• Cowbee [he/they]
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    1 day ago

    Kinda hard to argue against a country that consistently focuses on increasing the development of their productive forces. Tarrifs in the US are a way to protect dying industries from competition with more productive and efficient countries. The only way out for the US is re-industrialization, either through strong federal expansions a la FDR with some type of mega Green New Deal, or replacing the system with Socialism (at which point relations with China would likely cool down).

    Social Democracy, however, would only delay the inevitable.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 day ago

      you forgot the third option: military and/or financial intervention, forcing other countries to stop trading with china or face consequences like regime change; political instability; economic destruction; etc.

      the mindset of american “patriots” since the cold war when it came to a nuclear holocaust was that if 4 russians are still alive after the nuclear missile stopped falling and there were 5 americans left alive, then we’ve won; that mindset is still alive, well and in charge right now.

      • @[email protected]
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        423 hours ago

        forcing other countries to stop trading with china

        This is not a war the US could or would win.

        • @mlg
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          113 hours ago

          Yeah but they’re fully content in simply delaying the inevitable as much as they can.

          China by itself is only really behind in microchip litho fabs which is probably the most advanced and complicated tech humanity has created. What they truly lack is currency stability backing for trade.

          For the time being, BRICS will just be a stepping stone because USD still has an iron grip on the global economy. China is playing the long game by letting it slip away slowly via loans and foreign investments to replace stuff like IMF loans. Any huge action to strip USD now would result in country heads getting magically arrested or assassinated overnight (cough Pakistan cough).

          The US knows it can’t keep up the control for long, yet their solution is to essentially pretend China will never catch up.

        • @[email protected]
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          521 hours ago

          that’s never stopped us before and the proof is in the pudding with vietnam, iraq & afghanistan.

      • Cowbee [he/they]
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        71 day ago

        Even if the US doubles down on millitary action, and commits, that isn’t a way out. The US has no other manufacturing overseas or domestically that can keep up with its consumption, it needs to re-industrialize regardless.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 day ago

          re-industrialize

          The US economy is too based on rent seeking for that to happen without a system disintegrating crash.

          That is, maybe some polity occupying the territories formerly known as the United States could do it.

          Which might be something motivating this “network state” bullshit.

          • Cowbee [he/they]
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            81 day ago

            Hence why I said it would need essentially a mega-FDR admin or Socialism to achieve, and the mega-FDR admin would merely be a delay of crashing.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 day ago

          the posthumously beloved mexican dictator, porfirio diaz, proved that the military alone wasn’t sufficient when he instituted his successful “bread or stick” policy; i forsee the american military being that stick and the financial inducement as the bread, luring other countries away from continuing to trade with china on mutually favorable terms.

          you’re 100% right in the end since there’s a time limit; but unlike diaz, the american pockets are practically infinitely deep and our military is absurdly large and well placed in our equally absurdly large number of bases all around the world; along with a large enough desperate population that will serve as cannon fodder for that military.

          • Cowbee [he/they]
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            61 day ago

            I’m more of the mindset that the US, at this point, is a Paper Tiger. It has strength to project, but not an industrial base to maintain it.

        • @[email protected]
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          81 day ago

          i’m convinced that the russian puppet thing is american liberal notion and i don’t ascribe to it; it think he’s just a ordinary american conservative who aligns politically with russian conservatism.