Originally Posted by Kepi

It's the GINI, dude. If you've got a high GINI, it's a strong sign that your economy can't self sustain if the status quo is disrupted in terms of trade. Plus, while South Korea exports more than it imports, it's much closer than China, meaning that, when pinched, they can pick up most of their own slack in theory (naturally occurring trade imbalances happen).

The extreme example was the Confederate States of America. An economy predicated upon slave labor and the near-absence of a middle class ensured that its economy could thrive only upon exports of the commodities that it produced. The Union Army could strangle the South economically with a tight blockade and gut its productive capacity by giving refuge to fleeing slaves (who got the inducement of honest pay for honest work building fortifications). Once the Union Army captured Chattanooga (the Foundry of the Confederacy) the Confederacy was damned and doomed.

Agricultural productivity -- even of foodstuffs -- collapsed; by the end of the war Confederate troops were often a sorry lot from hunger.

Basically, when you have a your economic core with a declining population, you're going to have a deflation driven environment. South Korea is going to be in a better position to deal with that than China, mostly because they're not going to be as reliant on foreign income to turn their gears. South Korea can, for the most part, turn it's own gears.

China solves its economic problems by fully adopting a consumer-driven economy instead of its current hybrid of crony capitalism and state enterprises of questionable accountability. That probably comes with democratization which may be necessary for saving the skins of politically-connected bureaucrats and crony capitalists.

The thing is, Kepi, I actually like you and don't think we're all that far off in the big picture. It's just the specifics where we differ. I think you have an annoying tendency to present pet interpretations of this or that piece of social science theory as incontrovertible and generally accepted fact. Mikebert does the same thing from time to time, but at least he actually presents the methodology and data behind it, and so it is a little easier to keep the debate at a more academic level. With you I feel the need to point out, "Hey, that's not actually a real thing!" before you bother to defend what you're talking about. If it ruffles your feathers a little, hey, my bad. Now, as to what you've just posted.

Okay, look at what I'm predicting: a massive reorganization of the economic order. What do you think happens when that occurs? I'm pretty sure that means slow downs and stops in trade while the situation resolves.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. My point was that, contrary to what you said before, SK actually has a much higher exposure to the global economy, as the figures I posted previously showed. It has really bad demographics, and with its urbanization, income, and productivity at developed country levels, it has less room to grow. It also has comparatively few natural resources with which to power an industrial economy. With North Korea being what it is, SK is effectively an island nation, a condition that is historically associated with a greater reliance on trade. China by contrast is a continental power, self-sufficient in food (the which SK is not), with an abundance of natural resources. Outside of the big coastal cities, its economy is primarily oriented around domestic production and consumption, which is what it would need if trade broke down. It also has a huge surplus rural population, and has tremendous room for productivity growth as best practices in business and industry diffuse through the rest of the economy. It doesn't even need to continue to grow population wise or reach developed country status to become the largest economy in the world, as it still has millions of peasants to move off of subsistence farms and into cities, while attaining even the development level of a Greece or Portugal would be more than adequate to put it at virtually double the US economy. There is also no historical precedent for a Korean superpower in East Asia, while China has been the dominant power in the region whenever it was halfway cohesive. I'm just not seeing whatever it is you're seeing here.

It's the nations that can most quickly reorganize. A moderate or low GINI in an industrialized nation implies that.

No, it is simply a measure of income disparity in the economy. If anything, a country with a strong state and a high Gini score has MORE room to reorganize without jeopardizing efficiency. This can be observed in the graphs above, where countries like the US in the '20s brought their (equivalent) Gini scores down rapidly as they transitioned into a consumer society through measures like the New Deal. China today has far more in common with the US then than it does the US now.

Meanwhile you laugh at the idea that the US could become a totalitarian state, but why? We've single other nation under a presidential system has become that what makes the US special?

Well, the short answer is that the US has gone more than 200 years without becoming a totalitarian state, so there are clearly informal differences (meaning outside the written constitutions) betwen it and the (mostly Latin American) states that had the same model. Now, past performance does not predict future results, and I don't feel that it is impossible that the Presidency could become an outright Imperial institution if democratic institutions continued to decay, a la the shift from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. If I am not mistaken, the shift from democracy to monarchy was part of the accepted model in classical political thought (via Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius), so the thesis is not necessarily a bad one. But that doesn't mean that it will be desirable, implemented by a new Millennial only party, and follow only your particular prejudices, all of which have been suggested by you before.

You laugh at the idea that we would eliminate state and local governments, but what good are they doing? We're seeing a push for national standards for police and for courts, and the majority of the policing agenda has been set by jumping through hoops for federal money for decades. At this point the state and local governments are largely bankrupt library systems that double as middle men for distributing federal funds.

I laugh because there is exactly zero intellectual or political momentum for such a shift, even on the fringes, which makes it an extraordinarily unlikely outcome within the next 20 years. Nor have you identified a conceivable mechanism for how such an event could be brought about.

