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> First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of inte

> First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion. Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago. The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever. We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.

stackghost 9mo ago
>world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it. I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.
- TacticalCoder 9mo ago
  > ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
  - roxolotl 9mo ago
    The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
    - user32489318 9mo ago
      Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
      - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        Correct. Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that. Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
        JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter On foreign policy? Probably not. Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
        JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been Why? You haven’t actually argued that point.
        AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
        Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting
  - wrs 9mo ago
    I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”
    - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
      The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today. Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job. Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate. Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate. I could go on, but you probably get the message.
      - jeromegv 9mo ago
        If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
        PlanksVariable 9mo ago
        Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
        defrost 9mo ago
        The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA. eg: > People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records. Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry. His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
  - Paradigma11 9mo ago
    The US voters didn't care what the election meant to the rest of the world and the rest of the world doesn't care what it meant to US voters.
    - mlrtime 9mo ago
      I was thinking the same. It's just a hunch, but very few people vote on what the rest of the world thinks of the candidate that they vote for. They think, how this president will serve me and my family.
- knubie 9mo ago
  > They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
  - rfrey 9mo ago
    That's certainly Trump's claim, along with the Norway/Denmark joint government issuing Nobel prizes.
  - dh2022 9mo ago
    Europeans volunteered troops in Afghanistan to help America fight Al-Quaida. When America was not right about invading Iraq, European nations tried to help America to see the truth. When America took on Libyan dictator Kadhafi European nations provided some air support. Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
    - mlrtime 9mo ago
      After 9/11, America had a brief moment of world support that we royalty screwed up. But that was only because we were attacked. Besides that its all nations for themselves. And even today, if the UK or Germany [just examples] were attacked in the same way, America would send troops under the same circumstances.
  - koonsolo 9mo ago
    Do you feel Europeans have a better friendship with Canada for example? I mean before Trump was elected of course.
- PlanksVariable 9mo ago
  The American people had two options in November: - Kamala Harris, a terribly unqualified candidate who was appointed by the Democratic Party without a primary vote, who couldn’t clearly communicate basic policy positions, and who served as “the border czar” while the Biden administration dismantled the border protection agency and ushered in almost four years of a de facto open Southern border, which was very unpopular with most voters. - Donald Trump, who was a known quantity, who riled people up and said things that were offensive, but didn’t actually do anything catastrophic in his first term and was mostly harmless by virtue of being ineffective. These were far and away the worst two candidates of my lifetime. But among the Americans who voted for Trump, I doubt many expected the administration to simultaneously be this much more unhinged and impactful a second time around.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > Both were bad options. Few expected a Trump administration would simultaneously be this unhinged and impactful this time around He led an insurrection against our Constitution. He went along with folks who legitimately aimed to murder Senators. Venezuela voted for Chavez. Gaza for Hamas. America for Trump.
    - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
      “He led an insurrection against our Constitution” is extremely hyperbolic.
      - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed The Electoral College is a Constitutional body. The Vice President, in his electoral duties, a Constitutional officer. These are limited roles with specific aims and they were directly, explicitly and violently attacked. The men who called for hanging the Vice President never repented and were pardoned.
        deleted 9mo ago
- analog31 9mo ago
  A loss of the popular vote, followed by a near toss-up, was hardly a clear message. Roughly half of us didn't intend to send that message, and if polls are an indicator, even fewer now. I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
  - philistine 9mo ago
    Let me be clear; the rest of the world no longer trusts your type of American to fix your country. After Trump 1, maybe. Trump 2, that's it. We'll start to untangle our commitments to you and look elsewhere.
    - analog31 9mo ago
      What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface. Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
      - aoeusnth1 9mo ago
        Nothing. American empire isn't yours to control - people can hate what America is doing without recommending any personal change to your involvement in it.
        analog31 9mo ago
        That's fair, but I'm open to change. In fact, coincidentally, my wife and I were talking about it tonight. We feel frustrated that we might not have done enough.
        UncleMeat 9mo ago
        These are a few ideas. My guess is that people on HN make a lot of money. Finding effective places to donate it is useful. While this won't be able to directly influence international saber rattling, it can still help protect people from Trump's criminal presidency. Donate to organizations that provide legal information and legal defense to people at risk of abuse by ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food for people who are frightened to leave their homes because of ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food to people who are threatened by SNAP funding changes. Donate to independent media organizations that are willing to aggressively criticize the Trump administration. If thinking internationally, donate to organizations that target problems that USAID was targeting before being gutted. For political change we need two things: democrats to win in 2026 and 2028 and democrats to have the guts to dismantle the systems that enabled Trump and charge people involved for their crimes. Existing dem leadership is clearly not willing to do this. So we need involvement starting at the local level all the way up to replace dem leadership with people with guts. Find community groups involved in local elections. If you live in a region where ICE is highly active, document. Making their crimes undeniable to as many people as possible is what will shift public opinion so much that a new government will be forced to act.
- palmotea 9mo ago
  > I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant. What really happened was a lot of people were unhappy with a lot of different things, and enough of them rolled the dice on Trump again, because he was the only other choice (and the Democrats decided to rely on his negatives as their complete electoral strategy, which was stupid).
  - honzabe 9mo ago
    > Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant. Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor. Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?
cal_dent 9mo ago
What i find fascinating is that, if we hold that Trump being elected twice was because of frustration and rage against society, this is the way they are now when the US is literally the most dominant country in the world. Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ
- gonzo41 9mo ago
  What would you consider real decline? I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and The jobs market being brutal to graduates. Things are not so great at the moment.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > What would you consider real decline? Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
  - tasuki 9mo ago
    > I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. People talk about "worse prospects" all the time. It irks me: you know nothing what your "prospects" are. That's why they're prospects! > The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people The housing is still there. All those old people are gonna die. Who do you think will get the housing?
    - philistine 9mo ago
      The housing is a house, but it's also a financial vehicle to wealth accumulation. Younger generations have been shut out of that wealth. When the old people are dead can we be so sure the wealth enrichment mechanisms will be left standing?
      - 9mo ago
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law. Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service. We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
RobotToaster 9mo ago
"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?" - Joseph Heller, Catch-22
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony. The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
  - devman0 9mo ago
    Right, I mean the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned. That doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more. > doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years Or America trying for that future. That’s WWIII.
  - AtlasBarfed 9mo ago
    Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory. Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy. America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades. However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars. And that is a very very bad thing
JohnnyLarue 9mo ago
[dead]
NamlchakKhandro 9mo ago
This has happened 7 times before. The last was Amsterdam.
salawat 9mo ago
My question is, why? This has been obvious to me over the past decade, and I just got into the financial world on the ground floor 2015-ish. Every damn trade agreement has in one way or another been projecting U.S. soft power through financial integration.
mikewarot 9mo ago
>We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire If Trump goes ahead with his Greenland obsession, we'll likely know before the end of 2027.
wesapien 8mo ago
It's an admission that the decades of preference falsification and praise of the emperors clothes is not worthy anymore. Carney hints that the same pressures that kept the dysfunctional Soviet system is similar to the same pressures that keep the dysfunction of capitalism, Neo-liberalism (religion) as well as Neo-classical economics (theology).

stackghost 9mo ago

>world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it. I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.

TacticalCoder 9mo ago
> ... By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
- roxolotl 9mo ago
  The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
  - user32489318 9mo ago
    Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
    - AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
      Correct. Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that. Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
      - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter On foreign policy? Probably not. Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
        AndrewKemendo 9mo ago
        My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been.
        JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        > My point is that Trump is actually probably more representative of the median voter than Biden or any other previous president has been Why? You haven’t actually argued that point.
        AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
        Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting
- wrs 9mo ago
  I have to say as an “other American” I’m still having a lot of trouble reading the supposedly unambiguous message. Was it “Hold my beer?”
  - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
    The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today. Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job. Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate. Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate. I could go on, but you probably get the message.
    - jeromegv 9mo ago
      If Trump only hires people best for the job, why am I only seeing old white men next to him 99% of the time? Are they the best of the best?
      - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
        Who said Trump hires the best people for the job? That’s not what I said.
        defrost 9mo ago
        The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA. eg: > People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records. Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry. His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
- Paradigma11 9mo ago
  The US voters didn't care what the election meant to the rest of the world and the rest of the world doesn't care what it meant to US voters.
  - mlrtime 9mo ago
    I was thinking the same. It's just a hunch, but very few people vote on what the rest of the world thinks of the candidate that they vote for. They think, how this president will serve me and my family.
knubie 9mo ago
> They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
- rfrey 9mo ago
  That's certainly Trump's claim, along with the Norway/Denmark joint government issuing Nobel prizes.
- dh2022 9mo ago
  Europeans volunteered troops in Afghanistan to help America fight Al-Quaida. When America was not right about invading Iraq, European nations tried to help America to see the truth. When America took on Libyan dictator Kadhafi European nations provided some air support. Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
  - mlrtime 9mo ago
    After 9/11, America had a brief moment of world support that we royalty screwed up. But that was only because we were attacked. Besides that its all nations for themselves. And even today, if the UK or Germany [just examples] were attacked in the same way, America would send troops under the same circumstances.
- koonsolo 9mo ago
  Do you feel Europeans have a better friendship with Canada for example? I mean before Trump was elected of course.
PlanksVariable 9mo ago
The American people had two options in November: - Kamala Harris, a terribly unqualified candidate who was appointed by the Democratic Party without a primary vote, who couldn’t clearly communicate basic policy positions, and who served as “the border czar” while the Biden administration dismantled the border protection agency and ushered in almost four years of a de facto open Southern border, which was very unpopular with most voters. - Donald Trump, who was a known quantity, who riled people up and said things that were offensive, but didn’t actually do anything catastrophic in his first term and was mostly harmless by virtue of being ineffective. These were far and away the worst two candidates of my lifetime. But among the Americans who voted for Trump, I doubt many expected the administration to simultaneously be this much more unhinged and impactful a second time around.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > Both were bad options. Few expected a Trump administration would simultaneously be this unhinged and impactful this time around He led an insurrection against our Constitution. He went along with folks who legitimately aimed to murder Senators. Venezuela voted for Chavez. Gaza for Hamas. America for Trump.
  - PlanksVariable 9mo ago
    “He led an insurrection against our Constitution” is extremely hyperbolic.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed The Electoral College is a Constitutional body. The Vice President, in his electoral duties, a Constitutional officer. These are limited roles with specific aims and they were directly, explicitly and violently attacked. The men who called for hanging the Vice President never repented and were pardoned.
      - deleted 9mo ago
analog31 9mo ago
A loss of the popular vote, followed by a near toss-up, was hardly a clear message. Roughly half of us didn't intend to send that message, and if polls are an indicator, even fewer now. I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
- philistine 9mo ago
  Let me be clear; the rest of the world no longer trusts your type of American to fix your country. After Trump 1, maybe. Trump 2, that's it. We'll start to untangle our commitments to you and look elsewhere.
