3 ms·

Global Trade and the United States Navy

36 points by Pwntheon 1mo ago

abstractspoon 1mo ago
Global trade or just US trade?
- nocoiner 1mo ago
  Global trade. Here’s an explanation for more details: https://acoup.blog/2026/08/28/collections-global-trade-and-united-states-navy/ https://acoup.blog/2026/08/28/collections-global-trade-and-u...
  - Thlom 1mo ago
    Global trade, except for the states the US doesn't want to have access to global trade at any given moment.
- anentropic 1mo ago
  If you read the article you'll get your answer
Havoc 1mo ago
Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold. What worries me far more is environmental disasters. Large parts of insurance and accountability has disappeared with the arrival of the shadow fleet model. Only a matter of time before some pristine coastline gets fucked by an oil spill and everyone just shrugs and ignores it
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  Trade will muddle through, but with a 50%+ incentive to cheat, the winners will be those who are best at cheating.
- robtherobber 1mo ago
  > Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold. That's what I believe as well. Once the opportunity arises, another power or group of interest will seize it, as it's always been the case throughout history. It may take a while, that's true, but just like we can't turn back to a world without countries anytime soon, we can't turn back to a world without commerce anytime soon. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that we should not want a state like the US to be the guarantor of such a system, if only because it will do everything in its power to keep this planet burning just so it can maintain various leverages of power. Regardless of what the US does in this particular respect, the current economic philosophy is nothing short of disastrous on some key aspects and it needs changing fast, something that the US is determined to prevent from happening. As such, I suspect that there will be tremendous suffering globally regardless of this particular situation, having a so-called guarantor won't make much of a difference - it may very well be the opposite.
derf_ 1mo ago
Sarah C. M. Paine has an excellent series of lectures on what it means to be a "continental" vs. a "maritime" power, and how the latter build wealth through trade and an international rules-based order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VSg4ZSwJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VSg4ZSwJs is probably the most succinct, and a good introduction if the name Alfred T. Mahan is not familiar to you. Dwarkesh Patel's channel has a more recent 9-part series (on this and other topics): https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel
msandford 1mo ago
[flagged]
- senorrib 1mo ago
  You know "load bearing" as an expression existed before AI, right?
  - msandford 1mo ago
    You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right? Nobody outside of actual engineering or engineering adjacent like construction used load bearing up until about 6-12mo ago. Now it's everywhere.
    - embedding-shape 1mo ago
      > You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right? Seems to be going up and down in usage, if you look at Google Ngram + Trends: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22load+bearing%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22load+bearin... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22load%20bearing%22&hl=en-US https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22load%... Seems Google Trends say ~50% "interest over time" around 2004, which Ngrams at that same time has about half the occurrence in books compared to around ~1926. As the labs adjust their models to become more human, less repetitive and more of the population starts catching up these patterns, we'll see it become less used again, starting the new loop of the repeating cycle.
    - everybodyknows 1mo ago
      It's yet another borrowing of the prestige of technical terms -- propagated by LLMs, but in rampant misuse by poseurs even before AI: inflection point, exponential growth, order of magnitude, evolve, viable, ...
    - cwillu 1mo ago
      I'm calling it: if Bret Devereaux is being accused of posting slop, we have officially achieved peak unhinged claims of “this seems like AI”
Recurecur 1mo ago
This was a well-written and thought provoking article. The USA bashers out there should contemplate a world where the Chinese PLAN has assumed the role of the US Navy. Hint: it wouldn’t be pretty. Where the essay goes off the tracks is in its conspiratorial view that the US no longer wants to perform the role of securing maritime trade. Instead, the US is intent on expanding its Navy, and the Trump administration clearly recognizes that trade is crucial for future American and worldwide prosperity. It’s America First, not America Only. ;-)
- AlotOfReading 1mo ago
  It’s America First, not America Only. "America first, not only" was Obama's policy [0], not Trump's. The US wouldn't be starting trade wars with its oldest, closest allies if the current executive believed in multipolarity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine

36 points by Pwntheon 1mo ago

abstractspoon 1mo ago

Global trade or just US trade?

nocoiner 1mo ago
Global trade. Here’s an explanation for more details: https://acoup.blog/2026/08/28/collections-global-trade-and-united-states-navy/ https://acoup.blog/2026/08/28/collections-global-trade-and-u...
- Thlom 1mo ago
  Global trade, except for the states the US doesn't want to have access to global trade at any given moment.
anentropic 1mo ago
If you read the article you'll get your answer

Havoc 1mo ago

Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold. What worries me far more is environmental disasters. Large parts of insurance and accountability has disappeared with the arrival of the shadow fleet model. Only a matter of time before some pristine coastline gets fucked by an oil spill and everyone just shrugs and ignores it

bryanlarsen 1mo ago
Trade will muddle through, but with a 50%+ incentive to cheat, the winners will be those who are best at cheating.
robtherobber 1mo ago
> Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold. That's what I believe as well. Once the opportunity arises, another power or group of interest will seize it, as it's always been the case throughout history. It may take a while, that's true, but just like we can't turn back to a world without countries anytime soon, we can't turn back to a world without commerce anytime soon. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that we should not want a state like the US to be the guarantor of such a system, if only because it will do everything in its power to keep this planet burning just so it can maintain various leverages of power. Regardless of what the US does in this particular respect, the current economic philosophy is nothing short of disastrous on some key aspects and it needs changing fast, something that the US is determined to prevent from happening. As such, I suspect that there will be tremendous suffering globally regardless of this particular situation, having a so-called guarantor won't make much of a difference - it may very well be the opposite.

derf_ 1mo ago

Sarah C. M. Paine has an excellent series of lectures on what it means to be a "continental" vs. a "maritime" power, and how the latter build wealth through trade and an international rules-based order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VSg4ZSwJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VSg4ZSwJs is probably the most succinct, and a good introduction if the name Alfred T. Mahan is not familiar to you. Dwarkesh Patel's channel has a more recent 9-part series (on this and other topics): https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel

msandford 1mo ago

[flagged]

senorrib 1mo ago
You know "load bearing" as an expression existed before AI, right?
- msandford 1mo ago
  You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right? Nobody outside of actual engineering or engineering adjacent like construction used load bearing up until about 6-12mo ago. Now it's everywhere.
  - embedding-shape 1mo ago
    > You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right? Seems to be going up and down in usage, if you look at Google Ngram + Trends: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22load+bearing%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22load+bearin... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22load%20bearing%22&hl=en-US https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22load%... Seems Google Trends say ~50% "interest over time" around 2004, which Ngrams at that same time has about half the occurrence in books compared to around ~1926. As the labs adjust their models to become more human, less repetitive and more of the population starts catching up these patterns, we'll see it become less used again, starting the new loop of the repeating cycle.
  - everybodyknows 1mo ago
    It's yet another borrowing of the prestige of technical terms -- propagated by LLMs, but in rampant misuse by poseurs even before AI: inflection point, exponential growth, order of magnitude, evolve, viable, ...
  - cwillu 1mo ago
    I'm calling it: if Bret Devereaux is being accused of posting slop, we have officially achieved peak unhinged claims of “this seems like AI”

Recurecur 1mo ago

This was a well-written and thought provoking article. The USA bashers out there should contemplate a world where the Chinese PLAN has assumed the role of the US Navy. Hint: it wouldn’t be pretty. Where the essay goes off the tracks is in its conspiratorial view that the US no longer wants to perform the role of securing maritime trade. Instead, the US is intent on expanding its Navy, and the Trump administration clearly recognizes that trade is crucial for future American and worldwide prosperity. It’s America First, not America Only. ;-)

AlotOfReading 1mo ago
It’s America First, not America Only. "America first, not only" was Obama's policy [0], not Trump's. The US wouldn't be starting trade wars with its oldest, closest allies if the current executive believed in multipolarity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine