Youtube comments of Fredinno (@innosam123).

  1. Fun fact: The Chinese-Russian-Iranian alliance roughly corresponds to the borders of the Mongol Empire.
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  2. Korea: The Ireland of Asia.
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  3. “There are 4 Chinese for every American, a kill ratio that’s almost never been matched in history.” Nazis and Mongols: laughs
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  4. “We’re long overdue and living on borrowed time.” Humans: Oh, I don’t think so.
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  5. The Suez would probably be built by the Athenians as well, since it doesn’t require locks or complex machinery, just a lot of effort to dig a giant trench to let ocean-going ships through (a pseudo-Suez was actually built by ancient Egypt), so they would get a colonial empire by expanding into the Indian Ocean (East Africa, India, Indonesia, Australia, Arabia) as well as likely moving down the Nile to Ethiopia and Sudan via railroads.
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  6. Wasn’t Japan generally anti-Russia and pro-Britain? Why would they join Russia’s side- Japan was mostly focused on trying to take over China, and Russia was a hindrance to those efforts. Also, I would like to see more medieval alternate histories.
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  7. You have to remember that China never conquered Taiwan until the 17th century for a reason. Taiwan is a fortress island that’s geographically as difficult to invade as Japan itself. Also, there’s only a few months and beaches where an invasion is possible. Naval invasions are already difficult against a prepared and determined enemy. Japan in WW2 would have been able to give the Americans a bloody nose despite having already lost control of the seas and air. Taiwan is much smaller, but any invasion of Taiwan would be, long, brutal, and simply impossible without complete naval and air dominance. If the Chinese actually felt they could invade Taiwan by 2020, they would have already invaded when the world was facing COVID.
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  8.  @mappingshaman5280  Poland, Georgia, and Hungary were not part of the Mongol Empire. They were invaded by them, but never annexed.
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  9. “Check me out on Twitter.” Oh, you poor soul... what have you done?
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  10. Disease is more common in tropical regions, and that is a serious negative.
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  11. 14:00 Ironically, Star Wars itself was highly inspired by the Vietnam War, where the ‘rebels’ weren’t really better than the ‘empire’. I don’t think George Lucas was intending for Star Wars to create a view of underdog=good. The Prequels actually tried to address this problem, with the Jedi Order itself being corrupt to an extent and flawed in a way that led to its downfall, and the outnumbered underdog Sith using its flaws against it. The Clone Wars were horrifically brutal, extended, and accomplished very little other than to expand Palpatine’s power despite being based on genuine political grievances. Unfortunately, the Prequels have their own problems that prevented them from becoming as influential as the Original Trilogy, and the Sequel Trilogy just copied off the Original Trilogy.
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  12. “The biggest Asian Bubble in history?” China: Are you challenging me?
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  13. That’s still a bad thing, because Greece is in a debt crisis, and that sort of tax evasion was one of the biggest problems that lead to it. Also, grey market workers are generally less efficient than normal workers and have less protections.
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  14.  @themsmloveswar3985  “Straightforward process” I see you don’t follow South African or Brazilian politics? 😂
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  15. “The Chinese Elite think in terms of Centuries.” Remembers One-Child Policy. Hmm.... The “think in centuries” part is honestly kind of overblown and is the perception is partially a product of Chinese Propaganda. I would also point out a minor point that, as a Korean, I doubt Japan would be a Chinese Ally even with a honorable government due to the pains of WW2. Korea still hates Japan due to its occupation by the Japanese. Ireland still hates Britain from the Potato famine. Arguably, the hatred amongst the South Slavs goes back to at least the rise of the Ottoman Empire, several centuries ago. Some wounds never properly heal.
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  16. Zoomers are already slightly more conservative than millennials on average, it’s not a hard prediction to make.
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  17. Time to star the western Crusade.
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  18. I'm not sure about the population of Latin America being larger. Their Birth Rates are higher in the modern day than the USA, which counteracts a lot of the early advantage. Also, Northern Mexico has horrid geography (minus California) that really make it difficult to make wealthy, especially as an independent state. It's comparable to Afghanistan in terms of geography, and the Americans can use the Mississippi's tributaries to secure all the land in its watershed- taking most of the actually decent land (minus California) and thus still being a global power.
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  19. 16:20 I would point out that there’s also an innate and animal fear of death, much more ingrained than the taboo against immortality. I seriously doubt people would choose to die outside their own terms of given the choice, regardless of the consequences or taboos.
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  20. Russia is only allied with China because they have a common enemy.
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  21. This isn’t What if Japan went Catholic in the 16th century....
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  22. PIRATE99A The Japense Islands are hell to invade. Even if they land, the Soviets would end up likely only getting Hokkaido, at best. People always put North-South Japan in these TLs because that happened si many other places.
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  23. What if France's demographic decline did not happen in the Victorian Era, and the birth rate was comparable to Britain or Germany?
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  24. Why is it that every timeline that Germany is on the losing side of WW2 does Germany end up with the Oder-Neisse borders? They don’t make sense for anyone unless you’re Stalin and deliberately trying to move Poland and Germany as far away from you as possible and have no problem with forced expulsions and genocide. Though this is kind of a minor gripe as well, it seems unlikely Romania and Bulgaria would still surrender to the Soviets, since the Allies could easily capture Adrianopole and move north- and neither wanted to be under Soviet domination. Hungary might become a Soviet puppet if Operation Margarethe still works out, but with the allies closer and Soviets farther, that seems to be more a toss-up. Bohemia was also mostly unoccupied when the war ended and isn’t the easiest part of Europe to invade, so unless it’s specifically doled out to the Soviets, it would also likely go to the West. Basically, the Warsaw Pact wouldn’t exist. Would Morocco and Tunisia remain French? Also, Algeria kind of means there’d be a lot more Arabs in France. So you could end up with the awkward situation where there are more Muslims in France than Catholics. France doesn’t have the demographics to assimilate Algeria without it also going a lot the other way around. Though, overall, pretty good video. I went into this thinking that nothing would change because the Axis would mop up the weak forces left in Algeria, but then I remembered- this is Benito we’re talking about here.
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  25. Wouldn’t it be more realistic for Siberia to become a vassal of Poland? Since Siberia kind of has to depend on Poland or China for trade. The Poles would have to conquer the Caucasus to actually get defensible borders as well. At least as vassal states.
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  26. An invasion of Taiwan COULD also be a Crete-style paratrooper landing, not just a naval one.
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  27. If Justin Trudeau can lose young voters (which he has in nearly all recent polling in Canada) the idea of Biden losing young voters is not unreasonable.
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  28. Antonio Renteria It’s also arguably bad for geopolitical reasons because it basically means China is going to become the greater Superpower. Hate the US’s foreign policy or not, China is not a better tiger’s mouth to jump into.
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  29. Because US progressives have more control over the education system. Also, Gen Z is statistically about as politically left (or less than) Millennials. Millennials are also disproportionally large in the Anglo-sphere compared to most of the developed world.
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  30. Space Expansion is unlikely compared to ocean/polar expansion. The Earth’s gravity well is a bitch. The ISS costs billions just to maintain 7 people, and each Dragon seat is only accessible to the ultra-wealthy ($55mil/seat). Costs have only gone down modestly. Once we develop algal aquaculture, we can see a massive expansion in aquaculture and the marine economy as a viable basis for a wider Marine colonization effort can be made.
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  31. AltHistHub made one on Zealandia. Problem is that Australia is shaped wrong and is at the wrong latitude for inland seas and wet interiors. Lake Eyre even if filled, isn’t really an inland sea, more a mini- Aral Sea.
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  32. You forgot the most chad German partition plan, the Churchill plan…. Austria-Hungary lives again!
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  33. The only people who took her seriously was TYT. 😂
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  34. The problem is that a failed impeachment historically increases the popularity of the candidate/politician the same way the prosecution of Trump does.
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  35. I still don't see how falling Birth rates result in the Sons if Jacob coming to power... Nations like Japan, Lithuania, and Signapore have far lower birth rates without religious or ideological backlashes... Like a global Depression, and an enormous refugee Crisis in Mexico due to a civil war there.
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  36. The issue with desalination isn't the cost, it's the energy requirements. We know how to solve that problem. Nuclear Energy. The issue is getting there.
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  37. “You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.”
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  38. 00:04 This man has Coronavirus.
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  39. The problem Peter misses is that Trump didn’t challenge the CO state because he wanted to, he did it because he had to. This is also a federal constitutional issue, so it can apply to SCOTUS, not state courts.
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  40. Latin America is doing better now than ever before. Mexico in particular is on the verge of breaking the Middle Income barrier, and has an incredibly diversified economy and businesses and show no sign of slowing down due to NAFTA2. The US also has free trade deals with every Latin American nation except Bolivia, the Guyanas and Brazil, and the Americas are pretty reliably in the American SOI (not that they have a choice.) Also, doing so would end the threat of mass immigration and drug cartels, so there are quite a few reasons for Latin America’s industrialization to be encouraged. Argentina has everything to succeed if it can stop figuring out ways to screw itself over. It has good geography, a highly educated population, good demographics, and even tons of domestic businesses that were doing OK before COVID. COVID has been handled so poorly by the current Peronist government, we’re likely to see some more economic reforms come through. Hopefully. Columbia and Chile are also doing pretty well and will likely become outlets for American investment once Mexico starts to reach higher-income status. Brazil is probably going to have difficulty though.
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  41. The advantage to that is that you didn’t get incest from royal inbreeding because you didn’t have constantly intermixing lines of the same royal houses because those dynasties would have been dead by then. 😂
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  42.  @diegoidepersia  The Channel of the Pharaohs couldn't take larger vessels.
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  43. Peter Mann The problem is that the Ethiopians themselves never heard of Prester John, and people eventually accepted that they weren’t. Because Prester John was just a myth.
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  44. I want a shirtless PJW video.
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  45. Well, TBF, most of the military were in the rural areas. Later on, Rome became dominated almost entirely by the military, meaning it became dominated by the rural frontier regions.
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  46. Anti Mapping They got the cuisine down kinda. Just instead of Potatoes, it’s Kimchi.
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  47. Mark12 Strang Puerto Rico has no representation because it’s small. If you had Cuba and Haiti as well, the equation changes a bit, because they’re impossible to ignore.
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  48. Most areas with huge populations abolished slavery on their own. Slavery only makes sense with low populations, like in the Americas, where labour is so expensive you have to artificially force the price down via slavery. Either that, or you’re a Muslim empire.
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  49. Romney infamously won Independents in 2012 and lost the election…
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  50. I honestly think by the time the European powers could really get thinking much about dividing China, considering its distance, they were either already too overstretched, or defeated in WW1. Japan and Russia were always going to be the most agressive in the region, followed by Germany, while Britain and France would be less keen to see the Status quo fail.
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  51. @Metsarebuff 22 The soviet Army in 1945 was much more competent than that, you know. They weren't just swarming with higher manpower, otherwise, they would have lost to the Germans. But yeah, it probably wouldn't have worked very well for the Soviets.
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  52. Note that purging the military with left-wingers (including the lower ranks) means that they most likely just swell the ranks of paramilitaries and mercenary groups, which we have been seeing right now. There are also far more veterans than there are actual active soldiers. Also, a civil war starting almost certainly involves shooting at your own countryman. I can’t help but be reminded of Robert E Lee’s reluctance to join the Confederacy, but ultimately doing so for his state over his country, regardless of the consequences over slavery. Loyalty can mean a lot of things, but in particular, who you are loyal to.
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  53. What if Shaggy fought Chuck Norris?
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  54.  @solvency2690  The Soviets could have lasted into the 21st century without Gorbechev. They just would have become increasingly poor and irrelevant as the stresses of their poor domestic situation, Afghanistan, and SDI played their toll. I would imagine the bloc would start collapsing right around now, considering the increasing irrelevance of their only real export/source of hard currency, Oil/Gas. Economic Reform is difficult (the USSR was stuck at the Middle Income Trap).
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  55. I would also point out that the Empire was basically just an ad-hoc dynastic military dictatorship, not a true Monarchy.
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  56. Watch Peter Zeihan’s presentations. He goes into pretty much most of the details about demographics and their effect on the global economy. But in summary: Economic Growth in the West outside America dies. America focuses inward after China is no longer a threat. China gets fucked in the ass either because of increasing sanctions and pressure from America or demographics (both cutting economic growth rates enormously) and either goes into Maoist tyranny or implodes. Russia and Germany fight over Europe in an attempt to keep their economies running by gaining total hegemony over Europe. Japan, France, and Turkey basically get free reign to do what they want.
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  57. I would point out that the Heavy plow arrived in Europe around the same time the Fall of the West took place, so the introduction of more advanced farming techniques likely increased production more than the fall of the Empire.
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  58. Trump has been polling above Biden in the polling aggregate for months at this point, and independents are currently treating this indictment the same as the one by Bragg over Hush money. (GOP gains support, Democrats support case against Trump, Independents are divided but overall don’t change their opinion much in the long run.)
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  59. Nirvana The Great Meme War of 2016 was a massive success.
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  60. 15:52 Germany would retain Prussia and Silesia without the extremity of the Nazis causing a retaliation by the Russians against the Germans.
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  61. That’s what happens when you build a tunnel system. There really aren’t many good ways to get people in tunnels out of them in a way where they won’t escape, so it kind of forces more drastic measures. Look at what happened in Tora Bora, for instance, and Osama’s escape from them.
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  62. @Whatifalthist New Mexico is pretty isolated and difficult to access in the grand scheme of things, esp. without railways- there's no way to get there by boat, leaving only wagons though desert until the invention of the railway. Most of Sonora has the problem South Africa had- no one would really want to live there, even if they could- they’d go to Argentina or America instead. Only California and Texas would be colonized until all their land was gone. It's also important to note so much of California and Texas are only arable due to wide-scale irrigation that may not be available to early settlers. If in Texas, there's no reason the Americans can't just take it over- I mean, they made it all the way to Quebec City in the American Revolution (Canada would have a smaller population, but it's arguably more defensible due to the Great Lakes and St Lawrence). The border with the Americans is also completely indefensible just from sheer size and scale.
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  63.  @bigbrothersinnerparty297  Taiwan is highly motivated to fight and unlike the Japanese in WW2, are not going to be starving due to blockade. China recovered the first from the pandemic. There was a window in April when China had mostly recovered and the rest of the world hadn’t. Secondly, missiles go the other way as well. Missiles can destroy any invasion craft, and they’re not that hard to hide away from bombers. Even just a basic speedboat laden with explosives can seriously harm an invasion vessel (the Japanese did this in WW2, with some success.) Assuming you even win the battle in the skies.
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  64. > Relying on Chinese state-owned media as a source. 😂
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  65. Crimea is strategically important to control the Black Sea, but yeah, it’s not as likely.
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  66. What if the Millennium Eruption (a supervolcano eruption that destroyed an entire Korean Kingdom) never happened?
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  67. 17:30 But ruralization occurred due to the fall of the Roman Empire, not social change. You couldn’t sustain the same number of people in the cities without trade networks, so people left. I think the connection is purely coincidence. Also, lots of the Red states on the map DO have large rural areas for the most part. Eastern Washington and Oregon are huge areas. Also, rural areas’ infrastructure is more costly. This is a point Tim Pool made- that there’s actually a limit to how cheap real estate actually gets the further away from civilization you go due to the need to add infrastructure. Also, manufacturing still needs humans in congregations. This implies the dominance of small cities and towns, rather than just the countryside.
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  68. The Allies didn’t finish off Turkey after the war even though they were supposed to, and the Allies didn’t support the Whites even though they were supposed to be allied due to war exhaustion.
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  69. Cotton was pretty important for industrialization, though, which you kind of ignored.
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  70. Days after the Conspirators killed Caesar, the plebs burned down the city of Rome, forcing the conspirators into hiding and exile.
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  71.  @ingold1470  That implies that modern leftism continues dominant. Which seems kind of unlikely- not really want to be a Trumpet here, but 2020 was only barely won by having the entire elite class and populist left unite against the least popular president in decades (at least on paper). Which is not a stable alliance, which is why there is almost desperation to implement the policies to ensure they stay in power as soon as possible (HR-1, Multi-Billion dollar stimuluses with flimsy justifications, etc.) The ‘Merkelite’ EU is only lasting as long as Merkel remains in power. Without her, the EU in its current state is doomed. Mainly because no one can really replace her. The current ‘West’ basically doesn’t have a leader anymore, or really a stable dominant ideological faction. The most likely scenario is a brutal ideological civil war a la Spain 1938.
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  72. Regarding their products, or their style? Anything Elon Musk does is basically the definition of “chaos” and “drama”.
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  73.  @lie01234  Dunno, how much cash can you dump into an economy before the economy just dies from the imbalances? That’s one of the big economic questions. China has dumped trillions into the system every time something looks like it’s going to go bad. This was before COVID. Almost every other central bank eventually gives up and at least lets a partial correction happen in order to relieve the pressure. If you don’t... well, the last time that happened was the 1997 crisis, and it was not pretty- the 2008 crisis was tame compared to the 1997 Asian crisis or 1991 Japan crisis. Considering there are several high-profile SOE defaults occurring, there is reason to believe the end has already begun. It’s not that I even want this. A crash in China would trigger another global recession right after the global economy is in a weak state after COVID. And the primary way the CCP takes attention away from the economy is by lashing out against the rest of the world. Not a great combination.
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  74. Hawaii has been trending right pretty hard in recent elections, from one of the bluest states, to merely ‘very blue.’ It’s still not likely to flip, but it could pose some problems beyond 2024-2028 if it continues to move right at the current rate. Tulsi Gabbard may actually be able to return to her home state as an elected politician.
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  75.  @lie01234  Nope, bubbles can only be determined with certainty after a collapse, but exist before a collapse. Most post-COVID economic production has been inventory builds and investment due to weak export orders: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-20/how-an-ordinary-disaster-is-flooding-china-s-covid-turnaround The price-wage ratio of Chinese real estate is reaching the levels of the largest RE bubbles in history while the process of urbanization in China is nearing its conclusion:https://talkmarkets.com/content/global-markets/why-the-fate-of-the-world-economy-is-in-the-hands-of-chinas-housing-bubble?post=127081&page=2 https://ghovexx.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-fate-of-world-economy-is-in-hands.html
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  76.  @theamazing2435  I think the opposite. In Latin America ‘doing their own thing’ has meant protectionism and socialism, which has hampered Latin America economically.
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  77. John Fetterwoman got elected, so… 😂
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  78. Nixon was not very conservative (this is still the New Deal era of US politics), but he was popular pre-Watergate for ending the War in Vietnam and being tough on crime and drugs during the ‘70s crime wave. However, this has been completely overshadowed by the Watergate scandal.
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  79.  @WhatifAltHist  My argument is that they wouldn't be able to hold the lands (it's much easier to get to there from the American side than the Mexican side), and Sonora would be left with California and the Desert. Texas just isn't defensible in any way, and so you'd be left with a core in California and a comparatively impoverished Sonora. This map shows why: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AphyHYpEjmp-gqkS66W7rhZhj6T9Ag?e=HfBQaT Even with the scenario as you made it, the USA minus Texas and California is still a superpower in OTL. Unless they manage to conquer all of the Great Plains.
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  80. Austria-Hungary didn’t occupy Romania in OTL, why would they in this TL? Also, Japan declared war on the USA largely because the Philippines threatened their supply lines to the DEI.
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  81. A lot of African Islands were populated originally partially or fully by non-Africans.
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  82.  @Honorbound43  Russia won’t try to conquer Ukraine. It made its demands very clear: make sure Ukraine never joins NATO. If it invades, it’s going to be used as a bargaining chip. Also, Russia already has the power to ‘help’ rewrite Ukraine’s constitution. Russia already has Ukraine half up its asshole. Putin would be a retard to try to annex Ukraine when it’s already compromised in his favour.
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  83.  @Raul_Menendez  2020: China will be the next superpower and overtake the USA! 2005: Europe will be the next superpower and overtake the USA! 1986: Japan will be the next superpower and overtake the USA! 1950: The Soviet Union will be the next superpower and overtake the USA!
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  84.  @compatriot852  Mexico could never become a superpower as long as the US exists. Brazil has massive problems with internal unity due to its geography and varied cultural landscape, that are only rivalled on the Americas by Canada. That makes it difficult to project power even if Brazil becomes wealthy.
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  85. Kiyan Hakim Ok, so you’re implying moral equivalence in terms of racism between the two sides? Here’s a hint. Only one side actually intended to destroy entire races and cultures from existence.
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  86. LET'S GET DOWN TO BUISNESS
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  87. Yeah. Rarely when people talk about ‘College Educated Elite’ do they talk about STEM professionals. Both the Right and Left respect them, and rarely are they activists for some social cause trying to advance their social class (unless it’s better conditions.) Even computer science is far closer to the ‘real world’ of compromise, hard work, problem-solving, and teamwork compared to the Social Sciences and Liberal Arts.
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  88. Morphine. Not even once.
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  89. Then again, how easy would it be to maintain an isolated exclave like that?
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  90. TBF, only one side was undoubtedly genocidal.
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  91.  @mikehawk4856  …Who produce stuff with American designs and parts from other developed nations (as well as the USA)? People forget that even if something is “Made in China”, only a small fraction of the actual value of the product is from China. People also underestimate how difficult high-end manufacturing is. China has tried to become self-sufficient in chips, and spent billions to do so- only to fail completely and be on the exact same position of importing chips. The USA is also the 2nd largest manufacturing power in the world. It still produces a ton of stuff (and actually more now than ever, due to a lot of reasons).
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  92. bigdog1 wait what? A scream showed he was power hungry? Wut
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  93. +John Smith That would probably mean they would have nothing wrong with killing their sons, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, etc.
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  94. There is one thing I disagree with, though, which is the Sweden unable to hold all that land. Lithuania started off much smaller, and also gained an enormous amount of land that was ethnically different. It was united with Poland late on though, so no one knows how it would eventually have played out.
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  95. Li Eric Funnily enough the USA rejected all diplomatic requests for near unconditional surrender until after the bombs.
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  96.  @hkl1459  Not entirely accurate. There is a lot to exploit in Africa. The issue is lack of infrastructure, or market to exploit for... anything. Everything has to be created from scratch, requiring huge amounts of investment. This made most African colonies lose money. It’s like the Americas, except with large populations of rebellious natives that didn’t die off.
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  97. Caviat: Stopping inflation by moving to a static- base currency (like Gold) would result in mass deflation due to demographic aging, thus, causing real debt loads to increase until there is either very little debt, or an economic depression as mass bankruptcy occurs. The current economy effectively can’t run on a static-base currency, because it assumes inflation is the norm. Which can work- if wages keep in pace with inflation.
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  98. 15:00 Okinawa was never part of China. It was a tributary of China, but it was independent until Japan annexed it in the Victorian Era.
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  99. Sealdrop Neither did Finland.
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  100. Yeah, Mao gave up on invading Taiwan for a reason. The operation kept getting bigger and more complicated and less feasible until they eventually gave up on the idea and sent the troops designated for Taiwan to Korea.
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  101. Chinese weapons and infantry quality is also generally viewed as inferior, however. This is part of the reason eg. nominal prices for GDP are preferred over PPP. PPP tends to overestimate the abilities of poorer nations.
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  102. dasnad I don’t defend the CIA. However: https://www.newsweek.com/china-involved-90-percent-economic-espionage-and-industrial-secrets-theft-1255908 And Yes, China was based off settler colonialism as well. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-662-44575-4_13 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan#Kingdom_of_Tungning Not to mention, China went from being a small civilization on the Yellow River Valley to span from Beijing to Vietnam. How did that happen? Everyone is guilty of imperialism. The West was only more successful- but attempted murder is still treated like murder.
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  103.  @TheEmolano  Why?
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  104. I think the Cape would end up as an African Israel. Armed to the teeth, unusually industrialized, constantly attacked by its neighbours, while also having stable demographics. And also semi-Aparthetic.
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  105. What if the Kingdom of Burgundy survived? What if the French demographic decline didn’t happen? What if Hitler never existed?
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  106. Technically, there was a conflict over some border provinces when the two were gaining independence, but it’s not really a thing anymore. Hungary and Slovakia however… Ironically, Hitler did a better job drawing borders for Hungary than the entente did after WW1. Huge Hungarian minorities outside Hungary.
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  107. I wonder what the list of unoffensive costumes is ? I don't exactly want to trigger anyone... Just saying. It's probably shorter than the list of offensive costumes....
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  108. Sometimes bigger tunnels means demolishing the entire subway and building another one on top of it. Hence, why London still uses subways from the last century.
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  109.  @user-ym1bs7om9e  Japan couldn’t defeat China in WW2 because they were being beaten back by the Americans. They continued to make advances into China until the war was basically over.
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  110. If Islamists kidnap Justin Bieber, then I'm all for it!
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  111. The UK needs to integrate into NAFTA to become a conduit between the EU and North America again. Also, the dominance of the finance sector was horrible for regional inequality in the UK. Having a more diversified economy by focusing on manufacturing would be a good thing (even though the UK is unlikely to catch up to Germany anytime soon.) The UK has one of the EU’s strongest renewable energy potential due to the North Sea and Scotland’s wind. Further Public Investment would also help.
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  112. JohnnyRebKy That's only less than 5% of immigrants. Most migrants in general in Europe, come from East Europe and India, and in North America, India and Latin America. Immigration wasn't a big issue in the public until the refugee crisis, and the illegal immigrant boom.
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  113. LOL Diamond 101 Capitalism can exist in slave societies. Not to mention the Roman Empire was big enough that complex trade networks could form in spite of mercantilism. Scandinavia isn’t exactly free market libertarian, but it also definitely not socialistic. It’s capitalistic. Nothing you said really disproves my point.
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  114. TBH, a Depression is not likely. You showed the Debt-to-GDP ratio as a a supporting factor in your argument- but it’s only a meaningful number if you include private as well as public debt to GDP. Private debt to GDP in the developed world has fallen since 2008, resulting in overall stagnation or decline in total debt-to-GDP. Economists generally agree that public debt is less of an issue than private debt due to the fact they can just print money (which has issues, but not as bad as private sector defaults.) There is a reason Japan has such a high government debt-to-GDP and is still a stable, functioning economy. Worst case scenario is stagflation. Second, despite the arguments from Austrian economists, there has not been a single economic depression since 1946 (COVID was artificial, and cheating- if I included it, I would also have to include the similar 1920 depression.) Meanwhile, from 1830-1930, there were 3 depressions. Arguably, without interventionism, there would have been 2 more depressions- the late 1970s, and 2008. No inflation… and worse economic performance. Global currencies have always been maintained by the geopolitical and commercial strength of the nations backing it. Britain was not the only nation with currencies backed by Gold. Its decline coincides almost perfectly with its decline as a superpower. Has it been abused? Yes. So did Britain. That’s just how it works. Countries use their power for good and evil. Is it right? Arguably no, but that’s not the point. This is the same “guilt” you’ve criticized the modern left for. —- Note also that the current bout of inflation is also accompanied by reindustrialization and economic growth in North America. No matter how badly Biden tries to fuck it up.
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  115. Sir Adrian That’s why he said they would be barely connected to Rome.
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  116. dasnad Tell me when Modern America tries to annex other nations for its land claims. Tell me when the USA steals civilian technology using industrial espionage. The most comparable thing for the USA was Iraq, which is not US soil despite ‘winning’, and is considered a universal disaster by everyone, including both sides of American politicians.
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  117. RobinsonCrouse24 Feudalism was not a command economy. States were highly weak in Feudal societies.
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  118. RobinsonCrouse24 He meant it was a command economy that was proto- communistic.
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  119. WI Charles the Bold succeeded in making Burgundy a Kingdom?
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  120.  @Thecognoscenti_1  Well, yeah, ‘Not all Chinese’ are bad warriors, in the same way not all Indians are bad warriors (eg. Nepali and Punjabis- basically the highlands of India.) If you create a statement that applies to hundreds of millions of people, there are going to exceptions that are subgroups.
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  121. NPC 19867 They didn’t in OTL, and there is literally no reason to assume they would in TTL.
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  122.  @jackyex  Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela? Raise any bells?
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  123. 28:13 Nero was an incredibly popular emperor. Note that the records regarding Nero were largely written by the groups that hated him (elites and Christians), so that negatively influences our perception of a man who, at minimum, doesn’t appear to have been that bad (probably.) Also, he turned out to be a girl and be able to be summoned as a Servant, but what do I know about that?
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  124.  @JAG8691 ixon had to go off the Gold Standard no matter what. The Fed would have defaulted if he let the gold reserves go to zero. And second, inflation was higher during the ‘Bretton Woods Reserve’ era than it is today on average.
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  125. Always Curious to be fair, the EU was fucked long before the migrants.
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  126. No. She’s the only person able to guarantee Trump gets the popular vote in 2024. 😂
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  127. This is also what Canada did- maintaining high immigration levels by focusing on more professional immigrants. That was until the housing crisis, decreasing immigrant quality (more refugees and international students), and the stagnating economy turned Canadians against Trudeau’s ever-increasing immigration targets. This also explains why the UK wants to stop illegal immigration. It’s as much the number as the composition.
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  128. Israel has a plan to use the desalinated water to refill the Sea of Galilee and to build another tunnel from the sea to refill the Dead Sea (which is evaporating away.)
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  129. Jeffery Handerson How do you think Ethnic Koreans feel?
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  130. I would like to note that most Mercenaries are actually just Veterans who decide to keep fighting in Wars because they want to (or because they fail to integrate back into Civilian life.) So this makes the situation for the Left even worse. They’re the same pool of people who would likely join the Right to begin with. It’s like hiring Goths to fight the Goths.
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  131. Kitty Kitty Ideology. It's the same thing the USSR did, destroying nations just so they could get a little closer to their dream of a utopia. In the case of the USSR, it was the starving of Ukraine to increase production, instead of admitting the system was flawed. Here, it's importing people in the assumption that it will give them better lives without bankrupting and destroying Europe. In both cases, it was 'selfless thinking' of the collective good, while ignoring the consequences of doing so.
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  132. Coal Gasification is not new technology. It’s from the Victorian Era.
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  133.  @ub3rfr3nzy94  Capitalism IS a synonym for trade. Capitalism is defined by the existence of private property and trade.
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  134. @Metsarebuff 22 The Soviet Army reformed seriously after the Winter War and WW2. The main issue was that they had no experience with the Navy, or indeed amphibious landings. They weren't as good as the Germans, but 'overwhelming number' implies the Russian Civil War-style swarm tactics.
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  135. The French would be able to keep most of its Empire. Not just it’s loose control over West Africa, but also North Africa, which would be settled with French settlers. Libya and Egypt were also almost French colonies. The population of Africa was low enough that even West Africa could become majority- White with enough people in France. The Entire Western Half of Africa being European would have interesting consequences. Maybe the Portuguese and Spanish Empire survives without such a drive for decolonization, and the support from France. Which would also mean Rhodesia and South Africa would be in a better position to survive.
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  136.  @jackyex  Remember, I did add the caviat that Argentina keeps somehow finding ways to fuck itself over even when everything is in its favour. You can bring a horse to water but not have it drink. Even Spain, the nation responsible for giving birth to Latin America, became developed. Surely with access to the largest markets, resources, as well as plentiful and quality human capital and favourable geopolitical situations, many can ultimately succeed. And I think it’s unfair to put down the reforms made by Macri. He made some pretty decent strides in liberalization before getting hit with bad economic luck.
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  137. TBF, there is a ton of evidence China is in a massive economic bubble. Look at its RE prices in relation to wealth.
