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Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'
- jleyank 10mo agoTom Clancy used this as the catalyst for one of his many techno war stories - something along the lines of “if you piss off your creditors they won’t give you any more money”. Think it was bear and dragon, the China Russia war. Debt is sold, and the purchaser’s willingness to buy sets the interest rate. And they don’t like uncertainty. The us detached itself from the world after ww I and it seems to want to do it again. The tariffs might recapitulate the 30’s but that decade didn’t turn out well at all. So I hope the historical behaviour breaks down first.
- rorylawless 10mo agohttps://archive.ph/CcFhs https://archive.ph/CcFhs
- filterfish 10mo agoThank you. This is what I was looking for.
- mrweasel 10mo agoLargely the US isn't losing control, it's giving it up willingly. For what reason, no one knows yet.
- 3D30497420 10mo agoI came to the comments to say exactly this. I think the reason is a combination of incompetence, ignorance, and greed.
- pfdietz 10mo agoIt's because it's not worth the expense. Vanity is a hell of a drug, but it has its limits.
- squidbeak 10mo agoA large part of the lifestyle Americans enjoy is owed to its control of the world.
- pfdietz 10mo agoHow is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun? The benefits would seem to flow to those countries that would have been swallowed up without Pax Americana.
- danmaz74 10mo ago> How is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun? No, but the USA is getting a lot of stuff in exchange for $$ which it can print for basically free. Consumers in the USA have benefitted a lot from this, which partly compensated the fact that more and more of the pie is going to the richest instead of the average American.
- pfdietz 10mo agoDollar holdings outside the US come to about $1 trillion. What you are talking about there are holdings of debt. Yes, US prosperity has been propped up by borrowing increasing amounts of money. This is not sustainable. One can view Trump's tariff actions as preparatory for US debt default. This would crash the dollar and make imports much more expensive.
- mattmaroon 10mo agoIt’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to. I don’t agree with Trump about much but he’s correct that the other liberal democracies have been more than happy to have us foot the bill for keeping the wolves at bay while looking down on us for doing it.
- pfdietz 10mo ago
- Molitor5901 10mo agoI think the US is giving up control willingly and turning more isolationist. It has been building for some time but I do not thing it is forced. It is a deliberate policy shift turning away from trying to control and police the world. America is pushed in and on to other countries and societies that a retraction might be the best thing
- piva00 10mo agoI don't believe it's trying to give up control, the current US administration don't want to be the world police but still wants the control given by being the world police, both can't exist at the same time and some sort of reckoning will happen.
- pjc50 10mo agoThey're currently threatening to invade Venezuela! Mind you, another consequence of the regime is that nobody knows what's real and what's keyfabe any more. They were also threatening to invade Canada, lost a colossal amount of goodwill as a result, and got bored and moved on.
- QuadmasterXLII 10mo agoThe US is currently starting a war with Venezuela. You are ascribing coherence and deliberateness where I don’t see evidence for its presence.
- giardini 10mo agoThe US is pulling back from NATO and simultaneously re-asserting dominance in the Americas, i.e., the Munroe Doctrine, which has suffered setbacks in recent decades.
- mmh0000 10mo agoYou gotta look into the Venezuela thing further. It's more geopolitical, specifically about reducing Chinese influence in South America. Now, whether that's needed or whether the US is handling it in a "good way" is all up for debate. But there is a deliberateness. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Venezuela_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Venezuela_relati... * https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/china-breaks-with-latin-america-and-brics-allies-over-venezuela-election-fraud/ https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/china-breaks-with-latin-amer... * https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlikely-aid-maduro-if-us-acts-could-benefit-fallout-analysts https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3335116/china-unlike...
- thrance 10mo agoTrump's project is to turn the US into a playground for oligarchs such as himself, like in Putin's Russia. It doesn't matter if the US becomes way poorer and weaker in the process. "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven".
- tgv 10mo agoThiel and Musk want to decentralize as much as possible, and split everything into small autonomies, so they can pit different jurisdictions against each other, and pressure/manipulate them. That's fairly sure. The goal has never been revealed, but one can assume it is not because it hurts their interests.
- fidotron 10mo agoThe Europeans want it both ways: they want the US to pay for and be responsible for policing the world, but to do it the way the Europeans want with them free to criticize the US and act morally superior the whole time. This act has become utterly tiresome.
- alchemist1e9 10mo agoNot only that, which I agree with, but also consider the US demographics are extremely advantageous over other nations. There is a chance the US isn’t losing control but is pulling away because the rest of the world has increasingly less to offer it. The US is energy and food independent and with increased automation is on a path to industrial independence. As a small example, Chinese had thought they had the US on hook with rare earths, well it’s starting to look now like that threat led to Americans looking around for them and then discovering, oh wait, we do have them, let’s go dig them out, and in 5 years it’s possible the US will be rare earth independent. What happens when the US is increasingly independent and isolationist? do you really think that will be a problem for it? or instead a problem for others?
- pjc50 10mo ago> want the US to pay for and be responsible for policing the world Not really convinced that it's that way round, that Europe actually wants much of this "policing" to be done at all rather than being dragged into it. Until Ukraine, which is the exact bit of world policing that Republicans no longer recognize as crime.
- seydor 10mo agothose things are usually hard to discriminate
- tmountain 10mo agoThe America First agenda is predicated by isolationism. You have a demagogue with whom nobody is willing to say "no" and an army of self serving sycophants lined up to try and win favors. The political messaging is all built around zero sum language and arguments, and toughness is demonstrated by punitive measures taken against any allies deemed "weaker" than the U.S. (basically everyone). Those who know where this will lead are unwilling to speak up and the rest follow. Everyone involved seems to be in it for short-term transactional benefits, and nobody seems to acknowledge or care about what the long term outcomes will be for the country.
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago> Those who know where this will lead are unwilling to speak up and the rest follow. They did speak up. And they lost the popular vote. Democracy is only as good as its voters. A country is only as good as its people. Replace good with productive/sane/not corrupt, etc.
- OgsyedIE 10mo agoNot only did they lose the popular vote, they lost it repeatedly. Although it was only a matter of degree at each step, Clinton was more isolationist than Bush and Dole. Bush was more isolationist than Gore and Kerry. Obama was more isolationist than McCain and Romney. Trump was more isolationist than Clinton, Biden was more isolationist than first-term Trump and Trump beat Biden last year partially on the basis of becoming much more isolationist than his first term version, surpassing Biden.
- Hendrikto 10mo agoIf you do not get votes, it’s not the voters who failed, it is you. If politicians got that through their heads, and started trying to convince voters on their own merit, instead of simply trash-talking their opponents and telling people they voted “wrong”, they would start to get things done again, and we could actually solve real problems.
- 5upplied_demand 10mo ago
- next_xibalba 10mo agoYou cannot separate monstrously expensive calamities like Vietnam or Iraq from the military-industry complex that is the foundation for the U.S.’s role as the defender of the west. So many thousands of lives lost or ruined, trillions spent. To say nothing of the millions of foreign civilians killed and maimed. The American people are sick to death of it. Some politicians smartly harnessed that sentiment.
- watwut 10mo ago> The American people are sick to death of it. Some politicians smartly harnessed that sentiment. Except that MAGA cheers on new wars. They prefer "ministry of the war", they like the threats to annex Canada and Greenland. They enjoy fishermen boats being destroyed and want to bomb Venezuela. This is not about distaste toward foreign wars. This is about wanting more of them, wanting more torture and wanting more violence. This is about wanting to feel and appear more manly and getting there via more violence.
- derelicta 10mo agoI mean its hand has been forced. That's good imo, maybe my country will be able to regain its sovereignty after all.
- rayiner 10mo agoWhy should we control the world? It’s very expensive running an empire, and all it has accomplished is getting people around the world to hate us. Do you know how much people in my home country hate Reagan and Nixon (who opposed our independence because of some stupid alliance with Pakistan against Russia)? Much more than they hate Trump.
- Ekaros 10mo agoFrom outside massive wealth extraction and exploitation of less powerful countries. Worked long enough, but cracks are starting to appear.
- rayiner 10mo agoI think folks in my home country could at least understand wealth extraction. But what wealth has America extracted from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Iraq, etc? The Chinese got the oil contracts in Iraq. What’s insane about America’s foreign policy is that it costs huge amounts of money, pisses off most of the third world, and doesn’t even seem to result in any flow of wealth to the U.S.
