4 ms·

Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a go

Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a good 20-50 years.

techblueberry 1y ago
I do wonder, and this is probably way too optimistic - but if China or another country were to open their economy, I wonder if there would be benefit to perhaps some of the wealth leaving the US, especially as too many of our modern businesses are too extractive.
- davidw 1y ago
  What's kind of depressing about this moment in general is that there isn't really a 'shining beacon on the hill'. If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. Europe is good in a lot of ways, but kind of muddling along in others - and won't even policy democratic backsliders like Hungary.
  - esafak 1y ago
    Canada could benefit.
    - nawgz 1y ago
      As a Canadian... Canada is weak, poor, and corrupted by the same plague that has lead America to where it sits. The rule of law is holding on a bit tighter, and quality of life isn't as bleak as the States, but Canada needs some serious reforms to break the hold of the elite class. Seriously, look at how the temporary foreign worker program enriched the elites and then is used by their centralized media machines to radicalize the population against immigrants. It's a bad joke, and this exact regulatory capture runs deep and wide.
      - I-M-S 1y ago
        Also, the fact power is distributed among three levels of government that are rarely in alignment translates into severe dysfunction. Just like the US, Canada has lost the ability to build.
    - I-M-S 1y ago
      To say Canada could benefit from USA's descent is like saying one's arms benefit from the person becoming paraplegic.
  - mullingitover 1y ago
    > If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US The US only has one additional political party beyond China has, and arguably both US parties are simply 'wings' of a larger party owned by the actual ruling class, something neither party wishes to acknowledge. When viewed through this lens the US and China aren't that different politically, and at the same time China is far more meritocratic and promotes leaders on a much more results-oriented basis. It's like a household where the voters are the kids and the leaders are the parents. In China the parents are happily married and communicate with each other. Kids can't really manipulate the parents, but the parents are reasonable and the household is demonstrably a successful one. In the US the parents are bitterly divorced, bickering, and are easily played against each other by the kids. The household is a disaster, in constant disarray and the kids are going to end up dropping out of high school. However, at the end of the day both of these households are overseen by the same leadership system: the parents.
    - nxor 1y ago
      Yeah, when Trump was in the news for having said in another world him and Biden would have been friends, it was celebrated, but to me it was just one more indicator that they have more in common with each other than with the people who put their faith in the one or other. Their lifestyles seem similar, the people around them are similar ...
    - davidw 1y ago
      Uh, in the US I can (still) criticize and mock the people running things. That's pretty important to me.
      - NoGravitas 1y ago
        Even when criticizing and mocking the people running things doesn't have any effect? The point of free speech was supposed to be that you'd be able to make material changes in your living conditions and government policies by convincing people that they should be made. That's not really true anymore for anyone in the US except the very, very wealthy. But don't take my word for it: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th... What would happen if we took a more consequentialist look at democracy rather than caring mainly about the forms?
  - tmountain 1y ago
    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Kinda like the adult equivalent of learning that Santa isn’t real or finding out your parents are getting a divorce. I believe that we put too much faith in our “bedrock institutions” because we were taught to. Now, the facade is gone, and we’re left to figure things out as best we can. I don’t have a clue where the future will take us (nobody does). But, there’s usually some good that comes with the bad, and I do have the feeling that we’re living through history, much more so than I ever thought we’d get to. If we are truly witnessing the downfall of the United States, well… it’s going to be very interesting to say the least.
    - davidw 1y ago
      It's certainly not like it was perfect here in the past or that the mythology reflected reality, but it felt like there was a fairly long arc of 'getting better in fits and starts' The cold war was over and we stopped supporting heinous dictators. Everyone could vote. Gay people got the right to marry. Things weren't perfect, but we had the means to work hard to make them better.
      - tmountain 1y ago
        Yeah, it felt like the U.S. was stumbling towards a more just and equitable future, and media and popular culture perpetuated a narrative that we were MUCH further along as a country and culture than we actually were. To the point of just representing a false reality. Then, all of the sudden, reality came crashing down, and it became pretty evident that a huge chunk of the country doesn't give a damn about any of that stuff, nor can they be bothered to waste a minute worrying about the consequences of re-electing a felon, etc. They just want cheap eggs, which they're still not getting, but they are getting an entirely new type of governance, which looks pretty darn authoritarian, but who am I to say...?