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  138.  @PragmaticAntithesis  Europe is also well-known for being the most regulated and taxed market of all major world markets. (Hence why it’s the ‘gold standard’ for regulatory protection. GDP is misleading on a macro level mostly if economies are in investment bubbles or due to high population sizes (see China, Japan in 1980s and 1990s). This does not apply here.
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  139. 13:50 ONE Soviet leader did- Khrushchev. Which is why the corn lord was one of the better and more under-appreciated leaders of the communist world. He at least seemed to care about the Russian people, rather than competing with the West, or trying to create a communist utopia.
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  140. Japan was actually also losing due to guerilla warfare from the Koreans, so it’s going to remain a bloody struggle for power even without Yi. All removing Yi does is making supporting Japanese troops easier.
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  141.  @elagabalusrex390  The plebs didn’t have guns and Molotov cocktails.
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  142.  @thepubliusproject I think he’s being sarcastic. 😂
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  143. Nowhere near enough, and even if they did, the area is so arid they largely rely on the Israelis for water.
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  144. My worry is that this would basically kill the remaining rainforests in Earth outside mountainous areas. If you can grow wheat everywhere, that makes tropical agriculture much easier - but tropical agriculture is also much easier, so the pressure on rainforests will grow even more.
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  145. 12 den No, they said they’re worried about Japanification here because the mix of inequality and Japanification would be toxic.
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  146. What do you want them to do that they aren’t doing? It’s likely that they’ll stop importing Russian energy within the next few months (despite being horrendously reliant on it), a fuck ton of equipment has been sent to Ukraine, pretty much every financial connection and channel to Russia minus energy has been cut, and Finland and Sweden are only stalled from NATO accession due to Turkey. The only way you could go further is to actually send boots on the ground or planes in the sky, which aren’t options due to the risk of Nuclear War. If we’d listened to Reagan with SDI instead of mocking him, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
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  147. Note about housing prices: The 60s and 50s were the best period in history to become a homebuyer- prior to this, most people were renters. The automobile and highway had opened up huge amounts of land to suburbanization, making land incredibly cheap. This is impossible today, as all the land within reasonable driving radius (and beyond) has been used up in most major cities, forcing a transition to densification to keep housing supply adequate. However, there is little incentive for this, as residents tend to vote for people who keep their own house prices high so that they can have more money. This means less development.
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  148.  @nomanor7987  Tell that to the millions in Chinese concentration camps. Or the North Koreans who were propped up by the Chinese government. Or the 6 million Ukrainian refugees.
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  149.  @user-ym1bs7om9e  Look at any map of the Pacific Front in WW2, and overlay it onto a map of the important parts of China. https://youtu.be/tS-BWXfFkVY The Japanese conquered almost all of the important and valuable lands in China (with the exception of Sichuan). The issue for the Japanese is that the war became a war of attrition, less because the Japanese couldn’t beat them (half of the army was being stationed in Manchuria to protect against the Soviet Union, which was busy elsewhere) but because they knew there was no point. The Japanese, for all practical purposes, had already ‘won’ after the initial invasion (as in, they got most of what they wanted). It didn’t matter, and dumping more troops into the Chinese meat grinder made no sense. Especially since they were literally months from running out of oil and they needed more ASAP. Especially once they were getting pummelled by the Americans. It’s similar to the Americans in Vietnam. The Americans were winning, but external factors unrelated to the battles themselves resulted in an American defeat. The Americans rejected sending more troops even before the Tet Offensive, because it would have been pointless. It was a war of endurance, not military strength.
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  150. And Canada.
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  151.  @vipeton.8927  How well is that BTC working for El Salvador?
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  152. Weenie Yes, but Afghanistan has good places to mine too. Sonora needs Irrigation to produce all those crops. Also, it’s a nightmare to connect all the parcels together because every places that’s farmed in Northern Mexico is separated from the other by mountains and desert.
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  153.  @jfojw21dfs9  Oil was not used in the Early industrial Era, only coal. And Japan has huge amounts of it. Japan's geography is roughly equivalent to England during the same era.
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  154.  @thelordz33  Then what should he use? Patents? Stock Market valuation? It’s perhaps not what the GDP numbers imply, but there are few economic stats that show Europe is doing that well, even by other developed nations’ standards (minus Germany and Britain pre-brexit.)
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  155. Psilocybin X It got cancelled (effectively) a while ago because they ran out of money.
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  156. The proliferation of firearms eventually ended their advantages because larger nations could simply recruit more soldiers to fend them off. Hence why Russia conquered the nomads of the Steppe.
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  157. Michigan, like Pennsylvania, is most likely very ‘fortified’. Especially due to the Dem trifecta. Also, not really many popular Michigan Republicans that could take the mantle.
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  158. Why should people be forced to vote? The act of not voting is sometimes a political statement in and of itself.
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  159. Also, SWA was Black- Majority too, so that's a bit of a problem. Also, the international community did not believe it should be part of South Africa (it was a WW1 Mandate, which were intended to be decolonized). Then again, White South Africa also has nukes.
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  160. Except the colonization of India took over 50 years (not an accurate number because of expansions into Burma and East Pakistan, so it depends on your definition of 'India'). And that assumes it happens like India, and the Germans, who supported both the Qing and ROC until WW2, would accept China being destroyed. The only reason it did in OTL was because Japan was also its ally- and a seemingly more successful one. It isn't going to be pretty- and assuming this happens after the Scramble for Africa, Germany is going to be extremely aggressive in its foreign policy, as is Japan. And if WW1 happens, the colonial empires of Britain and France will be too overextended and exhausted to really want to partition more land.
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  161.  @balazslengyel6950  Well, we also know the Soviets did ethnic replacement of the Poles and Germans after (and during) the war, and the Germans were well aware of previous Soviet genocides (as well as ‘being sent to the east’), so even if the POW death rate is exaggerated, it’s still reasonable for the Germans to have been terrified of the Soviets.
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  162. Umm no. Burundi is horrifically poor. 52% of the Children under 5 are stunted due to malnutrition. Its poverty rate is double that of Rwanda.
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  163. Kaanfight Capitalism existed as soon as markets existed, which is since Ancient Times. Rome had a financial sector.
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  164. What if the Carolingian Empire survived? What if Balhae survived?
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  165.  @jasperbudiono295  Made in China 2025 is not really working. China was trying to make itself independent in terms of tech imports (their largest import in terms of $ are computer chip components) and make themselves leaders in things like 5G and take over the data infrastructure. China is importing as many computer chips as it ever has, and Hwawei was kicked out of its ambitions to build out 5G. Chinese exports are increasing right now, primarily in medical equipment, and due to COVID. It’s not a sustainable boom. The reason the trade war failed was very simple: It was “Phase 1”. The Chinese inevitably reneged on the Phase 1 deal, giving reasons for Trump to enact more sanctions. At least that was the plan. Truth be told, neither China nor the US ‘won’ the trade war. Both the US and China took major hits, but because Trump lost the election and because of covid, the two sides effectively signed a temporary truce.
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  166.  @shiny_teddiursa  Dominican Rep. also faces Earthquakes, it’s literally on the same island…
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  167.  @Frdyan  Exactly, People need to keep in mind just because leaders act friendly towards enemy nations in some cases, it doesn’t mean they like those nations. It’s often a negotiating tactic. Moon though is known for wanting unification of Korea at all costs.
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  168. 29:33 That has a lot of do with what Rome was facing at the time (massive barbarian invasions, internal economic collapse due to the collapse of the trade system.) Hence, why East Rome was able to survive and live for another millennia longer.
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  169.  @MrStickyMouse Most people in the US (by 2-1 margins) want to remain in NATO. So no, very few Americans want to see the end of the American Empire.
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  170. Zachary I mean, does a homogenous nation need to maintain concentration camps against minority groups for unity?
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  171.  @jasontroy3911 And the same thing will happen. Even being sent to prison may not really matter - indicting a presidential front runner was already unprecedented, and had only limited effects in the end. The problem with Trump is that he is so polarizing that people have already more or less made up their mind on him. Also, the constant cases against him have the effect of desensitization - basically, ‘the boy who cried wolf’.
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  172. But WSJ commenters assure me China is just outcompeting the US, and it doesn’t have overcapacity problems! 😂
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  173. ⁠ @thefunklenbgamerextraordin6144 Also, trees were so scare to begin with that it wouldn’t require a lot to completely defrost a fjord.
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  174.  @macroxela  The Soviets also didn’t survive opening up. It’s a difficult balance. They also have another factor: China. If Kim opens too much to the West, you think Xi’s going to be happy?
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  175. This also gives Xi more control over the Jiang faction, which controls many of the SOEs.
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  176. So now you’re just moving debt around. The issue is that the bigger SOEs have their own debts and will likely need their own bailouts soon. The CCP central government is basically just doing everything they can to try to hide debts away from the central government.
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  177. Roger Schmuck The route doesn’t make sense for the Athenians either. It turns east into the Nile. May as well build a new, bigger one.
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  178. Trent N The draft is technically forced labor despite the fact you’re getting paid because you don’t have a choice if you’re drafted.
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  179. Johny Ricco Japan and Vietnam would literally be the only thing holding communism from taking over Asia at that point, so yes. Japan would want a larger navy if nothing else. Thing is that China was a bit of a different thing- Korea was pretty clearly aggression by not just a communist nation, but another sovereign nation annexing another one- if the USA refused to help South Korea, what about West Germany? Russia still theoretically had claims on the Turks and Finns. The Red Scare was also much stronger in the 50s.
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  180.  @cane6074 Turkey at least has a power vacuum in the MidEast it can fill.
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  181. The first day Joe came into office he fucked the Canadians over by canning the Keystone XL. Yeah, he’s not going well to diplomacy.
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  182. Metsarebuff 22 Signapore is a hodgepodge of different ethnicities.
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  183. Space Colonization? Probably should ask about Ocean Colonization first, deep ocean Aquaculture and mining are much closer to economic feasibility, and the economic, technological, and societal baseline for it already exists (oil industry, aquaculture industry, tourism/cruise ship industry.)
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  184. Whatifalthist Well, yeah, but in the America’s, they still did it on behalf of the American State. The Urals aren’t really much of a barrier between the two, and so I don’t see any reason they couldn’t keep Siberia at least nominally vassalized. It’s not like the Russians somehow had an easier time getting troops to the Pacific Coast in OTL.
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  185.  @sinoroman  Email him if you really want him to listen. He can’t read everything.
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  186.  @demun6065  Russia won’t collapse as in it ceases to be a nation, but it’s kind of like the Ottomans at the end of the 1900s- The nation still ‘existed’-kind of. The difference is that Russia is acting aggressive, but it’s hiding a shell of an economy and population that really has never recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union. Chechnya and Outer Manchuria are likely candidates to get split off. Russia’s only saving grace to stop it from getting parcelled up by its neighbours are nukes. Unfortunately, nukes aren’t as hard to build as they used to be, and the US no longer really cares as much about stopping nations from getting them. Unless Russia is willing to cause a nuclear winter and thus piss off everyone , it may just have to deal with it the old-fashioned way.
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  187. You mean if China never faced the pressures of colonialism? It would never have reformed into a more powerful and modern state. Chinese culture is generally arrogant towards outsiders and outside ideas, and the century of humiliation is what led to China reforming.
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  188. Have Pierre Trudeau stay as Prime Minister and have the Quebec referendum win.
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  189. Wouldn’t Oman, Aden, Somaliland, Burma, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Malawi, Solomon Is., Fiji, and the UAE still be under British Influence? They also got Libya and Italian Somalia from Italy after WW2. I guess Malta and Cyprus would be larger Gibralatars? Wouldn’t the Hong Kong accession cause problems for the Imperial Federation? Also, Botswana had a significant White population...
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  190. 5:00 No South Sudan... and I dunno.
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  191.  @timurermolenko2013  Subtracting ‘non-Muscovites’ is like removing the Great Plains from the US. Now you have a massive gaping hole.
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  192. Sanchit Kabra Well, say that again when Bangladesh is underwater....
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  193. Who determines what is ‘important?’ Some planner? After COVID, you think that’s a good idea? Shocking that people don’t want to be forced to eat Beyond Meat just because it’s more efficient.
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  194. King Wiwuz IV Which is why Eastern Europe is prosperous, while Singapore isn’t.
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  195. You're Spying Morgenthau results in a Germany already split in at least 2. Honestly, Germany losing East Germany has proven to be enough to stop it from being a dominant European power. Again, I would like to point out that there’s enough Germans in Poland to cause major headaches. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Poland_immediately_after_World_War_II#/media/File%3ACurzon_line_en.svg I mean, what do you expect when 1/3rd your nation is composed of a hostile ethnic group? Do the Poles even really want that land? There were a lot of plans to utterly destroy Germany by forcing it to pay huge reparations and deindustrialization at Yalta, which also didn’t go anywhere- largely because it would have held back the wider European economy and resulted in one of the worst genocides in Europe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#Implementation And even THIS plan didn’t include the Oder- Neisse borders, btw- even the Western Allies in a genocidal mood didn’t want the Oder-Neisse borders. There is no way that happens unless Stalin was total control of Poland. Romania and Bulgaria surrendered to the Soviets because they had no choice and could see they were doomed. If the Western Allies are in Greece, they DO have a choice. Romania in particular still had an army that could at least slow down the Soviets before the Allies could move up to there. The worst that happens may be the Romanians lose all of the land east of the Carpathians and/or is forced to be a neutral buffer state.
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  196. Melnek Is Poland being run by Genocidal Maniacs? If not, it can’t happen- Poland would be half German if they got everything they got from Oder-Neisse- Even just all of Silesia is a dubious notion. Parts of Silesia and East Prussia were half-Polish, though. Poland isn’t really powerful enough to prevent either the Allies or Soviets from doing what they want. Most likely the Morgenthau Plan would happen - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#/media/File%3AHenry_Morgenthau's_Proposal_for_Post-War_German_Boundaries.png but with half of East Prussia also being German. Though there’d still be enough Germans in Poland to cause headaches for everyone, including Poland. Not even France has fully yet assimilated Alsace-Lorraine. Maybe you’d see it become Poland’s Catalonia.
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  197. Wasn’t Egypt the wealthiest part of the empire due to the trade networks? From what I understand Gaul was populous but not wealthy. Also, Attila may have been turned back due to Pope Gregory’s talk with him, but his armies were also running out of supplies due to Aetius’ raids on his back supply lines and the Eastern Romans attacking his empire from the Danube. He probably just decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and the talk with the Pope was just the straw that broke the camel’s back (if it happened at all.)
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  198.  @Ghibelline_19  Also, Late Antiquity is where the Christians put their Saints and the Rise of Islam happened.
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  199. What if T-Series beat Pewdiepie?
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  200. 19:10 One could argue Japan has already gone past that phase and has adapted its economy and society around aging demographics while the world was still doing well. Russia also has decent-ish demographics. It has a TFR of 1.8 and was rising until experiencing mass recession due to sanctions and COVID- its demographic issue is ironically that it has a horrible life expectancy due to a dysfunctional healthcare system. Kind of makes sense considering how religious and conservative the society is. The other issue for Russia is that it’s a petro-state and has little ability to modernize due to lack of capital and Putin tying Russia so heavily to China (not a great long-term partner if you care about anything else other than reconquering Ukraine.)
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  201.  @SacredCowStockyards  That assumes China doesn't turn fucking livid and goes all out ballistic, because losing Tibet means the USA/India controls its headwaters. And China is already running out of water. Fast.
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  202. Peter Zeihan says hi. ... OK, no, but seriously, you should probably watch his stuff. This is a pretty interesting perspective though. I skimmed parts of it, but I've wanted to add my take as well, so here we go: I have studied China a lot: I would point out that Land-based trade orders are inherently inferior to sea-based ones in terms of cost of trade, and if the US was to blockade China, even if everything worked out well with the Belt and Road, it would still be a massive blow to Chinese manufacturing and trade. China is not the only cheap manufacturer, and it's not really especially good at high-end manufacturing (assuming the trade war doesn't kill that option in its cradle). China has also relied on the Belt and Road to prop up its 'Rust Belt' Northeast, which WILL inevitably decline even further eventually- and it will have the same problems as the American Rust Belt. Debt has also increased to levels at or exceeding the US in relative terms, assuming you choose to take Chinese data at face value. That's not encouraging for a developing economy. China may become a global power. But my worry is that Xi knows that the Chinese have already squandered its opportunity to be one, or are losing their chance as the world turns against them, their population ages, and their debt turns bad. Desperate people will do desperate things. Like invade Taiwan or India. In other words, the issue isn't that China is going to overtake the US. It's that China wants to- and is losing its chance.
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  203. LTSR Gameriai It still doesn't change that aging populations aren't enough to create an ideological backlash. It might, however, influence its direction.
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  204. Note that the reason inflation happens in part is due to the fact central banks actually target for inflation at around 2% to encourage spending and investment. You don’t need crypto of you convince everyone to target 0% instead of 2%. Also, note that debt is currency in effect, and thus trying to target a 0% inflation rate severely restricts credit. This is partially why only Jews could be moneylenders in the Middle Ages- in a world with cheap credit, inflation would be inevitable. Finally, the US is a victim of its reserve currency as much as a benefactors. Keynes noted that a single nation taking reserve status would result in a trade deficit due to the demand for the currency (the Triffin Dilemma). This is why he actually wanted a global reserve system.
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  205. Turkey doesn’t need to invade the Balkans to become a major power. Even just being able to take out all of its competitors in the Middle East is probably enough. Considering its military is Prussian compared to everyone but Israel and maybe Iran and the UAE, that shouldn’t be too hard. Greece is Turkey’s biggest threat in the European direction, but even then, Turkey’s centre of power is deep into Anatolia, not in Constantinople as it was in the 19th century. Russia is a massive question mark. They didn’t get involved in Karabakh as people thought he would, so who knows what Putin has on his mind in the region.
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  206.  @Ero_Hentai  Why didn't they take over Korea? They're already on the Chinese side. Plus the vast majority of Chinese military power was used up fighting against the northern Steppe tribes- thus, it wouldn't ever be taken over until late in the TL. It's better to have a friendly nation outside your borders than a hostile one inside it. The mindset of China being #1 hegemon does not change in this TL, and tributaries would be an acceptable compromise.
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  207. bruhman420 You’d have to move Australia either north or South, the former making it a rainforest, the latter a cold grassland. The climatic effects of fucking with the Circumantarctic Current on the latter may be major though. But basically, Australia wouldn’t be Australia. Also, having an inland sea at Lake Eyre would not increase rainfall enormously, because apparently the water evaporated would rain off the ocean instead of the interior. That was part of the reason filling up Lake Eyre with seawater never really was an idea that went off the ground.
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  208. What if the British Empire federated its empire?
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  209. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. People tend to forget in modern society that if you lack food and water, everything else collapses pretty quickly. People leave the cities in search of food and water. Factories stop operating without worker or water to run Machinery. Order collapses. Wealth evaporates.
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  210.  @bigheadrhino  So it wasn’t losing to China. It was losing to America’s oil embargo. If the US kept exporting oil to Japan, the Pacific War would never have happened. The Japanese took over Indochina because Vichy France was weak and the Japanese wanted to more effectively blockade China. The original intention, interestingly, was for Japan to only occupy Tonkin in Northern Vietnam for that purpose, but the Japanese soldiers o;the ground basically didn’t listen and they had to take the entire thing as a result.
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  211.  @commenter5469 They do not, and the Russians had the city in the ‘pincer’ for months. The problem is that Bakhmut is easy to defend, so the Russians can still give Ukraine a pretty nasty punch. Bakhmut also appears to have taken so long because of the Russian high command refusing to give supplies to Wagner during the offensive.
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  212.  @toma2667  Sure, but Ukraine has every reason to try to get NATO involved. This is still unacceptable behaviour from an ally.
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  213. Gao XiangShuai Dude, just because EVERY foreign ethnic group that lives in China isn’t revolting is a stupid argument to make. The Koreans don’t revolt because they’re more closely tied to Chinese culture than the ‘problematic’ ethnic groups, which is the problem. Mind you, Xi is also trying to sinicize the Hui by forcing them to give up Islam. However, historically, China has given the Hui and Koreans more freedom to do what they want. Considering that’s changing for the Hui, don’t be surprised if the Hui suddenly decide to become ‘problematic’. People don’t want their own country if they get what they want under the nation’s banner (in this case, freedom of culture and religion). Big shocker, I know. China never gave any of the Mongolians, Uygurs, or Tibetans a choice or vote to stay. Stop attaching moral equivalence to the West. The US Civil War was fought over Slavery. The war also did not start until the confederates decided to attack US federal property, which was definitely illegal, even if the constitution allowed for separation of states and self-determination- Federal property is in a state, but it does not belong to the state.
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  214. Working from home also allows people to move to smaller cities or rural areas, however, as jobs are less of a concern.
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  215.  @julienboyer Yeah, ask the Chinese, who mostly live in temperate areas.
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  216.  @SuperCrow02  To colonize space, you need an economy in space. Each Dragon seat to the ISS costs $55 mil. That’s not an economic basis. We’re still no where near to being able to do that.
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  217.  @erikabloodaxe2581  That didn’t stop them in Southern China. The Mongols didn’t go into Northern Siberia because it would have been pointless. There was nothing to plunder or things to take over (other than a couple nomad tribes, tundra, and trees.)
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  218.  The Martial Lord of Loyalty  They could develop a trading empire even without military superiority. Also, didn’t the Indians have rifles as well when the East India Company took over?
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  219.  @janehrahan5116  All indications are that the Slavs were the ones that invented the heavy plough- their populations exploded first, and this helped bring about the Slavic migrations. In any case, the Romans were bad at inventing technology, but good at adopting it (hence, why they remained militarily competitive with the barbarians despite centuries of technological exchange.)
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  220. Moving off Earth will inevitably carry the problems of Earth off Earth. It doesn’t magically solve the problem.
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  221.  @adrienthecool8072  Then how do you explain why US has stayed higher in level of GDP/world?
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  222. Assuming current TL (Cold War curtain), that means the colony areas of the European Powers would remain (at least Central Asia and Africa), as they needed a valve to hold the large population, and there’d be a larger colonial white base to hold it together. The US was not willing to start a trade war or sanction Europe over decolonization.
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  223. The Great Sasuke ...as if Government guarenteeing loans didn't do most of the work of causing the crisis
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  224. The creditors would still likely be paid, since delaying debt payments would mean higher debt payments later on, worsening things even more. The stuff that will get fucked are Social Security and Medicare, which have to be paid out monthly.
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  225.  @Niskirin  Except this is pretty much a theoretical discussion and not a ‘real’ one. No one with power is actually proposing this. Even the more moralist people like Ben Shapiro aren’t.
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  226. I’ve been hearing fears of hyperinflation in the US since 2008. It’s been over a decade and a half, and they’ve generally been consistently wrong.
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  227.  @debrah8110 Napoleon was literally on the brink of remaking a new Roman Empire before he got his ass shitcanned in Russia.
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  228. Nukes hurt.
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  229. Not a win-win. Just a win- for China. Iran getting payment in Yuan (which not even the Chinese want to keep their money in), Iran giving up Oil rights. China paid out a lot, but it needed more oil the infrastructure provides anyways, and Iran was never going to get any other form of investment. Iran is becoming a Chinese puppet.
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  230. That’s not the problem here, they tried that, and it still didn’t work.
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  231. Will the Turks turn against Russia, or are they effectively out of the coalition at this point? Seems like there are good arguments on both sides.
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  232.  @dustintacohands1107 Trump never said he’d stop giving aid to Ukraine, the dude has literally no coherent policy on the issue.
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  233. Isn’t the US considering Hong Kong as basically legally China now? Which basically means that China’s stocks are being listed on China’s stock exchanges and being isolated from the rest of the world.
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  234. They should have stayed as part of the UK…
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  235.  @fabiandonvil But Lukashenko and Proghoizin have common objectives… for now.
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  236. Ukraine was already a weak economy before the war. Let’s just say they’re getting economic subsidies for a reason. Strategic bombing is rarely good for an economy.
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  237. Is it? Office buildings can be destroyed. You can work from home, but what happens when the power goes out? At least the factories will be repaired faster because of wartime needs.
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  238. Real wages include inflation already…
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  239.  @seneca983  In other words, the European Currency Unit- the Euro’s predecessor. It had many of the same problems of the Euro, and it was arguably less stable (currency crashes still happened- famously exploited by George Soros- though they were more localized.) Because again, they had to follow the main player’s monetary policy- that of the Mark, in the case of the ECU/Euro and tie their currency to the Mark. And this block of countries is more diverse and less united than those of the EEC.
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  240. Lol
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  241. Wouldn’t China invade Europe via Russia in this scenario? If the goals of the conflict are to destroy the other’s allies and economies rather than each other (and most likely lacking enough naval and air power to invade eg. Japan while having enough industrial capacity and people to simply pump out enough units to overwhelm any small European garrison), a surprise invasion into Europe and the Middle East by a massive Chinese army could be a tempting option. Even if the US leaves Europe militarily and has some sort of trade war over non-participation, Europe would still likely be a major trade partner of the US and be large enough economically to be a major aid to the US Alliance.
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  242.  MeChupaUnHuevon  Well yeah, because the Turks genocided the Central Asian Iranics.
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  243. What if Korea never unified under the Silla?
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  244. Augustus was kind of iffy. It was his ability to find good people to work for him and his charisma that made him a legend (see: Agrippa.)
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  245.  @pababoyM2  It doesn’t take a genius to achieve enormous economic growth by dumping money into infrastructure and opening your economy to trade. Tsarist Russia also had enormous economic growth despite not really being run all that well.
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  246. The thing is that it’s a tactic that’s generally not done due to its risk. The West has tried those sorts of paratrooper tactics enough to know that the casualty rate is extremely high if done against a decent enemy due to the difficulty of supply and the fact you’re basically encircling yourself and hoping you’ll be saved eventually. Not saying it won’t work, I’m saying that it’ll be a bloodbath.
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  247. There's still large genetic differences from animals in the Americas and Eurasia. Also, agriculture tends to spread slower in North-South oriented areas, as it's harder to copy agricultural techniques when climates change wherever farming technology goes.
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  248. How does Egypt get so far into the malarial parts of Africa? Egypt in 1880 had quinine and other anti-Malarial drugs.
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  249. If Stalin destroyed Russia’s belief in the future, what does that say about China and Mao?
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  250. What if Polk succeeded in his Southern Expansions?
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  251. Spencer Austin Self Jesus Christ, every time. You fuckers come.
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  252. The Moon/Mars is nowhere near to being a real force in global economies, and it’s too speculative to really know what will happen. George Friedman had the Moon in his “Next 100 Years” book, but I honestly kind of find that part pretty iffy. The Moon lacks any inherent military advantages.
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  253.  @shorewall  Japan is Asian, I think most people would agree on that. If you’re going by Western Influence, you have to put Korea and Japan in the same category...
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  254. Is Latin America part of the West in this analysis? Because it would seem a little strange for it to not really be ‘Western’ despite failing badly in the 20th century.
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  255.  @marinuswillett6147  Canada also never subsidized the colonization of the less habitable parts of the country as much as say, Russia, as well. Also, there’s not enough people to colonize those areas. The Peace River region is relatively habitable (farming is barely possible, resources are abundant, temperatures are cold but not too extreme), but is practically empty.
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  256. It would be interesting to see what the social effects of life extension would be- since you seem to imply it would really send these forces into overdrive and destroy society…
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  257. 21:30 I noted how you made note of Fox News. Fox News is actually the only network competing with internet news right now effectively, likely by being ‘populist’ and not being complete liars. Tucker Carlson, for example, has only half the viewership of Joe Rogan, but several times that of CNN’s primetime.
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  258.  @Lazer-bp9lf  Control of the Black Sea itself (not just its entrance), weakening Russia.
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  259. 19:55 I’ve seen you say that BC is socialist many times, and that doesn’t make any sense. If you put BC on an Electoral College-style map, BC would be a swing state. It’s voted in its centre-right party (ironically called the ‘Liberals’- it’s kind of weird) almost every election. Saying BC is socialist is like saying Virginia or Georgia is Socialist because they occasionally elect left-wing candidates. I also don’t get why the territories would stay part of Ontario. There’s not a single port that connects the two, and at the point Canada falls apart, it basically just becomes who can offer various elites in the Northern Territories more concessions. It’s kind of like Russia falling apart and losing all of Siberia to China except Chukchi for some reason. It makes no logical sense.
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  260. Emperor R Catholic Hentai bro
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  261. wizthegod Germany was also practically bankrupt by the end of the war, unlike Britain.
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  262. kankuj23 The Congo could produce Rubber without cutting off hands. Turns out though, it just wasn’t enough for the King’s liking. A fuck ton of Rubber was also made in Brazil and Malaysia, though the former needed Slave Labor.
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  263. What if Antarctica was colonized by Native peoples?
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  264. Meta appears to be lame, but that’s partially since it’s trying to appeal to businesses, to try to get them to use VR in exchange for real spaces. I doubt it’ll be the success Facebook wants it to be, but saying it’ll be a failure that’ll destroy the industry is probably going too far.
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  265.  @timurermolenko2013  Second-biggest. Russia is the biggest.
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  266.  @bnic9471  The guy with the gas-Mask moustache? Who? Napoleon basically only really ever fought a war of aggression 2 times - the infamous Russian invasion and the Portugal Invasion. Every other time, he was being attacked by other powers gaining up on him (or being dragged into it by dynastic strife in the case of Spain), followed by Napoleon carving them up. France during the Napoleonic Wars had the demographic, military, and economic strength (of any European nation) to subjugate the rest of Europe. That was a major threat to literally everyone else, so this created a cycle where Napoleon would carve out more land to try to get the other powers to stop and to strengthen his own position, only to get attacked again. Really, by the time we get to the Russia situation, one can reasonably argue that Napoleon was perfectly rational in assuming every European nation not allied with him or under his heel were potential adversaries. Because that had been the pattern for the past decade.
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  267.  @makotonagano-i7q  TBH, the Austro-Hungarian empire had already collapsed. The only other real possibility at the time would be to split up Yugoslavia into 2 states, Croatian and Serb dominated. Also, the Serbs were lobbying pretty hard for Bosnia as well-remember who killed Archduke Ferdinand? A Bosnian Serb.
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  268.  @mdza  Right, as if ethnic genocide wasn’t going on before NATO got involved…
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  269.  @WhyteHorse2023 Yes, with FEDNOW, the process will lose all of the middlemen slowing down the process of debanking you have to go through. Now the Fed can debank people at will, without all those middlemen, meaning the scope and scale can get even faster. There’s a reason the CCP keeps pushing CBDC.
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  270. The fact that the Chinese Navy lacks range is not a secret and is basically open knowledge if you do a little research: https://www.rand.org/paf/projects/us-china-scorecard.html https://fas.org/irp/agency/oni/pla-navy.pdf Chinese Naval and Air Force projection capability declines massively as you get further from the mainland. Gordon Chiang basically cried wolf too many times that even when he has real points, he isn't taken seriously: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/12/29/the-coming-collapse-of-china-2012-edition/ There's nothing particularly wrong in this analysis. If anything, it's come true, but he didn't account for the mass increase in debt following the 2008 crisis. Zeihan has been consistent that the collapse of China would be the result of financial, demographic, and trade stress. He also has said 'collapse' could mean either literal breakup of China or Maoist tyranny- both would be the 'collapse' of China as a major power. Maybe a bit sensationalist, but dictatorships look strong on the outside, but are really brittle on the inside. The Iranian Revolution comes to mind.
