Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. The "multipolar world" that anti-American forces want just means multiple fault lines of conflict disrupting and significantly increasing the costs of international trade. There's a reason Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana are named after a single military power who provided protection for at least a third of humanity at the time.
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  2. It always has been, just the effects have stacked up so much that it's increasingly harder to deny the evidence with a straight face.
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  3. Our subs just have to take out the PLAN's underwater "washing machines" and the relatively few surface vessels that pose an anti-air threat. The rest of the PLA's ships can then be dealt with through cheap guided gravity bombs, of which the US has hundreds of thousands of Mk-80 series in stock ready to bolt on a JDAM kit.
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  4.  @pietwandelaar1743 In technical aspects. In other skills and achievements humans care about (notably artistic), the average Singaporean seems lacking.
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  5. I wonder what he considers "armored". I don't imagine the RF trying to clear out Ukrainian AT teams rolling up in cash trucks and executive limos.
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  6. It’s not the headcount that counts, it’s more how old they are. Populations then had both elders dying and youth being born faster.
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  7. Raids from friendly territory are a lot easier to "win" than sustaining combat in hostile lands, which the South Koreans at least did in Vietnam.
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  8. So we should issue like a Permanent Voter Card to all citizens like they do in Nigeria? I thought y'all were terrified of a centralized demographic database, hence why we have no unique citizen ID number and the closest we use is the SSN.
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  9. More like because the US makes it so damned hard to legally immigrate regardless of skills and education. It's already an administrative nightmare converting our own international student graduates into just permanent residents.
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  10. They’re likewise struggling with a weakening consumer base, or the infrastructure to support sustainable mass electrified mobility.
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  11. Also uneconomical to build for coal when gas is cheaper and more effective, with further pressure from dropping prices in renewables. China keeps building them because they’re trying to maintain their subsidized electricity prices, and are taking on debt accordingly.
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  12. Not Communist China, which is the goal of "derisking" from this increasingly unsafe single point of failure. India and ASEAN seem to be producing the lower end, while the EU and North America are gaining more premium manufacturing.
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  13.  @Victor-ns6pj  Anti-radiation missiles. Specifically attracted to radars. Without a compatible working radar, air defenses are no more than sitting ammo dumps. The US is by far the leading expert at blinding and thus defeating air defenses.
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  14. Only more visibly. Obama committed the Pivot to Asia after our economic faceplant under Bush Jr got Beijing emboldened.
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  15. That doesn't solve their issues with raw production though, just their lack of local refining capabilities (they've historically exported the crude and reimported the refined stuff).
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  16. Even the jobs they don't want (line factories) aren't doing so well either, with all the shrinking orders and offshoring of operations.
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  17. CA would do comparatively alright for earthquakes as the building codes have long demanded seismic hardening. It's other states like in the PNW and New Madrid regions whose peak seismic potential is at least as great as the ones in CA whom we should be worried about.
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  18. ​That's because we keep trying to treat rail travel like a for-profit business instead of the public utility like it really is. No land-based transport is profitable on path usage fees alone, it has to take either government support or considerable ancillary real estate ownership (as is the case in Hong Kong, or previously the US where rail companies were granted rights of way at times 100 miles wide).
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  19. Terminal life stage retirees need to stop demanding so much entitlement for themselves, so that young folks with their whole taxpaying life ahead of them can get the support they need to get a decent career and family going.
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  20. Plus Taiwan's geostrategic location as the keystone of the First Island Chain, which ensures PLAN boomer subs don't reach the deep ocean undetected.
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  21. We need a new polling scheme that allows for a viable alternative to the choice between either "winner" and "loser", say ranked-choice ballots.
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  22. ​ @SignalCorps1 Right, I don't trust the specific timelines that PZ puts out, but the underlying trendlines are still solid.
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  23. As long as African leaders continue biasing interest towards sub-national tribalism and extractive corruption, they'll just continue pushing its people towards expatriating to more competent and developed economies.
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  24. It would have to be forced, because it's extra costs the consumers aren't used to. Much how like Californians pay more for gas because of its special blend only refined in a couple places, but breathe way easier because of it compared to the infamous LA smog levels of the 1970s.
