth too heavily on exports and infrastructure build, leading to a massive overhang in building, a housing bubble that is teetering dangerously close to unwinding, and a major shortage of domestic consumer demand. The Chinese people should be richer; the fact that they export a lot is a symptom of the failure to build up the household sector so domestic demand partly balances investment. Again, read Michael Pettis’s “China Financial Markets” blog at the Carnegie Endowment: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets
    • suraci 2y ago
      China is collapsing!
      • coliveira 2y ago
        Its even funny, since 2005 the major economists are calling for a major collapse in the Chinese economy, but it never happens as they hope...
    • csomar 2y ago
      Since the pandemic China on Western TVs is about to "collapse". However, what I saw is new EVs, new Phones, record high exports, record high solar panels installations, new metros/airports etc... Something must be very wrong in your assessment, right?
• ryandamm 2y ago
  I prefer my economic takes from economists, or people who actually study these things. -there is more to an economy than manufacturing. Using manufacturing metrics to rate an economy is like scoring a soccer game based on how far your players run: in some contexts correlated with “winning” but in others it’s not. -gold is not a good currency or basis for monetary policy. -these ideas only sound self consistent without economic context. But solution point 1 — brain drain the rest of the world — is an absolutely first rate policy. The fact that the US requires newly-minted PhDs educated here to get a different visa or leave is absolutely self-defeating. We should be welcoming skilled immigration from everywhere. For my money, you’re better off reading Krugman, Brad Delong, and (my personal favorite) Michael Pettis. I’ll read Geohot when it’s about engineering or self driving cars.
  • gjsman-1000 2y ago
    “there is more to an economy than manufacturing” Not really, no. If China cut off the US, for any reason, who gets hurt more? Who has a bigger house of cards to collapse? Who will have a harder time rebuilding? If the next leader is bolder than Xi, and is of the same kind that once killed tens of millions of people, losing an arm and a leg to behead an enemy might be a viable strategy.
    • ryandamm 2y ago
      Arguing that manufacturing is strategic is not the same thing as manufacturing being “all that matters in an economy.” There’s a logical fallacy in your rebuttal.
      • gjsman-1000 2y ago
        How about I put it this way: Manufacturing is the bedrock of power. Everything else above it, particularly fiat currency, is built on that bedrock. While those cards can be mighty attractive, losing the bedrock for any reason would destroy everything. Apple isn’t going to be worth $3 trillion when they can’t sell an iPhone for the next decade. Heck, General Mills won’t be selling much breakfast cereal, when the parts to the equipment can’t be imported. How much do you think a bare shelves Walmart is worth? Heck, how will American manufacturing rebuild when the CNC motors are made in China? When even a Prusa uses motors from China (LDO)? Will software sales save us with no hardware to run it on? The value of everything on the stock market collapses in such a scenario, and the power of the US Dollar goes with it.
• janalsncm 2y ago
  One thing that China does that I’d like to see more of (not that we don’t do it) are “wish lists” for products which use strategic technologies. So in their AI plan, they specifically call out applications for AI which can improve their cities like traffic light optimization. It’s like a publicly funded version of YC’s call for startups. The difference is in the public sector the answer to “how do you make money” doesn’t have to be sell to a business/sell to consumers/run ads.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• lxgr 2y ago
  > Back the dollar by gold [...] The second will prevent a lot of the scams. Oh boy... Bitcoin in many ways is idealized gold (unlike the real one, its supply is actually limited), yet there is no shortage of scams around it. On the contrary, a gold standard would remove one of the most essential tools modern governments have: That of monetary policy. That sounds like a good idea if and only if there's an extreme shortage of trust in the government and institutions, and even then it's only the lesser of two evils (the other being inflation) and comes at a high price.
  • tomrod 2y ago
    Well, bitcoin does have an upper limit, but rug pull coins don't. The exact number is ₿20,999,999.9769
    • lxgr 2y ago
      Well, if you believe that that somehow makes Bitcoin immune to scams, I have a wallet address where you can send me some right now and I "promise to return you twice the amount to give back to the community"... Note that Bitcoin might have a monetary cap built in, but source code is not actually capable of preventing people from denominating IOUs in it.
      • jazzyjackson 2y ago
        I don't think they were rebutting that, it's just that Bitcoin supply is only capped if you consider it the one true currency, but there is no cap on the supply of forks that perform identical function, only difference being adoption. It's like you could take the entire gold supply and put it through a Star Trek replicator, but now you have the job of convincing the world that your vault is full of gold too
        • lxgr 2y ago
          But even in a world of only Bitcoin and no way to make alternate coins, all kinds of bad things are still possible, as there is no mechanism to prevent people from starting fractional reserve banking all over. The only way to prevent that is to somehow completely eliminate all trust from all economic activity. Without trust, breach of trust becomes trivially impossible.
• skybrian 2y ago
  > abandon all hopes of being an empire I should hope so! Imperialist ambitions are what Russia is still doing, but most other nations have realized that war isn’t profitable. Fighting a war to conquer factories will likely result in owning rubble. This article has a more convincing description of how it works in modern times: https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/ https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa...
• almaight 2y ago
  The Soviet Union had strong consumption power, but they did not know how to manufacture. The final result was obvious.
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    They did know how to manufacture. The products they manufactured can be seen today rusting in Ukrainian fields.
• Spooky23 2y ago
  His point with respect to the questionable nature of the modern economy is a good one. I’d guess that 20% of GDP is tax avoidance. Everything with respect to real estate is a scheme to get government subsidy. If you go to a modern Courtyard or Hampton Inn, you’re sleeping in a tax shelter that rents beds
• 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  > I’m talking doubling the US population, bringing in all the factory workers, farmers, miners, engineers, literally anyone who produces value Based?? > Back the dollar by gold Oh haha lol No bud, gold isn't money.