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  271.  @renaissance17  The Petrodollar is a myth. The US is not propped up by oil- otherwise, they’d have done to war with Venezuela and would not increase domestic production (doing so makes it easier to keep oil traded in USD, as the main market is in USD.) Also, Russia is using Chinese Financial service companies to overcome Western Sanctions on payment services. Also, even if it IS a gold standard, Switzerland had a gold standard until 1999. The Soviet Bloc was also not using the dollar system during the Cold War, so there is precedent for competing currency systems. This is more just a fracturing of the world order than anything else.
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  272. The buttons for the nukes were in Moscow.
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  273.  @johnnydavis5896  It was very awkward when Himmler found out the Iranians had been calling themselves “Aryans” long before the Nords were even on the map.
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  274. D D You'd think he would pick up on extremist beliefs- but considering this guy was a Muslim activist as well- I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it seems like the Parents did do some damage, even if they didn't intend it to go this far. Parents seeing their children suddenly disappear is a horrible experience for the parents.
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  275. Korea is like Belgium. They have no choice, geography does not pay a good hand, and trying to stay neutral is only going to get your ass fucked. Hard. Belgium tried to stay neutral in WW2, and all it did was make it easier for the Nazis to take over France.
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  276.  @jamestajiri58  Note the IEA projected nuclear to be growing much faster than it is now. Nuclear is slow because it’s saddled with a million regulations and low institutional knowledge. Solar and Wind tech have also been dumped onto the market by the Chinese for cheap.
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  277.  @user-DongJ The problem is that BRICS has so far been able to do fuck all, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It’s too diverse. NATO only formed because of the Soviets and the Cold War and the destruction of Europe. What do Brazil, India, and South Africa really have in common? Some of them despise each other, and are closer allies to the US than to each other. The worst case is China - India, which usually scuppers any action (India does not trust China.)
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  278. Yeah, it’s not going to work. Other than the obvious issue of lack of land, Macau is effectively legally China at this point, and would likely fall under similar regulations as Hong Kong and China if it made into a financial district. Companies aren’t going to move to Macau just because the people there are less rowdy. They may as well move to Shanghai, and make use of its more developed institutions.
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  279.  @ArawnOfAnnwn  1. Afghanistan has the worst possible terrain to establish centralized control over. 2. The original mission in Afghanistan was antiterrorism- the issue was massive mission creep during W Bush. Antiterrorism meant preventing the country from being used as a terrorist hotbed. Biden withdrew when the US had about as many troops there as a large US military base and no casualties (being mostly a support role). For all effective purposes, the war had ended sometime between 2014 and 2020 - at least from the US’ point of view. From the original goal of the war, the US won. The US successfully ‘Vietnamized’ Afghanistan. Until one senile dude thought it was a good idea to give it all up for some brownie points. 3. No one in the US approved of Biden’s withdrawal. 4. Losing a friendly government that held overlordship over mountainous desert isn’t really a big deal on the grand picture. It also assumes the Taliban don’t themselves face another US-friendly uprising, which is what happened last time around. 5. They killed people and established an objectively better and less brutal government. At least it actually brought good to the world. Xinjiang is forced assimilation. Unless you believe the Han race is superior to all races, there’s not much benefit to that.
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  280. The President of the Solomon Islands just resigned over protests of that great Chinese ‘business’.
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  281.  @ArawnOfAnnwn Africa is also a diseased hellscape, which physically makes people less productive. Even with modern medicine, infrastructure in Africa is difficult to build, so much of the continent is still diseased vs Eurasia.
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  282. …Assuming they can leave China in the first place. Which they can’t. House prices and sales are dropping in Vancouver as well.
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  283.  @sirrathersplendid4825  This debate is the exact one they had when the Breton-Woods system was established. Keynes wanted a global trade currency (the Bancor) created by the IMF to solve this problem. The problem is that you end up creating a global central bank. Obviously, the kinds of people who dislike the Dollar system would despise a ‘one-world currency’ - unless they were the ones controlling it- so it never went anywhere.
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  284.  @henricussilvanus4332  Because there’s not even a self-sustaining city anywhere on Earth? MIT concluded the tech needed to make Mars One sustainable didn’t exist, and it’d actually be cheaper to just bring all the food you need from Earth. Also, if there’s anything the last 2 years have taught, it’s how important trade is to the modern world.
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  285.  The Martial Lord of Loyalty  [Citation needed] for Carthage having difficulty colonizing due to population. They colonized half of Spain between the first 2 Punic Wars. North Africa was wetter at the time and was a breadbasket, ripe for massive population growth. Also, ‘Athens’ is a bit of a misnomer by the later parts of the TL, as much as calling France ‘Paris’ is. Also, Africa is extremely disunited. Freaking Oman was able to develop a ‘empire’ on Africa’s East Coast. All the plagues in Europe were already in India. Remember that India had already been in contact with the West for millennia.
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  286. The Martial Lord of Loyalty ...Isn’t this entire timeline a what-if for an Industrialized Ancient Greece? That implies better technology than the Sub-Saharan Africans.
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  287. LOL Diamond 101 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism “Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.[1][2][3][4] Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system and competitive markets.[5][6] In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by every owner of wealth, property or production ability in financial and capital markets whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.[7][8]” Mercantilism can exist in a capitalistic system- in fact most countries are mercantilistic to varying degrees. Rome definitely had everything in the definition (at least before the Crisis of the 3rd Century). https://www.mikeanderson.biz/2009/02/capitalism-in-roman-republic.html “As Rome grew the demand for business grew, but the nobility considered merchant activities off limits for them – it lacked dignitas. Since there was no government administration the Senate looked to the Knights to handle the business of the Republic. The first of these “businessmen” were called Publicans. They were employed by the state to manage public contracts: to collect taxes, manage mining companies, and oversee road construction. These contracts were awarded at auction and their duration was five years. During the Punic Wars Publicans built ships for the Roman Navy and equiped the Roman Army. The nobility began to covert the profits of the Knights and become involved in sea trade, until a law was passed in 218 BC forbidding Senators from owning ships with a larger capacity of more than 300 amphorae (1 amp= 6 gal). In 215 three Publican contractors were censured because they provided financing to Spanish tribes (the enemy). They scuttled their ships and sued the Republic for reimbursement for the loss. The Senate chose to utilize the Knights commercially, instead of creating a civil service, and disregarded their political claims. But the power of the Knights grew and they were able to exert great influence as a class. In 169 BC the censor Tiberius Gracchus cancelled all Publican contracts because of corruption, but the Knights rebelled and accused him of treason against the state. Tiberius was acquited, but the Knights has flexed their muscles. By the fall of the Republic there were hundreds of corporations selling shares to investors. Manufacturing and trades flourished: including furniture making, leatherwork, weaving, metalworking, stoneworking, and food processing.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMYruhJb8e0 Shows Rome had a primitive banking system. Also, Denmark has a tax to GDP ratio of 45%. Any more, and they’d actually be losing money due to the Laffer Curve. Ancient Rome? 3% wealth tax, plus a 2.5% customs tax (and other taxes, but none were higher than single digits %). They were practically Reaganistic in tax policy.
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  288.  @marza339  Private Sector cannot print money, which spreads the pain of default across the economy (as well as making local exports more competitive). Note that the vast majority of currency in an economy is actually debt, not paper currency. If you’re printing money to pay off debt, this action itself ‘destroys’ the money from the debt (though this still will result in inflation, as the new money can be used as basis for more debt, as there’s legal and practical limits to how much debt you can hold based on how much cash you have at hand.) Note this does not justify MMT- there are consequences. Private Sector defaults are generally bankruptcy. Ie. Lehman. Not the end of the company (its assets are still technically around in Barkley’s), but it’s still not good. Bankruptcy still results in lots of economic destruction, and often of assets that would otherwise be solid (Toy’s R Us). The flip side of private default are zombie companies- kept alive only by liquidity, holding workers hostage in a dead company. Private Sector debt also includes household debt, which prevents people from spending or investing money (as well as making everyone more miserable.)
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  289.  @TapOnX  ...And it’s rising back up now that places like Poland and Hungary are developed, and the ghost of communism fades. The 90s were a REALLY bad and painful time for Eastern Europe, since they were haemorrhaging people and their economies had imploded with the fall of the Warsaw Pact. The fact birth rates fell would be expected .
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  290.  @agentc7020  Trump basically let Putin do what he wanted in Belarus and Ukraine.
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  291. Darth Mortus Central Asia had tons of economic potential and weren’t that separatist. Let them stay.
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  292. What if France’s Demographic Decline never occurred? What if Hitler never existed? What is Austria participated in the 2nd Polish Partition? What if Joan of Arc didn’t exist? What if Zealandia existed?
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  293.  @apathak34  Ok, I sent a link to Peter Zeiahn’s newsletter, but it didn’t go through. Basically, the Dems have lost the vast majority of both Senate and House Elections since 2000, despite having a nominal voter majority. The factions in the Democrats are far more divided than those in the Republicans, and despite a nominally higher number of voters, cannot keep everyone happy for very long. And Trump managed to catch an abnormally large # of minorities despite being “racist”. Turns out minorities aren’t oppressed classes who beat on every leftist’s whim.
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  294. You mean the Soviet Union?
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  295. Both Shiaism and Christianity have the most aspects of Zoroastrianism. I could see a variant of either being used to create something similar. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time Iran changed religion.
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  296.  @nooraldeen6327  https://www.studyinternational.com/news/saudization-are-saudi-students-adequately-prepared-for-university/ “”Students are simply not well enough prepared in fundamental areas like writing, quantitative and analytical skills to be able to succeed in an undergraduate course,” wrote Manail Anis Ahmed in a piece published in University World News. Poor proficiency in English is also common among Saudi youth, presenting itself as another barrier to effective learning at the university level.” ““The principles of education in Saudi Arabia are strongly rooted in the teachings and values of Islam and sharia law. At the K-12 level, there is a greater emphasis placed on learning about the religion, culture and history of the country as opposed to subjects related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM),” wrote Khadija Mosaad in the Fair Observer.”
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  297.  @nooraldeen6327  You can’t reform an entire educational system overnight just by dumping money into universities and new tech hubs. It doesn’t work like that. Especially when the citizenry has not needed to do real work with the oil revenues.
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  298.  @redqwertyu  Turkey already is food self-sufficient- and really, if they want the food, making an alliance with Bulgaria is good enough.
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  299. Pretty sure the high death toll of WW2 has more to do with the genocides of the combatants involved than war itself.
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  300. 5:00 Armenia merges with Georgia, Uganda merges with Tanzania?
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  301. What if the Ottoman Empire Survived WW1?
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  302. What if Zealandia existed?
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  303.  @Newbmann  No. Chinese Tributaries were basically allowed to do what they wanted.
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  304.  @fedcoin1602  Canada has decent geography, the issue is that it's spread out to thinly and makes it a nightmare to manage....unless you're coming from the south. Central Mexico is iffy and full of Metizos and are numerous enough that it would cause nationalist problems. Central America and the Caribbean aren't that useful from a resource standpoint, but gives it better access and integration to the rest of the world (especially Latin America). Population density is comparatively low in Central America though, so they might be able to colonize much of it with proper incentives.
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  305. King Utopus The Koreans did not lose their entire country even during the first invasion. Much of the Northwest and Southeast were still under Korean control. And what happens if they do win completely in Korea? Move into China and lose even worse.
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  306.  @timurermolenko2013  France is also partly in Europe, is it not European?
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  307. Max W Sir, you do realize China believed through its entire history that it was the center of the world? Hence the tributary system and it’s inwards looking nature (which also prevented Colonialism, on the other hand).
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  308. Would anti-voter ID even pass the supermajority GOP state house and senate?
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  309.  @Charlemagnetheman  Not fast enough to give them a win in 2024. Also, Puerto Rico may or may not become a state by then, which is 6 EVs.
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  310.  @yekkub9425  I mean, other than the last time a similar revolution like that happened being the Iranian Revolution?
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  311. And Trudeau, lol.
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  312.  @Brusef  Cao over-performed by 12 points in his NOVA House district in 2022 vs 2020 (though Virginia trended right in 2022 by a few points, it’s still a wild over-performance.)
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  313. Renewables are also highly reliant on vulnerable mineral inputs, and need backups in case of intermittency. This isn’t really an either-or situation. We need to expand production of oil and gas in the EU and US, we need to expand nuclear- and yes, we need to keep investing in renewables and renewable energy supply chains.
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  314. Syed Muhammad Akbar The only countries that invest in Africa are France (because Empire) and China (because Empire). Africa has never been a profitable venture without colossal investment in human capital and infrastructure, and the recent relative stability in the region is just that- recent. The African Union could succeed in unifying Africa...or it could face a crisis like the EU and implode without any strong leadership to keep it together. Places like India at least have some of the infrastructure and human capital in place. Which is why people have been able to build things like call centres there.
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  315. And? He never said the waste can’t be recycled, it can be, but the US doesn’t have any reprocessing facilities.
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  316. Peter Zeihan’s fatal flaw is that he still has trust in the institutions that they won’t overstep their boundaries and that they are generally right… Apparently COVID wasn’t a big enough wake-up call.
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  317.  @peirithoosian  I keep a decent amount of cash under my mattress for that reason, so thanks, I guess?
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  318.  @pauldennison1757 that doesn’t make sense, poor people lean GOP overall.
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  319. Well, if you get off Twitter, that might help. ;)
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  320.  @RishTheMan Polling showed that the majority of Independents would not change their vote based on the verdict.
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  321. Dominic Rossetti And Icelanders. The Alpha Vikings went out to England, France, Germany... Funnily enough, the longest lasting ones were Greenland, Iceland, and Kievian Rus.
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  322. They DO have PTSD. Post Twitter Stress-Disorder.
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  323.  @michaelashby9654  The Northern Part of Korea was Korea’s “Austria”, having a massive multiethnic empire that spread out into Manchuria before the Millennium Eruption destroyed it, and it was absorbed into the South in around 950AD. That’s a REALLY long time ago. A bit long to say they’ve “historically” been a different kingdom.
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  324.  @ada6220  Uhh no. Turkey isn’t connected to Kazakhstan. Also, Turkey is culturally seperate from Central Asia. It would go about as well as Russia annexing Central Asia, except without the Geography to support it.
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  325. Uryendel The thing with tax evasion and money laundering is that the methods are always changing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Economics Explained Video would become outdated in 2-3 years because just by shining a light on the method, the people doing it have almost certainly started to move on and use different methods as authorities realize what’s going on and crack down on it. Also, it’s not the reason Fine Art has become so valuable in the first place. Fine Art has been absurdly expensive for centuries as a store of wealth. The tax evasion schemes may, however, explain the current run-up in price.
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  326.  @ArawnOfAnnwn  Which poll does China score higher?
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  327.  @admiralsuperior3  That means they won’t get any cuts. The problem is that budgets can be approved without filibustering. Also, the Democrats never tried to suspend the debt ceiling while they had the House and Senate under their control, knowing full well that the opposing party would use the Debt ceiling as a bargaining chip. This is entirely their fault.
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  328.  @venkyratnam Japan also is trying to get Japanese from South America to come back to Japan. Thing is that Japan sucks at integration. Koreans are a separate caste despite being culturally very similar due to the insular nature of society.
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  329. There’s one problem with that plan: China has wholly failed to move up the value-added manufacturing chain. As a result, they’re losing the lower-value manufacturing with nothing to replace it.
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  330. The US private debt load to GDP is not the reason for stock and asset overvaluation. This did not occur before 2008. This is a result of quantitative easing.
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  331. Been saying this. Maybe something relevant could work, like what if the Roman successor states (Arthurian/Celtic Britain, Neponic Dalmatia, and Soissons) survived and replaced the Roman Empire instead of the Germanic kingdoms.
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  332.  @glennnile7918  Well, TBF, even for a pro-Musk person, you can’t ignore the broken promises and WTF is going on in Autopilot and SolarCity.
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  333. rogelio valdez The problem is that logistics to Northern Mexico are difficult and it’s so disconnected to Mexico’s Core.
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  334.  The Martial Lord of Loyalty  I mean, but then you’d have to assume that 1. Greek successor states would be as bad at assimilating people as Carthage, and 2. Are city-states with an empire rather than nations at this point. More importantly, the conquest of India was conducted with very few actual British soldiers, with the EIC’s army being overwhelmingly Indian. This was the case with most colonies in the Victorian age.
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  335. Kowalski From Nebraska Moboutu nationalized most of the important resources to give to his friends, sir. That’s not capitalism. So, I guess Mao killing 40 million is more fine because it was a small number of people on a per capita basis? What? Is a murder in 1400 less big a deal than a murder in 2000 because the world population is smaller?
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  336. Kowalski From Nebraska The Congo was an autocratic state that’s wasn’t even technically a colony, it was under the direct rule of the King of Belgium. It’s not much different from Mobutu’s Congo, really, aside from more hand chopping. You know, a Black dictator, instead of a white one raping the Congo to line his pockets. Note that Leopod’s Crimes were a massive political Scandal when it was found out, and Belgium afterwards had a fairly benevolent rule to the Congo- during Mobutu’s rule, there were Congolese who actually wanted the Belgians back because the ‘colonizers’ were less tyrannical. Also, Capitalism and Colonialism have lasted for much longer than Communism.
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  337. What if South Vietnam survived?
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  338. What if Colonialism never ended?
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  339.  @hkl1459  You said there was ‘nothing to exploit’. Which is wrong. There are things to exploit, it’s just expensive.
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  340. umut ozer https://youtu.be/jT6HFCAFDgU https://youtu.be/jT6HFCAFDgU https://youtu.be/pKVQDUQR8I4
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  341. Little Griff Regarding economics: Bitcoin cannot and will never be a major currency. It’s fixed max cap means it’s far too unstable (ironically on the deflationary side) to be a viable store of value as the total values of goods it backs grows. Etherium, which has a fixed inflation rate (similar to gold) is a much more viable real option, since it is a far more stable store of value. Look at the price of Etherium vs the price of Bitcoin. Which would you rather use to buy groceries? Gold is another alternative, but the exchange rate would be absolutely insane (likely over $3,000/ounce). You absolutely need to have some kind of intermediary currency (which is hard to sell for people who don’t trust normal currencies). It could also just end up remaining the US Dollar. Central Banks don’t really like tying themselves to any kind of crypto, and the currency has survived mass bouts of inflation before (‘70s). I would also be very sceptical that inflation would result in everyone becoming equally poor. Those holding assets will see their asset prices retain a significant portion of their wealth, as their prices bloat with the currency. Which is most of the rich. What WOULD happen, however, is that the debt levels in real terms, become much lower. Mass inflation means the total weight of debt becomes much lower in real terms- and this WOULD benefit the poor/debtors.
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  342. Sweet Candy Romania got it back during the Civil War, and there really isn’t much reason for the Russians to fight to get it back. He did fuck up post WW2 Germany badly too though. East Germany should include Prussia and Silesia since it’s unlikely there’d be forced evictions of the Germans to the west.
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  343. Whatifalthist Republican.
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  344. DID THEY SEND ME DAUGHTERS
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  345. What if Japan won the Imjin War?
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  346. Dan oz No, you can solve it. By getting rid of the salt. Either use it as salt beds to extract salt from. Or by moving the brine further out to sea where it is more easily diluted. Desalination is definitely a win if you literally have no other way of getting water. The Colorado no longer goes to sea because of the hunger for water.
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  347.  @Sara3346  The primary advantage of He-3 fusion is to allow for a neutron in fusion. The issue is that practically no work is being done on He-3 fusion because we don’t have much. But mining the Moon for He-3 effectively requires strip mining while somehow making sure Helium gas doesn’t escape the pockets between the rocks where it’s found. You’re better off using Li-D or B-H (lithium and boron) for aneutronic fusion instead. Or breeder fission reactors.
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  348.  @CarPitStop  The alliance with Japan was to counter Russia, not Germany. The alliance with France was to counter Germany.
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  349. The US economy was already the largest in the World by the Great depression. A better comparison would be Germany, which few genuinely thought would recover as quickly as it did to start WW2 (though this was partially deficit war economy spending). More importantly, China is expected to lose half its people by 2050 due to the 1 -child policy. That’s death-spiral level of bad.
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  350.  @YamiFlyZX  No, I said the Argentina has the potential to do well, and that everything points to it if it can maintain some level of economic stability and stop spending every penny they get. Hopefully COVID is killing Peronism, or at least severely weakening it.
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  351. 1:46 There’s a problem with the Audio here where it’s cut off.
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  352.  @Lusa_Iceheart  Well, TBF, Fox has a few other personalities, like Gutfeld who are doing pretty well. Prime Time Fox is doing badly, though, at comparable (though higher) levels to CNN and MSNBC, which probably indicates people don’t like the prime-time format. Thing is that other than Rachel Maddow and (well WAS) Chris Cumomo, left-wing cable has few good personalities. And even they’re still pretty low compared to their Fox counterparts.
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  353.  Aydan Oliveira  Turkey has one thing that no one else in the region has. Other than Israel, Turkey is the only nation in the Middle East who has passed the Middle Income Trap with a diversified economy. They have a wide, open path to the future. Turkey is in a similar position to the Japanese in 1900. First on the scene, and with a sandbox of weaker nations surrounding them.
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  354.  @Konstantinos1404  You do know Turkey invaded Syria with 0 repercussions, right?
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  355. 10:40 That depends. The Red River Rebellion could technically be classified as a native revolt, because the Métis were treated as Natives despite not really being natives…
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  356. fromant65 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism “Historians and other scholars disagree on the question of whether a specifically fascist type of economic policy can be said to exist.”
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  357. TBF, Elon Musk has so many companies that is the hype falls in one, he can just move to another idea, and that (borderline insanity) has basically allowed him to be at the cutting edge of other tech companies. It’s kind of a different model to the rest of the tech industry, which is why he has a billion different companies in completely unrelated industries. I think one can argue he’s kind of a cockroach, in that he survives so much crap and keeps going, seemingly unscathed.
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  358. Nicholas Nguyen Did I say Yi wasn’t important? You also can’t really win a guerrilla war ‘swiftly’, and the Japanese were unlikely to make concessions to the Koreans to gain their support. The only thing it does is make the Japanese campaign not completely doomed.
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  359. German Potato ...Faster economic growth doesn’t matter when your country was a complete wasteland due to WW2...
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  360. Too small in size unless they colonize the rest of the Levant. It’s more likely the Indians revolt in the Gulf States and form their own colonial state in Arabia.
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  361. WI went red in the Senate in 2022. Which was literally the only swing Senate seat the GOP kept in 2022.
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  362.  @tehemail.7062 Vivek is red meat to the MAGA base, but there’s a reason he’s down around where Christie is. He has very limited appeal outside a very narrow part of the GOP (the most hardline MAGA folks who are isolationists). The fact he’s trending on Twitter doesn’t matter when post-debate polling shows Vivek is viewed less and less favourably by voters as time goes on, to the point where Biden-Vivek polling shows him consistently losing to Biden.
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  363. TBF, even the people probably don’t know what the machine learning code is. 😂
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  364. He should run for Ohio Governor to replace Mike DeWine.
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  365. Sinema might try to run a centrist campaign to get all the corporate donation money that went to Biden last cycle. Many weren’t too happy with giving Biden money in 2022.
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  366. But they also need the equipment for China or any other security threat. Russia is not the only thing here.
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  367.  @fedyx1544 You better come up with a better solution soon, because if Birth rates keep falling, people and government will get increasingly desperate. Fascism looks real good when the alternative is societal and economic decline.
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  368.  @samnicholson5051 North  @samnicholson5051  or the Middle East @samnicholson5051  (Turkey is a special case.) Morocco is a close historical and current US ally, but then you’d have to redefine what NATO is trying to do. Again. The better question is why Austria isn’t part of NATO.
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  369. Could you make a video on Austria and NATO? It only really seems to make sense during the specific circumstances of the Cold War.
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  370. Resistance-Is- Growing So, explain how being forced to take payment in currency that only the Chinese accept is actually good for the Iranians? It’s great for the Chinese, they can use their hard currency reserves elsewhere and have forced the Iranians to buy from them. Remember that Iran ‘voluntarily’ sold out its oil to the Anglo- Iranian oil company. The two had been cooperating for thousands of years. Why is that considered imperialism and not this? In practice, both Iran then and Iran now are flat-out broke. The USA wanted Iran to give up its empire, not turn into a puppet (unless you can show me otherwise). And now it’s definitely a puppet. This is pretty similar to the conclusion in this video too-that it’s not likely to benefit Tehran much, if at all.
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  371. Bhangra Fan This deal sounds horrible for Iran. The Chinese would effectively be turning Iran into their puppet in this deal. The Iranians must be pretty desperate.
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  372.  @stabeyy  Not sure why you feel the need to compare the Holocaust to British Colonialism. My point was that there would likely be similar amounts of genocide and suffering without colonization. It didn’t help, certainly, but there’s no indication the Africans acted any different than anyone else when they got good weapons and had the ability to form empires (which is to say, they formed empires and killed a ton of people.)
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  373.  @awddfg  There is a reason manslaughter is treated as less severe than murder in the criminal justice system. And second, no nation is responsible for the actions for their ancestors. Otherwise, where do you stop? No nation would be morally superior or inferior to another nation.
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  374.  Pixel Smile  Show me where Britain and France wanted to exterminate entire ethnic groups for Lebensraum?
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  375.  @lc9245  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ichi-Go This was accomplished in 1944, when the Americans were taking over Saipan and approaching the Home Islands. You could say the same thing with the Americans in Vietnam. The Viet Cong held down tons of American soldiers, but were actually losing overall in the war of attrition. They lost 1/3rd of their forces in the Tet Offensive, an offensive undertaken precisely because the North Vietnamese knew they were losing. China has been conquered several times despite its enormous size by much smaller armies (mostly by people on horses). It’s not Russia.
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  376.  @tiananman Unless the debt is owed to the Central Bank, which also pays its profits back to the Treasury. All you’re doing at that point is printing money and moving it around, pretending to owe it to someone when it’s really just printed currency. 😂
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  377. No, they just think immigration is a bigger immediate issue than Ukraine, especially when there’s no likelihood of immediate breakthroughs on that front.
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  378. Look up the Gatez 8.
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  379.  @scottnunan4927  To be fair, the American Missile and nuke arsenal is also very old, as the US deprioritized nukes after the Cold War. Russia has prioritized nukes first and foremost as their primary survival mechanism. I wouldn’t count on the nukes not working.
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  380.  @Withnail1969 Silver and Fiber Optics are better replacements for copper in some applications. Copper is still the generalist king though. It’s unlikely there’s no ability to increase supply though, esp. due to recycling and new technology.
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  381. Considering that the Dnieper is relatively defensible, if Russia takes everything east of the Dnieper (and maybe Mykolaiv and Kherson), would it feel safe enough to be satisfied with that? Especially considering taking all the gaps doesn’t seem possible now.
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  382.  @OldGuyAdventure Manitoba has only a very tiny sliver of the Bakken field. Literally every other Western Canadian province has more of the stuff. So them banning fracking isn’t a huge deal. The biggest untapped shale fields in Canada are the stuff in Southern Ontario. Partially, that’s because of Toronto being on top of them, but still. —- And Churchill is not viable because it’s too far up in the permafrost, resulting in high maintenance costs for infrastructure and regular shutdowns when the permafrost melts. The proposal is currently to move the port to Port Nelson, which has much less permafrost. —- Manitoba has historically been the more liberal-friendly province in Western Canada (more so than B.C., which has the hippies in Vancouver City and Vancouver Island to deal with.) It’s not likely to change policies to favour growth.
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  383. Note that the reason the railroads from Russia and Central Asia are at max capacity is due to covid shutting down port capacity. In theory, the ports can be reopened; the railroads were rarely used before COVID.
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  384. Thing is that Russia isn’t in the top 5 producers for most of the metals at 1:05. New Caledonia and Greenland could be able to ramp up nickel production. The biggest issue is that China produces the majority of the world’s Zinc and a huge amount of the world’s copper. So new Wind turbines may be off the table soon. Solar and Nuclear look like the way future, with maybe deep geothermal if the technology gets good enough.
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  385.  @AuAdventures  3 problems happened. Gold is heavy and is inconvenient for transactions. Therefore, paper currencies were made to represent the gold. Gold-backed currencies are based on trust, like fiat currencies. Thus, they eventually failed when more paper (either for justified or unjustified reasons) were printed than the gold in existence. Gold supply growth tends to be lower than the economic growth rate of the world (also, half of gold is used for jewelry or industrial applications.) Therefore, to prevent deflation, problem 2 may become inevitable (or require costly outwards expansion to try to get more gold supply- eg. Boer War, Opium War.)
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  386.  @questchain1115  Bad infrastructure and crime compared to the best developed parts of Europe and East Asia. Compared to most countries, it’s fine. Not great, but viable. Everything still gets to everywhere they need to without causing economic collapse or famine. Note that gov. Debt to DGP in Euro Area is around ~20% lower than in US. Note that EU cannot just print money to lower debt in a desperate situation , as shown during the Euro Debt crisis.
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  387.  @sunspot42  Thing is that building pipelines for refined product is also difficult. In some cases, building the refinery in BC (for example) is preferred so that BC would actually benefit from the oil and gas going through their province more than just being a transit state.
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  388. Guys, they recorded a 3%GDP increase.😂
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  389. You’re not food or energy self-sufficient, so yes.
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  390. V Was anything he said wrong?
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  391. What happened to Rand Paul? Why is he not in the Libertarian Party?
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  392. James Karne0606 Well, TBF, he didn’t know Birth Control and the other end of the demographic transition existed. Realistically, the modern population would be more around what the US is today. The US has fairly high birth rates for its development and was around the Soviet population size following WW2.
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  393. Divij Shah No one has Breeder Reactors yet, and likely no one will before we get good energy storage via fuel cells. People are too scared to dump money into nuclear- except maybe China. But they’re not great at R&D.
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  394.  @amazonwarrior7126  French Guiana has over 3x Guyana’s or Suriname’s GDP per capita and a much more protected environment.
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  395. Biden started his presidency by pissing off the Canadian Government by cancelling Keystone XL without even asking for their input. :/ And truth be told, most Americans don’t want multilateralism. Biden is limited in what he can do without losing office, especially given the Democrats have a very precarious majority- and they seem to be more interested in impeaching Trump than anything else right now.
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  396. Compared to their other major colony, Korea, Taiwan was pretty calm.
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  397. He did say that though. No taxes in the Freeport and such.
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  398.  @Royhkz  Theoretically, you could build a submarine pipeline from Portugal to France, and one to Mauritania. However, this would cost an arm and a leg, and doesn’t likely make economic sense. Even Greece has better chances of becoming a transit hub.
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  399.  @educateyourself3872  The US also gave up all support operations in Afghanistan, which basically crippled the Afghan army.
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  400. The idea is that this allows for easy transportation for ships on the Yanztghe (the city of Guiyang is upstream). Normally, you wouldn’t build dams so large this sort of thing is necessary, however on a major transportation corridor, however.
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  401. Michael Estepp Most atrocities were not approved by the Emperor, or the near- powerless parliament. They were effectively vengeance actions, committed by a Japanese Military which had effectively taken control of the Government since and because of the Great Depression. Japan was highly militaristic and not genocidal from the Meiji Restoration to 1930.