You laugh at the idea that women might be excused from the work place, but why is that such a foreign concept? Gendered division of labor has been on going for thousands of years. Automation is going to continually dilute our need for labor. The labor participation rate is in decline. It will continue to decline. We're going to have to have a means of dividing up the labor pool effectively so that a certain amount of people just don't enter, because otherwise, we'll wind up diluting the value of labor so much the money earned isn't enough to buy the products created.

Because it flies counter to a great deal of cultural momentum, both here and abroad, in completely the opposite direction. And particularly if the cause for falling demand for labor is rising automation, it seems unlikely that the labor force would exclude women specifically over men. The dividing line would more likely be based on something like educational attainment, which would if anything privilege women over men, particularly outside the narrowly technical fields.

I think you like to write off other people's predictions as wishful thinking far too readily. What I want to do? I'd like to envision I'm going to live in a world with a 10 hour work week, and where I play Worlds of Magic more than I do most other things. I also know that's just flat out unlikely, and what I'm preparing for is the inevitability that I'm going to be financially responsible for my parents and my in laws and possibly a good chunk of my brothers' and sister's families as well.

We've had 500ish years of unbridled growth. I think we're probably due for a down shift.

I write off people's opinions off as wishful thinking when I see no evidence to suggest that they are anything but. I don't claim to KNOW the future, so I could always be wrong, but if I am I feel you should be able to prove that rationally rather than simply make off-the-wall assertions and then act surprised when i disagree.

And I agree that we are in for a downshift, an end to growth, but I think that has to more with things like declining population growth (not here so much), energy constraints, and the breakdown of the globalized dollar economy, much of which I think would tend to act against the trend of automation creating unemployment. If labor prices continue to fall, and capital and energy costs rise, it will become profitable to do more with people and less with machines.

Jordan is a virtual troll who just spouts off his insulting rants without any consideration for others.

You're just saying that because I think you're a stupid, self-indulgent prick whose "predictions" are a complete joke.

Smaller government is better in some ways, because it's more pliable and accessible.

Agreed, though you should be careful. You keep talkin' like that, people might think you're a libertarian or something.

It's a good point, but I don't see why you pick on women. In our day and age, we realize that women are just as valuable as men in the workplace. Sexism is passe, and feminism is the rule. If all women don't need to work, that is also true of all men. So, another solution is needed to the declining need for labor.

Agreed.

Probably, but we can mitigate it so that it does not cause as much suffering. #1, reduce inequality by rolling back Reaganomics and trickle-down, anti-government, libertarian free-market social-darwinist nonsense. Once that is done, fewer hours at higher wages can be legislated, so that the bosses who reap all the benefits from automation and don't deserve them don't hog them all for themselves as is currently the case, and a middle class can be recreated. Fair trade instead of free trade may be needed too for a while, if possible. Efficient and innovative use of resources will make it possible for all of us to still live a good life, which is not dependent on greed and excess consumerism, but IS dependent on a sustainable planet, proper city design and alternative energy. Economy and ecology must merge, forever and irrevocably. A shift in values to quality over quantity, fulfillment over money and security, has been ongoing since it started in the Awakening. This shift of values will enable us to live without the consumerist drive for things we don't need in order to keep up with the Joneses and win the rate race. We can do it!

What's funny is that I actually agree with a lot of this. Not worried, though, as the blue boomers thread showed, Eric and I can still quibble about means.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Words fail. SK. (pop. 50 million​)) is going to exceed China. (pop 1.3 billion) because of the spending power of their domestic market? That's even more retarded than your (Kepi) idea of an impending Millennial fascist party that's going to implement your preferred policies, like forcing women out of the workforce and abolishing state governments.

No. Fare better.

By 1913 Russia (that is Imperial Russia) already had one of the world's largest economies. It had huge production of coal, steel, oil, chemicals, textiles, and of course grain. Of course it was in the hazardous era of early capitalism in which workers got abysmal pay under brutal management in dangerous workplaces and could expect to live in huge tracts of crowded, disease-ridden, fire-trap slums. Recent peasants had been induced to go to the giant cities with promises that they could do well. Hunger and suffering were the surest companions of a proletariat that well fit Marx' depiction of disaffected workers awaiting the opportunity for a Socialist insurrection. It would take a catastrophic war to break the shaky and shabby economy of Imperial Russia...

Contrast Switzerland. The Swiss could give shelter to the radical revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who might have talked about a worldwide Socialist revolution but found no attentive audience among the Swiss. Wages and working conditions were far better in Switzerland than in Russia because (1)Switzerland had industrialized earlier, (2)was not as poor when it started to industrialize as was Russia -- infamous for famines, and (3)relied more heavily upon a consumer-driven society. Add to that, Switzerland had a responsible government -- and Russia had a government that operated at the whim of a capricious Tsar.

South Korea may not have the sheer size of GNP that China has, but divide the GNP per capita, and South Korea is near the top in the world. China is in the middle.

By the way -- Fascist parties are generally started by amoral, cynical figures, typically rogue conservatives and renegade socialists who meld a reactionary agenda with revolutionary techniques. In the degenerate 1920s most of the leaders who formed fascist movements were Lost figures -- Hitler, Mussolini, Mussert, Quisling, Gombos, Codreanu, Moseley... the vilest figure of American politics may have been D C Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan. To be sure, some contemporaries of the American Missionary generation gave some 'intellectual' and 'spiritual' guidance. Reactive generations have usually had the crankiest of political figures, and X is no exception.