  - analog31 9mo ago
    What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface. Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
    - aoeusnth1 9mo ago
      Nothing. American empire isn't yours to control - people can hate what America is doing without recommending any personal change to your involvement in it.
      - analog31 9mo ago
        That's fair, but I'm open to change. In fact, coincidentally, my wife and I were talking about it tonight. We feel frustrated that we might not have done enough.
        UncleMeat 9mo ago
        These are a few ideas. My guess is that people on HN make a lot of money. Finding effective places to donate it is useful. While this won't be able to directly influence international saber rattling, it can still help protect people from Trump's criminal presidency. Donate to organizations that provide legal information and legal defense to people at risk of abuse by ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food for people who are frightened to leave their homes because of ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food to people who are threatened by SNAP funding changes. Donate to independent media organizations that are willing to aggressively criticize the Trump administration. If thinking internationally, donate to organizations that target problems that USAID was targeting before being gutted. For political change we need two things: democrats to win in 2026 and 2028 and democrats to have the guts to dismantle the systems that enabled Trump and charge people involved for their crimes. Existing dem leadership is clearly not willing to do this. So we need involvement starting at the local level all the way up to replace dem leadership with people with guts. Find community groups involved in local elections. If you live in a region where ICE is highly active, document. Making their crimes undeniable to as many people as possible is what will shift public opinion so much that a new government will be forced to act.
palmotea 9mo ago
> I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed. Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant. What really happened was a lot of people were unhappy with a lot of different things, and enough of them rolled the dice on Trump again, because he was the only other choice (and the Democrats decided to rely on his negatives as their complete electoral strategy, which was stupid).
- honzabe 9mo ago
  > Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant. Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor. Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?

cal_dent 9mo ago

What i find fascinating is that, if we hold that Trump being elected twice was because of frustration and rage against society, this is the way they are now when the US is literally the most dominant country in the world. Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ

gonzo41 9mo ago
What would you consider real decline? I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and The jobs market being brutal to graduates. Things are not so great at the moment.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > What would you consider real decline? Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
- tasuki 9mo ago
  > I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. People talk about "worse prospects" all the time. It irks me: you know nothing what your "prospects" are. That's why they're prospects! > The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people The housing is still there. All those old people are gonna die. Who do you think will get the housing?
  - philistine 9mo ago
    The housing is a house, but it's also a financial vehicle to wealth accumulation. Younger generations have been shut out of that wealth. When the old people are dead can we be so sure the wealth enrichment mechanisms will be left standing?
    - 9mo ago

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law. Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service. We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

RobotToaster 9mo ago

"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?" - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony. The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
- devman0 9mo ago
  Right, I mean the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned. That doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more. > doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years Or America trying for that future. That’s WWIII.
- AtlasBarfed 9mo ago
  Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory. Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy. America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades. However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars. And that is a very very bad thing

JohnnyLarue 9mo ago

[dead]

NamlchakKhandro 9mo ago

This has happened 7 times before. The last was Amsterdam.

salawat 9mo ago

My question is, why? This has been obvious to me over the past decade, and I just got into the financial world on the ground floor 2015-ish. Every damn trade agreement has in one way or another been projecting U.S. soft power through financial integration.

mikewarot 9mo ago

>We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire If Trump goes ahead with his Greenland obsession, we'll likely know before the end of 2027.

wesapien 8mo ago

It's an admission that the decades of preference falsification and praise of the emperors clothes is not worthy anymore. Carney hints that the same pressures that kept the dysfunctional Soviet system is similar to the same pressures that keep the dysfunction of capitalism, Neo-liberalism (religion) as well as Neo-classical economics (theology).