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  402. Note that China spent $300B itself trying to become self-sufficient in chips with Made in China 2030. It’s largest import after that push? Still chips. Mostly from Taiwan and East Asia. Also, the CHIPS Act is more intended to ensure a domestic supply of chips, not to replace China. China is not a massive producer of advanced semiconductors. Taiwan and South Korea have also put in place their own industrial policy programs.
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  403. China did the same thing despite being an autocracy…
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  404. Wayne Because most of them are scientists getting funded by the EU.
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  405.  @MrJdsenior The man also said he’d make Mexico pay for the wall… they never paid a peso.😂 Trump’s words always has a huge grain of salt attached.
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  406. Artemios Triantafyllou Note the Ottoman Dynasty and non-Anatolian lands did not survive WW1, which is considered the end of the Ottoman Empire.
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  407. Dominique Schlag den Hauffen Petain wasn’t that sympathetic to the Axis, especially compared to other ‘collaborationist’ leaders, like Laval, or Quisling. You’re right about his political views, but there’s a degree of separation between that and liking Nazi Germany. Remember that not everyone who fought on even the side of the western Allies did it because they liked democracy- often, they just hated the other guy more. There were Monarchists and Communists in the Italian and French Resistances. I’m inclined to Churchill’s assessment of his character, which was that he was a ‘defeatist’ and didn’t have the personality to preserve in the face of overwhelming defeat (I guess like Churchill was.)
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  408. Johny Ricco That doesn’t matter, Japan needs a large navy if it’s not protected by another power to prevent it from starving, not to prevent it from getting invaded. Taiwan and Jeju are very strategic locations to block Japan’s supply lines off, even without naval superiority. I mean, it’s building up a navy now despite still being protected by the USA, having buffer space, and having a stagnating and indebted economy with much of the population being pacifist.
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  409. Also, it would have eliminated Korean Christianity other than minorities outside Korea.
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  410. Kowalski From Nebraska ... No, I explained why it’s not capitalistic. State control of the economy is literally the antithesis of capitalism.
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  411.  @rislivestreams3802  I think fascism would still exist, since it’s pretty easy for a military junta to take on fascist elements. It would not be nazism though, which formed under very specific circumstances as a reaction to communism.
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  412.  @equalsnein  Rome was also very keen in adapting against strategies of their opponents. Key examples being Hannibal and Pyrrhus.
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  413.  @kabulykos  Tell that to Majoran and Aetius, who were betrayed on the cusp of victory. Or the thousands of Romans who beat Atillia at the Catalunian Plains.
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  414.  @phillipalexander7862  You’re right, the world WON’T end. If you live in California or Amsterdam, though, prepare to have your lives ruined. Because they’re basically going to become uninhabitable without mass investment to mitigate climate change (eg. new aqueducts). In worse case scenarios, the Amazon would also vanish due to it drying out. From a purely human perspective, it’s not that bad, the Amazon is pretty overrated- grasslands are more effective than rainforests at actually sequestering Carbon- but it’s horrible from an environmental perspective, for obvious reasons. Humans are also not adapted to live in the Carboniferous Greenhouse Earth, we are adapted to the Holocene Ice Age Earth.
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  415. 1:52 That came out of nowhere, wow.
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  416. Adam Thornton Puyi abdicated in 1912. As I said earlier, with WW1, there's simply no time. The fact that wars never broke out over the partition of Africa was due to the fact it was undeveloped wasteland at the time (mostly). And even then, they nearly did break out in several instances.
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  417.  @Amaling  Freaking Trudeau supported Keystone XL. The support for Keystone XL amongst the political class was nearly unanimous. So, yes, it's still a slap on the face for Canadians.
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  418.  @leon-jj9dv  Also, India only entered the Global Market in the 90s, while China did in the 70s. Yes, State Policy did speed things up in China, but it would have happened regardless without a heavy-handed approach- and possibly more sustainably, since China’s economy is unbalanced due to excessive spending on investment having created a massive real estate bubble.
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  419. What are the war games saying China would be able to conquer Taiwan easily?
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  420.  IJŠƇĦͦ̚5ɜPƔNjƇάȥɓϋξ îπɛş\x91͈ǷǯƠɱ\  Japanese, Okinawans are a related, but distinct culture to Japanese.
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  421. “Of course!” -Enver Pasha, I think.
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  422. I don’t like how you never elaborate on the butterfly effect of France integrating Algeria…
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  423. John Wilson Yes, we have a China Problem. Especially if you’re Taiwanese, Indian, or Japanese.
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  424. Considering Ocean Colonization will likely happen before Space colonization, Japan+Korea+Taiwan+Philippines (The Asian Littoral) could also split off into partially its own thing like America.
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  425. Space colonization only works well for equatorial nations due to launch vehicles relying on using the Earth’s equatorial spin to reach space more cheaply. Alaska and Australia will never be the main hubs for space colonization. Even things like Orbital Rings tend to work better for equatorial nations than polar ones. However, the melting of the Arctic could allow the rivers of the Arctic to be useful for commerce, and people could slowly thaw the permafrost using solar mirrors into new habitable lands.
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  426.  @AureliusLaurentius1099  Unironically yes. New-Steampunk baby!
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  427.  @boosterh1113  The Amazon’s soil is also not very fertile, so you also need tons of fertilizer or a long process of soil-building. Not sure how much worse it is in the end, in both cases, you’re effectively completely rebuilding the soil. There are parts of the shield that are farmable- mainly the Clay Belt and similar smaller pockets of fertile soil between the ancient rock. Obviously, not the easiest to get to.
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  428.  @nikomann88  The migrants coming from the border are mostly Central American. And no amount of economic development is going to mitigate the Drug Cartels.
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  429.  @nikomann88  The Americans don’t have a vested interest in maintaining and strengthening Western Europe either- actually even less, because it geographically doesn’t make sense. Latin America is a good second option if you’re being mercantilistic- and China and India are larger long-term threats than Brazil, Mexico or Argentina can ever really be. Even Brazil has 2/3rds the population of the US, and it’s harder for them to make use of much scale due to geography.
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  430.  @J_X999  Speculation based on 1.0 TFR. China’s not even pretending to be honest with its own numbers, so being ‘factual’ is a bit difficult.
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  431. I’m not so sure that Africa is going to have a collapse in food production. The map you show ignores that the Sahara (and Arabia) is going to get wetter as higher temperatures return the continent back to conditions more similar to those in the African Humid period. South Africa and North Africa are the only parts expected to get drier to any major degree, so you’d likely actually see mass human migrations resulting in more ethnic conflict as new land is opened up and old land becomes desert. Ethiopia benefits a ton from this. Somalia is going to get wetter and is easy pickings for an industrialized Ethiopian state.
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  432. Usecriticalthinking ? I’m sure the economy was improved by not allowing people of your own nation to trade and connect with each other...
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  433. Hey, Whatifalthist? Can you reply to my email? I put a lot of effort into it, and I think it is very useful and relevant information.
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  434.  @nooraldeen6327  The Saudi economy is wholly reliant on oil and has no possibility of reform before it can reform its education system. The Turks taking Mecca would be fairly easy if the Saudis fell.
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  435. When was the last time Whatifalthist actually made an AltHist video?
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  436. What if the Ottomans survived as an empire into the 21st century?
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  437. Life extension tech is getting a ton of funding - and would make this less relevant if it's viable within the next few decades. The implications of that option is something that should also be discussed.
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  438.  @jacobusmarch9524  lol
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  439. You know, you could have just made a Kaiserreich lore video...
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  440.  @g1u2y345  But ‘eventually’ was several centuries of being pushed together by forced by the Macedonians and Romans. It took time, a lot of it.
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  441. 16:30 I don’t understand why the Erie Canal isn’t taken seriously as a trade choke point and a unifying river system when you take the St Lawrence as one, which is pretty much entirely rapids from the Great Lakes to Montreal. The same lock system needed for the St. Lawrence would be used for the Erie Canal. New York would still be a massive hub for trade and commerce.
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  442. Lugia The Czech defensives were pretty good- but they weren’t on the Austrian border. Czechoslovakia has no strategic depth, one breakthrough would mean the end of the war.
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  443. Rogue Oman is way too small to be a superpower in terms of population. It’s like wanting Belgium to be a superpower.
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  444.  @AureliusLaurentius1099  US: Yes.
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  445.  @fedcoin1602  Yes, but that doesn’t mean the land is *bad*. All nations expanded out from their (generally geographically good) core to less viable areas. The US took over California and the Pacific Northwest. The Great Basin in particular is worse than Central Mexico, and definitely the lower-population Western Canada. Eastern Canada gives full control over the Great Lakes-St. Lawerence Seaway, connecting the Mississippi to the Northern Atlantic, and giving the USA free reign to do what it wants with the continent’s largest source of fresh water. The Northwest passage also is Canadian.
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  446.  @fedcoin1602  Canada has good land for Agriculture in the St. Lawrence Basin. The Prairies are resource rich and are dominated by Chernozem soil, making it a breadbasket. Central Mexico is more iffy, but is similar to Anatolia. Note that most of Mexico sucks, but the core is pretty decent.
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  447. Does it matter when you control the water supply into the city? Or the food supply? And remember: most industry is in the suburbs. NOT the urban cores. The suburbs are mostly swing districts or weakly Democrat. Also, the Spanish Civil War went the same way. The Fascists only controlled the more rural areas with little industry but produced most of the food. Turns out factories don’t operate without food. Food became the biggest propaganda tool for the Fascist side
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  448. George Nathanael They can’t continue to China if their logistics are being wrecked in their rear by guerilla forces.
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  449.  @stevencooper4422  Most ‘separatist’ movements seem to be spurred by politics rather than cultural differences. It’s not Scotland.
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  450. Will the US enter a civil war due to its ideological split?
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  451. Whatifalthist The timeline raises the question of what if the Carolingian Empire had different succession laws, though. At least France and Germany could remain together, since they’re both on the Northern European Plain.
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  452.  @CheekClapper879  Probably, but even if the US didn’t get involved, those cuts are needed anyways. I mean, it’s not like the US did any meaningful cuts when the world was at peace. So that argument makes no sense for me. There’s always something that’s more important for governments until something major happens that forces meaningful welfare cuts because there’s no other choice (see Canada in the 1990s). People in the US don’t want the US to get involved in foreign wars, but when you get more specific, the polling gets more dicey. Kind of like how they say we need to cut deficits, but don’t want to cut anything that would actually make a dent in the deficit (instead, focusing on a few billion in foreign aid to developing nations, or unspecified ‘waste’.)
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  453. Because it incentivizes people to get poorer credit scores and take on larger amounts of debt? Sure, equity and all, but this isn’t a smart plan.
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  454. A bit late to switch now, it’s almost 2024…
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  455.  @dannyknightblade4592 He said he doesn’t want it.
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  456.  @rh906  He has to prepare for the turning himself in in the Georgia indictment, I don’t think he has the time as-is.
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  457.  @michaelanderson8339  Except the states who seceded literally wrongs down why they were seceding. The Declaration of Secession from South Carolina lays it out pretty clearly.
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  458.  @lescobrandon8045 He also basically had to to ensure slavery was abolished. Completely preserving state’s rights means also preserving their right to slavery. This is why the civil war happened in the first place. It’s not like the Confederates were libertarians either, eg. Fugitive Slave Act. They wanted to keep their slaves first and foremost, and the states rights was about keeping slavery around.
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  459.  @sowianskiwojownik5973  That’s the worry that people like WhatifAltHist (moderate right winger) has, that if the Right wins in any civil war, the most radical faction would take over (as common in revolutions) and make the US a moralistic state. The moralistic right always existed, it was just weakened heavily as the boomers took over society.
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  460. Yes, Odessa.
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  461.  @retromario96 Does that mean it wasn’t a country? Being a puppet still means you’re a country, just not an independent one.
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  462. Armed protests are pretty dangerous.
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  463. That implies that significantly more aid is given.
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  464. Turkey has been de facto been shunned in NATO.
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  465. Did you know? Seattle looks like a mini Bay Area.
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  466.  @lc9245  The problem is that Afghanistan is a bit of a special case that isn’t really replicated by most other nations facing invasion. Japan had its own puppet government(s) over China that actually ended up being in comparable size to the Kwantung Army (though they were iffy in quality- the Japanese didn’t trust them and used them mostly for anti-partisan activity) and were (nominally) headed by Chinese/Manchus. Many warlords switched sides from the ROC to Japan out of self-interest, and honestly, if Japan managed to take out Chongqing and consolidate their gains on the Yanztghe, there really isn’t much left of China outside of rural jungle, deserts, and mountains that would not be able to supply itself without outside support. Which was kind of difficult without allied control of Burma. You could have made the same argument that no one would have turned to the brutal Communist dictatorship of Mao and that the anti-communist ROC guerrillas in the mountains would eventually have overthrown the PRC. But they didn’t.
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  467. Stephen Jenkins ROC only holds the disputes because otherwise they’d have to declare themselves as Taiwan by giving up the mainland.
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  468. Tsukiitsune Yeah, this has nothing to do with racism. The people on the plane clearly arn't racist defending him. And United Airlines forced 3 other people off the plane previously who were not Asian. He was chosen randomly.
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  469. There are more Democrats than Republicans…because states like California and Maryland, and New York have automatic voter registration and closed primaries, while Republican states generally don’t. Voter registration numbers barely matter when there’s a fragmented system like in the USA. —- Also, the GOP has won 2 Presidential elections despite losing the popular vote. This has gotten worse over time due to state and rural/urban polarization. Democrats abandoning the working class and rural puts them at a geographic disadvantage. Trump nearly won the electoral college by a tie (would have won with AZ, GA, and WI) despite losing the popular vote by 4.5 points.
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  470. What would be a viable solution then? Raising interest rates while dumping money into QE? Raising taxes on consumption and austerity on social welfare to lower demand so supply could catch up?
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  471.  @markiic Maybe the solution is actually on the other end. Stop paying out pensions so that people are forced to have kids as an insurance policy when they get old.
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  472. Makes me wonder if we should stop having public pensions so that people will have kids. Children used to be an ‘insurance’ in case the parent got sick or retired. Not anymore.
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  473. Martyrdom.
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  474.  @tim211292  Trump never locked Hillary up, though. Which is important.
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  475.  @SenorJuan2023  ‘Pay for Play’ is not trivial. The Indictment only ever accuses Trump of using Classified documents as a trophy, not selling them.
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  476.  @leeknott8687 The difference is that Peron and Long based their ideology off socialist/Marxist bases (Long not so much, but still.) That makes the socialist/economic corruption aspects stronger.
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  477.  @thomascbartlett5106  It's never going to happen. Remember that they have to dig through a thousand km of plateau. Also, the empty cities are mostly actually satellite cities for places like Shenzhen, Chongching, Beijing, etc. It's also not going to be built any time within the next 5 years, by which it's too late to stop China from suffering from disputes with the other powers.
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  478. Russia’s demography is only ‘terminal’ compared to a more sustainable birth rate. However, basically all of Eastern Europe has worse demographic situations (with the exception of Poland and Hungary, you also have to add emigration to the mix). Russia has lost many people, but it’s nothing compared to the EU-aligned nations, which have lost people to Western Europe as workers, or Ukraine, which has lost them as refugees.
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  479. Well yeah, but Inflation can very easily become toxic, and is difficult to stop once it gets out of hand… The 70s-80s stagflation period was not fun. There is a reason Reagan won in 1980. Also, the Federal government pays interest to the Federal Reserve (still don’t get why, but it does), so interest can become a serious burden later on.
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  480.  @warhorse03826  No, because she massively underperformed in the ‘Blue Wall’ she never bothered to campaign in. It was bad strategy that lost her the election.
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  481. Also, ethanol requires more oil to produce than is gotten out.
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  482.  @joecojones  You know that California is way wetter than Arizona and Nevada? They could easily fill their own water needs if they actually had enough storage capacity to catch the rainfall that comes during the wet season.
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  483. Mead has been in drought conditions for decades. Vegas is actually pretty conservative with water- with the water being recycled and/or re-entering the reservoir due to the fact the Vegas Basin drains into Mead.
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  484.  @dragonhero14 They won’t come on fast enough…
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  485.  @RishTheMan The polls were actually mostly right in 2016 except in the Blue Wall states, where they missed the WWC turnout for Trump. Also, Trump is polling outside the margin of Error in NV, GA, and AZ.
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  486.  @johnpombrio  Yeah, getting a hold of him costs like $1000+.
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  487.  @cwx8  I live in BC as well. ‘America’ describes the US, or the continents called the Americas. Indigenous or Aboriginals are used more here, but I don’t use them, partially because I feel like it’s more accurate (Indigenous or Aboriginals can be confused with other groups, like Indigenous Australians.) I don’t see how this term matters that much, they describe the same thing. Maybe political correctness, but eh.
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  488. Maquina De Soldar soldadura arco sumergido Because China has a permanent seat on the UN council. Taiwan has been acting independently of the mainland for the several decades at this point. Things happen between China and Taiwan that make no sense if it was part of China- like the USA sending the navy in to prevent the military from moving from one part of China to another? Or there somehow being free elections in Taiwan despite democracy being banned in China? How does that work if Taiwan is in control of China? China is powerful enough to make everyone act as if Taiwan isn’t a country, but the reality is that China has about as much control over Taiwan as it has over South Korea.
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  489. gladifly Give me a source for that claim about Europeans never coming from elsewhere. Also, that ignores the fact that humans regularly migrated though history (ex. The Silk Road trade). Even if this rate is a mere 0.1%, this means the only true pure breeds are inbreds.
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  490. MuffinScoffer No religion should be banned, it sets a dangerous precedent for state-sponsored religion.
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  491. I like fat women. But trying to force what is basically a niche fetish on the rest of the world is just saddening. Not to mention these fuckers are likely only doing so because they can't lose weight. Look, if you want to be fat, go ahead. Just don't go complaining that people don't like the fact that you're fat, and that more males should be attracted to you (and that ads with thin women should be banned). To these people, suck it up- what would it be like if inflation fetishists or scat fetishists tried to push their fetishes on the rest of the world? Oh, wait, these people are SJWs. They can't suck anything up.
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  492. +2012escapee1 Why would the DNC not be forced to use Bernie? He's the only big Democratic rival to Hillary...
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  493. Rum Mug the Orc It's a fact that they either integrated into Normandy and Kievian Rus, or colonized Iceland and Greenland.
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  494. Considering that it seems economic recession will come back any time now, that's even more likely...
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  495. What about the flow of Migrants from Spain and Greece? Also, NGO boats can easily go from Algeria to Corsica/France.
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  496. Hikoaptic Really? Not all people who watch anime are virgins. It's not good to stereotype people like that.
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  497. Giorgos Barakoykakis Germany's freedom of speech is much worse than USA.
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  498.  @weirdshibainu  Except during an Operation Downfall, the Germans WOULD have the fuel, and the food. The Soviets themselves were at the end of their supply lines, and while infrastructure in the West was relatively untouched thanks to the insubordination of Speer, the stuff in the East was pretty much wreaked.
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  499.  @tampabaycanuck64  Cutting off the Soviet Oil supplies is not folly. The Soviets had put most of their reinforcements on the Moscow direction, attacking Moscow again isn’t going to provide much benefit.
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  500. Considering they couldn’t fuel them anyways, one might wonder why they even bothered with tanks at this point.
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  501.  Soul Traveller  The Soviet logistics would have also broken down by the time the Soviets reached the Polish Border without American support in the form of lend-lease, as both sides had basically ruined the land between Moscow and the Polish Border into a waste.
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  502. TBH, many ‘neutral’ countries helped both sides. Hence why Britain wanted to invade Norway to prevent Swedish Ore and railways from being used by the Germans. Once they lost, Sweden had no option but to comply with Nazi orders.
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  503. Abbas Al Mansuri The sanctions HAVE affected Iran. It’s actually experiencing Stagflation.
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  504.  @xDomglmao  They’re spending money, but not adding value via their labour. So prices for everything increase, especially housing.
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  505.  @gorge2786  Yes, because Chinese Companies destroyed it. Steel is heavy- it’s generally difficult to make it very far from where it’s consumed and still be profitable... unless, of course, you’re being subsidized by the government.
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  506. Moon was one of the few S. Korean ‘progressives’ out there, and this simply didn’t work at all. It’s Reagan after Carter.
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  507. The issue is that the Solomons are fare enough away from China that a military base here is difficult to supply ships to.
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  508. Vancouver: “Ah shit, here we go again...”
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  509. This wouldn’t be so much a problem if the DOD cut their DEI initiatives 😂!
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  510. No, it’s a correct term, China has claimed Australia since Ancient times. :P
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  511.  @ericsaxon5736  lol, sorry.
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  512.  @ericsaxon5736  The US is considered to be an Anglosphere nation. So… kind of. Point is, Mauritius isn’t really like the rest of Africa.
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  513.  @peacelover2008 Yes, the Chinese can produce a ton of ships that can’t actually fight the US fleets because they’re out of range.
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  514. Hargobind Singh Shan Visualpolitik actually showed a graph in this video that showed that Vancouver and Sydney are actually low adjusted to income. Which I guess is the reason for the focus on South Korea.
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  515.  @moshoodbakare1210  Uh, no. Colonial rights were based on right of occupation, not exploration. Anyways, Ceuta and Melilla were handed over as a result of wars causing the territory to be ceded as well, like Gibraltar. My point is that Morocco is claiming Ceuta and Melilla based off… well mostly proximity (like Argentina with the Falklands). Not even the UN (very anxious for decolonization of even territories with no desire for independence, like the Falklands) considers those areas ‘non-self governing’.
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  516. I guess Gibraltar isn’t British then because it’s not on the British Isles? Are the Falklands supposed to be part of Argentina due to distance?
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  517.  @viper8177  I think Epic will lose because Apple does not have a monopolistic share of the smartphone app industry, but only has one on Apple devices. Arguing Monopoly or Monopsony is kind of hard. Also, Epic is not a very good leader for this, since it’s largely owned by the Chinese company Tencent. I don’t see a reason Congress would be kind on Epic here. Hell, Trump could announce a ban on Tencent software tomorrow and Epic would be in deep shit.
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  518. Botswana had its institutions survive under British Rule, while Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was a settler colony whose elite was mostly white. When they were all kicked out, shit started to hit the fan quick.
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  519.  @mysteriousDSF  Yeah, 'some people like it'. My point is that Burundi's economy sucks. That's an undeniable fact. Also, people die from lack of running water or internet. :P
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  520.  @mysteriousDSF  True, but you also don’t have internet or running water.
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  521.  @andrewmckenzie292  The Russians could barely access the Far East, and their navy was run by imbeciles.
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  522.  @erikrungemadsen2081  Why? They can’t just reposition towards Asia?
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  523. Untrue. Real Median Household income has increased from their stagnation period from the mid-2000s since 2015. The problem was the Great Recession and the slow recovery made a big dent in household income.
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  524. Why? The UK isn’t a major power anymore.
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  525. The British were still an empire back then. Now the UK is an isolate economy, at least until the free trade deals with India and the US are finished.
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  526. China has downsized Belt and Road due to financial difficulties.
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  527. ⁠ @ArawnOfAnnwn China also heavily benefitted from Western technology and trade, which would make any Green transition easier. There were no other real options other than coal in the 1930s. So expanding out the timeline to include all historical emissions is dumb.
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  528. Because the climate doesn’t care about per-capita emissions, but absolute emissions. Yes, Developed Nations should reduce their carbon emissions. But carbon emissions from them has been falling since the mid-late 2000s.
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  529.  @gwaittaali8597 The Byzantines were still around during the Islamic Golden Age…
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  530. The modern left is also very anti-Natalist, which doesn’t help. The birth rates of young Liberals is imploding faster than any other demographic-political group in the US.
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  531. Companies hated work from home and basically forced everyone back in after the pandemic because of the logistical and practical issues.
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  532. 50% of US trade is within North America. You’ll be fine.
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  533. Canada has never had an economic crisis because of sky high immigration 😂.
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  534.  @dhirajmeenavilli5508  Vancouver is at such low vacancy (and at high out-migration due to prices pushing people to smaller BC cities) already that a cool-off in demand usually results in less change than one would expect. Any decrease in prices immediately opens up more demand, halting any further decreases in prices. Eg. The empty housing bill did actually work, but only to the point where it helped stabilize housing prices overall for the last couple years (considering housing was in a crippling bull run previously, that’s pretty good.)
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  535. Could China start penalizing people’s social credit scores if they stop paying mortgages?
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  536.  @nightmark2120  Taiwan is one of the only real ‘loyal’ allies Japan has in the region, and most Japanese trade goes through the Taiwan region. Japan not defending Taiwan would leave it isolated in a sea of unreliable allies and enemies.
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  537. seneca983 The “cooking the books” was mostly actually a loophole, where the EU didn’t count debt issued/transferred into foreign currency. Debt is generally issued in the national currency, but the EU is partially to blame for allowing such a loophole through.
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  538.  @darthvadeth6290  Yeah, have fun with inflation, then.
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  539. Taresh Patel The USA got stock from its bailouts as well. Note that they still own huge parts of GM and Ford.
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  540. Error Pie Red herring
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  541.  @dosgos  More importantly, the amount of currency in the world has increased so much since the end of Breton-Woods that any Gold-backed currency would have an absurd ratio of Gold to Currency. Eg. All non-jewelry Gold in the world above-ground is valued at 6.7 Trillion. M0 in USD is 5.5 Trillion. M2 is around 22 Trillion. Gold right now is ~$2000/ounce.
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  542.  @SkyllusBr  Except there are way better places to run to if you want to ‘colonize’. It’s not like you can just set up a colony on the Moon and have it go well. The best studies on trying to create a self-sufficient colony (no constant Earthly support) on say, Mars, show a colony utterly dependent on spare parts from Earth. If you fail, you can’t just escape into the wilderness like Settlers used to do and live among the natives. You’re dead. Comparing the Americas to space is like comparing Greenland to Korea. Night and Day.
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  543.  @JellyAntz  I do. Issac Arthur isn’t wrong, but if you actually do the calculations, most of the things he says are way beyond current Earth’s capability. We aren’t even close to Kardechev 1 anyways.
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  544.  @thecatinthefedora1201  Exactly, that’s my point. We don’t have the tech to make self-replicating machines, which would be necessary to make a colony like this viable.
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  545.  @glennnile7918  Sure, I agree. We just disagree on the conclusion. I think trying to colonize Mars is dumb to start, so he’s just wasting money and effort. Should have just stuck to the mouse landing idea. Is he trying to do good? Sure. But most people are. Most companies at least try to appear as if they are. Read most corporate Social Responsibility Statement, and you get the point. Is he more right than wrong? Sure. But half (or maybe a third) of what Elon Musk tries is just dumb or infeasible, and he only stops after failing miserably after everyone with half a brain tells him it’s a stupid idea- for practical and physical reasons (hyperloop was the worst example of this- and now it’s been replicated with the Boring shitshow- who knows if their new boring machine will actually deliver- but the simple idea of 3D burrowed car tunnels instead of trains or more flexible larger tunnels just falls flat, especially if something goes wrong.) Sure, you could say that about Tesla or SpaceX, but that was more a financial problem- since so few Auto or Space startups at the time got anywhere. This is shit someone with an internet connection, a calculator, and a few pieces of paper could figure out was stupid. I guess you could say I’m more frustrated with him if anything.
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  546.  @buddermonger2000  True, but how much? Even if you take Elon’s estimates for Starship costs seriously (you shouldn’t, they’re ~130x lower than Falcon 9), you’re looking at over a trillion dollars to send a million people to Mars. Assuming prices are more akin to what they are now, you’re looking at $90 Trillion. That is minus logistics to keep it alive once the people are there. American Colonization worked because it was cheap for someone to go to the Americas (relatively speaking). The King of Spain didn’t have to spend the entire budget of the country for generations to make it work out. Also, there were natives in the Americas, which actually helped colonization efforts (unless your name was U.S.A.)
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  547. What if the Ottoman Empire survived?
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  548. What if the Korean State of Baeku survived in Manchuria?
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  549. This really doesn’t fit Petain’s personality.
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  550. Darklysm The Franks weren’t around when Gaul was annexed.
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  551.  @bobwinters5572  Well, the British thought they were facing overwhelming defeat, since they thought the Luftwaffe was approximately twice the size it actually was. In which case, yeah, the Germans probably would have won the Battle of Britain and might have been able to destroy large parts of the Royal Navy if they attempted to get into the Channel.
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  552. What if Polk achieved his territorial aims?
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  553.  @k.t.5405  Brazil benefited from being a slave economy.
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  554.  @mappingshaman5280  This assumes they have control of Korea, Taiwan, and SE Asia. India is a pretty big nut to crack, and the front lines are actually pretty small, especially considering the likely sizes of the nations involved.
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  555. What if Contraceptives never existed?
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  556. infant jones I never said that.
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  557. Kowalski From Nebraska And again, the Cuban economy produces $100Billion in products per year. Also, apparently, like a lot of socialists, you can’t do math, because 62 years since the start of the embargo, times 2 is $124 Billion , not $1 Trillion. So not only is your assertion so insanely wrong it’s off by nearly a multiple of 10, but $124 Billion is also only about 1.25 years of 2018 GDP. An issue? Yes. Iran loses that much money to oil sanctions alone in less than 3 years. Cuba has no one to blame but itself for economic failure. Yeah, doctors/capita is what we should be concerned about the most. It’s not like machines exist. It’s not like systems could be more efficient and thus need less professional doctors.
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  558. Kowalski From Nebraska Cuba life expectancy: 78.7 years. USA Life expectancy: 78.3 years. I mean, if American stopped eating so much Hamburgers and Budweiser, they could probably get back that 0.4 years of life expectancy. ;) And the USA isn’t even a shining beacon of life expectancy or healthcare in the capitalist world. Not even close. What Cuba has done for being an impoverished 3rd world country is pretty good. But Cuba’s economy or political structure isn’t a model to follow. And I already pointed out the USA does large amounts of trade with Cuba. It’s not Mexico or Canada- the two still don’t like each other. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba “In 2009, the United States Chamber of Commerce estimated that the embargo was costing the United States economy $1.2 billion per year as a result of the legal structures that prevented American exporters from entering Cuban markets.[56] The Cuba Policy Foundation (CPF) has provided more extreme data; its estimates put the cost of the embargo at $4.84 billion per year while costing Cuba $685 million per year.” That’s 0.7% of Cuba’s GDP. Wow, that’s one hell of a blockade. It’s not the USA. That’s an excuse the Castros trot out when they need someone to blame. Honestly, the blockade doesn’t even make sense anymore, but the Americans have been adamant of getting rid of the Castros first. So...
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  559. Kowalski From Nebraska Cuba has a life expectancy nearly exactly of that of the USA. Wow, real impressive. It’s no Finland. Also, it’s no secret that Cuba has been stuck in time. The American embargo has not been enforced since the 70s. The USA is actually a major trading partner with Cuba- 6.6% of its imports come from the USA. It’s not an Iran. They have, but 1. The environment is not just Carbon emissions- Even China is wealthy enough to actually start focusing on the environment more. CHINA. 2. They’ve ‘exported’ industry due to free trade. If the USA stopped trade with most of the developing world in a decade, most of the factories that would go back to the US would be cleaner. Capitalism still existed when countries used Mechantilistic trade structures. And I’ve pointed out it’s a false equivalency. No sane person would argue that Gengis Khan was less evil than the British Empire. The British Empire killed more people- only because the British empire lasted longer than a generation. The fact you can’t understand that context matters more than just plain numbers is baffling.