No. Fare better.

No, dumbass, that was not the argument made.

That post was made in response to these statements of Kepi's, specifically:

China and Japan are going to implode due to declining populations, and likely it will be Korea, India, And maybe Australia who really run the East Asian world.

and

The difference is that Korea isn't already at max capacity economically. China and Japan are fully involved in an interdependent relationship with the rest of the world. Korea has started, but they're not nearly as overwrought as the other two. They might not make it because of demography, but I think they've got a lot more wiggle room than Japan. China is laughable and their labor situation is a farce.

So I have no idea what you're hopping in part way through gibbering about. Oh, wait...

By 1913 Russia (that is Imperial Russia) already had one of the world's largest economies. It had huge production of coal, steel, oil, chemicals, textiles, and of course grain. Of course it was in the hazardous era of early capitalism in which workers got abysmal pay under brutal management in dangerous workplaces and could expect to live in huge tracts of crowded, disease-ridden, fire-trap slums. Recent peasants had been induced to go to the giant cities with promises that they could do well. Hunger and suffering were the surest companions of a proletariat that well fit Marx' depiction of disaffected workers awaiting the opportunity for a Socialist insurrection. It would take a catastrophic war to break the shaky and shabby economy of Imperial Russia...

Contrast Switzerland. The Swiss could give shelter to the radical revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who might have talked about a worldwide Socialist revolution but found no attentive audience among the Swiss. Wages and working conditions were far better in Switzerland than in Russia because (1)Switzerland had industrialized earlier, (2)was not as poor when it started to industrialize as was Russia -- infamous for famines, and (3)relied more heavily upon a consumer-driven society. Add to that, Switzerland had a responsible government -- and Russia had a government that operated at the whim of a capricious Tsar.

South Korea may not have the sheer size of GNP that China has, but divide the GNP per capita, and South Korea is near the top in the world. China is in the middle.

It's an opportunity for you to once again go spouting off about something you read about (the run-up to) WWII. Seriously, your mom is dead, is your dad really in such condition that you can't run off and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING else with you life? It's not like you have a lot of ties to that "peasant village" you're always whining about. Go get a life with the time you have left.

On the other hand, this is one of the rare times when your pet obsessions are actually germane to the topic at hand. A couple of points:

1. It is entirely possible that China could experience another revolution. I suspect that the Chinese government is a lot more effective and prepared than that of Nicholas II, and that the danger conditions (hunger, suffering, and shaky and shabby economy) were passed in the last decades of the 20th, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, Kepi was talking about power, not necessarily well-being for the populace, and even under the circumstances you listed Soviet Russia remained substantially more powerful than Switzerland. I'm still not seeing the backing for Kepi's original claim.

2. The point you made about SK being at the top of the development ladder, while China is still in the middle, is precisely the point I was making about China not being maxed out economically, which is what Kepi claimed. Why don't you actually read the thread before hopping in with a canned rant about the Soviet Union and...

By the way -- Fascist parties are generally started by amoral, cynical figures, typically rogue conservatives and renegade socialists who meld a reactionary agenda with revolutionary techniques. In the degenerate 1920s most of the leaders who formed fascist movements were Lost figures -- Hitler, Mussolini, Mussert, Quisling, Gombos, Codreanu, Moseley... the vilest figure of American politics may have been D C Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan. To be sure, some contemporaries of the American Missionary generation gave some 'intellectual' and 'spiritual' guidance. Reactive generations have usually had the crankiest of political figures, and X is no exception.

This is why you're just the mirror image of Mr. "Restorationism". Q.E.D.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

(indults redacted)

On the other hand, this is one of the rare times when your pet obsessions are actually germane to the topic at hand. A couple of points:

1. It is entirely possible that China could experience another revolution. I suspect that the Chinese government is a lot more effective and prepared than that of Nicholas II, and that the danger conditions (hunger, suffering, and shaky and shabby economy) were passed in the last decades of the 20th, but I could be wrong. Nonetheless, Kepi was talking about power, not necessarily well-being for the populace, and even under the circumstances you listed Soviet Russia remained substantially more powerful than Switzerland. I'm still not seeing the backing for Kepi's original claim.

The Swiss Confederation has essentially the same political order that it got in 1815. The Soviet Union is no more. One system works, and the other did not work well.

2. The point you made about SK being at the top of the development ladder, while China is still in the middle, is precisely the point I was making about China not being maxed out economically, which is what Kepi claimed. Why don't you actually read the thread before hopping in with a canned rant about the Soviet Union and...

Some countries are approaching the post-industrial age in which people easily get all the stuff that they need. China is not approaching the post-industrial End of Scarcity. South Korea is. The two countries are in very different situations just on economics. Politics? Another huge difference that one cannot compare to economic reality.

China clearly will need to become its own market for much of what it manufactures. The First World may no longer be a reliable market for trinkets. China will have India as an economic competitor.

Cheap labor, which China still has, is good not so much for creating prosperity as it is for making stuff cheaply.