- apawloski 10mo agoI remember you trying to defend the tariff policies as a defense against China. Do you still honestly perceive China as a threat to American power and livelihood? If so, how do you square this stance of conceding global power to China at the same time? At the very least, surely you can see the importance of global supply chains to American manufacturing that you want to protect? I'm asking these questions specifically based on your arguments in the past. I don't understand how you can believe America can thrive in a world without allies and trade partners.
- rayiner 10mo agoI believe in the pre-World War I Republican policies that led to a highly developed industrial economy with few commitments to international security. We are at risk from China because we outsourced our industrial capacity to China. The U.S. used its industrial capacity to build the largest air force and navy in the world overnight when it entered World War II. Today, China is the country that has that capacity.
- aatd86 10mo agoI'd posit that it is trying to wrestle it back actually. It lost it when their industries went abroad. From a global perspective this is good because it makes peace more sustainable if the world is interlinked and interconnected. National interests being distributed all over. Alignment of incentives. The issue is that it is not without friction. People's interests don't align so flawlessly. The knee-jerk reaction is protectionism but it is too late. The other parts of the world have caught up. And that is normal and sound. It rebalances the world. It is a new equilibrium. This is just the natural way for most closed systems where there is a gradient. What is weird is that it is almost like watching a movie. Meaning that the current technological push into AI, energy and robotics is likely to spearhead us into a whole new kind of economics (post-money/post-work kind of). And probably requires to open the system (find new territory beyond the existing). The point is that it will probably offset the current protectionist trend. Wondering how AI will affect governance...
- kstenerud 10mo agoAmerica is, and always has been, an isolationist nation - behaving like an island nation even though it's not an island (although it might as well be, given it has only two neighbors of little consequence). It was dragged into the first world war (despite strong public aversion) because J.P. Morgan Jr started lending money to Britain and France to buy American steel, thus setting in motion a cycle of investment and production protection that eventually required boots on the ground. It was dragged into the second world war by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor (and Germany's subsequent declaration of war, as it was obligated to do under its treaty with Japan). It protected Europe and SE Asia in the post-war years in order to contain communism, which it feared more than anything else. Once that threat subsided, there wasn't much reason for it to continue with its overseas footprint other than inertia and protecting important trade routes. Gulf Wars I was to protect oil prices (and because they already had the equipment for war), and Gulf Wars II was to be seen to be doing something about 9/11. Now that Trump is in power, America is performing its "great reset" (which was going to come eventually), where it becomes isolationist again, sticking to the Americas (reinvigorating the Monroe Doctrine), and leaving everyone else to their own devices.
- gradus_ad 10mo agoThe "world", implicit in your comment, is the liberal world order. This world order worked for America (ie Americans) until it became apparent that it did not, at least in a political and cultural sense (in a material sense it is of course still working perhaps even too well). The greatest champion of this world order, the EU bureaucratic class, views Americans' play for their sovereignty with bewilderment and casts it as renouncing its leadership in the world, yet leadership is not just blindly following a path to ruin but instead forging ahead down new and promising paths. In this sense the US is indeed still "leading" and it is the EU that stands firm in its intransigence and refuses to follow the leader. Yet it need not be this way and the EU very well could follow the US away from the excesses of hegemonic liberalism. There are signs of change in the air. This is politically interesting and the eventual outcome is not at all clear. On the other hand, the emergence of China, India, and to a lesser extent Russia (as a puppet of the Chinese) upon the world stage as independent actors, out of the shadows of Western domination, is another way in which the US is "losing control" but this is much less politically interesting in the sense that it was an inevitable and expected outcome. There is nothing the US has done, is doing or could do that would diminish non-Western ambition and agitation for power.
- pjc50 10mo agoHegemonic liberalism is way, way, better than hegemonic illiberalism.
- gradus_ad 10mo agoHegemonic idealism is dangerous either way. We can pick and choose what works best.
- jswelker 10mo agoYes "we" can, but the difference is that in a liberal order "we" at least ostensibly represents the people, and in an illiberal order, "we" represents a naked power grab by whichever elite group currently has the reigns.
- aa-jv 10mo agoIsrael is rising to fill the void, and there are many indications that this is by design, all along...
- pjc50 10mo agoI think that's overestimating their influence and, crucially, their size. The country barely has a navy and is dependent on oil imports.
- taneliv 10mo agoHasn't this been the Russian agenda for decades? I don't think it's a secret, or a fringe theory. They have worked on it long term, and seemingly finding success now. I don't think China is against this change, but their agenda seems to be more focused on international trade and internal growth, rather than specific strategy against the US. The EU is definitely not benefiting from it in the short term. While some argue it needs this change in the long term, it is difficult to imagine that the EU wants it to happen so arbitrarily and quickly. Those holding any meaningful power in the US are either benefiting from this change, at least in the short term or personally, or oblivious to it, possibly also due to influence from the agents of change. It's an opportunity for other states to gain influence. And in particular for Russia to advance their geopolitical ambitions, since this is from their playbook. It would be in the interests of the United States to alter the course, and regain the influence already lost. The leaders seem to have chosen to ignore her interests, though.
- corimaith 10mo agoLol, the US deficits are what sustains the production of demand stricken surplus economies. Everything that has happened is the ultimate result of surplus countries doubling down on mercantalist investment than growing internal consumption. If a rebalancing were to occur, it is the surplus countries hit with mass unemployment that will hurt much more than deficit countries that can move production back at a much quicker pace. The author is making the mistake of viewing tings from a supply side perspective when given excessive reliance on investment and high savings the world is constrained by chronic underconsumption.
- tmountain 10mo agoSo, America is great at consuming, but if ratio of debt to GDP continues to grow, it's unsustainable for the U.S. Sure, China needs the U.S. to be a major customer, but it doesn't seem like things can continue as they're going now, especially as the willingness to ignore the extremity of the debt is largely based on good faith and credibility.
- next_xibalba 10mo agoWhy assume rebalancing is mainly a demand problem but not a (slow) supply-constrained adjustment driven by demographics, capital stickiness, and institutional limits (in deficit countries)?
- corimaith 10mo agoRead Michael Pettis
- AnimalMuppet 10mo agoCould you be a bit more specific?
- vdupras 10mo agoIt's a trade imbalance. They send stuff out, they get nothing in. They could just continue to produce the stuff, then just set it on fire. No mass unemployment. Problem solved, no? It seems easier to do than to build an industrial base again.
- zelphirkalt 10mo agoThe real problem is not the US no longer being the influence it was for "the west" (to simplify). The real problem is, what takes the space the US previously filled and still partly/mostly fills. The US are by no means innocent of terrorism and invasion of other countries, but at least with countries commonly counted as "the west", the US was a friendly nation. If we have the likes of terrorist states like Russia taking over, then we got some very dark times ahead of us. Even worse, if the right wing and right extreme talking points and policies in the US don't stop, we might face the (still) strongest military on the planet becoming the arm of a fascist state. It might even get worse than the WW2, since the US military is probably more superior compared to almost any other nation on the planet, than Nazi Germany's military was, and already has presence in basically all parts of the world, plus the logistics. So lets hope that the current period of idiocy ends soon, and we can get back to peaceful international relations, with a sane US leadership, instead of one, that seemingly seeks to tear down as many bridges as possible. However, we are only in year one (!) of the current US government, so we will probably have to hold out breath a little longer, and Europe will have to rely on itself.
- akka47 10mo ago>The US are by no means innocent of terrorism and invasion of other countries, but at least with countries commonly counted as "the west", the US was a friendly nation. >If we have the likes of terrorist states like Russia taking over, then we got some very dark times ahead of us. Did you seriously write these two sentences one right next to the other and not see the hypocrisy in what you're saying?
- SanjayMehta 10mo agoIt's pointless trying to educate the wilfully ignorant.
- giardini 10mo agoWe gave up on you guys a long time ago: told your Dad to leave you behind a bush but he was a good Dad so, lucky you! Our bad.
- akka47 10mo agoThank god. I don't understand how we, as in humanity, allow a single country to be "world police". Seriously, no one asked for it.
- GlacierFox 10mo ago100%. They should just step aside and let all those theocratic shit holes arm them selves with more nuclear weapons and wipe each other out. Problem sorted. Of course you might get a bit of radioactive dust blow over the sea for a few hundred years but totally worth it.
- cindyllm 10mo ago[dead]
- simonsarris 10mo agoDiplomacy before the "world police" era involved a lot more war than you might be willing to stomach.