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  560.  @christhecaribou  Not an expert on MMT, but, Keynesianism, from what I understand, is just countercyclical Keynesianism, but more extreme, and focused on taxation as cutting inflation (the usual method of cutting inflation is reducing money velocity or debt). IMO, taxation shouldn’t reduce inflation, the government spends the tax money anyways, effectively pumping the money somewhere else instead of being a ‘money sink.’ I could see MMT work better in a video game economy than a real economy. There are easier ways to create money sinks in a video game than IRL.
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  561. I think an interesting video would be “Is Japan a Future Superpower?” The Stratford School (Zehian, etc.) is one of those few that still holds onto the idea due to the fact they believe the area will end up becoming a major power vacuum. In a lot of ways, Japan is kind of like France circa 1938.
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  562. Note that Russia’s birth rate is 1.6 and rising, so birth rates are better than a lot of Europe.
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  563.  @MrAlepedroza  The leaders from Rome/Byzantium also tended to be more competent as a result, which is why it survived despite all the chaos and fighting on multiple fronts against powerful enemies. Basically the opposite of China. The top level of the bureaucracy is meritocratic, while the bottom level often isn’t.
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  564. Please do what if the Korean Kingdom of Balhae still existed.
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  565. Musica Australiana REAL wages have not increased since the 70s. Ie. adjusted to inflation. Wages have been keeping pace with inflation. People just want more.
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  566. Jackson Wu There is no study indicating all jobs will vanish during this cycle (4th Industrial Revolution). Industrial revolutions tend to occur once for every century, but it’s come early on this one. Honestly, computers are starting to hit a brick wall in terms of performance and are reverting to a more stable, non-exponential growth curve. Every time, it’s not just new jobs created, but also that consumption increases because of the net increase in buying power. The people in the farms were not replaced. They just got completely different jobs because people’s demands changed.
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  567. 16:30 East Asia also had water, which the Middle East does not. China is already experiencing serious water stress- and without water, no industrialization, or really development, is really possible. Same thing with India. Also, “Industrial” and “Developed” are not the same thing. Turkey is Industrialized, but not developed. The Middle Income Trap is a thing, and countries have been trapped at that state for decades (Chile). We may be moving to a world with a lot of middle-income ‘industrial’ nations, but few high-income nations that really punch above their weight.
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  568.  @Amaling  Doesn't change my point. Also, all it does really is make oil more expensive, slightly lowering demand but making it much harder for Alberta to export crude, increasing overall NA imports. If Biden cared about his allies as he pretends he does, it wouldn't have been a Day 1 decision. He would have called up Trudeau for a meeting first to work out some kind of compromise.
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  569.  @oreodepup  Germany did not have a large degree of influence over Poland or Greece until fairly recently (after the reunification of Germany).
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  570.  @watershed8685  Well, TBF, I did consider it was a possibility. Just not likely at that time. There is indication that Biden called the Chinese to try to get them to stop Russia. Which would explain why now. A self-fulfilling prophesy. Also, Putin was at a low approval rating before the invasion. Despite the protests, his approval ratings have soared (he’s still winning).
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  571.  @КГБ-л3п  Yeah, because they wanted the US around. Ironic, but understandable.
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  572.  @jamesdavis9036  The US is the 2nd largest industrial producer in the world. Additionally, advanced equipment is very difficult to convert from civilian industry (hence the need for the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ by the Eisenhower administration).
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  573. Thing is, I don’t think the Biden admin would actually SURVIVE not protecting Taiwan. Considering 2022 is expected to be a Republican victory, and the idea of containing China is bipartisan, one could imagine that embargoing China instead of going to war would result in a successful impeachment. Also, going to war is probably a good distraction from internal issues.
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  574. BlaBla The Seuz isn’t that wide, and the water level on both sides of the canal is exactly the same. Because that’s how oceans work... The straits of Gibraltar stopped no one from conquering Iberia or North Africa from each other.
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  575. Sweet Candy But why? Not pissing off the Balkans is more important.
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  576. Didn’t India ally with the USA in OTL? Also, what happened with Bangladesh? Why’d it go Communist?
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  577. bladefox2298 Japan was already getting its ass kicked by guerilla fighters.
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  578. ArchEnema 67 I think the goal is to see what happens if you remove something from history to see how important the thing is, unrealistic or not. AltHistHub does the same thing too sometimes.
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  579.  @Angel-je3bh  Sanctions didn’t stop Russia.
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  580.  @jstantongood5474  In the 1930s, Nazi Germany was growing and militarizing rapidly, eventually resulting in WW2.
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  581.  @jarjarbinks6018  Cities are moving away from the car-centric suburbia though. Partially because it’s increasingly impractical (cars take up too much land) and partially because people are increasingly accepting of human- centric development models.
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  582. @Ashawott Ketchum Uhh, no. There’s no reason to believe that. Birth rates have not fallen due to the advent of technology.
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  583.  @adamnesico  I mean what people in America would call “Asian”- specifically the Sino-East Asian cultural sphere. Japan is separate from it the same way Britain is separate from European Culture. People like to pretend it is- but it really isn’t.
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  584. @P4to D0l4n The British were busy elsewhere and didn’t really have much use for Patagonia, which is similar to much of Australia and South Africa in climate.
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  585. 4:00 Eh, not sure. McArthur was correct in viewing China and the USSR as only weak allies. North Korea wasn’t that important to the USSR, and they offered a lot less direct support than one would imagine to the North Koreans. Stalin was paranoid, but also kind of a dick. He wasn’t Trotsky. The USSR had supported the Kuomintang for longer than they’d supported Mao, and saddled the CCP with huge debts for their ‘assistance’. Which was one of the reasons for the Great Leap Forwards. When Mao didn’t blame the disaster on natural disaster, he blamed it on the debts the USSR forced on them. Also, the USSR and CCP almost went to nuclear war THEMSELVES a few decades later. Also, Mcarthur was only planning on nuking the border of North Korea as a tactical nuclear weapon. Also, Stalin was planning on invading Yugoslavia first, before the West, from what I’m aware. Made a lot of sense, it shortens the line in Europe enormously. Which would have ended about as well as Afghanistan did for the Soviets, because Tito was the one dude who could have pulled something like that off.
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  586. Hadar1991 What was the long comment?
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  587. Aran Butcher France can’t colonize the Americas with the US around, and even just Mexico would be a tall order considering the French would likely have still not been able to take everything in time before the Union won the Civil War. The only timeline where anyone slices off parts of the Americas is one where the Confederacy wins. Side note, the French could become a majority in Africa. The population of French North Africa, plus all of Morocco and Libya was ~15mil, and the population of West Africa was on the same scale (seems to be along the lines of 20 million). France has limited areas that are good for industrialization (mostly the land near Paris and the Rhine), so people would definitely want to move to avoid a Malthusian crisis.
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  588. Aran Butcher The population of Great Britain increased by about 2.85x from 1800-1900, while the population of 1914 Germany grew by about 2.33x from 1800 to 1900. Say, if you add a multiplier of 2.5x from France’s 1800 population, you have a population of 75 Million in Mainland France by 1900, ~46 Million more than in OTL by that time for France. France would need a ton of food, so they’d need to expand and farm wherever they could. More importantly, tropical diseases in Africa had already partially been conquered by the time of African colonization. That’s why they were even able to colonize Africa. Kind of hard to colonize when you can’t even march an army into your target. Give everyone going to West Africa free land and limited free healthcare/vaccines for the tropical diseases, and people would most likely be lining up to move there. North Africa was already much more densely populated anyways, so available land is more limited.
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  589.  @tntsummers926  H1B is one of the institutions Trump is against. Chain migration is useful so that people can actually raise families and integrate into American society, not to remain foreign workers longing to return home one day. He doesn't like immigration, period. He uses 'hard working' as an excuse. Otherwise he'd be using Harper-esque wealth-weighted policies.
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  590. @Terror tv Then why didn’t China support Trump in 2020?
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  591. 18:50 How? Dumping Government bonds? Considering the Fed could literally just buy every single one, that’s a stupid proposition. Note that the Federal Reserve is sort-of government-controlled anyways- the profits from the Fed go back to the Treasury. So the US gov pays interest on debt whose profits go back to the US gov. Ie. You’re not really paying interest so much as just shuffling money around. This is why Japan has such a high debt-to GDP ratio with no major issues stemming from it, and Greece collapsed with less Debt. Trade War? Already did that. Embargo? The only real bargaining chips are manufactured goods like batteries and rare earths, and solar panels that were outcompeted by the Chinese to begin with, so any effect would be temporary.
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  592. Hector Medrano It would actually put them closer to balance. As in there’d move more potential slave states, delaying the civil war even further, potentially indefinitely depending on the specifics.
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  593. Mark12 Strang Yes, but logistics trumps even the best armies.
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  594. Ivan the Great 2.0 Sure. I don’t think he even takes it that seriously. And the guy made an Atlantropa alt history. It’s less realistic than Zealandia or Green Antarctica or Sahara by a long shot. Africa is rich if you put in the resources and time to develop it. Acceleration does not change depending on the weight of the projectile. You mitigate it by making the gun longer and adding more explosive chambers along the gun. The modern way of doing it is an electric railgun.
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  595.  @ఉత్పాదక24  Those are either ancient (predating Christ) or never united India (not even close). So that kind of proves my point of India not being a historical superpower and only being unified by foreigners.
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  596.  @ఉత్పాదక24  More like the Afghans conquered North India, which is why they held those lands… :P Your point is contradicted by the large number of foreign dynasty Indian States, especially in North India (Eg. The Delhi Sultuate and Mughals). Also, you said ‘unified’ India, which is contradicted by the fact South and East India were rarely under the control of the dominant Indian power at the time.
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  597.  @ఉత్పాదక24  Lol @ the Indian nationalist. India’s ‘unified’ power never conquered the south until the Brits came along.
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  598.  @tompeled6193  Note that very few historical sources really survive from back then, so we can only make inferences based on the few bits of data we have.
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  599.  @toledochristianmatthew9919  He has, like in Nobel prizes, cultural power, and companies.
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  600. There is a ton of resources in Siberia and Central Asia, wouldn’t Germany want to install a friendly regime east of the Urals?
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  601. Too soon. But in any case, if AIG, GE Financial, and Bear Sterns failed, the financial system would be in deep shit. The Collapse of Lehman Bros triggered a major recession, and forced Congress to pass TARP in desperation. Iceland is a pretty good analogue to what might happen; the banking sector imploded, causing its investors to lose all their money. The difference is that the USA is a much bigger beast- its financial system is the largest in the world, and the British financial system, the next largest, wasn't in a good position either. Thus, the domino effect of people selling and pulling their investments would continue to spiral into a depression-level scenario. The Bailouts stopped that process, at the cost of hundreds of billions of taxpayer $. The US government would spend hundreds of billions more attempting to stimulate the economy via stimulus in a worse Great Recession, though, so I don't think it saves much money. Not much knowledge outside the USA though, but the EU and China also suffered horribly in the Great Recession, the former caused the EU to begin fracturing, and the latter caused the most civil unrest in China since Tiahmen Square due to the mass layoffs that followed.
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  602. Greece, Persia, and Spain all survived. Nations change regimes, but are notoriously hard to completely eliminate. Hell, the Mongols and Turks exterminated large fractions of Hungary’s population, and Hungarians are still around.
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  603.  @copyrightedperson8157  Neither does the tech exist for the St Lawrence Seaway. The river is not naturally navigable.
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  604. Sweet Candy The French strategy was primarily defensive. They weren’t going to be able to help much. The Maginot Line was a thing for a reason, and it wasn’t to go on the offensive.
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  605. Whatifalthist Switzerland can feed itself without external inputs, despite limited land availability. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/fact-check_does-switzerland-produce-half-of-all-the-food-it-needs-/44380058#:~:text=It%20concludes%20in%20a%20study%20that%20Switzerland%20could,inhabitant%20%28the%20recommended%20daily%20energy%20intake%20is%207%2C500-10%2C500KJ%29. Being surrounded by nuclear waste just means they’ll be isolated for a few generations. So I guess European Wakanda.
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  606.  @sephikong8323  Why would there be no Scramble for Africa?
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  607. President Polk liked this
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  608.  @ParagonRex  No, I didn’t. France had no way to defend the Louisiana Territory, and they got it back from Spain for only 2 years before they sold it to the USA. They were practically intermediaries from Spain to the US. Neither Spain or France were major threats to the USA conquering everything.
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  609. However, a quick, and decisive civil war would also likely crush one side or the other.
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  610.  @gremlinking5640  It’s also important to note that it wasn’t just the Soviets- there were also volunteers across the socialist community across the West to the Republicans (most famously George Orwell.) The Republicans were so disorganized and broken that the amount of foreign support simply didn’t matter. Republican solider would ride on top of tanks into entrenched nationalist lines and get slaughtered.
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  611. Clee4000 TBF, China would be taken over by the Qing in a couple decades, the Manchus were becoming an existential threat. They didn’t even send all that many to help Korea during the Imjin War.
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  612.  @joapercan6887  Plenty of biblical characters lived to thousands or hundreds of years. There’s not really any explicit reason against that, other than an implication it’s because of sinfulness.
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  613. @@fl2493A lot of people did, lol.😂
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  614. Hubert Bieniek When did Trump want to kill hispanics?
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  615. The GOP still has a chance in WI, as it moved right in 2022 despite every other Rust Belt Swing state going left. There’s no massive redistributing in the state between now and 2025, so the damage would likely be limited (aside from voting laws- maybe). The problem is that the GOP HAS to win A swing rust-belt state to win. GA + NC + AZ + NV = 268 seats. Not enough to win the presidency. PA and MI are even more ‘fortified’ than WI, with incompetent Republican parties. Trump didn’t even win MN or NH in 2016. No chance he wins them in 2024. And NH has trended left since 2016. WI is NOT ‘throwing money away.’ If we lose WI, we lose the election.
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  616. Or Palin losing in Alaska?
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  617.  @TheSafetyMarshalPSF  The issue is that Elon can’t get Twitter kicked off the app and play stores. He’s already pissed off the advertizers.
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  618. Trump assigned an executive order on this back in 2019.
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  619.  @williamsmith9026  He kind of had to, though. Even Trump ‘conceded’, even if not officially.
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  620.  @scottwaters998  Oz spent huge in Pennsylvania, to the point where the race became the biggest in terms of dollar spent, and campaigned his ass off. He focused on the issues. He basically did everything people wanted him to do but winning or being populist enough.
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  621. I think they’re drafting reservists because they can’t fill the military with volunteers, and that’s the real reason for this.
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  622. Note that Ballot harvesting benefits urban Democrats more than rural Republicans. It’s way more difficult to ballot harvest as a Republican due to greater geographical distances.
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  623. Who is in charge of the House GOP now? Oh right, the “MAGA” Mike Johnson. 😂
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  624. Haley did actually come out and say the CO case was wrong. Just on FOX, not on Twitter.
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  625.  @bnic9471  Well, the Allies gave Hitler a ton of rope with Austria and Czechoslovakia. Also, he literally wrote a book about how he wanted to enslave the Slavs, so this isn’t really a situation that’s ambiguous.
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  626.  @sheronbuytten7054  Because that sort of thinking is what lead to sky-high energy prices in the EU.
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  627. They’re trying to reach the Carpathians (or at least the Dniester) to secure a proper border with Europe. They’re also considering starting a war with Georgia again by allowing its separatist regions to join Russia. The biggest issue for Russia beyond a poor military leadership is that Russia is not in total war footing.
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  628.  @averageadventure200  China has a small consumer market for its size because the CCP actively suppressed wages and encouraged investment over the years, resulting in a bloated construction sector and undergrown consumer market.
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  629.  @counterleo Marriage rates have also plummeted with the social breakdown amongst young people, partially triggered by forcing children into daycares instead of allowing parents to spend time with their children and low fertility resulting in people sheltering their one child too much by putting all their eggs in that one child-basket (amongst other things).
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  630. ⁠ @MW_Asura It’s both money and time. Full-time nursery care in the UK costs £15,000/year, which is near half of the average UK wage of £33,000/year. This is so expensive that getting women into the full-time labour force disincentivizes having children.
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  631.  @dbz9393 Maybe then stop telling women they need to aspire to be CEOs and professionals so they can work part-time from home? That gives families lot more resources for childcare (not so much financial, but still- childcare is a lot cheaper when you have actually have time to take care of the children.)
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  632. Zeeshan Niazi The amount of trade in dollars dwarfs the total amount of trade in oil. People use dollars because it’s convenient to use it as a default considering it’s backed by a massive economy and the currency is kept stable (unlike the Yuan, for instance). The only other option that could conceivably be better is Gold, but there’s likely not nearly enough Gold in the world for the amount needed. Prices would go through the roof, and you’d have a situation similar to that of the Great Bullion Famine. Hence why they used to back Dollars with Gold.
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  633.  @johnjingleheimersmith9259  Also, LOL @ you.
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  634.  @johnjingleheimersmith9259  Point is that there’s making claims, and then there’s just taking the piss (claiming water all the way to the coastlines of other nations, like China). Australia at least had the excuse that the Timor Gap is part of its continental shelf and left most of E. Timor’s EEZ alone.
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  635.  @johnjingleheimersmith9259  Yes, because it’s the US trying to claim the territorial waters of 5 different nations at once…
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  636. Bhangra Fan No. You’re misrepresenting me. The Iranian people would be better off if the Iranians capitulated to the West, which would allow it to trade with everyone and economically recover. Even if that involved not being allowed to have any real foreign policy ever again. Or nukes. What does Iran gain at this point from its Sphere in the Middle East? Prestige? Religious Authority? But it wouldn’t be good for the government. Which is why they won’t. So they had no choice but to allow the Chinese in. This is the same thing that happened in Venezuela with Maduro. The country is not better off by ‘outmaneuvering’ the West. If anything, it let the violence continue rather than let a new government stabilize the country. Now, it’s the Somalia of Latin America. Also, Iran came under the British Sphere without a shit being fired. Did they have a choice? Not really.
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  637. Bhangra Fan Iran signed up the Anglo-Persian oil company a concession without the use of force on any side. Is this better for Iran? Probably, being able to sell to only China is better than not being able to sell at all. But don’t act like this (effectively a bailout) deal was made out of kindness by the Chinese. That would be out of character...honestly for geopolitics in general.
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  638. woodensurfer Thing is that larger nations don’t always win, even with similar tech and industrialization levels. Ever heard the term “Brazil is the nation of the future- and always will?” Specifically, Japan has and can build a massive navy due to its history with the navy, and being an island. China was a great power- on land, by relying almost entirely on defences and manpower (basically Asian Russia). Korea and Vietnam were scared of pissing China off, but Japan dominated the seas, their pirates pillaging Chinese ports and ships. China didn’t even conquer Taiwan without European assistance. China will be in the same demographic situation as Japan within the next decade, and growth is thus likely to drop to 2-3% (assuming no more sanctions). China has utterly failed to develop a significant domestic market and growth still relies on exports. Even if just the USA decides to sanction China (the USA has been successful at getting its allies to sanction Iran to death despite Europe not wanting to- and a LOT of their allies hate China) it’s game over- real growth will collapse unless the Chinese government tapes up everything with even more debt- no one buying goods= no economic growth. Just Japan is likely to be able to hold Chinese power back. Add in India and the USA, and starting a war is practically suicidal.
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  639.  @stabeyy  To be fair, it’s not like the Zulus were saints either. Today, we act as if they were the good guys because they were the underdogs, but honestly, they were pretty genocidal. History is more complicated than good guy vs bad guy.
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  640. dekaaizer Yes, because the USA was definitely the expansionist one making leases on foreign ports and saber-rattling with border claims. If China was in the US’ place, Canada wouldn’t exist. Cuba wouldn’t exist.
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  641. Mendicant Bias That assumes Greenland doesn’t least manage to negotiate special rights like the Inuit in Canada- Puerto Rico is so bad because Washington has no reason to care about Puerto Rico, with a low population, few resources, and without voting rights. Greenland has plenty of resources and is strategically located. They have more cards to play.
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  642. GeoT91 Taiwan was also legally never given to China as part of its territory, post WW2, but as an occupied region.
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  643. I do not trust Dr. Fauci and the NIH to be honest about the origins of COVID. They may be medical experts, but have conflicts of interest in allowing gain-of-function research. More importantly, it’s very difficult to know with high confidence the origins of COVID without the Chinese allowing a full investigation by the international community.
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  644.  @sammadison1172 Space is even more capital-intensive and lower benefit-ratio. Most companies outside the big old aerospace giants and SpaceX are currently slowly running out of capital as investors abandon the space. NASA has also given up on making new commercial contracts beyond the existing systems as the economics no longer align with reality.
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  645.  @blackwind743 Except those reactors (including the old PWRs) can use Pu-239, which is generated from irradiation of the much more common U-238 and is the primary source of long-lived radiation from nuclear fuel and is one of the primary ‘fuels’ generated from reprocessed nuclear fuel. There’s no actual shortage of nuclear fuel, just the facilities needed to reprocess and process the existing stockpile.
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  646. One side note about Senegal and Gambia- the British tried to exchange the Gambia to the French for other lands in the Niger Basin, but the French rejected it.
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  647. Peter, if you were paying any attention to the history of US politics, you’d know this was a possibility. In fact, this exact sort of thing happened before… in 2012. The GOP had a great midterm, and Romney won Independents by 5 points. Obama still won due to strong minority turnout and WWC support following the auto bailouts. —- Also, ‘Independents’ only voted for Harris by a few points in 2024. Biden won them by double digits in 2020. That’s even higher than *2008.* Your prediction was impossible even if the other shifts never happened.
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  648. Explain how Trump’s proposed election reforms would make the Republicans win no matter what?
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  649.  @zibbitybibbitybop  Midterms are not ==presidential. Obama lost the midterms and won presidential.
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  650. Midterm elections don’t always predict presidential elections. The Republicans made a huge amount of mistakes in 2022 with funding and campaigning, etc. Especially when both sides are increasingly authoritarian, like with the inditement.
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  651. Imagine if Hungary tries to take it back as ‘historical Hungarian land’.
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  652. There’s another thing you haven’t mentioned: The media and mainstream society gives off ‘vibes’ that really in effect tell people to stop having kids. Why have kids if they contribute to global warming and there’s no future for them? —- We need a society that actually tells people to have kids, not one that doesn’t.
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  653.  @gottagowork  It’s been 3 weeks, and the Ukrainians have failed to retake Bakhmut, as you promised.
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  654. I would like to see where Peter got the idea where COVID caused lower birth rates- as UN data seems to not support this.
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  655.  @advisorynotice  But it was Russia that held the Germans off in the critical years of 1941-1943. Proportionally, Ukraine lost the most, but mostly because it was occupied by the Germans and a battleground in the East for half of the war. The situation simply isn’t comparable. Russia (not really Central Asia - even Kazakhstan was more agricultural than the Slavic parts of the Soviet Union) had to pick up the pieces after losing Belarus, the Baltics, and Ukraine. At the time, that was over 1/3rd of the Russian economy. Also, Kazakhs ended up becoming a minority in their own country as a result of the push of industry and agriculture to the region. The people actually working in the factories sent East were Russians, not Kazakhs. And of those, most of the industry went to the Russian-dominated North Kazakhstan, not the Turkic South. Lend Lease played a huge role- but it were not Americans pushing the Germans out of Kursk. Even if you assume offensive operations would have been impossible without lend-lease due to a lack of trucks, aviation fuel, and ammo, in 1943, 4/5ths of all German divisions were in the East. Only in 1944 did the Western Front become a serious priority in terms of numbers for the Germans- and the most elite formations were also in the East.
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  656.  @advisorynotice  Thing is that the ‘core’ of the USSR was Russia (plus Eastern Ukraine), so this still applies. The Russians have been able to mobilize against the Poles, also their Slavic brothers. Also, Russia is not as ethnonationalistic as you think. The USSR crushed Slavic Nationalism. There is practically no ethnonationalism in the upper ranks of the Russian state.
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  657. Why is Putin so unwilling to go into full War Economy? Will it fire its Northern Commander, who seems to be the most incompetent?
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  658. Another thing you didn’t mention. The ‘new space revolution’ has been pretty much been entirely supported by Musk and cheap capital. The vast majority will be bought out or go bankrupt. NewSpace is the definition of ‘emerging’ and ‘low cost-benefit.’
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  659.  @nicholassmith7984  So cartels taking over the border isn’t a real threat?
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  660.  @nicholassmith7984 Cartels taking over the border isn’t a ‘real’ crisis? You do realize illegal immigrants pay the cartels to ferry them to the border, right? Also, the flood of migrants makes it impossible to vet everyone.
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  661.  @jerrymiller9039 The Soviets only lasted so long due to lend-lease. And even if they didn’t, having a genocidal German superpower turning Ukraine into a wasteland and enslaving entire peoples is kind of a big deal for everyone.
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  662.  @ryankuypers1819  Note that corporations were also restoring tremendously, especially during and after the pandemic. Before the interest rate hikes, US Services PMI was around 55 and Manufacturing PMI around 60 (!)- the highest it had been since before 2014. Retirements and the Pandemic causing/accelerating a lower Labour Force Participation rate were probably stalling PMI out. Also, Inflation hit a maximum of 15% in the early 80s, and had been elevated above 5% since around 1970. The inflation rate has already stalled out at around 8.5% despite the war in Ukraine. Also, the inflation means the real interest rate is still negative. They still need to raise rates by another 6% before they reach the real interest rates of pre-COVID. The FED has lots of room to maneuver still- honestly more than they did in 2008. The US government could also amend the Federal Reserve Act to allow for direct financing of the government from the Fed, bypassing the markets. They haven’t done it, but it’s a worst-case scenario option.
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  663.  @ryankuypers1819  Note that only Corporate and Govnt. debt are elevated above 2008 levels to GDP. Household Debt, for example, has remained below 80% of GDP since 08, including during COVID. Corporate Debt to GDP spiked during COVID, and is not back to 2008 (and Y2K bust) levels. Also, last quarter GDP fell by 0.9%, lower than the 1.6% drop in Q1. This is comparable to the trajectory of the US economy during the dot-com bust, which was a ‘soft landing recession, with the US economy only shrinking around 1% quarterly. GDP may drop below the 1% quarterly level, but only if the Fed raises rates faster than the market has in its forecast. Aka. A recession beyond that caused by inflation and rate increases may occur, but will likely not be disastrous.
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  664.  @willchristie2650  Imperial in the Roman sense?
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  665. None of this will be resolved until the next election. Either McCarthy's quest to primary everyone (except Biggs and Gatez due to their positions) who primaried him succeeds (2/6 are down already), or the Dems or Republicans take a stronger majority in the House.
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  666.  @joefish4466 Ah yes, which is why countries never built walls to protect themselves… ever…
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  667. What will happen to Wagner after the death of its 2 leaders?
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  668. Considering how well the Chinese have succeeded in stopping people from leaving, I can see the Russians soon implementing similar tactics (ripping up passports, etc.)
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  669.  @mariandaum8313  Turnout also matters- AZ margins were lower, but Trump got far more votes (and AZ was also closed.) Haley also has higher name recognition vs Phillips.
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  670.  @snakesandsticks Haley did meh in that state TBH. PA was Trump’s weakest state, but primary turnout for Trump is very high in every other swing state.
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  671. There are more Registered Democrats than Republicans, but voter registration =/= self-id. California and New York requires voter registration by party, and that massively skews the data. Also, tons of Southern states have people who are Independent ‘in name only’ (vote and identify as GOP nearly all the time and just never bothered to change their registration.)
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  672. Couldn’t they export oil via the White and Baltic Sea? What are the naval oil carrying capacity from the other ports from Russia (not on the Black Sea) and would they be able to compensate?
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  673.  @Withnail1969  en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Peak_copper "Copper is a fairly common element, with an estimated concentration of 50–70 ppm (0.005–0.007 percent) in Earth's crust (1 kg of copper per 15–20 tons of crustal rock).[25] A concentration of 60 ppm would multiply out to 1.66 quadrillion tonnes over the 2.77×1022 kg mass of the crust,[26] or over 90 million years' worth at the 2013 production rate of 18.3 MT per year. However, not all of it can be extracted profitably at the current level of technology and the current market value." The decline in ore quality has been ongoing since the prehistoric era, when copper could literally be obtained by walking around and picking up lumps of it. And yet, somehow, we keep getting more and more copper because we keep getting better and better at it. Again, this doesn't even include recycling or mine reclamation (reopening old mines),
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  674. Technically, the ‘safer’ area would be to move all the way to the German Border, as the border is even shorter and more defensible there- and if you’re going to invade Poland, you may as well go all the way.
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  675. “Independents” are not all the same. Especially in the South, party registration is an inaccurate estimator of actual voting patterns. Hence, why Indiana and Missouri are safe red despite having large “registered” Democrats.
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  676.  @warhorse03826 Polls don’t count electoral college votes, they count popular vote. They were accurate on popular vote % for Clinton.
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  677.  @warhorse03826  She won the popular vote by 3 points. Polls don’t count electoral college…
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  678. Polls were accurate on the national level (yes, even 2016.)
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  679. Pictured: Zeihan coping about a likely Trump win.
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  680. Zeihan has always been like this when it comes to domestic politics. Look at his analysis of Trump/2022. He still hates Trump because of ‘failed COVID policies.’
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  681. ⁠ @patphatkitten Problem is that Cali has barely invested in new reservoirs for decades… Rainwater storage is great if you have the space. Flooding large parts of SoCal isn’t something the farmers are interested in.
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  682.  @jscotthamilton5809  I’m talking more about dumb munitions, since they’re running out of them now. They still have enough old Soviet hardware otherwise.
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  683. Despite the…questionable Russian finances, could/would they go into a total war stance to get enough artillery shells to continue to fight the war? Also, to be fair to the Russians, they’ve known a major counteroffensive was coming and where it would likely be. Probably smart to save ammo, especially when their own offensives have stalled out and the end of the Russian/Ukrainian fighting season is coming (Mud is a major concern in the autumn). So far, the Russians have had no opportunity to reorganize since the initial reorganization after the failure to capture Kiev.
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  684. The only reason the Biden Administration is in this situation is because they wanted this fight. They never raised the debt ceiling when they had control of both the House and Senate.
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  685. Fracking methane leaks… aren’t an issue. Same thing with the drilling fluids, the reservoirs are simply too deep for meaningful amounts of methane to reach the atmosphere. And mine reclamation would reduce coal methane emissions. But it’s safe to say China won’t do that.
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  686.  @duyle-ej6ty  Trump set up a foreign policy after the War on Terror that was functional and Biden has more or less followed. He reformed the tax system to be more competitive and removed the state and local tax deduction (increasing economic growth for relatively low deficit increases). Also, Operation Lightspeed got actually working vaccines for COVID (ie. not crappy Chinese vaccines with no effectively against later strains) for the Western World the fastest anywhere in the world.
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  687. High inflation is going to make any increases in government spending much more controversial. And inflation still hasn’t dropped below 2%. So spending may actually go down due populist reasons (inflation is one of the big reasons Biden is behind.)
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  688.  @here_for_the  That’s the case with all commodities, though… No one ever wants to have gold bars in their apartment, so they don’t really have many options.
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  689. He predicted this when people were panicking about the “Russian Gold Standard.”
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  690.  @spm_hcmc  Or North Korea. Or Romania. Or now China.
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  691. The issue is that large-scale use of tactical nukes basically ensures only tactical nukes are used. See pentomic infantry.
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  692. Joe Rogan seems more reasonable.