This is why you're just the mirror image of Mr. "Restorationism". Q.E.D.

No. I hope an antithesis. Fascist war crimes would be the ruin of America as we now know it. We need more reliance upon small business and less upon trusts and cartels that now dominate the American economy.

The Swiss Confederation has essentially the same political order that it got in 1815. The Soviet Union is no more. One system works, and the other did not work well.

And yet Russia still exists, and continues to exert its will abroad. You keep trying to pull the discussion away from the original claim (verging dangerously near red herring territory), which was that South Korea would surpass China in the region. I am not contending that South Korea's present system (political, economic, what have you) isn't better than that of China today. I am simply arguing that barring, I dunno, a nuclear exchange that affected China only, it will be the dominant power in the immediate region (though a conflict with Japan appears to be pending, IMO) as it develops, and that its development will continue even allowing for a breakdown in trade. I was also disputing the claim that SK had less exposure to the global economy, which is demonstrably false. If you're not disputing one of those two theses I don't know why you are talking to me.

Some countries are approaching the post-industrial age in which people easily get all the stuff that they need. China is not approaching the post-industrial End of Scarcity. South Korea is. The two countries are in very different situations just on economics.

I am familiar with this point of view, but I personally find it to be questionable. The Earth is a finite system with finite resources, and thus scarcity will always be a factor. And South Korea has (along with its fellow "Tigers"), in this century, been experiencing all the same issues with the transition to post-industrialism that Western countries have. The long-term effects of said transition are not yet known. It may turn out to not be a new stage of growth. You should check out the history of the 18th century Netherlands to see an example of a pre-fossil fuel stage of post-industrial decline.

Politics? Another huge difference that one cannot compare to economic reality

Once again, you're just bringing in random garbage. If democracy were in itself such a panacea, India would have long overtaken China in the development race. The fact that it hasn't, though starting from a similar base, should really cause you to look a little deeper.

hina clearly will need to become its own market for much of what it manufactures

Agreed, and its Gini scores, income, and level of industrialization are broadly similar to those of Western countries when they made the same transition.

China will have India as an economic competitor.

Nope, already been there. China won that​ race a while ago. Try to keep up.

Cheap labor, which China still has, is good not so much for creating prosperity as it is for making stuff cheaply.

Petty moralism masquerading as economic analysis. In comparison to where it was 30 years ago, "making stuff cheaply" has made it vastly more prosperous. The massive increase in Chinese students in education is one of the many factors that will (probably) propel it to the next stage of development. The other East Asian economies once relied on cheap labor, too. South Korea was poorer than West Africa 50 years ago. Look where it is now.

I hope an antithesis.

Don't flatter yourself, you're just another crank with an axe to grind.

We need more reliance upon small business and less upon trusts and cartels that now dominate the American economy.

Language is a little outmoded, but otherwise agree.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Calling the War on Terror a holy war is more than a bit of a farce, Eric. Comparing 9-11 to anything akin to the Crusades, including our level of mobilization or interest in winning the thing is laughable. We couldn't even set terms for victory that actually made some semblance of sense. Gas prices over $3 a gallon have made more of an impact on the average person's life than either of these events, and that's been a reality since 04.

What matters is the narrative of the masses. I.e. what the average person on the other side of the crisis says when everything started to suck and why. It's laughable enough that you seem to think the crisis will be allowed to continue until 2029, but that Millennials and Xers will think that 2003-2007 are amongst the "good old days"? Starkly laughable.

Then again, a lot of Millennials born in the mid-late 90s seem to think so.

Originally Posted by decadeologist101

Then again, a lot of Millennials born in the mid-late 90s seem to think so.

Probably because they don't know anything different. To me-a Boomer!-the 90s now seem like the good old days. Really, that decade was the Indian summer of the MilSaec.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's a good point, but I don't see why you pick on women. In our day and age, we realize that women are just as valuable as men in the workplace. Sexism is passe, and feminism is the rule. If all women don't need to work, that is also true of all men. So, another solution is needed to the declining need for labor. I have mentioned the solutions, and again below.

Inclusion is the only reason why we see women in certain physically demanding jobs. So, I can see those particular work settings reverting to a much earlier state. Meanwhile, in spite of inclusion, the current evaluation tests for hiring tend to exclude folks who don't have the best people skills or who are quirky, so there is yet another way to reduce the work force. At some point, if things don't change to bring more productive activity back into the US, we are going to face all sorts of things that will reduce the work force.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

The thing is, Kepi, I actually like you and don't think we're all that far off in the big picture. It's just the specifics where we differ. I think you have an annoying tendency to present pet interpretations of this or that piece of social science theory as incontrovertible and generally acced fact. Mikebert does the same thing from time to time, but at least he actually presents the methodology and data behind it, and so it is a little easier to keep the debate at a more academic level. With you I feel the need to point out, "Hey, that's not actually a real thing!" before you bother to defend what you're talking about. If it ruffles your feathers a little, hey, my bad. Now, as to what you've just posted.



