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7 sats \ 3 replies \ @CliffBadger 5h \ on: The West trapped in cult of financialisation- losing its engineering advantage. econ
I found your problem. It's your British heritage. You get your love of statism from them.
There is no "production" unless you have a stable financial system (a free market) running calculations for it. The alternative is statism, which means the economy is fundamentally unproductive, because the productive classes are constantly having to pay off the statists (who contribute nothing back to society). That's why statism fails in every country that tries it.
You correctly identify my British/Irish heritage and DNA.
And yes as I grew up the products of British manufacturing were still respected although in decline as US and Japanese competition overwhelmed them.
New Zealand was in the process of shifting from being a colony of the British Empire to being a tribute state to the emerging US empire.
I will always prefer Triumphs and BSAs ro Harleys!
However I would strenuously challenge the implied assertion that US hegemony and wealth was built any less on military might and power projection that the British Empire was.
It wasn't.
USA first gained hegemony over the Americas and thenwent global after WW2 and the fall of the Berlin wall.
Post WW2 Britain grudgingly handed over the keys to the empire to Uncle Sam.
The murder of the democratically elected President of Iran, Mossadegh was one of the early stages in the handover.
USA has exercised its global military bases and threat of use of force as well as frequent actual uses of force to gain economic advantage.
Perhaps even more than the British did.
Certainly one fuck of a lot more than China has done to date.
To assert that wealth and prosperity are solely derivatives of free and open markets is absurd and history shows it is.
Now that China dominates global trade in commodities and manufactured goods it must be able to defend its global assets and investments just as previous empires have had to.
The Chinese are building from a base of mercantile- engineering- and have already beaten western capitalism at its own game of producing manufactured goods in the most cost competitive manner.
Western factories simply cannot compete thus Trump rolls out the protectionist tariffs.
USA is a bastion of crony capitalism and always has been.
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WWI and WWII were statist problems that started in Europe. The US became relatively richer than Europe in the aftermath only to the extent that it avoided getting involved. No where did the US ever turn a profit profit from fulfilling a war goal.
Besides, I'm not saying the US never never tried to gain economic advantages from warfare. I'm saying those attempts weren't successful and weren't the reason the US became a rich country in the first place. The wealth building happened before the military ventures, in the form of free markets being allowed to do the capitalist work of inventing and producing. The decline started when Jewish refugees from Europe started working from LA and New York to promote Marxism/statism while denigrating America's founding ideologies.
You say "crony capitalism" when it's just statism. Government exerting control over the economy is statism, your preferred system. It was separation of economy and state, with humility towards God and none towards the government, that was the driving force behind the industrial revolution and America's "hegemony," which was a side effect of wealth creation and not a concious objective.
To assert that wealth and prosperity are solely derivatives of free and open markets is absurd and history shows it is.
Where does history show anything different? In life there is only trade, or violence. You can't threaten and intimidate someone into invention and creation.
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'No where did the US ever turn a profit profit from fulfilling a war goal.'
This is fucking hilarious, extreme and TRAGIC ignorance you are spouting.
Petrodollar
Have you not heard about the million Indonesians murdered on the orders of the CIA and the later carve up of Indonesian resources wealth to US corporates?
You might like to read some history starting with US involvement in The Opium Wars.
Then read about the US involvement in the assassination of Irans democratically elected leader Mossadagh.
Chile, El Salvador, The Contras (Nicaragua), Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Libya and many many more...all US military power projection serving to protect and promote US Corporate Interests!
The ONGOING US drone strikes in breach of international law that kill an estimated 50 innocant bystanders for every enemy combatant suspect killed. yes suspect as in untried.
Your ignorance of US imperialism is tragic and undermines any ability for me to take anything else you say seriously.
Seriously read some history and get your head out of the arsehole of Libertarian Mises Institute Bullshit.
All of the above are tragic examples of the 'compromises' that become imperative as nations gain super power status and lose sight of the democratic and fundamental principles that they may have been founded upon.
China in emerging as a super power is no less prone to these imperatives but to date has not displayed anything even approaching the brutality and extent of US imperialist militarism. The US has hundreds of declared military bases globally and many hundreds more undeclared...there is a reason for this and much of it is documented- do some reading.
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