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  693. I’m sure that the Trump Admin would never apply secondary sanctions on Mexico for attempted Chinese bypasses. It’s not like they did that with Iran. 😂 —- Doug Ford and Trudeau have just asked for a seperate trade deal with the US in anticipation of secondary sanctions on Mexico. Zeihan’s TDS is showing again.
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  694. If we can get economically viable CCS, that might change the picture.
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  695.  @danwall9301  Methane still produces CO2 when burned. Also, clathrates are kind of like Kerogen for Oil- a holy grail of energy with a million and a half problems that have never been solved. Even with pressure vessels, you also have to ensure the calthrates remain stable. Shale isn’t being extracted in most of the world, and there’s still a ton of deep water oil and gas reserves underused.
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  696.  @AuAdventures  The Soviet economic system was horrifically inefficient and shortages were rampant because the Soviet Union kept wages artificially high above production. They could ensure full employment, but not that the employment was actually competitive with the wider global economy. When it collapsed, industry collapsed and hyperinflation ensued. Argentina did something similar under Peron (and even now, arguably.)
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  697.  @AuAdventures  GDP is as much an ‘arbitrary number’ as IQ. Yes, it can be misleading, and lacks nuance (eg. Is the economy in bubble? Is the money all going to the top?); but it’s best tool we have to measure an economy’s size.
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  698.  @AuAdventures  Also, note that most of the debt is owed to the Federal Reserve, which is partially controlled by the government and sends its profits to the Government (same with all nations owing money to its own central bank). Aka. Interest payments are sent back to the government after being paid. :P This is why Japan’s not collapsed the same as Greece despite similar debt-to-GDP.
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  699.  @emceeboogieboots1608  Global export volume is $20.5 trillion (about double incl. imports.) Global oil trade market is $1.7 trillion (incl. refined products.) Not sure how you use 8.2% to control 100%. Also, the fact the US is no longer importing oil incentivizes people NOT to use USD. You would think the US would try to regulate shale out of existence instead of hailing its accomplishments.
    2
  700. Isn’t the Djibouti -Ethiopia corridor another zone where the mountains have a break?
    2
  701. Also note that the West is also running out of equipment to send to Ukraine.
    2
  702.  @mrdisco99 Tell that to the Mayor of New York…
    2
  703. This would be bad for the GOP if the Democratic Coalition wasn’t also imploding at the same time.
    2
  704. The US could definitely extend the Missouri water system all the way up to Montana.
    2
  705.  @mgntstr The thing is that brand is as important as tech in terms of consumer decisions. They’ve been stealing tech from Apple for decades, and that doesn’t stop them from making a ton of sales there. But the bigger problem for Elon is that capacity outside China still hasn’t caught up to be able to replace Tesla Shanghai.
    2
  706.  @Bayard1503 Macri already tried that, and failed.
    2
  707.  @joebobhenrybob2000  Probably depends. Shale used to be uneconomical to extract at all.
    2
  708. The issue with _ years predictions is that they’re generally horrendously inaccurate, and imply only what is being accessed in the current reservoirs. Since shale reservoirs are small and spread out, that’s probably where you get the 10 vs 30y estimate.
    2
  709.  @cwx8  Should I call the, “Indians?” BC is weird in NA. It’s the only place other than Latin America where the Natives are the ethnic majority in much of the rural countryside. In terms of total population, Whites and Asians dominate, but most of them live in the cities or smaller towns. Also, no treaty like the numbered treaties were ever signed. Hence, building a pipeline in undeveloped BC is…problematic. Kitimat is also at the end of a long, winding inlet that is a magnet for ship crashes. This is why Prince Rupert became the primary port in the area, despite being further away- it’s safer (in theory, though many ships still use the inlets (eg. Gardner Canal) to get to Prince Rupert from the South, like passenger ships, mostly because this protects them from the waves. Oil and Gas tankers would go straight out to sea though, so this is a moot point.) Many pipeline companies have decided to build to Kitimat because it’s the shortest (ie. cheapest) route to the sea from the oil and gas fields in Northern BC and Alberta (also, land is cheaper than in the Lower Mainland, lowering construction costs.) It has been proven that’s probably a stupid-ass plan with CGL, even if they get government support (the Natives are actively destroying construction.) The Fortis BC Delta LNG port expansion will process comparable additional amounts of LNG to CGL, and has gone comparatively smoothly.
    2
  710.  @cwx8  I’m not talking about the Kitimat pipelines. BC has been very much against pumping fossil fuels to Kitimat for environmental and Native American reasons, preferring ports on the Lower Mainland. The Lower Mainland ports and pipelines (eg. Woodfibre) are still very much going forwards comparatively smoothly.
    2
  711. There is only 1 major project not canned by the companies themselves (mostly for lack of demand at the time) not being built in BC- Northern Gateway, which was the most ecologically risky, and the inlet it was trying to send crude through is a magnet for ship disasters due to being windy and narrow. Woodfibre and Delta LNG have gone through, as well as TransMountain. I can see them speeding up the expansion plans in the Vancouver oil and gas ports.
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  712. There’s a large Indian worker population in Arabia that could become 5th columns in the Arab states if India invades there…
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  713.  @tullymcfarland9015 This man is living in the 60s….😂
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  714. The other explanation is that Care Centers aren’t open yet in a lot of places, preventing people from working, and unemployment benefits were boosted during the pandemic, disincentivizing people from working. Remember that demographic trends are long-term, slow behemoths, and are unlikely to be responsible for short-term spikes.
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  715.  @hillaryclintondidnothingwrong  And that’s under review by the Supreme Court if they violate the constitution. States can’t violate the Constitution. That was the entire point of Roe V Wade, for instance.
    2
  716. Moon Moon It helps put trains closer together as well if the trains are capable of fast acceleration and deceleration. And I’m pretty sure the Subway is basically fire walled already.
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  717. steve crawford Population is mostly rising now because of inertia, and developed nations have lower than replacement birth rates. The problem isn’t births. Unless you plan on Thanosing the population of Earth, there’s going to be at least 10B people.
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  718.  @motherlandbot6837  “Vassals” whose payment basically consists of military bases and tribute payment for them in the form of foreign policy alignment and trade deals, in exchange for being protected by the biggest military in the world and having market access to the largest economy in the world. Yes, by a certain given definition of vassal, yes. But very loose vassals. More like the old Chinese Tributary system- except again, there is an actual guarantee of protection (which the Chinese never gave to its tributes.) People are saying China won’t become the next superpower because of demographics because the one nation that has hit the demographic cliff is Japan, which people also believed would become a superpower. Europe is also hitting a demographic cliff, and is part of the reason it has become a complete nightmare with slow growth (especially in the periphery). But more to the point, any nation with a massive retiree population has to spend money on retirees that they can’t spend anywhere else. China has a probable birth rate near 1-1.2, which is amongst the lowest in the world due to the one-child policy. And China’s economy is horrifically dependant on investment (look up % of GDP by composition), causing the debt rate and real estate prices to spiral out of control (if you think prices in San Fran or Vancouver are bad, remember the price- to wages ratio is similar- but averaged across the entire country - Good luck getting an apartment in Beijing) and MUST run out of steam because their population is already mostly urbanized (60%, vs US 80%)- and the law of diminishing returns applies. Also, if you want another reason, it’s because people don’t WANT a Chinese- dominated world. Ask India or Japan or Vietnam. For several reasons.
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  719.  @jyashin  North and South Korea signed a truce, not an armistice. And even if we go by your definition, it means China is a part of Taiwan as well, because the Nationalists never gave up their claims to control of the mainland either. Declaring independence as Taiwan means that the ROC as to give up claims to the mainland. But let's face it, would the PRC do the same?
    2
  720. Honey Pot Umm, you do know that hundreds of Jews also died in 9/11, right? Doesn't seem like it was a Jewish Nationalist conspiracy, more like a small number of sick people. Why they were celebrating is a completely different story. Also, the Koch aren't Jews. And yet they're considered the Right- Wing Soros for their financing of anti- climate change organizations. Plus, powerful people are still only a fraction of the Jewish population. It's a massive generalization. If all those people were Asian, would you still blame the Asians? Or is it the fact that power corrupts?
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  721. She did that because people were willing to give her money for it, simple as that.
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  722. Do you have a link to that video. I can't find it...
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  723. +i.am.you He was there since the beginning, and was ine if the founding members of InfoWars. He has personal connections. Keep that in mind.
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  724. Just A Regular Guy Communism never seems to die. Was it malicious? I doubt it.
    2
  725. Didn't the Chinese first end slavery in the 5th century or something?
    2
  726. Use the desktop site.
    2
  727. +Benjamin Siegel He's a feminist.
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  728. To be fair, Carbon taxes are one of the most libertarian ways to fight climate change... Sometimes, yes, it is necessary- at least a bit.
    2
  729. Liberty AboveAllElse ...Because that extra IQ is doing Venezuelans and Cambodians so well. IQ is not a adequate indicator for possible prosperity. Otherwise, Israel would be the richest nation on the planet.
    2
  730. Twitter actually already doesn't make a huge amount of profit, BTW.
    2
  731. Elon Musk has a point here. We need a better screening method ASAP.
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  732. Paul Joseph Watson where is the sexy burka video?
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  733. strategery101 Glass and steel isn't bad if done properly, and where it fits. Like all forms of architecture. Dubai looks pretty cool, but not every city needs glass towers. Especially since they tend to have higher maintenance costs- and because it often doesn't fit with the skyline stand theme of the area.
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  734. captain_ahab Lol no. China was the head of Civilization for a good few centuries.
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  735. Kerath It doesn't need time a conspiracy. Communism wasn't SUPPOSED to turn into a failure. But it did. Ever heard of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions?" Even if the establishment wants to shift gear, they can't, because it would require them to lose whatever remaining trust they have by admitting they are complete liars.
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  736. Bert Stir It still doesn't change the fact that no one has been growing as fast as even a few months ago. Leafy is just the most drastic. Plus, Youtube probably doesn't like Leafy either, he's the only one who clings on to the 2016 commentary drama fest that Youtube hated, so it's not 100% out there that part of his low views is due to Youtube. Also, Leafy's video views have remained stable- the current loss in subs are probably purges of inactive accounts.
    2
  737. Make a video about the state of the global economy and the current economic bubble please!
    2
  738. Why are you here then? Seems like you care about US politics.
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  739.  @natekaufman1982  The alternative “Plan C” for Japan was to simply blockade and starve out Japan (which was already starving.) Japan’s Navy was kaput at this point, so it’s feasible for the US to fight the Soviets on land and Japan with a much smaller land force, using the Navy and Air Force to force them to surrender. Japan blockaded can’t support any of their conquered territories.
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  740. The Soviets were constantly trying to break the siege of Leningrad in the North.
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  741. Considering the Persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire ultimately lead the the spread of Christianity across the empire? Yes. I suppose none of you are actually Christians?
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  742. Daily Wonder The USA used China as a lever to surround the Soviet Union and break the Communist bloc apart permanently.
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  743. Trump did not manage the strategy in the midterms. Trump only endorsed people. That’s the extent of his participation.
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  744. Theoretically, the Republicans may be able to filibuster any attempt to give PR statehood- the constitution says 50 votes are necessary, but there is ambiguity over filibustering here (especially since it’s been so long since it was last done.) IMO, it would only pass in a “two-state” situation, like pre-civil war, with a Republican and (presumed Democratic (??? No good polling exists for Puerto Rico)) state, say West Washington and Oregon, or Virginia giving back its section of DC to the Federal government to turn VA back into a swing state.
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  745. > Greens > Not acknowledging reality. Who could have seen this coming? Aside from, well, everyone. Facts they don’t like is almost toxic to most Greens.
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  746. Why are South Korean politicians so shit? It looks like every other President in its Democratic history is in prison or is shady/corrupt AF.
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  747.  @lolingkwarts3999  Also, Switzerland was more useful alive than dead, they helped the Nazis keep a financial link to the outside world (because few trusted the Reichmark).
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  748. It’s incorrect that a blockade is a ‘grey zone’ tactic. Blockades are generally considered an act of war, and have been used as a Casus belli for war many times- eg. The Six-Day War. This is because blockades end up destroying neutral cargo shipping to be effective. Like US shipping.
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  749.  @alatorre33 AMLO is also already building a railway across the Isthmus of Tehuanteptec, which will take most of that traffic. So… yay?
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  750.  @vogel2499  Yeah, and that would mean the end of the world if a war broke out.
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  751. Elaad Teuerstein You think the Pentagon has no idea about the threat of cyber warfare? They’re just not as active as North Korea at hacking PCs.
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  752.  @GonzoTehGreat  You’ve proven my point. They don’t add money to the economy via their labour, they do it via their spending. They’re not helping the healthcare system function, or fixing pipes by being tradesmen, and thus plugging gaps in the skilled labour market. Usually, immigrants add money to the economy on both ends (working and spending.) Also, many popular tourist sites (eg. Venice) have visitor number control measures too.
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  753.  @broskinh7979  Trump has been the most isolationist president ever and has overwhelmingly focussed on boosting the American economy and industry.
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  754.  @lennartgosman3640  Which is why Turkey was the only NATO country to not abide by the sanctions? I guess the German government is a traitor to its own people for not falling to Russian demands?
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  755. Kealen Yes. Medieval Warm period. Thing is that if you agree that CO2 levels are rising, it’s kind of impossible to NOT come to the assessment that climate change is happening. There is a reason Venus is hotter than Mercury. It’s not the Sun.
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  756. Mendicant Bias HK is a global exchange and is only special because elf its special status from China. Get rid of that, and you may as well be listing in Shanghai.
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  757. That would be more convincing - except Trump and Biden’s foreign policy in this region is almost identical to each other.
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  758. Thing is, in practice, he’s actually been hard on Putin and Xi compared to previous presidents. Actions, not Rhetoric matter. Obama acted like he hated the CCP, but did nothing to stop them. Trump has been the opposite. Trump was ‘hard’ on his allies so he could renegotiate trade deals to benefit the US more. Regardless of what you think about this, he has fulfilled a key campaign promise.
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  759. Unless Russia is able to annex Belarus and has the Initiative- in which case, it’s Russia that has the Baltics cut off and surrounded.
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  760.  @od9694  Ukraine in the EU would be one of its largest members population-wise, creating a massive change in the balance of powers. Also, Bulgaria and Romania have not done well in the EU due to corruption (better than Ukraine, but still.)
    2
  761.  @hkchan1339  Yeah, only the UK recently allowed it, and I expect if Labour comes into power (very possible), for the ban to be reinstated. Also, they would need to ramp up production.
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  762.  @jonathanalvarez3875  Most goodwill with free trade has been lost due to it being abused for power by Russia and China. The only free trade deal that's still being tried by the US is Biden attempting to revive the Free Trade Area of the Americas... kind of.
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  763.  @miroslavhoudek7085  TBF, living on welfare wouldn’t decrease the amount of societal decay. Having money doesn’t give people something to do.
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  764. Is Saudi Arabia planning on invading and conquering its neighbours? Pretty sure the Gulf Wars already set that precedent for them.
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  765. Tim Meyer The Philippines is a bad place to go. The government is corrupt and crime is rampant. Guam is a military layover and stupidly isolated. If you want some place in Canada or the USA to create a new Hong Kong, it has to be on the mainland. Northern Ireland is probably the best place, since Brexit means Ulster has to have a special border status in Britain anyways.
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  766.  @madisonryan7671  Note that Europe tried to focus on the demand side of fossil fuels-and failed miserably. Also note that the inflation crisis is at least half due to supply chain distributions, which was first due to the pandemic but is more being driven by deglobalization and corporate exodus from China.
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  767.  @botswanainsight3804  There we’re also ‘Foreign SS’, which were composed of volunteers from…basically everywhere to fight against the Soviets. The SS was weird.
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  768. bastisonnenkind It’s not really a good thing, because it was a symptom of a major problem across the Eastern Bloc. Either way, Trams aren’t that much better than buses. The ride is less loud and bumpy, but that’s about it. Unless you’re going very-high capacity, in which case LRT is the way to go. You also can’t avoid obstacles as well, and the routing is much less flexible. Streetcars worked because there was much less traffic. Today, that’s impossible to achieve without outright designating space for transit.
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  769. bastisonnenkind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Berlin Most of the streetcars run on the East German side of the city- which, I mean, the Soviets weren’t that great at staying up to date with infrastructure, period. Their rail network had serious congestion issues and the road network wasn’t really invested that much in. Streetcars survived in Toronto too because the city decided to bail them out- and they’re only a little bit better than buses (smoother).
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  770.  @macroxela  He can’t just ignore China. If they can’t kill him, they could sanction or even invade him.
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  771. Well, the EU was intended to help with the scale issue… it hasn’t then?
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  772.  @user-DongJ  Right, and what is their common interest? Destroying the West does not accomplish anything but an ego boost for India, before realizing now they have to deal with their more immediate enemy (China) alone. South Africa has bigger shit to deal with than superpower ambitions. Brazil is…Brazil. The US is literally next door. You have to be really confident they won’t do anything. The 8-Nation alliance happened because their nations’ expats were being massacred, so everyone turned around and bullied the Chinese and rebels to stop their own citizens from being killed. Not really a similar situation.
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  773.  @ry8246  The Austranesians were masters of the sea. They probably also got to the Americas as well (and imported Sweet Potatoes into Oceania).
    2
  774. jdivision79 1. The South explicitly fought for slavery. 2. The Civil War only started because the Confederates attacked US Federal Property, which is not under States’ juristriction, and was this effectively attacking another country (the USA).
    2
  775. Batto WW2 is debatable, because its end also coincided with the Americans guaranteeing free trade over most of the free world. WW1 was followed by a (short) depression.
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  776.  @WaynewesInv  Not the desalinated water. There were ‘water wars’ around who got to use the Jordan River water, so it’s probably for the best Isreal uses less and less of its water to just avoid the issue entirely. Jordan is the only nation that directly borders the river- and the desalination projects to refill both the Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea will only benefit them. If anything, I’d say there’s a pretty good argument Jordan should pay them for the water. Though, this has obvious issues.
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  777.  @nazimelhadi4700 Western Sahara is even more a lost cause than Palestine. Morocco basically already owns all of it. It’s over.
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  778.  @r.s.10  There are 2 groups who care about Israel a lot. The Jews and Evangelical lobby, and the woke lobby. The former are far more numerous, and the latter just have way bigger fights to fight than Israel. Frankly, if they do it during a Republican administration, they probably could get away with it- Trump was pretty favourable to Israel. The issue is the difficulty of integration. Also, no one wants Gaza. It’s basically a giant slum with no resources.
    2
  779.  @mannik8  Real Estate is considered an asset, not a consumer good. Rent is considered part of the CPI, however, and so indirectly affects the CPI. However, rents across the US are not consistent in their increase.
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  780. TDS video
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  781. Belorussian prisons.
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  782.  @fabiandonvil  Wagner needs somewhere to stay, and Belarus wants protection.
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  783.  @ten_tego_teges  I would imagine it depends on if a private area is large and open enough to be like a public space in practicality.
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  784.  @ten_tego_teges  Ok, but if everyone talks on a private space, in practice, banning someone on the private space has similar effects to banning them on the public space. Hence, an exception to private property can be made while still keeping private property rights of the company intact by arguing that private space is effectively public space. I mean, we have laws preventing discrimination by race or age on private property. No one has a problem with that (well, most people), and it’s rarely considered an issue in the context of property rights. Why not ideas, if they are being discriminated against?
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  785. 1. Chinese statistics are bonkers. 2. Usually you compare to similarly developed nations, as people have less ability to pay debt if they are poorer. Since more money goes to things like food.
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  786. Give the West Bank to Isreal and leave the Gaza Strip to Palestine as a fully independent state. The Palestinians won’t like it, but they’re never going to be satisfied- at least the Israelis have shown they’re actually willing to give up claims for peace- except the West Bank, because it’s critical for its defence and water supply. The Palestinians won’t. The West Bank under this plan is probably more of a liability than a benefit anyways. The UN will also be pissed, but they really can’t do all that much in real terms.
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  787.  @TimCheong  PPP is kind of shit of a measurement. There’s a reason nominal is generally preferred over PPP- PPP ignores quality. Also, much of the money is spent on internal security, not outwards expansion.
    2
  788.  @carlobellucci5063  US government debt is misleading. Money owed to the central bank isn’t really ‘owed’, as profits from the interest go back to the treasury.
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  789. We have exactly what you describe (land value tax, vacancy tax) in Vancouver…and still have massive house prices (TBF, not as bad as Toronto, or before those policies were put in place, so those policies have helped increase supply, but still not enough to solve the issue.) Also, governments in Japan and Russia literally give out homes in rural areas for free… and still have massive rural depopulation. TBF, they populations overall are also declining, but still. You need to also make it easier for people to have jobs in remote areas, replacing or reviving the old resource jobs that kept these places afloat.
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  790. I think globalization has also diverted resources from possible innovation to globalization, slowing economic growth in developed nations in the short and medium term.
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  791. TBF, fracking came in, and that wouldn’t have been possible if the US had nationalized oil production.
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  792.  @ryanedgerton1982  “Lived Experience” lol
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  793. Also, everyone going to college made the situation worse. Higher education is highly biased towards the left, so people who have college degrees and don’t get jobs are more likely to blame capitalism for poor economics.
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  794. He did. It’s called ‘real’ wages. Adjusted to inflation.
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  795. Because Increasing interest rates lowers lending? Try lowering interest rates in an inflation scare. Really going well for Erdogan.
    2
  796.  @michaelwells5920  Well, that’s not really true. If the economy ceases to exist, and there’s all that money around, there would be hyperinflation because the money is worthless. This is why the worst cases of hyperinflation in developed economies happened after World Wars.
    2
  797.  @Ruruisinane  They do, for a given amount of production.
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  798. Banking will disappear. 😂
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  799. Only if you consider socialism == welfare.
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  800. 1:02 Untrue. Biden ended Remain in Mexico on Day 1. That’s a major reason for this immigration crisis.
    2
  801.  JG-MV Because the numbers are inflated by small numbers of very skilled migrants, not the large % of illegals.
    2
  802.  @dh510 They will be if they have less burnout or exhaustion from labour.
    2
  803.  @emilianosintarias7337 Capitalism is a bottom-up system and arises whenever you allow people to freely exchange goods. Most societies did not have the resources and capability to suppress it. It’s not capitalism, it’s the combination of capitalism and industrialization.
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  804. How much of that is sucked away from inflation?
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  805.  @casnimot  Not really. You run into problems with thermodynamics where you need to move the printer head too quickly to make it run very fast. A traditional machine factory can create a plastic bottle in seconds. Trying to do that on a 3D printer just isn’t going to happen, because it needs to be able to adapt to multiple different types of products it prints out. Basically, economics of scale is the problem.
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  806. It’s still vastly more efficient to have traditional manufacturing for most products vs additive manufacturing.
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  807. 'Democratic' Socialism at its finest.
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  808. William Maina Prices are increasing due to inflation, not Profit Maximization.
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  809.  @youngz13o  And China is heavily dependent on Littoral Asia and the US’s semiconductor industry. It’s their top import, and one China has failed to replace after a decade of trying. China attempting to kick out all US companies from China will likely be followed by the US kicking out Chinese companies from their stock exchanges, blocking one of the primary inflows of capital. Trump was trying to reach a trade *deal*, not embargo China. Big difference. Not to mention he ‘failed’ because he got kicked out of office for mostly unrelated reasons. No permanent deal was ever finalized.
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  810.  @lenomali  LOL, So apparently British colonialism was fine because they built railways?
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  811. Hydropower dams do not decrease overall water flow, unless they are being filled or are diverting water. The fact that new dams have recently been constructed on the Yangtze is the primary reason for the low water levels, not the dams themselves.
    2
  812.  @donnydrumpf9563  Because it’s a lie? People bitch on the US not including energy in core CPI even though that’s only for core CPI, not the headline CPI.
    2
  813. M2 includes money pumped into the stock market via QE, and so enters the stock market first, and is slow to exit into the wider economy.
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  814. China is not experiencing inflation as well due to the zero-COVID lockdowns reducing spending, as well as capital controls. They can’t keep zero-COVID forever.
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  815. It’s not cheaper counting for the cost of storage.
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  816. This strategy of using these stations to get sanctioned parts might work for smaller bits and pieces of advanced tech, but bulk commodities, even underground, would be too obvious. Look at India during the Ukraine situation.
    2
  817. Considering Vietnam was in war with China and are currently allowing Bride Kidnapping from Vietnam? Seems unlikely.
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  818.  @drumpfdon760  If China uses nukes in any invasion of Taiwan, I worry for the future of the world. Taiwan is a natural geographic fortress. And if the situation of Ukraine is saying anything, even taking over the country will not be the end. Taiwan, unlike Hong Kong, is a guerrilla fighter’s paradise. A peaceful unification is about as likely as a peaceful unification of North and South Korea.
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  819.  @zhoma982  Lol. Call me up when half the economy is producing bullets and jets. People who say the US has a ‘war economy’ know nothing about what a ‘war economy’ looks like.
    2
  820. mark jones Twitter rarely ever makes a profit, is it owned by the government?
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  821. Yeah, the Democrats pushed her up as a radical and then she shifted hard to the centre. 😂
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  822. j russ Got to love how this line of thinking goes. Never mind Flint was a huge story when it was revealed to the masses... People don't want to hear about the same story all the time.
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  823. sebbe91 You do know Chavez was originally democratically elected, right?
    2
  824. Democratic Socialism... Like Vendezula :)
    2
  825.  @seneca983  Why would they not be pegged to each other? If they vary wildly, that threatens the stability of the trading currency.
    2
  826.  @victoriap1561  How well is Russia doing with foreign trade after being kicked out of SWIFT?
    2
  827.  @rogergeyer9851  Well, Musk did at least once - with the SolarCity case and the roof tiles. Whether he’s playing the same tricks for anything else is anyone’s guess.
    2
  828.  @markheinle6319  Because then Elon Musk would have a hundred lawsuits up his ass and be a broke-ass man. So people just act as if it’s ok because Papa Elon does it.
    2
  829. What if Britain lost the Falklands War?
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  830.  @JellyAntz  No we won't. There's no physical shortage of those things (in terms of the elements themselves). The sorts of we have ___years of stuff assumes usually only current reserves being extracted. Eg. there are hundreds of years of Rare Earths in the Japan Sea. Morocco always had a near-monopoly on Phosphorus Rock. They're also one of the oldest US allies. California is a prefect example why your argument just doesn't hold water. California has known about the issues with water it would likely face now for decades, but has basically refused to do anything that would actually fix the problem, like adding new storage reservoirs, the Peripheral Canal, or indeed, desalination.
    2
  831.  @JellyAntz  True, but that’s my point. We’re nowhere near using up the Earth’s resources to the point where using the resources of space becomes viable. We easily have centuries (possibly millennia, depending on growth rates) until we actually need to expand into space. As of yet, space is simply much more costly, making it unviable for anything but sending a couple multi-billionaires to orbit. It’s like fusion- seemingly perpetually 20 years away.
    2
  832.  @MyDomesticChiffchaff  What would you do then?
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  833.  @roadbone1941  The World Wars didn’t.
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  834.  @SuperCrow02  Asteroid Mining? How is that easier than going to Antarctica or the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and digging around? Remember that you’re competing against cheaper sources closer by. Also, just because you can make a dollar, it doesn’t mean you can make a profit. Both Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources (the most serious asteroid Ming in efforts) went bust. The only efforts remaining are suckling on government grants for support. Improvements are not inevitable. In fact, we are pretty close to the max theoretical efficiency for chemical propulsion in terms of ISP- and going further requires things like microwave propulsion or space tethers- which we just don’t have.
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  835.  @porterwayman8643  The Roman Empire reached peak decadence during the Crisis of the Third Century. It was on the road the recovery when the West fell, as proven with what happened with the East after the Great Migration (ignoring the Rise of Islam).
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  836.  @Lusa_Iceheart  No one thought you’d reach the end of the world by sailing off it. The worry is that you’d die before you reached the other side of Asia because you’d run out of supplies. And by that point, the Portuguese had already sailed around Africa. And I guess your logic is the same that led the Pope to call for the Crusades?
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  837.  @music79075  Growing Algae and Plankton in tanks and turning it into fish feed. Basically taking the bottom level of the oceanic food chain so that fish farming no longer relies on feeding fish other fish from the ocean- ie. what we did with normal animal husbandry millennia ago on the land. We’re making some good process on this.
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  838.  @buddermonger2000  Well, that’s only partially true. The Fur Trade and Lumber Trade were profitable. The issue is that even once you get all the people up there, each person isn’t even self-sustaining. Creating a fully-self sustaining colony (from things like the Mars One MIT study and Biosphere 2) is basically impossible (at least so far.) Unlike in the Americas, where you could rely on the environment for your basic needs, you rely on life support tech in space, trying to extract whatever you can from the regolith. So not only is it unprofitable, it’s a economic drain.
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  839. Sultan Samurott The Ottomans before WW1 had at least loose control of most of Arabia, which means they most likely take control of Turkey’s Industry and Saudi Arabia’s resource wealth. If they can keep it together.
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  840. Alexander Lopazan More like what if Red Alert actually happened.
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  841. Ser Barr He did say the British had a bad record with Native colonies. And TBH, the Mixed Race people would likely be more like Settler Whites if they were treated as such.
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  842. What if Zealandia existed?
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  843. No, at least not historically.
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  844.  @omargarcia517  Eh, throughout most of history, money and tech was far more important than sheer production capability for the military (eg. Medieval Knights vs peasant mobs)- and the Gulf War showed that quality > quantity in the modern battlefield.
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  845.  @guyandalaptop434  The say way it became Muslim in OTL? The Greco-Bactrians/Indians had surprisingly large amounts of influence in their region, and no one else is going to challenge them in this region.
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  846.  @schadenfreude000  Well, technically the Ottomans had a ‘vassal’ in Aceh… Either way, the issue is that the Ottomans weren’t particularly mercantile or naval (being regularly outclassed by the Venetians). So there was no ability to make colonies.
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  847. Or if Balhae survived.
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  848. @Koffing 024 I’m not. It’s not gulag labour, but it’s still a form of forced labour. There are different levels of forced labour.
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  849. Wouldn’t China not be as developed because the USA would never sign trade deals with China to balance against Russia after being nuked by China?
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  850. infant jones https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism “Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending the rule or authority of a country over other countries and peoples, often by military force or by gaining political and economic control.[2]” Though what I’m referring to is actually closer to Colonialism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism “Colonialism is the policy of a country seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories,[1] generally with the aim of economic dominance.[2]”
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  851. Kowalski From Nebraska Kowalski From Nebraska Capitalism allowed for people to be wealthy enough to actually care about smog more than other problems enough to enact those regulations. And China is also far poorer than the USA. You shouldn’t account for population, because energy use is what is driving climate change, and energy use correlates with wealth. Any given industry in China is dirtier than a comparable factory in the USA or Europe. People still make textiles and electronics in the west. Social Democratic Societies are still capitalistic, just with a social welfare distributive system. Stalin liquidating the Kulaks and the Holodomor were actually communist- the idea was to accelerate the Soviet Union’s economic development at all costs (including starving the countryside) and to purge Bourgeois elements.