I agree with this wholeheartedly. My point was that, contrary to what you said before, SK actually has a much higher exposure to the global economy, as the figures I posted previously showed. It has really bad demographics, and with its urbanization, income, and productivity at developed country levels, it has less room to grow. It also has comparatively few natural resources with which to power an industrial economy. With North Korea being what it is, SK is effectively an island nation, a condition that is historically associated with a greater reliance on trade. China by contrast is a continental power, self-sufficient in food (the which SK is not), with an abundance of natural resources. Outside of the big coastal cities, its economy is primarily oriented around domestic production and consumption, which is what it would need if trade broke down. It also has a huge surplus rural population, and has tremendous room for productivity growth as best practices in business and industry diffuse through the rest of the economy. It doesn't even need to continue to grow population wise or reach developed country status to become the largest economy in the world, as it still has millions of peasants to move off of subsistence farms and into cities, while attaining even the development level of a Greece or Portugal would be more than adequate to put it at virtually double the US economy. There is also no historical precedent for a Korean superpower in East Asia, while China has been the dominant power in the region whenever it was halfway cohesive. I'm just not seeing whatever it is you're seeing here.



No, it is simply a measure of income disparity in the economy. If anything, a country with a strong state and a high Gini score has MORE room to reorganize without jeopardizing efficiency. This can be observed in the graphs above, where countries like the US in the '20s brought their (equivalent) Gini scores down rapidly as they transitioned into a consumer society through measures like the New Deal. China today has far more in common with the US then than it does the US now.



Well, the short answer is that the US has gone more than 200 years without becoming a totalitarian state, so there are clearly informal differences (meaning outside the written constitutions) betwen it and the (mostly Latin American) states that had the same model. Now, past performance does not predict future results, and I don't feel that it is impossible that the Presidency could become an outright Imperial institution if democratic institutions continued to decay, a la the shift from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. If I am not mistaken, the shift from democracy to monarchy was part of the accepted model in classical political thought (via Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius), so the thesis is not necessarily a bad one. But that doesn't mean that it will be desirable, implemented by a new Millennial only party, and follow only your particular prejudices, all of which have been suggested by you before.



I laugh because there is exactly zero intellectual or political momentum for such a shift, even on the fringes, which makes it an extraordinarily unlikely outcome within the next 20 years. Nor have you identified a conceivable mechanism for how such an event could be brought about.



Because it flies counter to a great deal of cultural momentum, both here and abroad, in completely the opposite direction. And particularly if the cause for falling demand for labor is rising automation, it seems unlikely that the labor force would exclude women specifically over men. The dividing line would more likely be based on something like educational attainment, which would if anything privilege women over men, particularly outside the narrowly technical fields.



I write off people's opinions off as wishful thinking when I see no evidence to suggest that they are anything but. I don't claim to KNOW the future, so I could always be wrong, but if I am I feel you should be able to prove that rationally rather than simply make off-the-wall assertions and then act surprised when i disagree.

And I agree that we are in for a downshift, an end to growth, but I think that has to more with things like declining population growth (not here so much), energy constraints, and the breakdown of the globalized dollar economy, much of which I think would tend to act against the trend of automation creating unemployment. If labor prices continue to fall, and capital and energy costs rise, it will become profitable to do more with people and less with machines.

Okay, this is literally the third fucking day I've tried to reply to this post in a fair, line by line manner because you've put a fair amount of thought in the post and I really wanted to give a good counter point and goddamn if the fucking computer hasn't eaten it every fucking time, except now, where it's sitting, saved on my laptop, which refuses to connect to the Wi-Fi (to be fair, I think the save is messed up). Yeah, there's internet. My laptop just refuses to connect. So fucking eventually, I'll get the reply up. But now? I'm gonna quit for a bit before I rage quit my router.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Okay, this is literally the third fucking day I've tried to reply to this post in a fair, line by line manner because you've put a fair amount of thought in the post and I really wanted to give a good counter point and goddamn if the fucking computer hasn't eaten it every fucking time, except now, where it's sitting, saved on my laptop, which refuses to connect to the Wi-Fi (to be fair, I think the save is messed up). Yeah, there's internet. My laptop just refuses to connect. So fucking eventually, I'll get the reply up. But now? I'm gonna quit for a bit before I rage quit my router.

Thanks for the update. It happens, man. I always make a point of saving the text before I hit reply, especially when it's a long post.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

The thing is, Kepi, I actually like you and don't think we're all that far off in the big picture. It's just the specifics where we differ. I think you have an annoying tendency to present pet interpretations of this or that piece of social science theory as incontrovertible and generally accepted fact. Mikebert does the same thing from time to time, but at least he actually presents the methodology and data behind it, and so it is a little easier to keep the debate at a more academic level. With you I feel the need to point out, "Hey, that's not actually a real thing!" before you bother to defend what you're talking about. If it ruffles your feathers a little, hey, my bad.

Agreed. I actually brought out my laptop instead of my phone for this post so that I can go line by line instead of having to be lazy or get frustrated by formatting issues which is what happens when it comes to using my phone, which I think makes things a little ambiguous, because I have to redo the same message a few times, it takes much longer than I'm willing to spend and then a lot of the time, and so I get willing to sacrifice depth and analysis for the short hand because I'm frustrated with the time sink.