- testdelacc1 10mo agoYou can say this but the people who need to hear it won’t listen. They lack the perspective of actually reading history to understand the scale at which people were killed before the world police era. But even reading history isn’t enough. I think we’re fundamentally not equipped to understand what a large number of deaths actually looks and feels like. 10 deaths happening in our vicinity is an unbearable tragedy. 1 million deaths is just a number. So folks are struck by a nostalgia for a time when humans killed each other by the millions. In some ways they remind me of the people who long for the days before vaccines eliminated a bunch of diseases.
- OgsyedIE 10mo agoIn 1944 huge numbers of people, from a large number of countries, asked for a hegemonic world police stemming from a sole hegemon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference We don't know much of it anymore with the decline of Europe, but for several centuries the dominant geopolitical goal of most countries on Earth was to defend themselves from European invasion. Why do you think every incremental ratchet step on the gear of Germany rearming in the last three years has been taken as serious headline news by so many?
- metalman 10mo agoAmerica never had control. What it did have was the natural, organic attention of a very large portion of the world population, just after the end of WW2. Anericans were physicaly bigger, stronger, better educated, cool and casual about all the gadgets,tools,and toys they tossed around, and the media evidence of the goings on in the US, painted a come on over and join the fun immage that many fought to get any piece they could. Thats, over.
- jnmandal 10mo agoWithout entering (and winning) some kind of major conflict, this was always going to happen. Two things are important to think about. 1. Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute. (For a good treatise on this, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers). The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position. 2. Great nations/empires generally become so at least partially through population growth. This can be organic or engineered (ie: continuously conquering more and more territory) but rising dominance almost never coincides with demographic stagnation, which the US is experiencing. This population plateau has been accurately predicted by the US Census for my entire lifetime. Also nothing about this decline is unusual or unexpected. This is the course of empire, which is not a new concept.
- OgsyedIE 10mo agoAn important caveat to #2. Rising populations can only be leveraged into more power if they can be channeled into import substition. Countries where import substitution is suppressed can not gain power.
- IAmBroom 10mo ago> Countries where import substitution is suppressed can not gain power. What does that mean? Seriously; I can't make sense of it.
- flowerthoughts 10mo agoIf you can't produce something domestically that takes away the need to import that thing, the nation cannot gain power.
- OgsyedIE 10mo agoImport substition is a process where domestic industry develops by adopting the processes of overseas industries contributing to imports, so that the country can import the raw materials and make the product, instead of importing the full product at the market price. Most surveys of macroeconomics reveal that it is integral and foundational to the development of most industrialised countries today, e.g. China. The exporter countries contain smart people who may seek to suppress this process to maintain revenue flows. This prevents the development from happening. Two examples: 1: the 'unequal treaties' between 19th century Japan and America prohibited certain kinds of tariffs and subsidies by Japan. This allowed westerners, prominently Americans, to maintain market share in Japan by product dumping. 2: in 18th and 19th century India various British offices at different times had policies of having their sepoys arrest textile workers and maim them by the forcible amputation of both thumbs, to preserve the market share of British textiles.
- nextstep 10mo agoThe US will try to avoid this by privatizing the Fed through stablecoins, but I predict this backfiring massively. Private creation of money will likely tank the world economy worse than 2008 and in the rubble a new order will form without the US at the center.
- 23434dsf 10mo agoAmericans cant have their cake and eat it too. The allies are quietly leaving the room and forming alliances without Americans.
- ericmay 10mo agoAny specific examples you can speak to? Which countries? Who are they allying with?
- tim333 10mo agoNot sure what 23434dsf means but America's traditional allies like Canada, Europe and maybe post WW2 Japan are forming an alliance against Russia's invasion into Europe, while Trump's position seems to be it's ok for Russia to take land by force as long as he/the US get a cut of the plunder.
- ericmay 10mo agoAre you suggesting that Canada, Europe (I take it you mean the EU and UK), and perhaps Japan are forming a separate alliance without the United States because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Can you link to anything specific? Have there been alliance talks? What are the new alliances being formed called? I know there have been some arms purchases and agreements but that wouldn't have anything to do with forming an alliance separate from what already exists today.
- tencentshill 10mo agoNothing of note, yet. Like most US corporations, they're holding off on implementing real changes to see if we the people choose to continue on this self-destructive course after He leaves office.
- ericmay 10mo agoIn some ways self-destructive, in other ways not. President Biden restricted early use of long range weapons to strike Russia - that was self-destructive too. Really, what exactly are folks asking the United States to do here? Give more money or weapons? Sure we could give even more, I support that. I'm quite hawkish on both Russia and China. But I don't think that giving more money and arms tips the scales enough for Ukraine to force Russia out. So where does that leave us? The EU isn't going to do anything militarily about the situation. As the PM of Poland said, 600+ million Europeans are asking 300+ million Americans to defend them from 180+ million Russians. Something doesn't seem right. That doesn't mean the Trump Administration has handled this well. I'll give them to the extent that it is genuine that pursuing peace, if possible, is what we should do. But it also doesn't mean that all of the political grandstanding and TRUMP MAN BAD is getting us anywhere either. Has he handled our alliances poorly, yea I think so. Are our allies leaving and forming new alliances? No, not in any material sense. Does Europe need to step up and spend to defend itself, absolutely. It also doesn't mean President Trump needs to be an asshat either. Some ways self-destructive, other ways not.
- 01284a7e 10mo ago"The Iraq War, launched in 2003 – resulting in over 100,000 deaths" Isn't this an extreme low-ball estimate?
- pjc50 10mo agoThe Lancet had numbers around 600k, but that included the wider context of deaths due to the temporary collapse of society, medical services, electricity supplies, ongoing violence and insurgency, and so on. The long consequence of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions was providing Russia with a pretext for its own interventions, from the various caucasus states to Syria to Ukraine.
- padjo 10mo agoNot really, it’s the lower end of what we can be confident about from direct evidence per things like the Iraq body count project. There are statistical estimates that are higher but they have very large error bars. Over 100k is completely defendable and plenty high that any reasonable person should be horrified by it!
- griffzhowl 10mo agoYes, it's on the low end of estimates and corresponds most closely to the US military's Iraq war logs that were leaked by Wikileaks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tab... Still, "over 100,000" is technically correct if it's more than 100,000. Since this subject isn't the main point of the article and the Iraq war is generally acknowledged to have been disastrous, I suppose he chose a safe figure so as not to derail the article with disputed estimates at the outset.
- igravious 10mo agoThere's a pretty famous website that tracks Iraqi civilian deaths: Documented civilian deaths from violence 187,499 – 211,046 Further analysis of the WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs may add 10,000 civilian deaths. as of today https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/ https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
- SanjayMehta 10mo ago
- squidbeak 10mo agoThere's a very real chance the USA will get lucky and find a new means of economic domination through its AI companies and the looming space build-out. Its self-destructiveness right now, flouting longstanding alliances and truckling to its enemies, would ruin it in any other moment in its history. But in these unusual circumstances, it might not matter.
- skywhopper 10mo agoNah, AI is a massive money pit, and Starship has proven to be a dead end. The real tech revolutions of the moment are in energy production and storage and health care advances like mRNA and GLP-1. The US is actively self-sabotaging on both energy and health care at the moment.
- ericmay 10mo agoIn what specific way is the United States self-sabotaging on GLP-1s? Is the current Republican administration against them? I’m confused.
- skywhopper 10mo agoThey are decimating academic research into health care tech in general. There’s been mixed messaging from the administration on GLP-1s (although if they keep pushing on the eugenics theme, they will solidify as anti on those as well soon enough) but that wasn’t really the point. I named mRNA and GLP-1s as two examples of modern tech revolutions that are not AI or space-related. Those are the modern tech breakthroughs, not AI and definitely not space launches. (I went back and edited the post to make it clearer what I meant by “both”).
- ericmay 10mo ago> There’s been mixed messaging from the administration on GLP-1s Do you have any examples? This is what I've seen: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/trump-eli-lilly-novo-nordisk-deal-obesity-drug-prices.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/trump-eli-lilly-novo-nordisk... Wegovy and Zepbound have not been covered by Medicare for weight loss, “and they’ve only rarely been covered by Medicaid,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They’ve often cost consumers more than $1,000 per month, some a lot more than that. ... That ends starting today." "“This is the biggest drug in our country, and that’s why this is the most important of all the [most favored nation] announcements we’ve made,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during the briefing. “This is going to have the biggest impact on the American people. All Americans, even those who are not on Medicaid, Medicare, are going to be able to get the same price for their drugs, for their GLP-1s.""
- Gualdrapo 10mo ago"In movies, the United States saves the world. In real life, the world has to be saved from the United States."