  • ACCount36 2y ago
    Unrestricted immigration for basically anyone who can prove their mettle (whether by educational attainment, rigorous aptitude testing or just by earning money) is ballsy but could work. It would require US to start building a metric shitton of housing though, and fast. Otherwise you just get what Canada got, or worse. Gold standard? That's batshit insane. Like Karl Marx tier of bad fucking ideas on how to change the way economics work.
    • giacomoforte 2y ago
      Even as somebody trying to get a US VISA, I think it is a bad idea. Whatever tests you use, there will be many millions trying to learn for the test, thereby massively taxing the immigration system and making it harder for the more genuinely skilled prospects. BTW, merit VISAs already exist, and if you are rich there are investment VISAs. H1B is a cluster fuck, but it can be trivially fixed by allowing employees to switch employers.
• nextworddev 2y ago
  He is pretty clueless about a few things, namely 1) China inflated an even bigger asset bubble in the form of real estate and they are using dumping and aggressive trade to keep afloat, and 2)the regime can be ended in a few months without importing food since it’s not self sufficient in terms of food supply
  • Incipient 2y ago
    China owns a lot of food generation overseas, so while they may "import" it, they effectively own it.
    • nextworddev 2y ago
      Doesn’t really work that way
      • csomar 2y ago
        They have nuclear weapons and a massive army/navy. They sure can pressure Brazil to not mess with them.
        • rNULLED 2y ago
          I think there are multiple issues with nuking the country with your food supply
  • hot_gril 2y ago
    The article does a good chunk of fear mongering, so it's hard to take the stats at face value. I want to know more details about that US vs China trade map. I've seen it before, and first off, it's not "primary trading partners" as the author said, it's the larger of the two. Like a country that trades 95% with its neighbors, 3% with China, 2% with US is red on that map. And idk if this is $ value traded in either direction or what.
  • suraci 2y ago
    > the regime can be ended in a few months without importing food since it’s not self sufficient in terms of food supply let's do it! starve these commies to death, 'a few months' later they'll enter a brighter future without communism!
• waltercool 2y ago
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• maybelsyrup 2y ago
  I liked him better when he was fourteen and helping me jailbreak my iphone
• silexia 2y ago
  Fantastic article. The banking system especially is a scam... the "fractional reserve system" basically allows elite friends of the government to create new dollars ($100 loaned for every $1 deposit). Move to gold and get rid of the corruption.
• lrvick 2y ago
  We used to have gold certificates. If you had a $20 gold certificate and converted it to gold in the 1930s, you would get one ounce of gold worth nearly $3k today. Then the government did an exit scam, passing a law that the gold trade in statements on the certificates are void. You can still spend one of these bills today though. For $20. Why should anyone expect any government to indefinitely honor gold certificates? The only currency that can avoid being devalued by a single government, is a currency no single government can control.
  • saagarjha 2y ago
    Instead, you can have it be devalued by a techbro ;)
• danny_codes 2y ago
  Well this was embarrassing to read. Good god man read an economics textbook or at least talk to an economist before posting. Is industrial capacity important? Sure. Is it the top of the value chain? No.
  • torlok 2y ago
    This guy spent a few hours trying to "solve" covid from "basic principles", ran some python on the DNA sequence, and then gave up. None of this is serious.
    • lannisterstark 2y ago
      Remember when he wanted to "fix twitter search?" Then a few weeks in he went "Anyone want a job? Fix this, make your code MIT and we'll see!" ...despite the fact that he just wanted to steal code and had 0 authority to give anyone a job.
  • sp4cec0wb0y 2y ago
    This is what happens you feed the ego of software engineers. Make them think they are smarter than everyone else and that they cannot be wrong simply because they are good at software engineering.
  • jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
    Their "about" page reads "home for poorly researched ideas that I find myself repeating a lot anyway"
• baerrie 2y ago
  The real backing all economies across the world need, and look for in the US dollar, is trust. If we were capable of radical trust across every country in the world in tandem, then ideas of who manufactures more, salary, etc, would evaporate and it would be the timeless question of “how do we all survive and thrive together rather than against one another?”. Trust is a limitless resource that still has to be earned and that is why the US has been so successful, unfortunately we are destroying that trust.
• andsoitis 2y ago
  > The main product made by the US is the dollar, and it used those manufactured dollars to outsource everything. Most jobs in the US are now basically fake These two hot takes at the top of the essay really undermines everything else the author might say in the article and brings into question how serious and critical their thinking is. Several comments here against the article talk about the Chinese economy problems and this article in this morning’s BBC is a pretty good summary of the dynamics and the problems, notwithstanding manufacturing prowess, China is facing: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x4vj8rj9wo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8x4vj8rj9wo
  • intended 2y ago
    This is near certainly part of a new groundwork being laid for a later misinfo campaign. It’s wrong in so many ways, that it actively reverses reality. I believe the core payload is the idea that America was already fading, and that it was in decline agains China / Asia. My suspicion is the goal is to kill the idea of dynamism, feed off of the malaise people are feeling. The intellectual payload is simply a barb for the emotional payload to be distributed.
  • dumbledoren 2y ago
    > These two hot takes at the top of the essay really undermines everything else the author might say in the article and brings into question how serious and critical their thinking is. Does it though... If anything, the numbers prove him right: https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/ > Several comments here against the article talk about the Chinese economy problems and this article in this morning’s BBC is a pretty good summary of the dynamics and the problems They have been predicting 'a hard landing' for the Chinese economy every year for 15 years now. What the economic press publishes in Angloamerican countries about China is just external lobbying to scare China into opening up its market to financial speculation. Without any success. Naturally so, as everyone saw what it led to in the West in 2008.
    • sp4cec0wb0y 2y ago
      I am struggling to see how that chart of layoffs prove him right in the assumption that: 1) the US only produces the dollar 2) US jobs are fake If you think DOGE is a legitimate source of determining fake jobs you are mislead and not worth listening to.
• josephstalinOk 2y ago
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• deadbabe 2y ago
  Beware of anyone who hordes trust, because they may be planning to cash in on that trust to screw you over when you need them most. The United States is shifting toward a zero-trust model. All deals and agreements must be based on tangible incentives and benefits. It will be an interesting era.
  • torlok 2y ago
    Yeah, except it's the world shifting to zero-trust towards USA after Trump torched the Budapest Memorandum and started threatening with expansionism. Please leave calling things "interesting" to Musk. This situation is tragic.
• tomlockwood 2y ago
  Bemoans America potentially "embracing socialism", in an article about how good China is. Hm.
• sp527 2y ago
  The real scam was all these Silicon Valley "geniuses", who are lately outing themselves as total morons. Never have heroes.
  • rvz 2y ago
    Yes. It is all a giant scam and a grift wrapped into one repeating 1999 once again. When this VC pyramid scheme collapses, we'll look back at this as a time where the economy and startups were once devoid from reality.
• crq-yml 2y ago
  I think the brain drain idea is fine. Making a goldbug argument is surprisingly regressive. Currency is a socially constructed phenomenon in all times and places, and gold is only special in that at this moment, reverting to it would cause a violent reset to the balance sheet - a temporary, painful fix. The progressive option would be to deeply question "what lies beyond trade?" and to search for answers beyond the conventional regulated/unregulated spectrum, answers that are compatible in some degree with our starting place but allow broad movement. We know what trade is and does, but the economies it produces are no match for the hivemind efficacy of an ants or beavers. The frameworks of trade are negotiated around maintenance of fiefdoms, and economic activity is regularly blocked because the power structure will push against it and normalize "we can't have that here". At the same time, we know that power needs checks and balances, and the capitalist mode of power creates some checks on power through its use of trade. That is what has kept it ahead of command economies. What I find appealing about continuing down a crypto-oriented route is that it's a data structure with a balance sheet as a frontend. The frontend can change - it is a thing that can be experimented with. Valorizing the numbers on the balance sheet as gold-equivalent has always been an adaptive, "this is the only way we know how to do things" kind of social construction. If we can construct a different kind of game to play, the motives can shift.
• 0dayz 2y ago
  Yet another prodigy turned to a "know it all" with no actual education to back anything said about specific topics. You can critic America for failing to transition away from the manufacturing economy or how awfully bad they are at utilizing government to drive innovation or extra market value (look at the dogshit railway infrastructure) but pointing to manufacturer graph and doing soy face ain't it.
• dinamic 2y ago
  Gold and Value producers reminded me of the Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged. But I could not fancy this imaginary community to scale up to even millions
• system7rocks 2y ago
  I thought I was going to read something interesting, and while yes, America has significant problems and we are likely on the decline under this administration (and likely before), backing the dollar by gold is the same crackpot nonsense that Ron Paul people loved to hammer on about. What is even his point?
• siliconc0w 2y ago
  +1 to brain drain. Though it's probably net beneficial for the US to remain the reserve currency, as long as we stop getting high on our supply.
• georgeecollins 2y ago
  I get tired of people talking about how the US doesn't "make anything". I spent my adult life creating software that was super valuable. Along the way I worked with a bunch of people (from all over the world) who-- because of their brains and their education-- could have made almost anything very well. They didn't make steel or automobiles because that wasn't where their skills were best deployed.
  • globular-toast 2y ago
    I'm not convinced that software is really intrinsically valuable. We write it to help us make and deliver things that are actually valuable, which are physical goods. The whole service sector would be nothing without the physical. Finance doesn't exist just to see numbers changing on a screen. It's there so we can buy food after we retire etc. Maybe games are truly software that isn't tied to anything physical. I can't think of much else, though. Can you?
    • sam_goody 2y ago
      At work, we provide video courses of therapists to other mental health professionals. I help run a youth group, which uses lots of software to manage, communicate, learn and empower the next generation. Nothing physical, but there is no question in my mind that all this software is intrinsically valuable.
      • globular-toast 2y ago
        If it were intrinsically valuable then it would still be valuable if you took away the businesses. Would your healthcare software be valuable if there was nobody to produce the video course? Would your youth group be valuable if nobody attended it? What are you empowering the youth to do? Also write software to empower the next generation? It has to end somewhere. You can't eat software. You can't eat gold either, but if society collapsed I bet you'd still be able to trade a gold ingot for a carrot, because it maintains a modicum of value. I doubt you'd have many takers for a JPEG codec you just wrote, though, and that's far more generally useful software than business software which is what most software is.
• snowwrestler 2y ago
  It's a surprisingly retro economic take from a tech guy. Kind of crazy to see famous tech personalities pivoting from "software is eating the world" to "it's fake unless it is made out of metal."
  • baq 2y ago
    Every problem has a solution which is simple, elegant and wrong. I’ve made such confident mistakes when I was younger; nowadays when I have an idea for a fix in a complex system that is simple and elegant, I take a step back and try to look why it’s wrong. Usually doesn’t take much looking.