Now, as to what you've just posted.

Let's go.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. My point was that, contrary to what you said before, SK actually has a much higher exposure to the global economy, as the figures I posted previously showed. It has really bad demographics, and with its urbanization, income, and productivity at developed country levels, it has less room to grow. It also has comparatively few natural resources with which to power an industrial economy. With North Korea being what it is, SK is effectively an island nation, a condition that is historically associated with a greater reliance on trade. China by contrast is a continental power, self-sufficient in food (the which SK is not), with an abundance of natural resources. Outside of the big coastal cities, its economy is primarily oriented around domestic production and consumption, which is what it would need if trade broke down. It also has a huge surplus rural population, and has tremendous room for productivity growth as best practices in business and industry diffuse through the rest of the economy. It doesn't even need to continue to grow population wise or reach developed country status to become the largest economy in the world, as it still has millions of peasants to move off of subsistence farms and into cities, while attaining even the development level of a Greece or Portugal would be more than adequate to put it at virtually double the US economy. There is also no historical precedent for a Korean superpower in East Asia, while China has been the dominant power in the region whenever it was halfway cohesive. I'm just not seeing whatever it is you're seeing here.

That's mostly because you're not looking for what I am, which is fair enough. My basic thought is that after you have the crash, if you've got a bottom up population (which most industrialized nations do), then you're going to have to race to become a core player in your world. So it's about timing, infrastructure, and demand, not so much about having the fundamentals of a sound economy. That's why things like the GINI score (and yes, I realize that it can change rather quickly, but I don't think this is something that's going to happen 15 years from now), whether or not the entire nation is industrialized, and whether or not the economy can be quickly retooled to provide for the existing population rather than primarily for exports counts. China was out of my running from the get go because they have an upended population and they haven't completed industrialization yet. Yes, there's a large industrialized portion of their economy, but there they have the other part of the economy which is totally just not at all in sync with the industrialized part. That's going to create major organizational difficulties. Maybe industrialized portions of China will split off and take command, and just drop the rest of China, but I just don't think they have the organizational prowess to race back to some semblance of normal with a nation that size.

No, it is simply a measure of income disparity in the economy. If anything, a country with a strong state and a high Gini score has MORE room to reorganize without jeopardizing efficiency. This can be observed in the graphs above, where countries like the US in the '20s brought their (equivalent) Gini scores down rapidly as they transitioned into a consumer society through measures like the New Deal. China today has far more in common with the US then than it does the US now.

A nation with a strong state and high GINI will do well in an economy that will be expanding overall, but not one that is declining. The upended population changes the game. Smaller, more organizationally lithe, and more equal are going to bounce back faster. In terms of the race back to normal, I think Korea just has more of an opportunity to reorganize, arm up, and take some territory to farm on faster than China will be able to even respond if their land is taken.

Well, the short answer is that the US has gone more than 200 years without becoming a totalitarian state, so there are clearly informal differences (meaning outside the written constitutions) betwen it and the (mostly Latin American) states that had the same model. Now, past performance does not predict future results, and I don't feel that it is impossible that the Presidency could become an outright Imperial institution if democratic institutions continued to decay, a la the shift from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. If I am not mistaken, the shift from democracy to monarchy was part of the accepted model in classical political thought (via Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius), so the thesis is not necessarily a bad one. But that doesn't mean that it will be desirable, implemented by a new Millennial only party, and follow only your particular prejudices, all of which have been suggested by you before.

I think here, I haven't been clear. Like, I'll say some stuff, but I don't have the progress tree listed out anywhere, so it's kinda like looking at all the videos at the end of a video game that are based off of different twists and turns you can take without conforming to one set ending. Basically, I think that major, systemic government overhaul is inevitable. that inevitability is likely to produce one of three results really:


1) Direct democracy
2) Parliamentary style democracy
3) Totalitarian governance.


Now my hope is that a generally for Millennials by Millennials uprising in the form of a political party will create a direct democracy. Why do I think the overwhelming majority will be Millennials? Well for one they'll be aged just about right for it, meanwhile Boomers and Xers are vested in the system, and Boomers control the system to the point where if they wanted change in government, they'd have done it already. On the other side, you could see a military takeover... most of the participants in that would be military, making the bulk of them Millennial. Predicting that Millennials are going to change the system is, at this point, like shooting fish in a barrel. If Boomers wanted to change things, they'd have done it. If Xers really wanted to change things, they'd have at least tried to get started.


And to point out, I don't think it'll really make a difference to you or me what government we get, because the change in the world economic cores will be what sets the agenda for the next 30 or 40 years. My personal hope of Direct Democracy is just because I think we can and it's a matter of aesthetics, what really matters is that it's a semi-competent government, which is really the most you can hope for.

I laugh because there is exactly zero intellectual or political momentum for such a shift, even on the fringes, which makes it an extraordinarily unlikely outcome within the next 20 years. Nor have you identified a conceivable mechanism for how such an event could be brought about.

