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0 sats \ 11 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 20 Feb \ parent \ on: Milei's promotion of shitcoins is turning into a real scandal Politics_And_Law
I disagree though thank you for the kind words and sats.
Yes I agree governments often do harm but citizens also invite/allow them to.
People more or less get the government they deserve ~ collectively speaking.
And people need government- without it and rule of law there is no security or chance of prosperity.
The CCP knows it can only hold power as long as it delivers ongoing economic results to the majority of Chinese citizens- they operate on a version of the Heavens Mandate.
In contrast the wests liberal 'democracies' are now a sad and corrupted shadow of democracy- they are owned by the Jewish bankers and the corporate sponsors who support their absurd electoral antics. Trump is taking cronyism to a new level and the majority of US citizens will not benefit.
Finally the delusion that a Libertarian ideology can deliver us from the hypocrisy and conflict that is inevitable with government is never going to be a solution.
Governments flawed and corrupt as they often are, and as citizens allow them to be are nevertheless fundamental to the wealth (or poverty) of nations.
Without strong and principled government no strong economy has ever emerged.
Governments are fundamental to the wealth of nations.
The US government is a corrupt one and is not serving its citizens because it faces no real consequences if it doesn't...unlike the CCP which would risk a bloody fate if it failed to deliver decent results.
Quid pro quo zaps btw.
I think both China and the US have been in decline for a while now - at least in terms of social coherence but likely economically too - numbers get pimped to buy confidence and look tough but they're not always real. Both can get over it but it'll be done by the willpower of the people, not the supreme leaders - no matter how authoritarian they make their "rule". The leaders can make it easier, or harder. If they make it too hard it will not end well, if they make it too easy it will not end well either.
It doesn't matter where you live though, you'll always be subject to the extortion of the state. I've lived in multiple democracies and under multiple authoritarian regimes and the one thing that always has been true for me personally is that the less of your energy you have to spend on compliance, the more productive you can be. That's why I think the governments are mostly noise.
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I agree governments are almost always messy but where would you be without them?
Governments can only be as good as the citizens they govern and are more often than not more serving the wealthy elites who gain access to them above all else.
But US democracy has become a joke- ironically the Chinese de facto Mandate of Heaven system while giving the CCP huge power also gives them huge incentives to serve the people with an improving economy or risk very brutal removal- because western 'liberal' democratic governments do not face such harsh consequences they are ironically much more prone to corruption and corporate sponsorship.
The USA used to limit and control monopolists and cartels- now it is owned by them.
Chinas productive economy (trade exports) is now double that of the US...and it has enjoyed large and growing trade surpluses since the 1980s- in contrast the USA has not had a trade surplus since the 1960s.
Can you name a single nation that can now afford not to trade with China?
The west seems blind and in denial about the scale with which China has beaten it at its own game - now the battle is for the tertiary layers of global control- institutions and protocols and the US led by Trump is busy trashing the legacy of rules based international order (aka western imperialism) it once established upon succeeding the British empire.
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Oh I will be the last to challenge you on the US part. When Trump talked about Ukraine the past 24h it was kinda ... unique and it made the US look unreliable af. But this is a mere reflection of the national identity crisis in large part due to the polarization going on. And it's not just in the US, it's all over the EU, Canada, the UK, Australia and NZ too... The arguments you hear politicians post on the daily in all these countries are very weak: party lines or preprogrammed narratives. High "told you so" factor because everything gets narrated back to divide further. Nothing actually intelligent enough to be worth mentioning has been detected by yours truly in at least a decade.
you're saying that this statistic is now 2x, from 1.15x a year ago? (source)
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No I said manufactured GOODS.
The US services exports are mostly financialised products like the trillions of USDs finance and debt (and insurance) that the US is now reliant upon and that is based upon its USD Reserve currency status.
For example where I live- here in New Zealand- 80% of the banks are majorityowned by US shareholders- they extract massive profits from NZ every year and route them via tax havens to their US bankers owners.
They sponsored 2 of our last three Prime Ministers. One came directly from BoA/Merril Lynch.
After the large amnd devastating Christchurch earthqauke of 2010-2011 that PM arbitrarily ordered the demolition of repairable civic structures before they had been assessed for insurance- the insurer was AIG.
He did a similar trick on residential homeowners arbitrarily ordering over 10000 homes 'redzoned' which meant they got an offer from the government which bypassed reinsurers and short changed homeowners and saved US reinsurers billions.
The fiat debt slavery bankers cartel now owns and controls most governments.
Not only do the US owned banks extract huge profits they also fund these NZ banks capital requirements- these USD capital funding supplies are booked in NZ as taxable expenses reducing the tax liability of the banks while these payments are again routed via tax havens to their US bank funders. How are these USD capital funings created- out of thin fucking air.