• suraci 2y ago
  'demoralization' is a good word to describe the mental state of imperial citizen social being determines social consciousness, but social consciousness often lags behind social being. when the empire was falling, its citizens still indulged in the eternal victories of the past. by the time they realized the empire's glory was irretrievable, it was usually already fallen. this lagging may cause some consequences. for instance, overconfident imperial citizens may try to contain rivals and prevent the empire's fall through various ways, tariffs, sanctions, or wars, the worst case imperial citizens think a lot when they see this: > In addition, we had and have military bases in Japan. This is not the same situation. imperial policymakers may be rational, or may not be
• solidsnack9000 2y ago
  I don't see why the author thinks backing the dollar with gold is so important. Is China backing their currency with gold? If not, and it's so important, how did they get ahead?
• jljljl 2y ago
  Proposal number 2 will destroy the US economy, completely destabilize prices, and make recovering from recessions painful and slow. There is a reason that no country today, including the ones that produce things, use the gold standard.
• sakras 2y ago
  > Sure, we don’t produce anything, but we have companies with high revenues and we can raise money based on those revenues. We’ll both be rich! I think this is the central hole in the argument that the US is stagnant. The money that investors give you has to come from somewhere! Particularly in venture capital, you only get returns if you produce value. Nevertheless, I do agree with a lot of the points here.
  • sergiomattei 2y ago
    In my view, the stagnant part begins when extractive industries grow uncontrollably (think financial services). Yes, money is slushing around and line goes up, but ultimately the value production behind it remained the same. Money is detached from real output. Especially true in a zero interest rate environment like we had until recently. There is no reinvestment when rent-seeking activities and financialization take place. Wealth is accumulated but not reinvested for greater growth. > in venture capital you only get returns if you produce value Is that so?
• wetpaws 2y ago
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• isaacremuant 2y ago
  This person sees the world as a game where the US needs to be a supremacy over others. > America really is at a fork in the road. In one world, they abandon all hopes of being an empire, becoming a regional power with highly protectionist economics. This happened before, and it’s called Europe. I know it’s hard to believe now, but Europe used to be the seat of power for the whole world. The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes It's simply a disgusting take. Full of ego and lacking any empathy for people inside and outside the USA because he is too busy thinking in zero sum caveman terms. This type of mindset is the one that justifies all military interventions because "there must be a world superpower and it must be us".
• locallost 2y ago
  > America really is at a fork in the road. In one world, they abandon all hopes of being an empire, becoming a regional power with highly protectionist economics Seems like the current choice is to be highly protectionist, not sure if it means becoming a regional power.
• pfannkuchen 2y ago
  This feels too all over the place and contains a lot of assertions without evidence. I say this as a person who is very bearish about America. > The sun never set on the British empire. Now they put you in jail for memes. I’m pretty sure they put people in jail for the equivalent of memes during the imperial days, no? The king couldn’t put you away for speaking against him?
  • aredox 2y ago
    geohot is a deeply unserious person. (See also: his attempt at self-driving, and his "internship" at x/twitter under Elon)
    • norswap 2y ago
      His "attempt" at self-driving is better than most of the industry, at a fraction of the cost. The man does and tries things. Man in the arena.
      • aredox 2y ago
        >His "attempt" at self-driving is better than most of the industry, at a fraction of the cost. Because it was an unserious hack, like him. https://venturebeat.com/ai/comma-ai-cancels-self-driving-car-device-after-warning-from-u-s-regulators/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/comma-ai-cancels-self-driving-car...
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    Author has decent points, but then again falls into “europoor” trap. He keeps saying how things are bad in Europe because X, Y, Z, but China also does X, Y, Z and for some reason he doesn’t comment on that. And as usual, no comments on quality of life for an average citizen. Some people really need to go out, sit at random bars, and talk to people. They would get a better pulse check on society than 24/7 Twitter shitposting.
    • torlok 2y ago
      You can also spend 8 hours furiously typing at Google to confirm your biases and vomit out a bunch of theories.
• viccis 2y ago
  >It kicks the can further down the road of poverty, basically embraces socialism Ah yes, the US, famously under a socialist regime currently.
  • torlok 2y ago
    You won't believe this, but it looks like people who were born into a tiny window of opportunities to make large personal wealth out of thin air don't have a sane grasp on capitalism and socialism.
• porridgeraisin 2y ago
  I don't agree with the proposed solutions, but the problem is 100% on point.
• LarsDu88 2y ago
  George Hotz thinks silicon valley companies are all scams... in comparison to... Chinese companies???? I think this guy may need to travel the world a bit more. A lot of companies here are shiite, but you really need to understand what the competition actually looks like under the hood. And I'm not just talking about Chinese government efforts to crank out more commodities, which has been a Communist metric of success since Mao Zedong's time.
• deleted 2y ago
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• ks2048 2y ago
  He equates protectionism with stagnation, being boring, the road to poverty, socialism, etc. Yet, the US was very protectionist during it's accent to becoming the world's largest economy. The free market zealotry came later. (I'm not trying to say Trump's current plans have any merit - which seem to be without any strategic foresight or planning).
• giacomoforte 2y ago
  He contradicts himself. Europe, in particular Spain, France and Germany are still manufacturing goods. And yet their economies are stagnant. Because those industries have seen no growth for decades already.
  • locallost 2y ago
    It's not true there was no growth for decades there, but otherwise I agree. He is not far off from the truth that a lot of the American economy is phony with wrong incentives. I submitted an article recently that makes the same argument, about e.g. the 2008 crisis "we used to sell mortgages to so we can build houses, not build houses so we can sell mortgages". But his solutions fall on their face. The contradiction you mention is not the only one - his wrong way involves "protectionist economy" which is actually exactly what is happening right now. It's also a bit funny the current backlash against globalization I'm the US government is led by the people that profited the most from it. That right there tells you their intentions are not noble.
  • dig1 2y ago
    I cannot speak for Spain and France, but for Germany, stagnation was primarily due to long-standing internal political issues. Wolfgang Münchau discusses this in his book Kaput [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Kaput-End-German-Miracle/dp/B0DLWZBZST https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Kaput-End-German-Miracle/dp/B...
    • amai 2y ago
      „An often reported story, not presented by Münchau, takes the case of BioNTech’s miracle mRNA vaccine that is now being applied to the treatment of common cancers.“ Germanys role in the fight against covid should not be forgotten. Germany is not just cars. https://www.ft.com/content/4c0f90ac-1068-46ec-bb6a-b27f21af6210 https://www.ft.com/content/4c0f90ac-1068-46ec-bb6a-b27f21af6...
• andy_ppp 2y ago
  Sure, but you know what you should do if you were trying to completely destroy the US? Side with Russia against our allies, put up huge trade barriers on our neighbours, torch the rules based order, look at the world as split into many hemispheres of influence, unpick all the institutions that protect the government and the US citizens from scams and replace them with the richest man in the world, stand down retaliatory measures against cyber threats, shake down European democracies you were protecting for mineral deals, undermine the very idea of truth itself and flood the zone with shit. You can absolutely forget competing with China under these circumstances, their system is starting to look better than the US will after another 1416 days of this.
• grahar64 2y ago
  Pretty sure that the USA isnt "embracing socialism" when it is currently going through the largest cuts to social programs in history.
• bigbacaloa 2y ago
  [dead]
• cvak 2y ago
  even the first picture is not correct so not reading all of that
• torlok 2y ago
  Nice to see that Europe remains a failed socialist hellscape even in the eyes of supposedly smart Americans. Thanks for taking the time to write this. Must've took a solid 4 hours of googling on ketamine.
• gloosx 2y ago
  A rather medieval way of thinking about gold - it is only scarce on Earth. The year is 2025, and asteroid mining is on the horizon, so gold supply could increase dramatically. Tying the dollar to something that may soon become abundant doesn’t seem like a brilliant idea.
• crakhamster01 2y ago
  I thought this was an interesting post with some outlandish statements, but I was willing to grapple with them because I thought the author was cooking up something new... Then I realized this was a post from geohot and felt very foolish the 15 minutes I spent thinking through his argument. Why is this so upvoted!
• cft 2y ago
  I call this DocuSign economy.
• ergl 2y ago
  You know this is a serious article written by someone who knows what they're talking about when it earnestly quotes Curtis Yarvin on its third paragraph /s
• KaiserPro 2y ago
  Going back to a gold standard will limit the money supply. This means that there will be less capital for building $thing. A gold standard means that when the economy gets overheated it pops, then contracts and you get deflation. This makes crashes last longer and harder. It requires greater fiscal discipline to overcome. The problem with the USA "empire" is that for a trading empire to work you need a plan, and stick to it. China has been quietly debt trapping a whole bunch of nations that have strategic things they need. They have been investing in infra and leasing it back to the host country. That takes planning, money vision and time. Something neither the president or congress have the ability to do. The USA in the 40/50s played a blinder, neatly using war debt and the martial plan to usurp the exhausted british empire's trading power. The dollar became the global reserve and all of the new global institutions were setup and housed in the USA.
  • tromp 2y ago
    Small typo fix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
    • KaiserPro 2y ago
      Yup sorry, Marshall the man, not Martial the state.
  • pif 2y ago
    > That takes planning, money vision and time. And a dictatorship. Democracy does not fit very well with long term plans, unless you either make huge efforts to ensure everyone gets their fair share (see Scandinavia) or you have a good plan for people being rich with not too much effort (see Switzerland and other tax havens). Concerning the USA, the divide between the extra rich and the general poor is nowadays too large to have a functioning country.
    • rsanek 2y ago
      income inequality today is about the same as it was 100 years ago. https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-countries-evolved-over-the-past-century https://ourworldindata.org/how-has-income-inequality-within-...
• alecco 2y ago
  He is a bit naive in general but he is mostly right. 1. Hyperfinancialization was a huge mistake (e.g. a house should not be an investment) 2. ZIRP was a huge mistake: revenue matters, the current SP500 P/E ratio is insane. [1] 3. Manufacturing matters if you want to keep the blue collar people engaged economically. It's bewildering how US Democrats turned their back on their political base, the proletariat. [1] https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings.php https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings... Now, what he gets wrong. China is also doing hyperfinancialization, just slightly different. Their housing market is crazy with tofu constructions and mostly empty cities. And they got already the Evergrande collapse. China also over-invests to take over markets, for example BYD is kind of a gigantic ponzi scheme [2]. [2] BYD’s Financial Time Bomb: A Replica of Evergrande's Collapse in the Making https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpTWsBRIQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpTWsBRIQs As many other people said, Trump is making a huge mistake on tariffs. He should be putting tariffs on the completed products but not on the supply chain. Block subsidized EVs but not the small parts for industry and make Europe do the same. This would prick the Chinese manufacturing bubble. And about importing talent, the system needs an overhaul. The H1B system is completely rigged and most of it brings cheap consultants for jobs easily sourced locally. Improve local competition. But bring the high earners. Make H1B for say 300k and up salaries for a minimum 5 year contract. And they should have a very strict English test, I'm fed up with people who don't bother to learn basic English because they live in bubbles of their country (and I'm foreign). Also, and this is probably controversial, make some Singapore-style limits on who immigrants can live with and marry, forcing very different cultures assimilate. No more ghettos of very different cultures fighting each other. See how that's turning up in Europe. Before you call me a n*zi, Soviets did something like that, too.
  • tucnak 2y ago
    Surely there's more to economics than controlling who you get to marry brother!