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  25. There's already a lot of criticism among Chinese themselves about all the BRI-related loans to other countries when they could be investing at home. There's a reason Chinese-language media doesn't talk about how much money is being spent on foreign aid.
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  26. American ammo manufacturers are running all day and night to provide for Ukraine, but it's only a fraction of what we were once able to do due to the historically smaller need and rising standards for weaponry. Plus there's also all the air and sea equipment necessary to defend the status quo in the Western Pacific, which has a much longer lead time to get into production.
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  27. There's also the lack of private sector competition enabling a profit-price spiral. If anything the concentration of corporate wealth and influence is getting as severe as we experienced a century ago.
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  28. No, falling supply is just as influential. Just remember those times gas prices went up because of some disruption in oil production, like a hurricane in the Gulf or whenever OPEC decides to squeeze more money out of us.
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  29. This attitude is a problem with every Old World ethnostate. Hence why the Americas, Australia, and other nations open to immigration aren't falling so fast into retirement dependency.
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  30. ​ @takeda64 And look what happened to Germany in the end. When free societies rally they can end a threat permanently (and not say permit them to survive and slowly salami slice gains over generations), but it usually requires something dramatic to create and sustain that motivation.
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  31. Do they have a weird greasy feel to them too?
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  32. The endgame would be the establishment of an independent Palestine who accepts the existence of Israel. But there's too much Islam-supremacist sentiments around for Israel to be comfortable standing down. That or a single state with a strict and absolute separation of religious interests from civil institutions.
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  33. Hence why it's more economical for immigrants to just enter irregularly and claim asylum. Legal pathways are just too limited if they're even available anymore.
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  34. That's ironically a big reason why illegal immigration became a problem. Before locking down the border in the 90s, illegals would regularly cross back south quietly and only come over seasonally. A sealed border means they're trapped by the raised threat of imprisonment and uncertainty of access to employment.
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  35. Drill just a bit deeper and we could use the nuclear power of the Earth's mantle directly instead. That way there's no exotic radioactivity that isn't already occurring from volcanic eruptions.
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  36. All his other videos say the US will do fine, as long as pro-facist modern Republicans don't dominate politics and dramatically dismantle the institutions that let America prosper in order to cater to their more narrow has-been ideals.
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  37. It'll do just fine should we reach 1 billion again, since that's about the estimated sustainable carrying capacity of Earth with developed country standards of living and its enormous per capita productivity.
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  38. Even within 5th Ring it wasn't hard to find dark if not long incomplete high rises. My own place there included warning signs to "Watch for falling objects", and it wasn't depicting flowerpots or other household items either.
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  39. I'd still be cautious on how much to rely on past measurements to determine the future. Sea level rise will likely have an exponential curve, and humans are horrible at thinking about nonlinear trends. We may be experiencing something like this with the weather, as in a growing number of places each summer gets more stifling and winters more crushing.
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  40. ​ @babakv38 Seattle and New Madrid aren't front of mind when it comes to earthquakes in America, but it doesn't mean it will never happen there either
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  41. ​ @wbay3848 Right, social media and the collapse of appeal of churches for after-college in-person socializing has basically driven women to ignore the average dude and concentrate their attention towards the minority of elite men... who spoiled for choice aren't compelled to settle down. There's dating app data indicating this inflating bias among their cis-female userbase.
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  42. We don't have the funds though. Just buying out the land required for this project could be better spent on renovating the rest of the nation's infrastructure. America has better things to spend out tax dollars on than trying to stop every asylum seeker who'd have otherwise been killed at home waiting for us to process a proper visa.
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  43. Made in America as an option, but not the only one. We won't be able to afford it if it's the only game in town, regardless of source.
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  44. Just another reason to quit smoking 🚭
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  45. CO2 accelerates the amount of water vapor trapped in the air. The effects stack on each other.
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  46. There's also the cultural aspect of not desiring a used house, especially if it doesn't accommodate modern preferences like more open floor plans and generous electrical capacity.
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  47. Petrostates benefit from higher oil prices, so it is a possibility.
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  48. Continuously staffing, maintaining, and securing it from Russia's adversaries costs how much though?
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  49. If the CPC continues on their quest for absolute control, likely how every other Chinese autocratic dynasty ended -- imploding violently.
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  50. China has always been an autocracy, which means developments happen quickly. Whether good or bad.
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