The mechanism is simply having to switch tracks and create a new government. That changes the equation from "why would you make that change?" to "why would you keep them in?" My thing is, with our technological capabilities now, why would you keep separated state and local governance? I just really don't see much practical reason to keep them around anymore. Back before we had easy access to mass communications, sure, it made sense. But the reality is that under this system, if I flew up and stole your car, drove it to Eric and handed it off to him, then flew back to Virginia, the only place where I'm likely to be extradited for the crime is Pennsylvania and Ohio as I drive off. Why would we tolerate that kind of incongruity of law anymore? We don't even need to extradite as long as it's one big system. Under our current order, I can be pulled over in California and I'd get off scott free. You'd get your car back, but you'd be paying cross country to pick your car up out of impound (which also costs money), and I'd be flying back to Virginia and the only penalty is that I'd need to avoid New York and surrounding states (at least I think that's where you live). That's an old world way of organization. The truth is that in this day and age, I could get picked up in California and we could have a completely teleconferenced trial, no problem. The only problem is who is going to pay for it? California wouldn't want to pay for my prison time for a crime committed in New York, but if it's all one system, who cares where they're caught?


Meanwhile, if we're redoing the government from the ground up, I can't really think of one advantage that state and local governance would provide as long as the new singular governance picked up the services they provide.

Because it flies counter to a great deal of cultural momentum, both here and abroad, in completely the opposite direction. And particularly if the cause for falling demand for labor is rising automation, it seems unlikely that the labor force would exclude women specifically over men. The dividing line would more likely be based on something like educational attainment, which would if anything privilege women over men, particularly outside the narrowly technical fields.

Actually, if we're dealing with low labor demand, it's likely that men will be chosen over women specifically to retain the value of the college degree. In terms of the portion of the labor pool you need with a college degree, women have enough that it takes what was once more or less a guarantee of a fast track to the upper middle class and turned it into a lottery. The financial viability is going to favor men, simply because women have too many degrees. Furthermore, the reason that we'd start with sex as the defining labor divider is because it would likely be the least disruptive in terms of magnitude to the most amount of people. Most people couple within their own class, when you look at it from a "who loses" perspective, this dividing labor by sex creates the lowest number of losers. That number decreases when you include certain exceptions. I, for one, think that gay women would be excepted, child support would still be in effect and alimony would come back as a norm. You don't get that least level disruption from anything else I can think of.


In a time of economic calamity, cultures change. That simple.

I write off people's opinions off as wishful thinking when I see no evidence to suggest that they are anything but. I don't claim to KNOW the future, so I could always be wrong, but if I am I feel you should be able to prove that rationally rather than simply make off-the-wall assertions and then act surprised when i disagree.

If you want to know why, you could always ask.

And I agree that we are in for a downshift, an end to growth, but I think that has to more with things like declining population growth (not here so much), energy constraints, and the breakdown of the globalized dollar economy, much of which I think would tend to act against the trend of automation creating unemployment. If labor prices continue to fall, and capital and energy costs rise, it will become profitable to do more with people and less with machines.

I don't think you can get to a point where, once set in place, people cost less than machines, especially when it comes to purely digital information exchange. We're never going to get to a zero labor level, but one that's extremely low demand is something that's very doable for a cost that will ultimately be little more than some lines of code, and we can keep using those lines of code.

After Kaspersky's recent revelations, I've been thinking of a new analogue to propose: NSA escalation and Total Information Awareness as a modern-day Manhattan Project.

Both are high tech, super secret attempts to create a decisive weapon with a global scale. Both projects are headquartered somewhere in the desert, they come with large, hard-to-trace budgets, and they require political buy-ins from the broader scientific community. Anyone who shares a secret is treated like a traitor.

As for weapons deployment, Kaspersky specifically found backdoors coded straight in to the firmware of hard drives. It's really advanced stuff, too. Once you get the infection inside the computer, you can even issue additional commands over an air-gap (like, through a microphone). This is the attack map:



Further, based on the specific targets, it seems that infiltrating conventional militaries, studying foreign media from the inside, staying one step ahead in corporate intelligence, and extracting data straight from university & research servers may be the *true* purpose of the NSA. With such a big picture strategy in place, actual hot conflicts become somewhat insignificant because the U.S. enters the battlefield with a decisive intelligence and technology advantage.

Originally Posted by decadeologist101

Then again, a lot of Millennials born in the mid-late 90s seem to think so.

I've noticed younger millenials think the bush years were actually pretty good. Probably because it was their childhood and they didn't really know what was going on.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Inclusion is the only reason why we see women in certain physically demanding jobs. So, I can see those particular work settings reverting to a much earlier state. Meanwhile, in spite of inclusion, the current evaluation tests for hiring tend to exclude folks who don't have the best people skills or who are quirky, so there is yet another way to reduce the work force. At some point, if things don't change to bring more productive activity back into the US, we are going to face all sorts of things that will reduce the work force.

That seems to me to be primarily a result of our free trade policies, which have encouraged most of our work to be outsourced overseas for cheaper labor.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Inclusion is the only reason why we see women in certain physically demanding jobs...