• tomhoward 2y ago
  There's an implicit assumption in the article and the comments here that "brain drain the world" is a free lunch. But does anyone think through to the end-game of that? That when you drain the most smart/productive people away from every other country, all those countries become less wealthy and more dysfunctional, leading to societal decline, poverty, resentment, radicalisation, war, etc? Aside from anything else, the other countries become less able to trade on good terms, and thus less able to buy US products/services. And so it becomes a self-defeating policy long-term. Good economists (and to be honest I don't know of many these days) know that there are no free lunches. We need to put as much effort into helping every other country develop and thrive - and by doing that we'll create many more customers for the products/services produced in our own countries, and everyone can end up richer. After writing this I wonder even if the economic and political dysfunction we're seeing in so much of the world as actually the inevitable consequence of decades of brain-draining, rather than an indication of the need for more of it.
  • maxerickson 2y ago
    That when you drain every smart/productive person away from every other country This is a ridiculous premise.
    • tomhoward 2y ago
      I edited that sentence to be less absolutist, but still, isn't this essentially what this article and many people are advocating? Attracting all the smartest and most productive people in the world to move to the US? How is that a mischaracterisation of the argument?
      • gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
        geohot is trying to convince himself not to be drained.. See https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-trust-society.html https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2024/11/03/high-... >Oh and in the IRL mean time, it’s very nice to be physically in a high trust society. Still working on opening an office in Hong Kong for those who want, salaries higher in person. Personally, I hope he'd flesh out more of that Bretton-Woods vs inflation argument (instead of fixating on gold, build an argument on that energy graph in the middle of it all (blackgold? stargold? hydrogold? datagold? Transmuted silicon ingots?))
• deleted 2y ago
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• mentalgear 2y ago
  Decoupling the Dollar from Gold (basically being able to print infinite money) opened the floodgates for all the FinScams that made up the last decades. Which ultimately led to an impoverished American Population and subsequent election of ignorant populist autocrats with no intent on fixing the broken system that brought them to power.
• mambru 2y ago
  Seems like George is inching towards learning about Triffin Dilemma[0]. To meet global demand, the issuer must supply enough currency, potentially weakening its own economy, but restricting supply would harm international trade and finance [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
• thegrto 2y ago
  On Lex, you said you want to have Elon as dictator. Dinner is served, enjoy your meal.
  • dudefeliciano 2y ago
    The issue with these contrarians, is that all they can do is scream loudly about how shitty everything is, without any real proposals on how to improve the world. We see this all the time: MAGA in the US, AFD in Germany...
    • desumeku 2y ago
      I would say that AfD has a pretty clear idea of what they think would improve the situation in Germany.
      • dudefeliciano 2y ago
        Their ideas are to deport immigrants, end the "woke agenda", stop supporting Ukraine, leave the euro, end green policies, get rid of the political establishment. All of these are purely reactionary and do not adress the problems Germany is facing. They did manage to galvanize a large portion of the electorate, and the last election debates were ridiculous, in that immigration seemed to be the only issue Germany needs to talk about. Not the collapsing infrastructure, not the loss of competetivity of German brands, not foreign policy, not the housing crisis. They have no proposals to improve these issues, and it doesn't even matter, because it's so easy to blind people with "immigrant bad".
        • desumeku 2y ago
          > and do not adress the problems Germany is facing According to you. The solutions to your complaints come pretty easily from solving AfD's, at least in my view.
          • dudefeliciano 2y ago
• gorpomon 2y ago
  | Now they put you in jail for memes. I'm going to nitpick on this line a bit, but bring it back to his core argument at the end. And I'm going to nitpick because in part, lines like this raise my hackles, but also because I think lines like this undercut his own argument: This type of modern conservatism (which is what this take from George is, and is very tied to a new type of non-religious social conservatism) has lost the plot when it comes to basic justice. Threats in person to people are just plain old crimes. But package them in a funny picture online and it's free reign. Free speech absolutists (not sure that's what George is, but just using this as a broad label) have pretty convenient takes when it comes to the basic rule of law. Often those takes are pretty circumstantial, in some cases they're more than happy to deem speech threatening, but in the vast majority of threatening speech people actually experience, not so much. And remember, if the law is arbitrarily applied, it makes people less interested in a democracy, but they don't seem bothered by that. Nor do they seem too bothered about the tens of thousands of people who suffer legitimate threats online daily. The social media companies know who those people are, down to what they had for breakfast that day. If we actually dared to, you know, enforce laws around threatening people our jails would be overflowing. I agree to a very minor degree: you can google "jailed for memes" and find some questionable choices, but to use your voice for those handfuls of situations when literally thousands upon thousands of people are legitimately threatened each day online? I think I can guess what your true intents are: its to further a brutal status quo so you continue feeling good. It doesn't help his argument that the sentence before this line bemoans the end of empire. And the frustrating thing is that one of his recommendations is kind of good: end the funny money system of business (not sure I agree with the how of the gold standard, but I'd have to defer to others there). But George just undercuts his argument with lines like this about memes, because if you pick it apart it just means he's advocating for the funny money version of enforcing the law. Ah, so George you're not against funny money in principle, it's more like "Funny money for me, but not for thee."