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  852.  @harshjain3122  Thanks. 1. I don’t doubt the US could keep forces in the Middle East if they wanted to- the issue is that there’s no obvious reason to. Afghanistan survived so so long because it was a base against the terrorist-infested region. Arguably, the garrison (which was indeed a garrison, it was well below 10,000 men even before peace negotiations began, which is the size of a large US garrison, like Thule) was useful enough to keep, but… too late now. Oil is not a good reason to now either. The US also never was very involved in Africa. The thing is that it probably won’t matter until as such Turkey or Iran start to become major powers, or India becomes a larger threat than China. The only other theoretical currency competitor is crypto, and it won’t matter if it is forced to go underground because every major economy put massive restrictions on it. Gold has existed as an option since Nixon went off the Gold Standard. If people wanted to trade solely in Gold, they’ve had almost 50 years to do so. Yuan… That’s like going from fighting a bear to taking a dunk in lava. Getting money into China is easy. Getting money out of China… is harder. Especially nowadays. 2. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/manufacturing-production https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/manufacturing-pmi Note the comparison between 2008, 2000, and today. This is despite inflation panic and mass supply shortages. Most stuff that made sense to outsource (textiles, etc.) were already outsourced long ago. Also, the decline of US manufacturing accelerated enormously after 2001…at the same time China joined the WTO. This appears to be unique to China, as things like NAFTA (1994) have little correlation with a sustained pattern of decline. This is consistent with many studies on the subject-China is infamous for effectively product dumping things like steel (which makes no sense to outsource, it’s heavy AF and low value/ton) onto the global market. The reversal should reverse the previous trend…in theory.
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  853.  @TheRedKing247  I meant more the companies and government. Vietnam is underdeveloped, and China is almost certainly faking its numbers (b/c one child policy- it was ABSOLUTELY enforced, and there is no indication of a post-policy boom.) Abe just brought up bringing nukes to Japan. Not sure how that’s minor. A lot of the elites are descended from the elite class of Japan back pre-WW2, as well (so the imperial military-industrial complex)…
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  854.  @TheRedKing247  Japan has a higher birth rate than any developed or decently industrialized nation in its proximity, and it’s birth rate is rising (possibly because of government programs, possibly because of a variation of the Roe effect, and the economy is already adapted to poor demographics. The elite are outwards looking, the people are not, largely due to WW2.
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  855.  @Jaco059  Lead levels were relatively low in Roman times compared to the post-leaded gasoline era. Remember that lead in pipes is mostly a problem if the water is acidic due to corrosion. Also, the power centre shifted away from Rome proper, where there was less lead piping.
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  856.  @Unknowngfyjoh  There are more excuses at least, because it’s so old.
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  857. The idea that Rome was doomed because of elite decadence doesn’t explain how they were able to survive in the East. Or how Rome was largely restored by the East before the Plague of Justinian Thanos snapped the empire’s population. Clearly there were countervailing forces (ie. the Dynasties and politically incompetent leaders could be replaced. Otherwise, both the East and West would have fallen, because they were derived from the same political system (only until after the Arab invasions were major reforms in the Eastern government made.)
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  858. Well yeah. That’s why reforms were made later on (like under Caracalla and Diocletian) were done to help fix the tax problem. Also, Rome was far more reliant on trade tariffs than on taxes- and Roman citizens were only partially exempt. They still paid taxes, just less than non-citizens. Of course, once everyone became a citizen, that distinction didn’t exist anymore, and the lower rate was the base rate. Also, Rome’s population was probably >50 million, while the army was more like 350,000 (double in the late empire.) Ie. Less than 1% of the total population.
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  859. zombieboy1292 They could send supplies through the Channel, which would be under RAF air superiority.
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  860.  @zuthula3847  Yes they can. We would already be heading into an ice age if not for GHGs. Also, Earth was generally warmer in the past despite the Sun being cooler.
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  861. Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave. We should have built SDI.
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  862.  @Hysteresis.Actual  People in the Soviet Union in 1983 ate almost as much calories as the average American. People just eat more if it’s cheaper, regardless of marketing. As you said, people want unlimited amounts of things. So scarcity can’t be removed until there are unlimited amounts of everything. Unless you can produce almost everything without work, people will still be working, because even if it takes 1 person to produce phones for 10000 people, you’re still going to have more demand if prices decrease. Jobs will remain. Is it Wasteful? Maybe. But the system still works. At least until there are no jobs, at least for normal humans. None of us know how to go on from there. We’re just going to have to crack some eggs and figure it out the hard way.
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  863. Jackson Wu Well, people could conceivably hire more landscapers to take care of their yards, considering that’s not that common. You could make the same argument with other sectors. How much food do people really need? Who is mandating these jobs? Why are they being paid when they’re unproductive? Now, *mind you*, there are definitely cases where this does happen, or people are made to work longer than they should or need to because it seems it would improve profits when it doesn’t. This isn’t a stable state though, and eventually changes because the market self-corrects because people find out those positions aren’t needed or hours can be reduced without losing production. (see: Adoption of 4-Day workweek) But for the most part, if you’re able to find someone to pay for something, it may be useless from a certain perspective, but it’s probably not, because people are clearly *paying for it*, because they want it. For example, Christmas trees are kind of useless from a practical perspective, but it’s a Billion-Dollar Industry. Most supplements and beauty products are useless. And yet people pay for that shit. A lot. Nothing is useless from an economic perspective if there is organic demand for it. Jobs are not ‘made up’ for no reason. They are satisfying actual demand. If I could get people to buy trash off me for a cent per ton, and there was demand for it, the jobs that are created selling trash are no less fake than that of farming food. If I wasn’t selling trash, that demand would go unfulfilled. Would it seriously negatively impact the people who didn’t get the trash? No, probably not. But that doesn’t matter. The entire economy is honestly ‘made up’. The entire concept of money is an abstract thing that doesn’t actually exist except in our minds. Bills aren’t money. They’re paper. What people want to trade the paper for depends on the people who hold them. And them moving that paper around is fundamentally what drives the economy and creates jobs. But that raises the question of what you would use to define productivity if profit isn’t it? The two primary drivers of technology through history are self-interest to generate profit, and war.
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  864. Jackson Wu Thing is that ‘increased consumption’ often involves the increase in demand for old jobs- like Horticulture, which has really taken off in recent years due to increased consumption and is difficult to automate. Construction is also not all that easy to automate either, and people wanting bigger houses and more kids if they have more money isn’t hard to imagine (it’s actually kind of a trend). Modular Construction has existed for years and will honestly likely never become mainstream. People just don’t like them, and they’re not flexible. Psychology is also a difficult field to automate, and is becoming more prevalent as a consequence of technology (not exactly for good reasons, but...) There is a reason we all still have jobs despite eliminating so many already. Also, demographics means that the labour pool of most industrial nations will shrink or stagnate, meaning consumption will increase as there are fewer people to work... we’ve seen this before in Japan, and the net result, despite high levels of automation isn’t no jobs, it’s the reverse. Unemployment rarely goes above 5% despite being in a recession for over 2 decades. Any serious loss of jobs are counteracting the lack of workforce available in the first place. The biggest threat for jobs may actually be in the third world, where wages increasingly matter more vs education and infrastructure. People in the First World have much more flexibility in getting and creating new jobs. If a factory can produce shorts cheaper than any wage worker, but needs to have educated engineers behind the scenes, the former isn’t going to get a job. And they have no consumer base to back into. This is already happening in the textile industry. https://youtu.be/OsSDI8wWAyQ —— With the last one, we really have no idea what we should do if no jobs exist. There is no real precedent, and the ones we kind of have (communities where everyone is on welfare and unemployed) are... not promising. I don’t believe we can decouple work from that innate human need. Human Psychology ingrained over eons of evolution can’t be reversed in a couple decades. Science has yet to find a way to actually fulfill a psychological need with a pill or some other substitute. The primary ways to deal with a psychological problem right now are dealing with its effects and fulfilling the need that isn’t being met. We aren’t going to solve the problem on the first try- or solve it by theory anyways. Historically, the most likely option is the natural one- Darwinianism - until we find the right solution. Meaning pain. Lots of pain. I personally think that we’re ultimately never going to create many intelligent/sentient AI, and that technology will eventually stagnate. That effectively means there will still be a decent number of jobs around, and we don’t have to deal with the AI can of worms. That’s not really make-work, just normal work. Solving the problem by never entering the problem to begin with.
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  865. Jackson Wu So what’s the solution? We already have a welfare state. We already effectively HAVE UBI for poor people, and if everyone makes 0 income, then it’s a UBI in effect anyways. Yay! You made sure nobody starves! Society has still imploded, and humanity has no idea what to do with itself with no work. Not everyone, but some people, are going to go crazy - humans are not designed to sit around and do nothing. Marxism doesn’t work. Honestly, Capitalism kind of has to exist unless we live in a society where literally everything (including time) is infinite, because money is how humans allocate limited resources. Which is probably impossible. Truth be told, we don’t have any idea. None of the ideas proposed by people present an actual solution, and won’t, unless work is replaced by something else. Honestly, a human-level or super-human level AI able to beat humans on everything is unlikely to get too far. Either everyone decides not to open or use that box, or they end up replacing or assimilating with humanity. Really, a human-level AI is really just an artificial humanoid in most respects. We’d be replacing humanity... by making new humans. Humans that also *consume*, in one form or another. The last things AI will replace are the last things that will separate the two (likely something like consciousness and free thought).
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  866. Why do you think Latin America is doomed to remain under kleptocracy?
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  867. Why do you think Latin America does not have a good future?
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  868. No serbia
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  869. Tall Jakee ‘Han’ is an artificial ethnicity. Really, ‘Chinese’ is less of a language, and more a language family (like Latin). Guangdong is practically North Vietnam genetically and culturally (kind of). They don’t need to tap into minority groups, because almost everyone is a minority group that’s not on the Yellow River Valley to an extent.
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  870.  @skygge1006  The Chinese military also sucks in terms of training, experience, and leadership compared to the German one in the World Wars. I think it’s unlikely Japan and India would not side with the USA against China, and likely Europe as well post-Ukraine.
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  871.  @КГБ-л3п  The issue in the Middle East was a complete lack of cultural understanding alienated the people who DID actually have reason to support the US. And in any case, the Kurds DID end up rising up and joining the US, and were a critical reason ISIS didn’t just take over. Russia is part of the West. Not to mention they have a bunch of ethnic groups who hate Russia (basically this area’s Kurds.)
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  872. Turkey Industrialized, but it’s far from being a developed nation. That’s an important distinction. The Chinese are upper middle income and are a superpower only due to sheer size, Turkey in this TL would be comparable in population to the USA. Oil money doesn’t help countries break the middle-income trap on the long run. Also, Israelis in OTL have pretty high birth rates, so the blacks may be less of a problem. Also, wouldn’t Turkey take Kuzestan and South Azerbaijan from Iran? Speaking of China, this TL would also make China’s ascension harder due to being surrounded on all sides by enemy states that the US could ally with. There’d be no belt-and-road because there’s no way they’d be able to connect it to China unless they beat the US navy.
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  873. What if the Ottoman Empire survived WWI?
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  874. Is this Japanese Empire Catholic?
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  875. Eh, the Chinese only ever fell internally, or to horse warriors- The Japanese were simply outnumbered fighting the Chinese. They managed to destroy Korea because its military was mostly incompetent, but guerillas hindered their movement across Korea as a whole....
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  876. What if Oil didn’t exist?
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  877. @PuntMan Taiwanese no longer view themselves as Chinese according to Pew. Also, if one’s going to go off the assumption China can’t take over Korea, they can’t take Taiwan. Every problem in Korea is magnified in Taiwan. Hell, if they can invade Taiwan, they’re strong enough to take over the entire first island chain, from Japan to Singapore. Japan in particular knows that they’re the next ones on the chopping block if Taiwan falls. They have every reason to fight to the death. Remember that Taiwan has a coast on the Pacific Ocean. How the Chinese block ships coming from Guam with missiles alone is hard to imagine.
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  878. @Tall Jakee Why would they piss off every SE Asian nation for useless maritime claims in the South China Sea? And there’s a good reason. China is running out of water and needs to bring in more- either from the South or the North. Controlling Vlavadivostok would make the rest of Siberia much harder to defend. Also, they want to green the Gobi Desert with water from Tibet.
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  879.  @alfalafelstine1536  China claimed Okinawa by claiming it was a *tributary* of China. Not even actually part of China. They don’t really care, they just use historicity as an excuse to take land.
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  880.  @johnwilson6324  Considering China is trying to conquer entire provinces of Japan and India? Yeah, no, they’re not fine. It’s the same as if Russia was trying to annex Alaska and Hawaii. And yeah, way to throw Asian-Americans under the bus. Not to mention if China starts invading shit, those refugees are going to flood into Europe and America in numbers that would make Syria look like a picnic party. Also, net migration from Mexico is now 0. You can solve the migrant problem by helping Central and Latin America develop and by defeating the Drug Cartels. Or if you prefer, with a wall on Mexico’s Southern border, because that’s where the migrants are coming from now.
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  881.  @SuperCrow02  Tibet is 90% Tibetan. Even Xinjiang has constant terrorist attacks despite being more throughly colonized.
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  882.  Luís Filipe Andrade  In math, a ‘singularity’ is generally considered to be an error. Computer tech isn’t even following Moore’s Law anymore.
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  883.  @RioX001  Helium 3 is overhyped, it’s only good because of not having the issue of neutron production. Considering we’re going to have to learn how to deal with that whether we like it or not to develop fusion in the first place, Helium 3 is pretty niche.
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  884. @anderson I mean, there is ONE other option. Build solar mirrors in space to restart the Sahara Monsoons, turning the desert back into grassland.
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  885.  StrategicFooyoo  Take a closer look at the numbers. https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports#:~:text=Exports%20in%20China%20averaged%20649.59%20USD%20HML%20from,February%20of%201983.%20source%3A%20General%20Administration%20of%20Customs. It's a 'record' off an overall stagnation in the numbers as companies start to divest from China despite China's Made in China 2020 plan attempting to increase trade margins on the high-end.
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  886.  StrategicFooyoo  China needs foreign currency (like any nation without a hard currency), and they’ve got that from exports and debt. Exports to the rest of the world collapse due to trade sanctions, and all of a sudden foreign currency debt levels explode, or the Chinese starve. (They have to import food to feed themselves despite using excessive inputs of pesticide and fertilizer, causing water pollution to get even worse.) Chinese foreign currency debt is 2 trillion. Or 13% of GDP. Most Western nations are inherently considered hard currencies and are trusted in international trade. Unlike the Yuan. The USA negotiating with the Fed is not necessarily default. Also, note that the president can appoint the Fed Chairman. Also, note that the reason the Fed doesn’t directly fund the US government has to do with legal handicaps the Federal Government gave the Federal Reserve*. It’s currently *illegal for the Fed to print money and just give it to the government (effectively being the same as a US Treasury banknote). Also, note every developed economy is attempting to fight *deflation* due to the baby boomer retirees. Instead of the inflation being pumped into QE, some could be given directly to the government. Also note that implementing a 5% VAT could raise $355 billion/year (excluding rebates, adding rebates would likely increase the real rate to something like 7%). https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0721_vat_for_us_gale.pdf A Carbon Tax would raise ~$250 billion/year. That would cut the deficit by 2/3rds. Both are supported by economists as good ways to reduce the deficit ASAP. Both could easily be implemented by a competent Democratic Administration (like the Clinton Administration did in the 90s). The reason the deficit is so high is the inability for Republicans to actually cut spending. Few nations have ‘funded’ its future liabilities. Not Canada. Not the EU. Not Japan. Not China. Not Russia. Literally every country WITH pensions has massive unfounded liabilities. https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/05/global-pension-timebomb-funding-gap-set-to-dwarf-world-gdp China in particular is nearly as bad as the US. If the US is fucked, so is everyone else. Assuming the CCP isn’t sacked after being in the world to the brink of a nuclear war? The biggest issue with ANY nuclear tactical use is that it risks easily turning into a nuclear war. China attacks American boats with nukes, the US retaliates by nuking Chinese shipyards and naval bases. The Chinese retaliate by attacking US cities, because they think those shipyards were too close to population centres or because hitting land was a red line. Then the world ends. There’s the other thing that if a world war actually started and tactical nuclear weapons became a risk, the US military would dust off SDI’s Brilliant Pebbles (which was actually somewhat affordable- a couple hundred billion), which would give the US all the leverage in a nuclear exchange. It hasn’t happened yet because that hasn’t been a threat since the USSR collapsed. Launch and satellite costs have also fallen since the 80s. Of course, so could China. But then, neither side can effectively use nuclear missiles to gain an advantage on each other.
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  887. StrategicFooyoo 1. China is a developing nation with less ability to pay. Absolute Debt does not matter, only relative debt. If I make $1000 a month and am in debt $10,000, I can probably pay it off. If I make $100 a month and am in debt $10,000, I’m screwed. Assuming you trust official public & private debt and GDP figures, China’s facing a financial crisis. If you don’t, they’re facing economic collapse. The US already had a financial crisis, and public&private debt-to-GDP has been on the decline since. Also, much of their debt is denominated in foreign currency. “Unfounded liabilities” are not debt. They’re designated future possible debt that would materialize if the US Government can’t find more money (taxes) cut benefits, or cut interest (ie. asking the Fed for money without going through the bond market, allowing for the direct printing of money). 2. China nukes US ships. Then what? You’ve basically set a precedent where the USA can now nuke all Chinese Naval bases (and ships), thus making the maneuver pointless. You’re still trapped. Geography also dooms it, because unless you also take out all American military bases in the 1st Island Chain, China, air power can also be used to interrupt shipping. That’s still not a guarantee, because you can use pretty much any flat, empty strip that’s long enough as an air strip. This discounts drone warfare, and the fact that US foreign and trade policy is in a state of disorganized, self-injuring flux as it reorganizes against China. That assumes the USA hasn’t already destroyed all those naval and coastal air bases, which tends to happen in a naval war.
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  888.  @williamchristy9463  Alaska isn’t. And honestly, it doesn’t change geopolitics the way he thinks it will. The US has decent access to the equatorial band. It’s Europe and Russia that have more problems getting to space (unless they reconquer Central Asia- Russia only launches from Baikonur because of the Soviet/National Security legacy.
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  889.  Lajd Hdhd  And the US Census Bureau considers Ted Cruz Hispanic. Honestly, it has more to do with integration/ generations more than anything. Pretty sure a First-generation Italian has as little in common in terms of identity as well. Also : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans “As of 2019, 58.5 million or 18% of Americans identified as Hispanic or Latino. Of those, 38.3 million, or 65.5% (11.8% of the total U.S. population), also self-identified as white.[12]”
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  890.  Lajd Hdhd  Depends. If you count Hispanics as White (considering the Census considers Ted Cruz as Hispanic (lol) and the fact that Hispanics are generally mixed-white anyways), the ethnic composition of Gen Z roughly parallels Gen X and Gen Y.
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  891.  @libatonvhs  I think it’s because Western culture is partially defined by it NOT being Muslim. Hence Bosnians vs Serbians, etc.
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  892. What if France’s Victorian Demographic Decline never occurred?
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  893.  @apathak34  Except the point is that they *don’t*. Biden is not going to be able to do that. You need someone who’s liked by the entire coalition, which is *hard*. And Biden is not it.
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  894.  @semigeo6911  Mars is extremely isolated from the world economy, and developing ANYTHING there requires insane amounts of capital. Neither are good for development. The soil is also toxic, and water is fairly difficult to get except in very specific areas (the poles) It’s going to be far cheaper to just not pollute as much on Earth. Light Industry is already fairly clean. It doesn’t even make sense to colonize outside of Earth’s Hill Sphere in our lifetimes. The economic argument doesn’t add up. The economic argument for space development even in Earth Orbit makes little sense. And no, I don’t take Starship seriously, especially not at its proposed numbers (130x below current launch costs/kg, LOLWUT?)
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  895.  @lilemont9302  Ever heard of Oil rigs?
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  896.  @nikomann88  Also, the pink waves probably did more long-term harm than the military dictatorships.
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  897.  @SacredCowStockyards  The number of countries have vastly increased though the 20th century...
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  898. The Japense Surrender had more to do with the communists than the bomb.
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  899.  @keshkeeper14  No.
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  900.  @drago939393  Yugo was still a communist nation. I’m not sure how or if the US would support a communist nation pre-Kissinger and Sino-Soviet split. I do, however, think Tito would eventually win- he could just hide in the mountains, and I can’t see Kruchev continuing a guerilla war to subdue a peripheral communist state. Maybe it would unify Yugoslavia enough to not die a horrible, painful death in the 90s.
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  901.  @foolsgold9993  Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus are very culturally similar aside from religion. It could work.
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  902.  @Schweizer_Politik  Whatifalthist already did a video on that scenario. Germany wins pretty hard.
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  903. Aran Butcher The Americans basically started funding the opposite side in the Mexican Campaign literally right after the Civil War. The French saw where things were going and gave up despite nearly conquering all of Mexico. It’s not even good for the French on the long run, the Americans, British and Germans can start a multi-front war against France in WW1. Remember who was in charge of foreign relations in Germany at the time. North and Northeastern Brazil are mostly multiracial, not Black. They had plenty of white settlers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilians They just mostly bred with Blacks and Natives. Which might end up happening here if they’re not being overly racist. Remember that they can’t use slavery in the late Victorian age and the Blacks were still fairly sparse. I was referring to places like Townsville. Not the most populous part of Australia, but not empty either. Remember that Australia had a fairly low number of migrants for its carrying capacity, so obviously everyone took the best land first. Libya and Eritrea are also as hot as West Africa, but had no issues finding Italian settlers. Libya is even worse because most of it is pretty marginal. Britain viewed France as a rival right up until Germany started being more of a threat. Maybe they could take Patagonia while Chile and Argentina were still disorganized, since it wasn’t actually under their control yet and thus the British may just let it slide. But it’s really only all that good for wool and has a population today of 2 million. South Island in NZ may also have been colonized if France was more organized. Which actually has good farmland, but it’s also tiny. It has only 1.16 million today, and even though it has an agricultural surplus, it can’t absorb all that many people. West Africa and the Sahel are breadbaskets if you have the infrastructure to support it.
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  904. Aran Butcher The Talleyrand Plan could happen, but it was a partition. West Africa as in all sub Saharan French Africa minus Madagascar and French Somaliland. Nigeria would be very useful to get due to being the head of the Niger River, though it had a population in 1900 of ~16 million, making it unlikely it could be majority white. Even the French would have difficulty swallowing it up. West Africa is comparably hot to Central and Northern Brazil or Australia year-round. Plenty of settlers there. Arizona too, at least in the summer. Britain had Latin America as a product dumping ground, they’re not just going to stand by and let the French take things if they keep taking land. And the Americans are not to be trifled with, even in the Reconstruction Era. The USA had the West’s largest economy by 1868 OTL. The population of the USA in 1900 was ~76 million. And they have home field advantage. If the Americans really put their weight against the French, they could win. The French ARE going to take the Monroe Doctrine very seriously. Because fighting the USA is not something they want to do. They’re as big a behemoth as France.
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  905.  @J_X999  Wait a minute, explain exactly how China had a 1 -Child policy until 2015, and still has a TFR of 1.6? There’s no evidence (not even by the CCP) for a massive surge in birth rates. We know the 1-Child policy was strictly enforced, with forced abortions and all.
    2
  906.  @CantoniaCustoms  There has been worse. The US went to war with itself for a reason, and it’s not because of competence or being highly united…
    2
  907. Not sure how China gets a massive empire when it’s supposed to shrink by half within 30 years.
    2
  908. Eugene InLaw They are. But they can't do anything significant about it when Chinese people literally have their life savings invested in RE, and municipal governments are making huge sums of money from the scheme.
    2
  909. BIRD MUST FEED And it still worked in the sense that it ended up reducing poverty and increasing overall prosperity (including the US to an extent, despite job losses in Industry-retooling tends to be a difficult process). The economic theories still held up. The problem is that cities and states, like in the initial wave of inner-city deindustrialization in the 60s and 70s, could not adapt. The most obvious early example of this is the fate of Detroit. Michigan as a whole did well while Detroit was unable to retool and collapsed. Not to mention those industries and businesses who benefited from free trade now have to deal with the consequences of its demise: https://shareblue.com/beer-industry-40000-jobs-trade-war/ The USA does subsidies its own industries and print enormous sums of money for various reasons. It can’t depreciate much due to its reserve currency status (along with the Euro). Complaining that this is unfair is kind of hypocritical- not to mention they increase government spending and reduce wages. Debt increased mostly out of tax cuts and spending (like the Bush tax cuts and 2008 stimulus package). The bubble economy is much more a cause of economic malaise in the USA, as debt and malinvestment wiped out people’s wealth.
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  910.  @1mol831  They enslaved way more people than anyone else, and kept slavery around despite having plenty of people around. Also, they chopped off slaves’ genitals so that they wouldn’t breed.
    2
  911. The closest Europe has been to being united is under the American Order, ironically.
    2
  912.  @kingdomcome46  Source? The CCP has been remarkably successful at crushing religion. I can’t see them becoming any significant % Christian unless the CCP vanishes.
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  913.  @jaketaber8553  Well, TBF, does Pheonix or Los Angeles have water?
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  914. One interesting side note when doing my own research: Japan’s birth rate is close to the highest amongst similarly industrialized Eastern Asian nations (despite a very aged population- the primary difference between Japan and everyone else is that Japan had a baby bust at the end of WW2 because everyone there thought their world was ending) and is (very slowly) increasing since 2015, with the possibility of reaching replacement by 2100 (which makes sense to eventually happen, as everyone who’s not willing to give birth die out or get replaced by cultural groups with higher birth rates - something which is kind of happening in Israel with the Orthodox Jews) Also, its economy is more adapted to bad demographics than anyone else in the region (or the world, really), and has a semi- independent foreign policy with the ability to do what it wants without American approval. So you could see Japan being able to carve somewhat of its own sphere of influence, especially if China ends up failing in its own bid to become superpower. The bad demographics also had pretty good timing for making Japan no longer a threat to the US right when Japan needed to ally against China. Japan could become a sleeper power/black swan power, becoming a major player, despite everyone counting it out as a lost power since the 90s, the same way people counted it out after its defeat in WW2. Either way, the 21st century is a bad time to be a Korean.
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  915.  Fuck YouTube  “Invasions and wars of conquest don’t happen anymore.” Sure they do, ask Russia.
    2
  916. Lol, Vancouver isn’t anywhere as bad as Los Angeles or other West Coast Cities in terms of homelessness There is a much stronger anti-crime system here. Things have gotten better since the early 2010s in terms of policy. Also, Prairie Canadian cities literally bus homeless to Vancouver (or they leave for Vancouver if they can’t find shelter) to avoid freezing to death in the winter.
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  917.  @AbeYousef  I think people kind of use the stereotypes to place BC in the liberal camp, especially if they’re Americans, who pretty much know BC as Downtown Vancouver and the touristy Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island (ie. the most liberal parts of BC), and extrapolate from Seattle. It’s especially obvious once he put Kelowna in the “Weed and Hippies Camp” (lol). A lot of the reason Washington is liberal are transplants from other states over the past 50 years (same as Colorado), which are disproportionally more Liberal than transplants to other states. No sane Californian or other resident from a liberal area ever heads to Vancouver for cheaper housing like they do in the rest of the Pacific Northwest (even if the border didn’t exist). So the leftwards-pushing effects of political migration into BC are not major. Also, the minor cities that usually are conservative strongholds despite the major cities are larger in BC.
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  918. Jason Belich Leningrad was already devastated following the long siege though.
    2
  919. It’s not social visibility that’s important to the Germans here.
    2
  920. What if Polk Suceeded?
    2
  921. ДАРТАНЬЯН He won’t choose Islam due to them being against Pork and Alcohol.
    2
  922. Also, France tried to colonize Korea and New Zealand.
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  923.  @ElGrandoCaymano  Doesn’t Bohemia have tons of coal?
    2
  924. The Netherlands had a supply line across all of Europe and through other empires. So...
    2
  925. How do you have primarily rural populations and still maintain a functional economy? You can’t have factories run remotely. We’ve seen post-pandemic most companies prefer people being in the office most of the time. So you’re basically suggesting poverty for everyone.
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  926. People don't really talk much about this because it's a difficult problem to solve, and there's no comparable movement like there is for Climate Change. There are a few things we know should increase birth rates (of those that have been tried) that should be feasible: 1. Solve the Housing Crisis. Duh. 2. Encourage people to get married. No marriage = no kids. 3. Ban dating apps so people actually have to go outside to find partners instead of being swarmed by hundreds of date requests (really hard to find a mate when you're competing in such a giant pool and people only choose the top 10%. Dating apps also suck generally.) 4. Pension reform to increase pension benefits based on the number of children they have. Children used to be a financial insurance policy, and this will make pensions more stable on the long run. 5. Stop trying to push women into full-time work and increase work benefits/flexibility for working mothers like Scandinavia does. 6. Ban abortion. Probably the most politically difficult, at least in the states. Most abortions are elective- so the vast majority of 'saved' babies just never end up being born (and a disproportionate number of the remainder have genetic defects), but still. One thing to note though: This is one case where technology might change things dramatically in the form of life extension. Since tech CEOs and billionaires want to live forever, this is one field that gets tons of funding. It's probably not one technology, but multiple, and will be disseminated in rich nations first. That would change these dynamics dramatically.
    2
  927.  @Web720  Technically, it’s been going on since the dawn of modern medicine, though biotech and genetic engineering has made unprecedented new strides as we get better at gene editing. We are at least starting to identify genes most associated with longer/shorter lifespans, which should buy a few decades of lifespan for most people.
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  928. bladefox2298 There was a lease agreement that was expiring... if Britain kept it it could result in war. Theoretically they could hand it over to Taiwan, but this would probably still result in war. There’s a reason the outcome was what it was in OTL despite the fact Hong Kongers didn’t want to join China.
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  929. Thomas Farley They can ferment revolt in Central Asia if there’s no cooperation. Also, Germany in the TL already vassalizes Russia West if the Urals, so why not? Also, situations like Castro or Tito surviving all those assassination attempts aren’t that likely. Siberia isn’t exactly Afghanistan, most of the population lives in a relatively narrow band near the Kazak and Mongol borders.
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  930. MS_Publisher Only Japan sent significant forces after the war, because they had selfish political aims.
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  931. Oh ff sake...
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  932.  @SeattlePioneer  Except none of those people failed because of internal revolts. They failed because everyone else ganged up on them to kill them. Napoleon failing is not a rebuttal of the idea Europe can be united.
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  933.  @rawshitirule  Because of lack of legal protection for anything. Expanding is difficult when you’re working under the table, and corruption tends to be much worse. Unemployment insurance is a thing, but it’s not great being unemployed either.
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  934.  @raydavison4288  According to Wikipedia, France has a taxation rate (all government levels, incl. EU) of 44% of GDP. The US has a taxation rate (all levels of government) of ~30%, with total spending ~38%. Both in the US have stayed mostly static at these levels since the Reagan administration (minus a few percent bump in spending post-08.)
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  935.  @itsirrelevant4565  Greece can leave the EU whenever they want and default on the euro debt if they want. No one is forcing them to stay.
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  936.  @georgios_5342  Bruh, no one got substantial reparations from WW2 but the Soviets. Poland deserves reparations too, and they got communist rule instead. Yeah, the Greek governments were doing a poor fiscal job in terms of spending. But Germany, Scandinavia, and France also had have higher welfare states as %GDP. This was a problem with both taxes and spending.
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  937.  @derFleetadmiral  Don’t call America when Russia comes knocking on the doors of Poland and the Baltics. Ukraine would have fallen by now if not for Western support- and there’s no reason Putin would stop there on the long-run if the West just showed their belly. Russia has to either be stopped in Kiev or Riga.
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  938.  @RA9U1  So basically you’re for federalism?