- JoeAltmaier 10mo agoBefore WWII America was content with it's own company and business. Then we found ourselves holding the big stick and everybody looking to us to solve their problems. If we go back to being peers, so what? Rich people who've capitalized on the favored position will cry and complain (and spend billions trying to keep control) but the world will go on.
- flowerthoughts 10mo agoI read somewhere that the sentiment in Europe after WW2 was that Soviet had a bigger impact than the US. But narrative has shifted over time. I'd guess Churchill saw the US as a last resort, not the goto fixer. Happy to be corrected by someone who knows history, thouogh. It seems the US wasn't in the war until two years after it started, and was drawn in due to Pearl Harbor. Even the protection of Atlantic trade was handled by the UK and Canada until 1941: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United...
- DivingForGold 10mo agohttps://archive.ph/WAMWI https://archive.ph/WAMWI
- engineerhead 10mo agoFraming this as the US “losing control” misses one of the points i.e what’s actually happening in energy sector. Oil worked as a lever of power precisely because it was scarce, centralised, and geopolitically choke-pointed. Renewables will flip that model. Sun and wind don’t care about borders, navies, or petrodollars.
- ericmay 10mo agoWell you can’t power fighter jets or tanks on renewables yet so there’s still that. But I think this past year really changed the direction of the US and to a lesser extent the EU with respect to oil and gas versus renewables. As the US has realized at the institutional level that China has secured a very strong position on refining rare earth materials into batteries and other green technology it is doubling down on oil and gas as the energy choice for the foreseeable future, climate change be damned. Not that China ever really cared about the climate, they just, for good reasons, wanted an alternative energy production source because even if they seized Taiwan the US Navy can bring oil and gas imports to near 0. Pipelines from Russia are sitting ducks too, so not much reprieve there. US is putting $40 billion into Al Udeid and signing AI deals with the Middle East powers, and is close enough on a deal to legitimize Israel. Add Venezuela. You can see where this is going. The EU politically wants to switch to green tech but it’s facing a problem which is doing so will result in effective deindustrialization since they would wind up buying most equipment from China including cars. The EU either did or is about to shelve the requirement that cars are EVs by 2035. I expect this to be fully repealed. While the EU likes to not mince words about US tariffs, they’re ultimately heading in the same direction. China had a $1 trillion export surplus. If the US isn’t buying their subsidized products who is? Brazil? Right now it’s Europe, but do you think Germany will let its manufacturing sector go away? If so I have a ticket to sell you to the next AfD rally. The product dumping from China is going to be too much and in a judo move the west will be able to use China’s manufacturing capacity against it. Nice factories you have there, too bad nobody buys anything you make (relatively speaking). So the EU is sitting between two oil and gas energy superpowers oh and the Middle East is just around the bend. Politically they’ll still work on climate change initiatives but as push comes to shove, and with China overplaying its hand with export controls on rare earth materials and creating more panic in Brussels (never mind China's support for Russia invading Ukraine), the EU will generally maintain an oil and gas industrial direction, if I were to guess. I’m not pro gas/oil or anything like that. Drive an EV and love it. But that’s my fun armchair take on what’s going on here.