• cudgy 2y ago
  “There’s two simple steps to restore American greatness: 1) Brain drain the world. Work visas for every person who can produce more than they consume. I’m talking doubling the US population, bringing in all the factory workers, farmers, miners, engineers, literally anyone who produces value. Can we raise the average IQ of America to be higher than China? 2) Back the dollar by gold (not socially constructed crypto), and bring major crackdowns to finance to tie it to real world value. Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing. Instead, go produce something real and exchange it for gold.” The first step has been in existence for decades in the US. Also, it is not sustainable potentially destabilizes other countries. The second step may have some merit, but I seriously doubt it will turn things around by itself. China has largely built domination over the US and manufacturing by a combination of the hollowing out of US manufacturing and other capabilities due to short term profit goals of US companies and unfair trading practices, primarily due to imbalanced environmental policies, labor policy, and currency manipulation by China. Many free traders lambast protectionist policies, but protectionist policies are largely what made China what it is today.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • sp4cec0wb0y 2y ago
    The second step has no merit. Backing the money supply using gold would be a bigger disaster.
• MortyWaves 2y ago
  I highly recommend reading Bullshit Jobs, it’s the same theme as this.
• stakhanov 2y ago
  > 1) Brain drain the world. Work visas for [...] literally anyone who produces value. So, to put it in terms of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they want to drain the rest of the world of everybody but hairdressers and marketing experts?
  • sealeck 2y ago
    Sorry you think hairdressers don't create value? I find if I don't cut my hair this is very negative for me, and decreases my productivity!!
    • stakhanov 2y ago
      :-) Just to be clear: Referring to Douglas Adams here, who obviously meant that as satire. [1] Of course the serious core here is this: It's assumed here that it would be a trivial matter to be able to see who is adding value and who isn't. I would question that assumption. [1] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_...
• LeroyRaz 2y ago
  Protectionist polices can serve countries well. A lovely example is South Korea's entertainment industry (they prohibited displaying foreign cinema, and the resulting need to produce domestic cinema lead to them developing a strong and independent entertainment industry, examples: squid game, train to busan, etc...) It looks to me like the countries in the pie charts are ones with protectionism (e.g., China), while you are seem to be implicitly advocating for the opposite...
• kaonashi 2y ago
  it seems the chinese have figured out a different option, i wonder what institutional arrangements facilitate that?
• RivieraKid 2y ago
  This started out interesting but then the red flags started to pop up. Going to jail in Europe for posting memes, gold standard, salivating over doing something that benefits the US and hurts countries that are already poorer than the US. He has strong opinions on economics, but doesn't understand it. His points about economics are partially true but either subtly incorrect or interpreted incorrectly.
  • wahnfrieden 2y ago
    It's geohot Leading with a Curtis Yarvin citation as supporting material
    • DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
      Genuine question: Is George qualified to be making statements concerning economic outlook?
      • braiamp 2y ago
        Think about this: in a complex enough information system, there's almost no one that understands all of it, therefore you need teams to take care of certain functions and processes. Multiply that by 3x10^33 and you have a economic system. Creating a representative of society like the state and the state creating institutions responsible of education, housing, finances, security, food production, etc. is why countries advance as a collective of individuals. No individual, other than setting up lofty but ambiguous goals like reducing hunger/malnutrition, understand how or why certain goals should or not be set for certain sectors and why the processes are what they are to accomplish them.
      • hermitcrab 2y ago
        It does say at the bottom of the page "A home for poorly researched ideas". So I don't think even he is very confident in what he is saying. I assume they are just trying to be provocative. Judging by the number of comments here, it worked.
• BLKNSLVR 2y ago
  "Trading is not a job. Passive income is not a thing." Never a truer word spoken. Making money by moving money around. It shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be possible or at least should come with severe limitations that make it not possible to live off as a vocation. When person A 'wins', person B 'loses'. It is a specific skill set that some humans have, but it's not one that should be valued because it gives nothing back to society. In fact, it's a net negative.
  • matltc 2y ago
    > when person a wins, person b loses Only if one assumes that capital markets are zero-sum. They clearly are not. What you presumably are referring to when you talk about "moving money around" is purchase of an asset such as a stock or a bond. Rather than moving it around, you are making capital available to some entity in exchange for the expected (but not guaranteed) return on investment. Such transactions are mutually beneficial. Companies need capital to operate so they sell equity to willing investors in exchange for it. This is what makes growth rates seen over last century possible. That said, they are not fair in that only those with capital can participate. If one is living hand-to-mouth, one cannot afford to participate. Would be ideal if we could find a way to level the playing field and equalize access
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  >I know it’s hard to believe now, but Europe used to be the seat of power for the whole world. And Europe used that power to do some incredibly inhumane and shitty things, while enriching a tiny number of sociopaths. I had hoped we had improved as a species since then, but I don't think we have.
• arthurofbabylon 2y ago
  Welcome to the world of an engineer’s magical thinking in the world of politics, where hard-to-understand constraints get hand-waived away.
• Havoc 2y ago
  The wider point about producing actual stuff seems intuitively correct. The gold one - seems infeasible at this stage.
• dumbledoren 2y ago
  Good, simple run-down of how printing free cash like a banana republic through ZIRP by relying on the reserve currency status of the dollar hollowed out the US economy. It led to a scammy economy in which finance sharks printed money and generated financial assets out of thin air to bloate the value of everything. Stocks got overpriced to ~60x their value, real estate became an atrocious balloon. All the while without producing anything. It even infected the tech sector and turned it from something that actually produces value to a casino that bets on 'potential' balloons to profit from bloated, overvalued stocks and valuations. Why produce anything when you can just make gobs of cash by shoveling the infinite amount of free cash that is entering the economy anyway... All of this was at the cost of the physical goods and services. Now that the dollar has tangible competition, the entire scam is coming crashing down.
• schnitzelstoat 2y ago
  The gold standard makes no sense whatsoever, you want the money supply to be able to grow with the economy. Printing loads of money is bad, but a deflationary spiral due to a fixed money supply is even worse.