This is how the US economy is now hugely reliant upon the fiat debt slavery bankers cartel.
China exports manufactured goods double the value that USA does. And that was what I said in the first place.
Agree most politicians speak from a script -they are puppets to the corporate banker sponsors who own them- Biden was a classic and sad example of this. It is right across the so called liberal western democracies with very few exceptions. Trump does not speak like that and I can see the appeal- he talks like a gangster and comes across perversely more genuine than the other sponsored puppets...but that's only because Trump is a genuine sociopathic shyster and never had any morals to begin with.
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The statistic I posted above excludes factor services (i.e. capital flows including dividends like you describe above) and things like salary remission. See the metadata definition (this took me forever to navigate because it kept crashing my browsers - worst performing site ever, sorry)
I think that we cannot just measure goods anymore like in the 60s. In 2023, digital service exports alone netted over 600bn for the US - a significant portion of US exports. Those are not shady investments but actually deliver great value. We cannot ignore that. Most organizations I've worked with outside of the US use AWS, Azure and/or Oracle Cloud. Also if they have otherwise fully domestic supply chains, simply because there aren't real contenders. I've directly seen this evolve starting around 2014 in EMEA, LatAm and even APAC - despite Alibaba competition - first hand. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed in these businesses, and they're extremely profitable.
If you want to compare nation states, the apples-to-apples comparison is to exclude as little as possible.
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Countries that do not need China include:
- Taiwan
- Norway
- Finland
- Switzerland
- Irelands Chinese imports fell a whoops 24% in FY 23 the most recent year available
It can be done. It’s stupid to think it’s impossible. Btw this list hits not only an Eastern Nation but several Western Nations
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Good answer and I cannot easily or readily refute any of the nations you point to.
All of them however with perhaps the exception of Switzerland are subservient tribute states to the USA both monetarily and militarily.
Switzerland with its famous role as the neutral state where Europes warring nations could safely stash their gold and treasure probably is the most independent of the list but even Switzerland is dependent upon the nod and wink acceptance of its neutrality.
The Chinese might take another view to that Europe did.
How much of global GDP do Norway and Finland account for? 1%?
Otherwise they are dependent upon NATO US military protection from the rising Chinese alliance fronted by its proxies N.Korea, Iran and Russia.
Taiwan is increasingly and inevitably integrated with China simply as a result of Chinas huge economic growth- the chips Taiwan makes mostly go to China for use in the manufacturing giant that China is.
Some of that Chinese manufacturing (mostly lower grade electronics) is now migrating to S.E.Asia which in turn is increasingly subject to Chinese influence...and may avoid US sanctions.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are now very firmly held extensions of Chinese influence.
Thailand and Vietnam may resist Chinese influence but they cannot deny or avoid the economic advantage and centre of gravity that is China.
China is building its bullet train network via Laos into Thailand eventually to penetrate all the way down to Singapore. Reverse engineering the rail seized and built with slave labour by the Japanese in WW2 which sought to cut off British supplies to the then Chinese Kuomintang government which eventually fled with the gold to Taiwan...
China is also building a canal from Cambodia out to sea to provide it and Cambodia with a direct shipping access and to avoid Vietnams control of the Mekong delta.
You do not put Japan on your list because Japan is increasingly dependent upon Chinese supply chains as is every industrial economy in the world.
China has won the trade war and he who dominates trade inevitably must dominate in other ways as well, or fail.
Both the USA and China know this...even if many western citizens don't seem to understand it, yet....and the fact is that USA no longer dominates global trade even though it still clings to dominating global trade payments...
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Since we are supposed to make up I wont prod further but surely you have witnessed or read about the Chinese protests over housing, the extreme level of unemployment in the youth or how the Chinese government ordered the Little Red Book app (the TikTok clone) to separate the Chinese mainland users from the international because of western ideas.
Even Chinese military might is starting to struggle due to the rampant corruption that mirrors the Russian military. The Chinese Navy is often cited as a huge threat to the US but there is a huge difference is putting a machine gun on a fishing boat and calling it a navy vessel and having an actual warship. Not to mention China, last time I checked, was still trying to get the nuclear sub it launched and immediately sunk off the river bed.....
Is the US government perfect oh hell no but what you are saying is wild. You need to look into US history if you want to truly find cronyism... I am not sure Trump is in the top 10 Presidents for it.
Blaming Jews is a straight up sick and disgusting thing. I mean I have tried to figure out how to address that because I mean seriously your at the step before telling me the Holocaust did not happen. If you are going to blame money where is the very deep pockets of the Arab oil money? Or the old US money that is definitely not Jewish? Look at the richest people in the world and those corporations you mean to tell me they are all controlled by Jewish people?