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    >If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. as a European who frequently travels to both, in recent history it was at an American airport, not China that I was being asked for my social media profiles and had a 30 minute discussion because they didn't believe me when I told them that I don't actively maintain a social media presence. Of course China has no free discourse as such, but at least there is a gentleman's agreement in the sense that if I don't stage a protest they'll not bother me, whereas the US now increasingly looks like Latin America, where you need to be afraid of being harangued by some goon squad of people hired off the streets at the behest of some kleptocrat
    - davidw 1y ago
      That sounds like "managing your expectations", as in the US is not supposed to be like China, but is becoming more like it. There's still a ways to fall though.
      - Barrin92 1y ago
        >but is becoming more like it it isn't though, that's the point. It's already more disorderly, arbitrary and unpredictable, the point is you have no expectation when you go to the US these days. You're not getting Prussian/Chinese autocracy in America, it lacks the people for it. You're going straight to Turkmenistan with the leader building himself golden statues of his favorite horses on the taxpayers dime, not the shiny trains
- mschuster91 1y ago
  Forget it. As long as China remains a dictatorship, investors will not pump in too much money - it's too uncertain what happens to your investment. The reality is that everyone in China who managed to build up some wealth sooner or later exfiltrates it despite capital controls. And Russia prior to the war was similar. That's a large part of why London's and Vancouver's real estate markets got screwed up so hard - tons of real estate just sitting empty because it's just a proxy, a storage for wealth in a country that has laws and follows laws instead of the will of a dictator.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    All billionaires still in China (and some much who've left) exist only at the pleasure of Xi. I don't think Jeff or Mark or Warren want to worry about being disappeared. I think you're probably right here.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  Everyone always complains that if you raise taxes, rich people will "leave", with the assumption that only the richest can actually run productive companies, which obviously isn't the case. On the other hand, there must be some fraction of the truly richest that are just relentlessly good at accruing wealth, and not much else, no? Wouldn't you _want_ those people to leave?
  - techblueberry 1y ago
    I think we have too many billionaires and not enough millionaires. I’ve seen growing arguments, even on the right about wealth inequality being an issue. Like specifically too much of the S&P 500 is tied up in 10 companies. And this video on a bro-podcast where a right wing marketer/economist talks about wealth consolidation: https://youtu.be/ajGmL1gus9A?si=5Vf4dW_7jtK8A5y2 https://youtu.be/ajGmL1gus9A?si=5Vf4dW_7jtK8A5y2 Specifically something like “I’m right-wing on income but not on wealth”
legitster 1y ago
In the US, the kids are doing poorly. But unlike China, there is actually a large number of children being born. One of the deep ironies of the current world order is that as America recedes in power, other countries are receding even faster (and less documented). America has too much in the way of natural resources and favorable demographics and can continue to fail forward for a long time.
- nxor 1y ago
  What do you mean by fail? Even if we have flaws we still seem to have a decent education system
- johnsillings 1y ago
  https://www.childtrends.org/publications/fertility-rate-united-states https://www.childtrends.org/publications/fertility-rate-unit... edit: fertility rate in the US is near historic lows. maybe you're thinking of something else re: demographic trends, but that seems pretty alarming to me.
- coliveira 1y ago
  Economic problems create their own demographic problems. The current government policies against immigration are a sure way to reduce population growth in the US for the next decades.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  Looking at fertility rates online, the most recent numbers I could find is 1.6 in the US and 1.4 in the EU. Both indicate population decline. China is at 1.7, but I am not sure I trust the number if they report it themselves. Either way, I have no idea where you take that there's a large number of children being born.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- greygoo222 1y ago
  China's fertility rate, even assuming it does not improve, won't cause problems for several decades. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-anything-knock-china-off-its https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-anything-knock-china-off-i...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Between this, Chinas rise (the lights-out factories etc) and the gestures around general atmosphere here in the USA it really doesnt seem like we're in for a good 20-50 years.

techblueberry 1y ago

I do wonder, and this is probably way too optimistic - but if China or another country were to open their economy, I wonder if there would be benefit to perhaps some of the wealth leaving the US, especially as too many of our modern businesses are too extractive.

davidw 1y ago
What's kind of depressing about this moment in general is that there isn't really a 'shining beacon on the hill'. If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. Europe is good in a lot of ways, but kind of muddling along in others - and won't even policy democratic backsliders like Hungary.
- esafak 1y ago
  Canada could benefit.
  - nawgz 1y ago
    As a Canadian... Canada is weak, poor, and corrupted by the same plague that has lead America to where it sits. The rule of law is holding on a bit tighter, and quality of life isn't as bleak as the States, but Canada needs some serious reforms to break the hold of the elite class. Seriously, look at how the temporary foreign worker program enriched the elites and then is used by their centralized media machines to radicalize the population against immigrants. It's a bad joke, and this exact regulatory capture runs deep and wide.
    - I-M-S 1y ago
      Also, the fact power is distributed among three levels of government that are rarely in alignment translates into severe dysfunction. Just like the US, Canada has lost the ability to build.
  - I-M-S 1y ago
    To say Canada could benefit from USA's descent is like saying one's arms benefit from the person becoming paraplegic.
- mullingitover 1y ago
  > If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US The US only has one additional political party beyond China has, and arguably both US parties are simply 'wings' of a larger party owned by the actual ruling class, something neither party wishes to acknowledge. When viewed through this lens the US and China aren't that different politically, and at the same time China is far more meritocratic and promotes leaders on a much more results-oriented basis. It's like a household where the voters are the kids and the leaders are the parents. In China the parents are happily married and communicate with each other. Kids can't really manipulate the parents, but the parents are reasonable and the household is demonstrably a successful one. In the US the parents are bitterly divorced, bickering, and are easily played against each other by the kids. The household is a disaster, in constant disarray and the kids are going to end up dropping out of high school. However, at the end of the day both of these households are overseen by the same leadership system: the parents.
  - nxor 1y ago
    Yeah, when Trump was in the news for having said in another world him and Biden would have been friends, it was celebrated, but to me it was just one more indicator that they have more in common with each other than with the people who put their faith in the one or other. Their lifestyles seem similar, the people around them are similar ...
  - davidw 1y ago
    Uh, in the US I can (still) criticize and mock the people running things. That's pretty important to me.
    - NoGravitas 1y ago
      Even when criticizing and mocking the people running things doesn't have any effect? The point of free speech was supposed to be that you'd be able to make material changes in your living conditions and government policies by convincing people that they should be made. That's not really true anymore for anyone in the US except the very, very wealthy. But don't take my word for it: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th... What would happen if we took a more consequentialist look at democracy rather than caring mainly about the forms?
- tmountain 1y ago
  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Kinda like the adult equivalent of learning that Santa isn’t real or finding out your parents are getting a divorce. I believe that we put too much faith in our “bedrock institutions” because we were taught to. Now, the facade is gone, and we’re left to figure things out as best we can. I don’t have a clue where the future will take us (nobody does). But, there’s usually some good that comes with the bad, and I do have the feeling that we’re living through history, much more so than I ever thought we’d get to. If we are truly witnessing the downfall of the United States, well… it’s going to be very interesting to say the least.
  - davidw 1y ago
    It's certainly not like it was perfect here in the past or that the mythology reflected reality, but it felt like there was a fairly long arc of 'getting better in fits and starts' The cold war was over and we stopped supporting heinous dictators. Everyone could vote. Gay people got the right to marry. Things weren't perfect, but we had the means to work hard to make them better.
    - tmountain 1y ago
      Yeah, it felt like the U.S. was stumbling towards a more just and equitable future, and media and popular culture perpetuated a narrative that we were MUCH further along as a country and culture than we actually were. To the point of just representing a false reality. Then, all of the sudden, reality came crashing down, and it became pretty evident that a huge chunk of the country doesn't give a damn about any of that stuff, nor can they be bothered to waste a minute worrying about the consequences of re-electing a felon, etc. They just want cheap eggs, which they're still not getting, but they are getting an entirely new type of governance, which looks pretty darn authoritarian, but who am I to say...?
- Barrin92 1y ago
  >If you don't like autocracy, China is way worse than the US. as a European who frequently travels to both, in recent history it was at an American airport, not China that I was being asked for my social media profiles and had a 30 minute discussion because they didn't believe me when I told them that I don't actively maintain a social media presence. Of course China has no free discourse as such, but at least there is a gentleman's agreement in the sense that if I don't stage a protest they'll not bother me, whereas the US now increasingly looks like Latin America, where you need to be afraid of being harangued by some goon squad of people hired off the streets at the behest of some kleptocrat
  - davidw 1y ago
    That sounds like "managing your expectations", as in the US is not supposed to be like China, but is becoming more like it. There's still a ways to fall though.
    - Barrin92 1y ago
      >but is becoming more like it it isn't though, that's the point. It's already more disorderly, arbitrary and unpredictable, the point is you have no expectation when you go to the US these days. You're not getting Prussian/Chinese autocracy in America, it lacks the people for it. You're going straight to Turkmenistan with the leader building himself golden statues of his favorite horses on the taxpayers dime, not the shiny trains
mschuster91 1y ago
Forget it. As long as China remains a dictatorship, investors will not pump in too much money - it's too uncertain what happens to your investment. The reality is that everyone in China who managed to build up some wealth sooner or later exfiltrates it despite capital controls. And Russia prior to the war was similar. That's a large part of why London's and Vancouver's real estate markets got screwed up so hard - tons of real estate just sitting empty because it's just a proxy, a storage for wealth in a country that has laws and follows laws instead of the will of a dictator.
- kulahan 1y ago
  All billionaires still in China (and some much who've left) exist only at the pleasure of Xi. I don't think Jeff or Mark or Warren want to worry about being disappeared. I think you're probably right here.
ambicapter 1y ago
Everyone always complains that if you raise taxes, rich people will "leave", with the assumption that only the richest can actually run productive companies, which obviously isn't the case. On the other hand, there must be some fraction of the truly richest that are just relentlessly good at accruing wealth, and not much else, no? Wouldn't you _want_ those people to leave?
- techblueberry 1y ago
  I think we have too many billionaires and not enough millionaires. I’ve seen growing arguments, even on the right about wealth inequality being an issue. Like specifically too much of the S&P 500 is tied up in 10 companies. And this video on a bro-podcast where a right wing marketer/economist talks about wealth consolidation: https://youtu.be/ajGmL1gus9A?si=5Vf4dW_7jtK8A5y2 https://youtu.be/ajGmL1gus9A?si=5Vf4dW_7jtK8A5y2 Specifically something like “I’m right-wing on income but not on wealth”

legitster 1y ago

In the US, the kids are doing poorly. But unlike China, there is actually a large number of children being born. One of the deep ironies of the current world order is that as America recedes in power, other countries are receding even faster (and less documented). America has too much in the way of natural resources and favorable demographics and can continue to fail forward for a long time.

nxor 1y ago
What do you mean by fail? Even if we have flaws we still seem to have a decent education system
johnsillings 1y ago
https://www.childtrends.org/publications/fertility-rate-united-states https://www.childtrends.org/publications/fertility-rate-unit... edit: fertility rate in the US is near historic lows. maybe you're thinking of something else re: demographic trends, but that seems pretty alarming to me.
coliveira 1y ago
Economic problems create their own demographic problems. The current government policies against immigration are a sure way to reduce population growth in the US for the next decades.
surgical_fire 1y ago
Looking at fertility rates online, the most recent numbers I could find is 1.6 in the US and 1.4 in the EU. Both indicate population decline. China is at 1.7, but I am not sure I trust the number if they report it themselves. Either way, I have no idea where you take that there's a large number of children being born.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
greygoo222 1y ago
China's fertility rate, even assuming it does not improve, won't cause problems for several decades. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-anything-knock-china-off-its https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/can-anything-knock-china-off-i...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]