  • kibwen 2y ago
    These chuckleheads have had their brains reduced to scrambled egg by decades of propaganda telling them that inflation is solely caused by "printing money", while failing to apply even the Econ 101 lesson that the value of a dollar is subject to supply and demand, and holding supply constant means that the value will vary based on demand.
  • desumeku 2y ago
    When was the last time we had a deflationary spiral? The 1930s? And how long has kenyesian inflationism been trying to "fix" this issue? And exactly how many global economic crashes have happened under the system that is supposed to prevent them? Additionally, exactly how much damage has been caused by the destruction and pilfering of the dollar's value, and exactly how much good has inflationism done to offset that? Judging by how harshly everyone speaks about wanting to behead billionaires in the streets, I would say that things have "gone bad", in very light terms.
• mark_l_watson 2y ago
  Wow, fantastic analysis with enough ‘inconvenient truths’ to cause most people to ignore the hard message of where the USA stands in the world and some things we can try to sustain our economy and productivity. Are George's suggestions all practical? Sadly no, but I think it is generally good to have strong goals, and then achieve what we can.
• anentropic 2y ago
  I'm thinking probably no one should listen to this guy about anything
• rcdwealth 2y ago
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• fbn79 2y ago
  If I understand correctly, the definition of "largest trading partner" in the graphic is misleading because it is based exclusively on physical goods. But the US exports to many countries an impressive amount of digital services (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple). If we take into account the value of these services I think that many parts of the map would return to blue.
• econ 2y ago
  The mining industry is also subject to fakery. We don't have a database with all trades in it. We for the most part don't know what people are paying. The bid and ask prices are real? What part of those transactions involve things that only exist on paper? Fort Knox is the funniest example. For the financial theather it doesn't matter if there is any physical gold.
• xyst 2y ago
  Restoring “American greatness” is well beyond switching to the gold standard or “brain drain” of the world. We need a paradigm shift from what we call neoclassical economics and neoliberal economic theory. The author sort of hints at it but goes off the rails with his conclusions, but this country was built on a _strong_ middle class. Purchasing power of the middle class has been decimated/stagnated. Public companies no longer invest in the wellbeing of their employees (ie, increasing wages) or invest back into the company to improve efficiency and remain competitive. Instead we see massive amounts of that profit generated by labor invested into short term _stock manipulation_ via stock buybacks. The endless thirst for paper growth and infinite profitability is ultimately not sustainable. The end result of this rapacious capitalism is what we see today: - 40 year wage stagnation of middle class and minimal chance of upward mobility for poor - loss of collective bargaining and via non-existent unions or decrease in participation - loss of safety nets such as pensions - increased cost of living due to corporations endless need for paper growth (list can go on, but I’m typing on a phone)
• coolThingsFirst 2y ago
  It's honestly for the best. US has been doing two-faced politics for years. Immigration is apparently a solution but the politicians have been waging a war on immigrants for as long as I can remember. Even with the democrats it was the same thing. People who jump the border were the only sucesfull immigrants. Those trying the legal pathways are waiting for decades to get into the country. Now the message is again clear, be ultra rich and invest 5M to gain entry.
• codewhsprr 2y ago
  [dead]
• ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Are bits like "they put you in jail for memes" intended to drive away people with a basic grasp of reality so that he can start a cult? Or has he already driven away everyone and his cult aren't able to point out the absurdity as they are all down the same rabbithole?
  • sp4cec0wb0y 2y ago
    Hit it right on the nose. This cult already exists and its easy to detect. Simply, do they treat Elon Musk like a intellectual god? Lex Fridman, Geo, and that bunch all happen to be a part of the same pseudointellectual cult. That is the rabbit hole.
• LuciOfStars 2y ago
  Wait, that's geohot! Geohot the console hacker!
• sp527 2y ago
  Somebody please explain Dunning-Kruger to Hotz. The secondhand embarrassment reading this is nearly unbearable.
• jaybrendansmith 2y ago
  Tell me you flunked Econ 101/102 without telling me you flunked Econ 101/102. The ignorance in this article is blowing my mind.
• keybored 2y ago
  > The Demoralization I don’t have time for these random words that blogs invent which makes sense if you followed the author for the past thirty entries but not if you just found this one random article. Demoralize who? Because I can’t imagine the average citizen wanting to get on board with your nakedly imperialist plan. The thing about cheering for “your country” doing well in terms of geopolitics is that you are either a completely misguided tool since the geopolitical interests have nothing to do with the interests of the average citizen. Or you are so wealthy and powerful that they do. In which case the average citizen has no common interests with you.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > The main product made by the US is the dollar, Very good point and one that not a lot of people understand. There is also a tipping point at which governments will look elsewhere for a reserve and trading currency. Yes, today the USD is king, but that's in part because China's efforts to make the RMB a reserve and trade currency are half-hearted as they conflict with its efforts to retain an iron control over its currency exchange rate. If the USD loses its preeminant status as _the_ global currency, the US is in very deep trouble. This plays into the Middle East in ways that many people don't realize. The Gulf countries only sell their oil for USD (in exchange for protection from the US). The US has a very big stake in that continuing to be the case. Now granted, they are less important than they used to be because of fracking, but still a major player. (Some people say the invasion of Iraq was because Sadaam threatened to start selling oil for EUR instead of USD. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's definitely a plausible reason.)
• derelicta 2y ago
  It's kind of sad that the author and most readers here do not understand that it's the same socialism they decry-but don't understand- that made China a great economic powerhouse and a stable democracy.
• amai 2y ago
  „Brain drain the world.“ Why? You could also invest in better schools and education in the US. A smarter population would also be good for democracy, because they would vote smarter. But I guess it is too late now. Dictators don‘t need a smart population, they need a dump one, so they can do whatever they want.