Consider one of the "female professions": nursing. That work has always been physically demanding, and is even life threatening in some cases. Consider the nurses who have to move massively overweight patients to treat bed sores or plot them on a bed pan. If anything, industrial jobs are far LESS demanding than that.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Consider one of the "female professions": nursing. That work has always been physically demanding, and is even life threatening in some cases. Consider the nurses who have to move massively overweight patients to treat bed sores or plot them on a bed pan. If anything, industrial jobs are far LESS demanding than that.

Obesity is more commonplace now than it used to be -- and such makes nursing more of a hazardous occupation than it used to be. Also, people with AIDS and hepatitis, those two originating often in very bad habits, create a risk of some dangerous infections.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Consider one of the "female professions": nursing. That work has always been physically demanding, and is even life threatening in some cases. Consider the nurses who have to move massively overweight patients to treat bed sores or plot them on a bed pan. If anything, industrial jobs are far LESS demanding than that.

Now it is. Keep in mind that the medical profession offers a lot more services now than it did 50 years ago. Not saying it wasn't hard back then, too, but it's a woke different ball game now. The amount of technical knowledge you need now is profound compared to what it was 50 years ago, and the difference it makes in terms of response is pretty amazing.

In order to facilitate the discussion, when we talk about the beginning of the 4T, what are we actually describing? Most turnings reflect definable changes in mood:

Examples:
Revolutionary 4T - Colonists recognized that they were no longer loyal to the Crown.
Era of Good Feeling 1T - The United States had defined itself.
Civil War 4T - A realization that America could become two countries
Great Depression - Fear
American High - Faith in American exceptionalism
Consciousness Revolution - Distrust in American leadership
Culture War 3T- Restoration of trust in America's leadership role
Current 4T - ?????

Define what the mood change was, then we can better understand when it started.

Originally Posted by JDW

In order to facilitate the discussion, when we talk about the beginning of the 4T, what are we actually describing? Most turnings reflect definable changes in mood:

Examples:
Revolutionary 4T - Colonists recognized that they were no longer loyal to the Crown.
Era of Good Feeling 1T - The United States had defined itself.
Civil War 4T - A realization that America could become two countries
Great Depression - Fear
American High - Faith in American exceptionalism
Consciousness Revolution - Distrust in American leadership
Culture War 3T- Restoration of trust in America's leadership role
Current 4T - ?????

Define what the mood change was, then we can better understand when it started.

Current 4T -- Establishment of unqualified trust in and complete obedience to plutocratic oligarchs -- or else! (Tea Party, GOP, Koch syndicate)

Originally Posted by Kepi

Now it is. Keep in mind that the medical profession offers a lot more services now than it did 50 years ago. Not saying it wasn't hard back then, too, but it's a woke different ball game now. The amount of technical knowledge you need now is profound compared to what it was 50 years ago, and the difference it makes in terms of response is pretty amazing.

But nurses still get injured all the time lifting heavy patients, of which there are more of these days. NPR did a story on that recently.

Originally Posted by JDW

In order to facilitate the discussion, when we talk about the beginning of the 4T, what are we actually describing? Most turnings reflect definable changes in mood:

Examples:
Revolutionary 4T - Colonists recognized that they were no longer loyal to the Crown.
Era of Good Feeling 1T - The United States had defined itself.
Civil War 4T - A realization that America could become two countries
Great Depression - Fear
American High - Faith in American exceptionalism
Consciousness Revolution - Distrust in American leadership
Culture War 3T- Restoration of trust in America's leadership role
Current 4T - ?????

Define what the mood change was, then we can better understand when it started.

Widespread sentiment that the Reagan-derived Neo-Liberal economic policies of the 3T are not working? We are now having radical criticisms of the 3T economic orthodoxy on both sides of the political spectrum, and interestingly both sides are now also criticizing the strong links between corporations and the government forged in the last 4T.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Current 4T -- Establishment of unqualified trust in and complete obedience to plutocratic oligarchs -- or else! (Tea Party, GOP, Koch syndicate)

In a leftwing way, you are saying that the catalyst for the 4T was Obama’s election. I don’t think that works.

Originally Posted by Odin

Widespread sentiment that the Reagan-derived Neo-Liberal economic policies of the 3T are not working? We are now having radical criticisms of the 3T economic orthodoxy on both sides of the political spectrum, and interestingly both sides are now also criticizing the strong links between corporations and the government forged in the last 4T.

What specifically? If the mood is a shift towards more government involvement, then I think that would make Katrina the catalyst.

CLARIFICATION: 9/11 triggered a mood for increased military spending (arguably 3T) while Katrina triggered a mood for increased domestic spending.

Originally Posted by JDW

Originally Posted by me

I said, Current 4T -- Establishment of unqualified trust in and complete obedience to plutocratic oligarchs -- or else! (Tea Party, GOP, Koch syndicate)

In a leftwing way, you are saying that the catalyst for the 4T was Obama’s election. I don’t think that works.

It might not work as the Hard Right wishes it to work. The Crisis Era is still young. Full consolidation of power by the America Right seems unlikely now, at least through normal politics. That's not to say that a coup is impossible even if there is no precedent for such.

One would think that the GOP would try to win support with the old method of pork-barrel politics -- build a dam or an expressway in swing districts and give credit to the Party. But that has yet to happen.