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> 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 t

• rayiner 2y ago
  > Brain-draining the world is really the key to cementing American Hegemony in a post-Cold War world. Why should we want that instead of an orderly, well-governed democracy? Do you think people in Sweden or Denmark are upset their countries aren't hegemons? And what would that do to the country? Do you really think that, say, the top 5% of India and China (100 million people) would do better maintaining a democracy than median Iowans? That's a real bet that your assumptions about how society works actually reflect reality.
  • rat87 2y ago
    India despite flaws is a democracy same as the US. It's a very different country then China. Plenty of immigrants from tyrannical countries are as if not more committed to democracy as those born here And just because someone was born in China or India it doesn't make them any less American then someone born in Iowa. Their children might be born in Iowa
    • rayiner 2y ago
      Democracy isn't created by intentions or "commitment," but rather the culture of the people, their attitudes, and mental processes. An Iowan born in Iowa to Iowan parents who were born to Iowan parents is steeped from birth in a culture that is very different from someone born in India or China--or even the American-born children of Indians and Chinese immigrants. Immigrants may become legally American overnight, but they don't become culturally American overnight. Cultural attitudes are extrmely durable (https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-transplant https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...). My mom has lived here for 36 years, and she's still a low-social-trust south asian who has distinctly south asian views on credentialism, education, social hierarchy, etc. Are those attitudes compatible with the kind of egalitarian, self-governed democracy Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about? I am skeptical that's true at scale. Even having grown up here, my cultural attitudes are very different--and again, distinctly south asian--compared to my wife's (whose family has been here since the early 1700s). If you took 1,000 people like my wife and put them on an island, you'd recreate America--including the parts of America I find perplexing and frustrating. I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.
      • ryandamm 2y ago
        I think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes. Even differing opinions on the functioning of democracy, though I personally think some opinions denigrating democracy are a bit out of bounds and "unamerican" -- though that's obviously a "no true Scotsman" argument, I'm sticking to it. I guess I'm just arguing for a more expansive view of what constitutes an American. If it was some precious fragile thing that gets diluted by immigration and threatened by cultural mixing and new ideas, well... Oh... darnit.
        • rayiner 2y ago
          > I think America in its best expression is an amalgamation of many different backgrounds and attitudes. In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance. In every multicultural society, the democratic rapport that people have with each other ends up being replaced with relationships mediated by an increasingly large and bureaucratic government that can reconcile the conflicting cultures and interests. Democracy is reduced to mere voting.
          • dctoedt 2y ago
            > In my view, the best expression of America is somewhere like Iowa--a flat society with intense, local self-governance. You sound very Jeffersonian, but methinks you're idealizing Iowa — have you ever spent time there? Anecdata: My dad's family is from Iowa — his people were small-holding farmers and village shopkeepers whose immigrant ancestors had come to Iowa from Germany. My dad and his siblings each left the state as soon as they reached adulthood and never once returned to live. Neither I, nor any of my siblings, nor any of our first cousins have ever lived there, nor have many of our second cousins (although we used to go back regularly to visit relatives). Feel free to conjecture why that might be.
      • cuteboy19 2y ago
        after jan6 we can pretty much put all asian democracies (minus pakistan) above the US in terms of democracy. SK recently had a similar coup-lite situation, not tolerated there. accepting loss is a core tenet of democracy
    • hayst4ck 2y ago
      How does one commit themselves to democracy?
  • lxgr 2y ago
    My suspicion is that for a lot of people that grew up in and only know the US, there's a sense of impending doom if "American hegemony" ever were to be replaced by something else. But since there's no real practical experience of how that would actually feel (or rather, how a very high quality of life and subjective happiness are possible without an US salary in many other countries), they instead project from something that does exist in the US: Downward social mobility. (And given how US society treats its less fortunate in many instances, that seems scary to me too.)
    • kawaiikouhai 2y ago
      Exactly. I had this exact thought experiment of "What if America were no longer Hegemon". So, I looked at other historic examples. The British, Dutch, and Spanish. (You can add German/Austrian and the French, close contenders). They're all still very well-off!
      • lxgr 2y ago
        I actually grew up in one of these, and I fully agree. Yes, my country was significantly larger and more influential a century ago. It even was an empire, with an emperor and all! But no, I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me.
        • sebastianz 2y ago
          > I don't feel like the average person born back then had a better life than me. This is true for (almost) anywhere in the world. Everybody has a better life _on average_ than 100 years ago. > It even was an empire, with an emperor and all! But the fact that your country was the capital of an empire a century ago is a large reason for why it is richer now, and generational wealth was indeed passed on. This perhaps is visible if you look at countries that used to be subservient to yours, in empire times. Are they not - relatively - still poorer than the former empire capital?
          • lxgr 2y ago
  • unclebucknasty 2y ago
    >Do you think people in Sweden or Denmark are upset their countries aren't hegemons? Funny that you chose those two countries. Denmark is a founding member of NATO. Sweden is one of the two most recent admitted, almost a year ago. My point is that it's U.S. hegemony that has protected its own democracy and that of liberal democratic Europe to a large extent. Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they haven't needed to be.
    • svara 2y ago
      > Sweden and Denmark haven't been hegemons because they haven't needed to be. That's exactly right, and I used nearly exactly those words in a recent comment. Important to note: The free world - economically advanced democracies excluding the US - is the largest economy in the world, larger than the US by about 30%, with an even larger population. These countries have a historically unprecedented incentive to work much more closely together now, and there is a massive void to fill.
      • pastage 2y ago
        That is not how it works, many of those countries will need to align with China or be conquered.
        • svara 2y ago
          We're long past the point where we can say "how it works" from how it used to work. The incentive is there now, when it wasn't before. Cooperation emerges under external pressures, almost as a rule.
        • Hikikomori 2y ago
          Align with China so they can protect us against the US?
    • t-3 2y ago
      U.S. hegemony has also destroyed and subverted democracies and propped up very illiberal dictatorships. Protecting democracy for white countries only isn't exactly what I think of when I think "world protector of liberal democracy".
• mjevans 2y ago
  Also great about an easy pathway to CITIZENSHIP, rather than a 'work visa' is suddenly they aren't a serf to be abused by the employer (any more than any other citizen at least), and thus grow the market rather than undercut employment.
• matwood 2y ago
  > Brain-draining the world is really the key to cementing American Hegemony in a post-Cold War world. One of the keys. Others are the USD as the defacto world reserve currency, the ability to project military might anywhere, and the US's ability to keep other countries from growing their militaries too much (making the other items in this list easier to manage). The US is quickly throwing all this away though.
  • consp 2y ago
    Not the any% speedrun I think I was going to see but definitely the top runner right now. While the USD is still the de facto reserve currency for some, many larger countries and blocks have made sure they are not reliant on it. Up to the point where weakening or strengthening the value of the dollar is far less than a power it used to be.
    • rat87 2y ago
      They are reliant on it. The US is still the currency used for trade. The world economy is tied to the dollar and outside of countries we've sanctioned no country has made large steps towards using something else because using something else would be more complicated and would cost them money
      • cookiemonsieur 2y ago
        > They are reliant on it. The US is still the currency used for trade. The world economy is tied to the dollar and outside of countries we've sanctioned no country has made large steps towards using something else because using something else would be more complicated and would cost them money What happens when you "sanction" a significant portion of the world because they don't share your "values" or want to play ball elsewhere ? Well guess what ? These countries will inevitably look at each other and form their own trade routes and alliances. Unfortunately, no hegemony is eternal.
        • rfrey 2y ago
          What sanctions are you referring to?
• bloppe 2y ago
  Too bad we're going to do the exact opposite of all that for at least the next 4 years
• Aeolun 2y ago
  So many spies would happily take up that offer.