I dont know @optimism how do you rationalize these thoughts and comments about a group of people who have been slaughtered throughout their existence?
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I blame Jewish bankers, not the Jewish people- just to be very clear...so please do not misrepresent me on this emotive topic.
Just as I do not hate the Russian people 21 million of whom died in WW2 fighting the Nazis, I do not like their current war Putin...and it is clear evidence of the moral decay of the USA that Trump is pandering so sickeningly to Putin when he is a war criminal despot.
Perhaps it is because Trump himself is a convicted criminal as well?
USA today is lead by a crackpot criminal narcissist .
The Chinese are now garnering nuclear submarine technology from their new tributary dependents Russia.
Certainly China is not yet at the same level of military technology as the US but it is definitely catching up. Modern warfare is rapidly changing with Biotech, Robotics, AI, Nanotech, Space and Cyberspace the new frontiers- and in all these areas Chinas centrally directed strategic efforts are advancing upon the west.
China build half the worlds shipping.
The USA less than 0.5%.
The USA has lost the trade war- Chinas economy is streamlined to minimise rentseeking infrastructure monopolists and cartels in a way similar to how USA used to limit them- until the USA was taken over by corporate/banker lobbyists who now openly run the US government.
The US government is held over a barrel of debt to Jewish bankers and corporate sponsors.
Don't let the facts get in the way of your US exceptionalism.
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This is the last one you are going to get out of me because I am taking a page out of @SimpleStacker's playbook and @optimism I tried man... This guy needs some serious self reflection and quite frankly maybe some mental help.
There is no evidence that these "Jewish bankers" you claim exist and if so kinda interesting you never pointed to a source. If you say the Rothschilds I can easily say you are stupider than a rock and I feel bad for insulting the poor rock because it didnt do anything.
The Jones Act addresses part of the US shipbuilding issue as it covers who can fly the US flag. However, you are failing to realize this isnt a ship to ship comparison. The US stopped building shipping boats long ago... why? Because we did not need to other countries like Greece, South Korea, and Japan would build just as good of ships cheaper. So we specialized.
God bless you for thinking that a closed research industry is successful. Go look at history to show you that is not the case. In China you cannot research whatever and push what ever boundaries you want like in the US. I mean for the love of God you were dumb enough to mention space..... uhhh China has been doing things that the US did decades ago.
Coming from a small town kid in the South Jesus your education was bad. You are failing to defend your point and just try to add additional ones to cover up the fact you never addressed the holes I was able to easily poke in your posts. Centralization is known to lead to failure in science and ask the Soviets how it went. Only reasons they were able to figure out an atomic bomb was espionage and hmmm who does that remind you of?
Are there things China could do like attack Taiwan sure but they would be on the losing end when Taiwan blows up all the chip factories. Then they just get a pissed off population and nothing that they wanted. Not to mention the porcupine strategy that will just make China bleed live a siv with little gain.
You have created this idea that the US is a fallen empire when people are throwing a fit right now because we are not being the world police and we are not putting boots on the ground. Thats the complete opposite of what you are describing.
Thoughts and prays to you bud but honestly.... you need to go see a doctor and talk out your wild and honestly gross thoughts. There is help out there.
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You claim to work in Congress, with as usual zero evidence of the claim- however if true, which I doubt, this would simply be further evidence of the trouble the USA is in. You admit the sheer vacuous nonsense US media has become. The vat of US culture is being poisoned from within...no need for Tik tok.
The USA has not just farmed out shipping, but almost all heavy industry and medium and light productive industry.
That is part of the reason you have not enjoyed a trade surplus for SEVEN DECADES.
That is why you are now so heavily dependent upon your legacy USD hegemony and the seigniorage/interest income it delivers.
This is why Trump threatened the BRICS that if they continue adopting Chinas alternative trade payments routing (as Iran, Russia and N.Korea have already done) he will place punitive sanctions on them. Trump understand that if the USA were to lose USD reserve currency status the USA would be insolvent very swiftly.
The USAs remaining strategic power is fragile and rests upon the USD.
USA has not won a war since--------WHEN?
Chinas power is built upon competitive productive scale.
Yes they lack the innovative research ability the west still leads on that- but China has mastered reverse engineering what the west expends its declining resources upon developing- take the recent AI coup.
China serves more nations more than USA does- China provides the most lucrative commodity markets and the most cost effective efficiently produced manufactured goods.
USA can cling to its fading hegemony but when the dollar is increasingly being replaced by Chinas shadow banking trade payments alternative the clock is ticking and US decline seems unlikely to be reversed. Wishful thinking, cosying up to Putin, alienating traditional allies and denial of the facts will certainly not save it.
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