- spwa4 10mo agoThis article reads as if this person seriously believes that ... Europe and European trade (strangely not the US, but okay) is the only thing preventing just and utopian outcomes across the entire world. It's also a useless discussion: whatever faith you may have in European progressive/socialist parties, they are not willing to give up the prosperity they have. They want fairness in addition to MORE than what the European people already have. If the demand is to give up more than 100% of European economic growth, you will not find them allies. Oh and there's the problem that they've got maybe 10-20% of the vote, and all other parties are not nearly as willing to help. So these utopian outcomes won't happen. What will? What these people never discuss is who will replace the US? Because the only real contender is the Chinese CCP. That will, to put it mildly, not be good. Frankly, the absurdly huge distinction between US hegemony and all others, whether you mean British hegemony, Ottoman hegemony or even going as far back as Roman or Greek hegemony is that every hegemon with the sole exception of the US conquered and murdered their empire together using slave armies (to their credit, some European powers, not all but some, at least refused to use slavery) You might say "but China has promised not to ...". Ok, let's go there. Let's say China doesn't actually go ahead and try to conquer 1/3 of the world. Or, at least somewhat realistically, let's say they take over Taiwan and the Phillippines and stop there. Or let's even say they add Indonesia and Malaysia maybe even Japan to that ... and then stop. Note: the CCP ideology is authoritarian and racist. We can perhaps argue if they'll go as far as the Nazi's did in the past century, but I don't understand how any rational person can argue it isn't at least going to go quite a ways in that direction. But if you don't live there ... who cares right? Also: if you live in these countries: get the fuck out of there (because the EU is definitely going to refuse to pay for the US securing the seas) Or you might say you actually believe the CCP, and let's say that you're right to do so. The result is that the US withdraws from the global oceans ... and that's the end of that. What will happen? The problem is "multilateralism" was demonstrated EXACTLY what it was at the end of WW1, at the real ending of Colonialism (I mean that yes, colonies endured a bit more, but the economic domination of European powers ended there. Their last big hurrah. At that point European Colonial powers had enjoyed a large surplus but right there and then, it was gone, and that's the point where the decline became totally inevitable, and exactly what happened became a certainty: a very large, protracted, slow economic decline. We might also mention what people chose to do in response to this happening: WW2) This is not theory. This is history. This is what actually happened. Any rational person should at least consider it might happen again. But let's discuss what will happen to us. Because that's what matters, right? First, perhaps most obvious, piracy will return, at the very least to East and West African coasts, maybe even the African Mediterranean coast, and to Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as parts of India. None of the countries there have any hope in hell of securing their own coast, never mind international waters. Quite a few will participate in piracy like they did before. As a result international trade will largely collapse. Maybe EU-US trade will survive, and maybe even US-China trade. But EU-Africa? EU-China? It will at the very least become orders of magnitude more expensive. Second, a large list of countries (a growing list, I might add) that are at each other's throats but are currently being stopped either directly by the US army, or by US weapons and diplomacy, and even some being restained by EU weapons and diplomacy, will burst out into ethnic violence. We'll have 10, or god forbid 50, Sudan-style conflicts. There is even such a conflict brewing in the EU: Kosovo - Serbia ... nothing is solved there and while people aren't currently at each other's throats, they're not far from it (and if you're truly honest, the problem is Kosovo. Or put it this way. If you erased Serbia from the map, the Serbia-Kosovo conflict would continue. If you erased Kosovo from the map, the conflict would stop). Greece and Turkey ... they're perhaps further from war than Kosovo, but I would still argue that left to their own devices, another war there is inevitable. India-Pakistan. China vs essentially everyone. And so on and so forth. The problem is "multilateralism" was demonstrated EXACTLY what it was just after WW1. There is a large group of countries that when restraints on their actions are released ... the result is a large set of genocides all occurring at once. I'm a pessimist, but let's be honest: this will simply happen again. That is at the very least a big risk of what Piketty and other calls "justice". And the problem is simple: for at least the next few years it is extremely in the EU's and EU member states' financial interest to bring us closer to this scenario. Piketty is arguing for social justice, and he should: we need that. We need that influence, because other forces are looking to destroy the rights we currently enjoy. But they'll never talk their way into more than minority influence in "the West". Perhaps Trump and MAGA are just extreme and cruel fatalists who realize what is coming now: a large, protracted, worldwide economic crisis, caused by Europe and China, followed by WW3. Perhaps they simply think the US will win WW3 and the world will go back to 1950. Perhaps their theory is that the best idea for the US is for WW3 to start before this economic crisis really hits the US, that the only thing they need to do is to withdraw the US army, weapons and diplomacy currently standing between a great many adversaries. Hell, that may be exactly what happens. But this is both giving these people way too much credit AND ignores that of course WW3 will make the world suck pretty fucking bad for a long time.
- Incipient 10mo agoI'm not sure anyone really is debating if the US is losing its control, I feel that's a given - I'd say much quicker recently than before, but still happening. I'm personally worried who takes over - none of the other parties vying for power instil even the vaguest sense of wanting to maintain the status quo. I feel fairly malicious authoritarianism and corruption will be observed in our own countries within this century (if that matters to you, depends on your age I suppose).
- daft_pink 10mo agoReality is that the US doesn’t want control of the world. Why do we want the blame for the world’s problems. Let the world take care of their own problems.
- pogue 10mo agoI have been thinking that the name of this site is lemonade (like the drink)... I'm aware of Le Monde, but didn't they previously use a different domain?
- giardini 10mo agoNeed a free link please!