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  939.  @sinoroman  Opposite, birth rates helped lead to the world wars by needing a population release valve, and the boom in young 20-somethings leading to a lot of built-up nationalism in the population.
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  940. I’m fairly certain space colonization is unlikely within the century. The costs, even under the most optimistic estimates (ie. Elon’s Starship ‘aspirational’ launch costs) are too high for any private company to justify or finance- and there’s not enough of a public push to allow it to happen (as seen by NASA’s generally inflation-adjusted stagnant budget.) For example, even assuming a $2M launch cost for the Starship, just launching 1 Million to Mars (incl. 3 cargo flights/100) costs $60B. Going by F9 costs/kg, and extrapolating it out to Starship, you get something like $9 Trillion. That’s a completely useless range of costs, but even if we saw current launch prices drop by 10x (even under the most optimistic estimates, SpaceX only ever accomplished 2-3x cost reductions- under pessimistic estimates, within 20%<), that’s still $900B. Only a handful of companies, even under an extremely bloated capital market, are valued higher than a trillion. A government could finance it- but that can only happen if there’s near unanimous support or someone with a ton of political clout, popularity, and competence like a HW Bush/LBJ/Reagan, to force it though (HW tried in OTL, but it was fairly half-hearted.) We’ve been waiting for a century at this point. There is also little need for the resources of space in any near-term scenario. We’re not even remotely close to being K-1, and over 80% of the Earth’s surface is basically unmined. Just the sunlight falling on the Sahara dwarfs current world energy consumption- let alone that falling on the Pacific. There’s also actually likely overproduction of foodstuffs in the Americas. The human population are more likely to decrease in the medium term before they start increasing again.
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  941. Sweet Candy If that’s how you’re going to be, why did you even ask?
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  942. Sweet Candy Pretty sure the French went defensive because their demographics were shit and would have difficulty absorbing another war, so they wanted to minimize manpower losses. Yes, technically, if France was completely prepared and went against their own self-interest to take the initiative, they could have made an attack. And probably be stopped on the Rhine. There’s also a massive amount of strategic buffer on the west side of Germany and even though the Rhineland is important, it isn’t everything.
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  943. Sweet Candy The Allies weren’t ready to fight yet. The allied military buildup was largely after the Sudetenland Crisis.
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  944. Sweet Candy Worse defences. I already gave you the answer. The Germans hold the French back and conquer the Czechs swiftly. Basically a repeat of Poland but worse for Germany without more time to prepare and resources and equipment from the Czechs. The defences existed, but they probably wouldn’t save them, there was too much going against the Czechs.
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  945. Lugia https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/33v0k6/czech_border_fortifications_before_wwii_1350x800/ The fortifications on the Austrian border sucked. Not to mention the Allies weren’t planning on helping. They only need 1 breakthrough.
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  946. What is your viewpoint on projects like Brilliant Pebbles and the SDI program?
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  947. Eh, TBF, AOL bough out Warner in the worst corporate buyout of all time- basically making adaption to new things impossible. IBM is one of the largest companies in the world still.
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  948. What if the Ottoman Empire never existed?
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  949.  @Leocomander  If Puerto Rico had 15 million, would they not be able to apply for statehood? Probably, or at least it would be a political football. It’s a lot of potential voters.
    2
  950.  @Willty64  No, but the point is that it just made things harder. Puerto Rico isn’t a state, but it should be.
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  951.  @Willty64  Difference is that Puerto Rico was acquired as a colony, unlike Wyoming.
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  952. You forgot to address Canada and Greenland.
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  953.  @Newbmann  But compared to being a colony, the resources sent were pretty trivial.
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  954.  @Newbmann  From my understanding, Tributaries basically just had to send symbolic tributes to China. Which weren’t that much compared to their cast resources, and were mostly just ego-boosting. Way less than a British Protectorate, where Britain controlled your resources and foreign policy.
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  955.  @ParagonRex  The French has already left the continent by the time of the American Revolution (especially after Haiti was gone). All that’s left are a couple islands the USA could just buy up for a pretty penny. That leaves the British. There is the possibility the Americans could conquer Canada before the British can respond, and just hold it. They made it all the way to Quebec City during the Revolution, and the British aren’t going to do a repeat of the American Revolutionary War for *Canada*. At most, the British keep the Maritimes as a Naval Base, and America gets Western Canada and Ontario.
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  956.  @nobodyherepal3292  US Civil War, Spanish Civil War, and Chinese Civil War say otherwise (that one not that quick though, but definitely decisive) The chaos happens because no faction takes full control. Basically, you'd have to assume the Republicans immediately eat their own coalition after winning and cause even more chaos.
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  957.  @NeonAnimeDreams  Atrocities that mostly are being bitched by either powers that do far worse on a regular basis (China, Russia, Iran), or people who are ignorant about foreign policy. It's easy to be pacifist when you're not the one who has to clean up after other peoples' BS.
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  958.  @nomanor7987  Those are called Prisons. And people are in them because they actually did something wrong other than being in a certain ethnic group and the government is suspicious of them.
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  959.  @bobwinters5572  They're not going to be the first ones on the front lines, unless they have lots of experience and skills in fighting. We might see them, but probably more once the front lines settle down (if it's not a quick fight, like in Ukraine.)
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  960. Middle-Aged men do not have the psychological energy or drive to swell the ranks of paramilitaries.
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  961.  @landgabriel  The Carribean isn't that different from the Med in geographical terms.
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  962.  @nobodyherepal3292  Honestly, by the time Augustus took power, the civil wars so far were so destructive that people were mostly just sick of fighting. Also, the people who were trying to 'preserve' the republic were corrupt enough that the faith in the system was long dead.
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  963.  @Cneq  Yeah. Ironically, the fact the US is more multiethnic and multiracial makes a conquest of Mexico or the Caribbean much easier. Especially as Birth rates across most of Central and Latin America are stabilizing at around 2-ish. This means that the 2 main cultural reasons (not wanting to integrate Catholic people of mixed or inferior races, and not wanting to be ethnically dominated by a foreign group) to not taking over the entire North American region dies. South America is more iffy. Geography doesn’t make sense here, as these places are effectively an ocean away from the American mainland. Also, someone like Argentina or Brazil might stop eating rocks and actually become a major power here.
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  964.  @danielkelly8870  You're basically describing a economically left-wing, culturally right-wing system. Like Latin America, but without the corruption and incompetence.
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  965.  @michaelweiske702  Well, from what I can tell, it's more like 'never-Palins'. Sarah Palin isn't popular in Alaska and has been out of politics for over a decade. Even then, she got the greater % of the vote and would have won without ranked-choice voting, indicating that the populists are probably the dominant faction. The 'never-Trumpers' exist, but not enough to provide much incentive for the right to continue to radicalize. Alaska is also moving left federally (not at the governor/state level, however), for many reasons- in part because of (ironically) population decline, partially because the Alaskan right-wing hates their federal election candidates. Being a centrist like Murkowski doesn't work anymore. The 'never-Trump' faction exists, but so does the 'only-Trump- faction.
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  966.  @michaelweiske702  Hey, remember when Virigina elected a Republican to Governor and New Jersey went within 3 points in 2021? And how both were actually important elections rather than a temporary house appointment? And the reason is that the vote was split. Also, probably Sarah Palin.
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  967. Yes, the Right does have internal conflicts. The issue is that socialist/leftist movements are much worse at this. The only time that internal conservative divisions actually changed things in recent years was when Trump sabotaged the 2020 Georgia Senate Race. The Democrats can’t get any legislation, on the other hand through, despite controlling all branches of government.
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  968. Does the Right Wing want to create a racial hierarchy? No? Then it’s not Apartheid. Basically no one on the right (aside from the very fringe neo-Nazi and alt-right) want to get rid of minorities or segregate society.
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  969.  @kauswekazilimani3736  To what? Yeah, you can trade, but they only trade if you have something to trade with . Considering you're going to be trading for everything while the economy is in freefall due to the war, things are probably not going to go great. Also, water usually isn't traded overseas. Water is the reason, for example, that the battle of Singapore ended so quickly. The British gave up as soon as the water supply was cut off.
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  970. ​ @alehaim  How well has that midterm prediction going? :/ RCP has the GOP winning both chambers with a healthy lead. Also, Trump got within the margin of error of 2016. Definitely the election denial didn't help him much in terms of votes, but considering 2020 was everyone who hated Trump vs those who didn't, he did surprisingly decent.
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  971. How much influence do the Never-Trumpers have in the party? Seriously. Most of the people who voted for impeachment against Trump are gone (minus Mitt Romney). There IS no more internal crisis/civil war in the GOP. All of them have been kicked out by the party already.
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  972. 30:30 What TF did you say?
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  973. That’s probably a different video, and would require him to probably make his chosen successor co-emperor.
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  974. You can fund another war, just cut some social spending or remove the Medicare Premium Cap. The entire Ukraine aid over the last year is ~$100B or so. In comparison, total US gov revenues for 2023 are around $4400B. And we need part of that money spent to keep the domestic defence-industrial base anyways sustainable (pre-Ukraine, a major worry was running out of supplies due to low stockpiles due to low defence-industrial production). Politically is a different question, but Ukraine is the only one where public polling has gone negative, and probably due to the stalemate.
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  975. Mean Max https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-technology-theft-fbi-biggest-threat China is responsible for 90% of IP theft.
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  976.  @JennaJennaJen  Yes, it’s not inverted, but there’s no longer as much of a reason to try to up your credit score. Subsidizing loans to people with poor ability to pay the loans is not a recipe for success, even if it helps poor people on the short term. This was one of the factors behind the 2008 crisis (along with bad regulation, easy monetary policies from the Fed…) And yes, increasing taxes tends to discourage people from working more (or at least investing.) This is why economists generally tend to dislike income taxes. It’s also the problem with some welfare schemes, where it can be better (or at least not really worth it) to not work than it is to get paid minimum wage and get taxed on it.
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  977. Now talk about RFK Jr.
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  978.  @starryrz9783  Huh? I’m looking at the NYT trend map for 2022 house, and VA trended right. VA is one of the most anti-Trump ‘swing states’. There’s been limited demographic shift since 2014, when Republicans got within 1 point of winning the Senate there. They just really despise Trump. Basically the opposite of the Rust Belt.
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  979. She can’t, she can only be impeached, which is impossible unless the Dem legislature turns on her.
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  980. Raj ‘having its old borders’ also includes Malaysia, Burma, and the UAE, btw. They were administered from New Delhi and were split off during or before independence.
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  981.  @wasdwasdedsf  These are the same polls that show Trump winning. Vivek does far worse than Trump. But sure, they’re rigged. LOL. This is the sort of cope that DeSantis influencers use. Trump generally tends to straddle the line on the most controversial issues dividing the GOP (like foreign policy), so he can get away with this. I heard the same BS too from the right after Roe, blaming literally everything BUT abortion messaging, only to finally realize that maybe not going hardline on abortion was a good political move… the right ignored polling, and it took losing a lot for them to finally get their head out of their ass.
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  982.  @wasdwasdedsf  Pure Delusion.
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  983.  @VioletDeathRei  Kind of a bad analogy, but destruction is a natural part of the lifecycle of cities. Most buildings don’t survive forever (at least in American cities) unless they’re very important or beloved or historically important. So if you’re using that standard, yes, we blew up buildings a few % faster than normal for a few years. So you want perfectly stable prices? That would completely break the economic system and require an unwinding of debt across all parts of the economy (public and private.) Basically, like Islamic or Medieval finance. No mortgages, or business loans. Inflation is the main reason debt payments doesn’t consume the entire money supply (paying down debt deflates the currency.) Deflation also isn’t good for the economy either. Also, historical avg. inflation in the US is 3%, which we are already back to.
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  984. He’s not intending to win. We know that most of the Wall Street types are unhappy with either party right now, so they want to put up a ‘centrist’ political movement to get leverage instead. This is No Labels. They have been partially unsuccessful so far. However, with Manchin, the idea would be to take votes as a third party and threaten the other two parties if they don’t cooperate.
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  985. Trump already signed an executive order on this back in 2019. The universities went back on it after Trump left office.
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  986. If there’s no chance it works, then why impeach? It just makes Biden look vindicated when he inevitably wins the impeachment battle in the Senate. McCarthy is slow-walking this so that the Hunter story stays in the news cycle, and thus, he can gather as much information as possible and send it to the media. This is a PR battle. McCarthy isn’t stupid.
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  987. Then split the vote and continue losing. 😂
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  988. “Mike Johnson will be a better speaker than McCarthy.”
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  989. Hopefully he cracks 15%.
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  990. Worse since GDP per capita has been stagnant since 2015.
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  991. Please don’t name the attacker.
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  992. This is why they aggregate.
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  993. Quick, start indicting Democrats for stupid bullshit! We need Florida DAs to invite Hillary over the emails. 😂
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  994.  @johncameron2241  The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is actually pretty blue for how rural it is. And it’s too small to be split into a new state, with fewer people than Wyoming. It has to be attached to either Michigan or Wisconsin.
    2
  995.  @johnathin0061892  Well, the issue with Social Security and Medicare could be fixed by removing the payment cap and reducing benefits for high-income earners. The issue is lack of political will from both parties to undertake the necessary reforms.
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  996.  @PoetofHateSpeech If you’re not a Slav, maybe. 😂
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  997. The irony was that there WAS a black dynasty in Egypt, the Nubian Dynasty (25th).
    2
  998. Well, aside from AZ and NV, most of the swing states are in the Rust Belt, where the GOP genuinely DID underperform for reasons other than voter fraud, even in non-competitive Ohio and Indiana. The Wisconsin electoral system was partially purged by a grassroots voter roll certification organization. It was the only state the GOP did ok in the Rust Belt, (the GOP only lost the governor’s seat, and gained WI-03.)
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  999. Do it. Let’s see if you can win elections.
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  1000.  @ibnkhaldoun4319  Opening trade relations with China made sense at the time, as it split the Communist block. The problem is that it continued into the 2000s, after the Soviets fell.
    2
  1001. Just Partition South Africa by splitting off the Cape, and let the black section starve.
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  1002. No, but upper unpopularity would make it more difficult for anyone running after her to win.
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  1003. If she gets impeached, the NM GOP would have to truly f-k up to not win the election. The problem is that the NM GOP is a s-show, and has been since at least 2018. There’s tons of articles showing how the party has difficulty finding candidates. Look at the current candidate list for the New Mexico Senate Race on the Republican side. 😢
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  1004. Remember: The polls by partisan leaning show a 10% approval for Biden by the GOP voters, 30% amongst independents, and >60% by Democrats. Biden will not fall below his 40% floor unless the Dems backstab him.
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  1005. Christie will join No Labels as their candidate along with Manchin as a running mate. His closing speech in the third presidential debate seems to indicate this the same way it has for Manchin, and both have been involved with No Labels heavily.
    2
  1006.  @retromario96  Scotland is a country, just not an independent one.
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  1007.  @debanydoombringer1385  I don’t think that’s the case unless an impeachment is likely to succeed (as it would mean a significant % of Democrats would be willing to backstab Biden.) If Biden’s approval drops below its soft floor of 40% (basically all Dems + Dem leans by polling data), then I can see it happening.
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  1008.  @herlescraft  Post-WW2, no one was willing to fight on the continent anymore.
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  1009. Because Ukraine itself is divided on the question. Overall, the nation is divided in roughly half between a pro-Russian and anti-Russian faction, with the East being pro-Russian and the West being pro-EU.
    2
  1010.  @ewoudalliet1734  Right, and before Ukraine, everyone was still wondering why NATO needed to exist, and the US and EU were on the verge of a trade war. Technically, the EU is a huge economy. It’s also not easy for it to actually mobilize its resources easily. The current division over pro/anti US is proof of that. Splitting the US means a confused foreign policy. Splitting up the EU means it can cease to exist.
    2
  1011.  @poucine832  Yeah, because the Russian stuff is way more effective, right?
    2
  1012.  @julianshepherd2038  The wind that Germany has been putting in really helped, didn’t it?
    2
  1013.  @Random-ob7dc  I presume you haven’t seen the pew Research polls in different countries on China? Only MENA and sub Saharan Africa like China at this point.
    2
  1014.  @Random-ob7dc China doesn’t want to alienate developed economies? They already have!
    2
  1015.  @absolootely2571  Assuming the Russians abide by the treaty…
    2
  1016. Zip Zipper State Run? Is Disney State Run? Because they own ABC.
    1
  1017. woodensurfer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization Both the KMT and CCP were obsessed with making everyone sign up to be ‘Han’. In reality, ‘Han’ as as artificial an ethnic identity as ‘American’. They’re not genetically homogenous (there are significant genetic differences between North and South China, largely related to surviving tropical diseases) linguistically homogenous (https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=%2FkTCTj%2FL&id=A1516F0989CB1C11E595910E28105F83FBCF320A&thid=OIP._kTCTj_Ljm14KI5ErNw9fAHaGS&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvku23lrh8i921.png&exph=1700&expw=2000&q=linguistic+map+china&simid=608014657379565992&ck=CAA105C5376AF551DAA416D06BB90814&selectedindex=2&qpvt=linguistic+map+china&form=EX0023&vt=4&sim=11&adlt=demote&shtp=GetUrl&shid=26de95fe-f00d-48ae-98fa-66e7f9918741&shtk=TGFuZ3VhZ2UgTWFwIE9mIENoaW5hICgyMDAweDE3MDApIDogTWFwUG9ybg%3D%3D&shdk=Rm91bmQgb24gQmluZyBmcm9tIHd3dy5yZWRkaXQuY29t&shhk=f3Q%2B4h7LfQrB3eUEEqDWz9Z7%2BulSwZx3HNqeELh8sK4%3D&shth=OSH.eIU703dkhr22f4xH9VLMBA) or culturally homogenous (again, North- South divide- the most obvious example is differences in Cuisine). Seriously, in Europe, these sorts of differences would usually create a new nation, and ethnicities have been fractured from super-ethnicities like ‘Han’ or almost fractured on less (Balkans, Ukraine, Scotland/Ireland).
    1
  1018. Deno Moto No, the estimates are 1-1.5 mil, which is around 10% of the population being kept by China. Second, the number of Blacks in the US prison system are about 500,000, or about 1.35% of the Black population in the USA. That assumes prisons in the USA are worse than the re-education camps.
    1
  1019. chip Yep.
    1
  1020. Bart Mika The Germans were destroying the balance of power in Europe and was the only threat to British dominance after Russia showed how incompetent it was (and other than the USA). Since war with the USA is nearly impossible-
    1
  1021. Stephen Jenkins ROC=Taiwan...
    1
  1022. Morigu “Real Socialism has never been attempted”
    1
  1023. If they are killing each other in hugely disproportionate amounts, yes, they go to jail disproportionately. Drugs are not as big of a crime as murder for a reason.
    1
  1024. And land.
    1
  1025.  @jpm1544 I don’t like Vance, but Vance > Harris in terms of intelligence. He won’t be running for re-election either. Because he can’t.
    1
  1026. Don’t go to college then. Plenty of good jobs without needing a 4-year if you’re willing to do manual labour.
    1
  1027.  @masx4468  It started off based on a Marxist framework.
    1
  1028. It's still in the early stages of development and exploration.
    1
  1029. The South China Sea isn't really very important compared to Taiwan.
    1
  1030. A US President could never justify that to his own people. Remember that people genuinely thought that the Soviets would take over the world in the early days of the Cold War. The only times (2) we got close to a nuclear strike involved the Soviets striking first.
    1
  1031. Basically, from Twitter, South Africa needs to solve the HIV crisis from killing so many young people before it has a real chance at being a player.
    1
  1032.  @danielschwarze781  That’s what happens when you start a war with no preparation or immediate justification.
    1
  1033. It's not even most of MAGA, it's a fraction of the MAGA members of Congress (so a fraction of a fraction.) Most of even them have enough brains to not have signed up to kicking out McCarthy, which is what started this whole mess.
    1
  1034.  @EnderViBrittania  Too bad the US government hasn't bothered to actually either build bunkers, or Brilliant Pebbles'-style systems... :/ Mostly because of $$$$/
    1
  1035.  @warhorse03826 popular vote is not EV.
    1
  1036.  @maflones lol 😂
    1
  1037. He didn’t vote in the primary…
    1
  1038.  @jessicali8594  It never existed.
    1
  1039.  @prometheusjackson8787  They might get kicked from NATO? Then again, they’ve been de facto shunned from NATO ever since Erdogan, so…
    1
  1040.  @lorrainearmstrong7587  The gas or oil pipeline? The Oil pipeline to Kitimat was never approved, the gas one was, but is being sabotaged by Native Activists. The Trans-Canada pipeline is still being upgraded. Without a Vancouver refinery.
    1
  1041. Recksz N Kingz Activities #RKA T.V. He’s like Anakin.
    1
  1042. Garrr Lick Average Wages in China are lower, so healthcare is more expensive in relative terms.
    1
  1043. ICEBERG ZHANG Ancient, as in 1948?
    1
  1044. Attitude Because it’s an open secret this is part of a power game.
    1
  1045. Jason Jean Because that’s not a fair judgement when they hadn’t gained independence. An accurate judgement would be their colonizer’s claims to the South China Sea, which would be inherited (in theory) by the decolonized nations (France claimed the area). Also, the 9- dash line predates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is the legal basis generally accepted as how oceanic claims should be created. The Chinese don’t accept this, so they’re not even really playing the same game as everyone else to begin with.
    1
  1046. jyashin Well, Yeah, but that’s like saying North and South Korea aren’t separate Nations because they are technically still at war and both claim all of Korea. I’m going off the actual practical situation right now. Taiwan is not under control of the CCP.
    1
  1047. Max Raider Are you referring to Apes or Malaysians? Somehow, I doubt if you’ve met these any of these ‘3rd worlders’ in person.
    1
  1048. gladifly I’m not denying that you’re Caucasian, I’m denying that Homo Sapiens originated from Europe. Don’t strawman me. Funny how your comment has 0 likes. You want to play this game?
    1
  1049. gladifly I take that you're not American?
    1
  1050. LittleFilms Korean here. Fuck off. Or do I have to remind you about the phenomenon of Yellow Fever?
    1
  1051. TBH, a Lawyer is SUPPOSED to defend her Client at all costs, Paul. This is not surprising at all.
    1
  1052. HOW THE FUCK IS THE POPE... STILL THE POPE???
    1
  1053. Steve Stevenson 'According to Bill Warner' How about you read the Quran yourself?
    1
  1054. Tripp Fields So you don't want freedom of speech? Religious control was historically used to control people's speech and thoughts. Which is why When religious diversity came to Europe in the form of Protestantism, it resulted in a war more devastating to Europe than WW1 or 2. Yes, people can practice death cults, for the same reason Neo Nazis should be allowed to exist.
    1
  1055. Bass cannon Jake So is Shintoism, arguably more so. It's a religion. The difference between cult and religion is the existence of god.
    1
  1056. Ducky1521 Wait what? The left loves to criticize Isreal?
    1
  1057. +VICTOR KENOSIS who's huma?
    1
  1058. The USA will make a reason, don't ya worry about that...
    1
  1059. +John Miller That energy.
    1
  1060. +samanthapayne77 who's that?
    1
  1061. +Peter Popoff A 747 can autopilot, and even land by itself.
    1
  1062. Then you support ww3, because China has a mutual defense agreement with DPRK.
    1
  1063. TheBestYoutubeChannelEverTimesInfinity Such socialist nonsense will never work...
    1
  1064. Also, Venus.
    1
  1065. Incredulous I didn't say there was no concensous, I said we don't KNOW the concencous... geez. "That does not mean that GHG emissions drive climate change. It's possible that variations in Earth's orbital distance (i.e. Milankovitch cycles) drive the climate ENTIRELY, with GHG emissions having ZERO effect. It's up to scientists to prove which one it is. Why were the temps on Earth in the distant past higher than today, with NO man-made emissions? Natural GHG emissions, orbital variations and (possibly) sun activity." The fuck is the difference between man and natural GHGs? They are the same gases, CO2, CH4, etc... You said GHGs don't drive climate change, but you contridicted yourself. Also, the variations in Earth's Orbital distance are counted in the Sun's heat load... It's still higher than it should be. And the temperature of Earth being higher in the distant past is soomething completely different, and would not be possible if it was only the Sun's fault, and the Earth was in teh same orbital distance. Look: "Young Sun Paradox". " >"it would overturn decades of climate and Earth science" No. Milankovitch cycles and their influence on climate have been known since 1920s." Bullshit, those cycles have to do with the interglacial and ice age cycles. WE should be ebbing into an ice age right now because of this- the opposite is actually happening right now. That fact is also why there was the global cooling panic in the past. Not anymore. ">"Doesn't mean the science behind it is not true." Child, stop shifting the burden of proof. It's up to IPCC etc to prove their claims. Political agreement to implement the costly policies proposed by supporters requires a HARD proof. It's yet to be presented. "Doesn't mean it's not true" is not a proof." except there IS HARD PROOF. IPCC is not the only organisation. For example, NASA. If it was just political, it should have been denying climate change when Bush was in office... http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Climate change being fake and climate change being overestimated are two different things...
    1
  1066. Incredulous "1) there is no scientific consensus on this matter (don't even bring up that debunked 97% number)" There is no concensous saying that climate scientists disagree, either. No one really know s the real concensous, so it's not really an argument. "2) science does not proceed by "consensus", but by data which currently support either view depending on interpretation" Exactly. Your point?  I never made that argument. "3) this allegedly scientific matter is heavily politicized (left vs right)" Didn't have to be. But one side went all radical with Global Warming Solving, the other straight up denied it. Thus, we have the current situation. When it started, it had nothing to do with politics. Just a simple logical move of GHGs increase global temperature above what it would otherwise be (Earth would be uninhabitable if there were no GHGs in the atmosphere) > We are emitting GHGs by the process of combustion, much more than nature normally does > Man Made Climate Change. If there was another explanation for Earth's abnormally high temperature than thhere would be with just the Sun emitting heat, tell me. It's pretty big of a scientific revelation, because it would overturn decades of climate and Earth science. "4) It's proposed economic solutions (carbon taxes) raise doubt about ANY claim w/r to its actual economic goal." Doesn't mean the science behind it is not true.
    1
  1067. Incredulous  More like the other way around. Do you need sources?
    1
  1068. Incredulous The latter. It sucks that so many libertarians refuse to believe in Global Warming despite mountains of evidence. Rational indeed...
    1
  1069. ***** The Irony....  I would be able to smell it from Canada.
    1
  1070. Merl Ball no, if they didn't, Merkel would be ousted already.
    1
  1071. Numan Harith gladly.
    1
  1072. This is why we need human Genetic modification
    1
  1073. Fetishes are one thing. This is another.
    1
  1074. This is just 'normal' fetishism. Nothing here to see folks. The internet only allows for their propagation.
    1
  1075. Stahlherz-Succubus not yet
    1
  1076. when maury says you are not the father it's both
    1
  1077. Slawomir Chmielewski nope, asian
    1
  1078. rafaelnubile I would say glass towers look pretty good- though those are almost always the expensive ones in the city centre.
    1
  1079. Trucker Josh VLOGS You know, Bush IIs wet dreams
    1
  1080. Trucker Josh VLOGS The Afghanistan and Iraq wars?
    1
  1081. ***** To be fair, Trump underpaid his contractors consistently. Plus, Trump University. He got fined multiple times for that shit, but--- doesn`t change the fact he`s a asshole.
    1
  1082. Don't worry, they can force migrants into Eastern Europe by embargoing all trade to the EU, and witholding debt.
    1
  1083. turd burgler Largely due to external factors than Genetics. Because if we say it's all genetics, Jews are the master race
    1
  1084. Assuming another recession doesn't hit, and turns the EU powder keg into a civil war in the next few years. I guess most people here don't follow financial news. Because it's overdue to happen.
    1
  1085. Gianni Errera a lot of boats come from turkey to Greece. And most go to Sicily because it's the "established route" from N. Africa, but Algeria/Morocco to Spain and Tunisia to Corsica are the next two obvious routes. Or Libya to Greece. Though Greece already hates the EU and is in the verge of complete collapse.
    1
  1086. Rio Yeah, Idubbz is the new Leafy. The problem with being the buster if everyone is that it makes you the target of everyone. That used to be Leafy. It's really a matter of time before someone does to Idubbz what he did to Leafy. :P idubbz is overrated right now in the same sense Leafy was back in the day.
    1
  1087. the sims lacks power ups...
    1
  1088. Sunny Jim Perfect spheres are impossible because Atoms will vibrate slightly...
    1
  1089. It's not like anyone will ever find the last digit of pi... just as far as anyoje bothers to go.
    1
  1090. maybe it's an irrational number... meaning there is no end.
    1
  1091. Virtueman1 There is evidence, about as much as that for we being in a simulation. No one will truely no for sure, because no one can prove it.
    1
  1092. ***** Or maybe the Simulation wanted to keep you alive? Or you just got lucky?
    1
  1093. It's like looking for god. We may never know the real answer. There is some evidence for both, but nothing conculsive.
    1
  1094. Singularity OH MY GOSH THIS SHIT AGAIN?!?! STOP INFECTING MY NOTIFICATIONS
    1
  1095. it's a hypothesis, not a theory. BIG difference.
    1
  1096. EastCoast Podcast *Thatcher
    1
  1097. +James Bond Actually, there is evidence those pills sometimes make things worse...
    1
  1098. So, who is going to become the Democratic leader when Hillary is hospitalized from seisures?
    1
  1099. I think #HillaryforHospital is a good hashtag for the more faint of heart who don't want to put #Hillaryinprison...
    1
  1100. TheThrashyOne Source?
    1
  1101. It vanished too quickly.
    1
  1102. xCkillaxC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Rapprochement
    1
  1103. He was a 2-term governor…
    1
  1104. Coman Rabiot He never said that.
    1
  1105. Mexico has similar geography is is much wealthier (at least Northern Mexico.)
    1
  1106. The people who voted Brexit were generally lower-class. So they’re pretty happy by that arrangement. 😂
    1
  1107. Divij Shah Develop breeder reactors.
    1
  1108. Divij Shah How fast? 20 years? We’ll probably have decent fuel cells by then. And it takes much longer to build a nuclear power plant than a wind turbine.
    1
  1109. Aussie Boy The USA is against illegal immigration. And that ‘phase’ has kind of passed since the border situation with Mexico and Islamic Terrorism is calmer now. Even Trump doesn’t care about the Wall anymore.
    1
  1110. Roman Bukins The big issue runs with Urban space. Cars are extremely space- inefficient and thus require building cities for cars, not humans. This has a ton of knock-on effects, like not being able to put businesses within a convenient distance to where people live. You can’t have a vibrant town center when half of your land is consumed by parking lots.
    1
  1111. Phyarth The Streetcar conspiracy is not taken seriously by any transit experts. Truth is, streetcars we’re just outdated. The fall of American Transit is more multi-layered and cultural than that.
    1
  1112.  @commie5211  Yes, and the Soviet Bloc only used the rubble within their system, and used dollars outside it.
    1
  1113.  @Sadoyasturadoglu  There is already the Organization of Turkic States.
    1
  1114.  @Sadoyasturadoglu  When, 'common union'? Are you talking about the personal union between Hannover and Britain? That was mostly just in name only and due to Henry 8th's lack of remaining heirs- the British basically just let the Hanoverians do whatever they wanted and ended the union without much resistance.
    1
  1115.  @Sadoyasturadoglu  So is Britain and Germany, but does that mean they should unite?
    1
  1116. Uryendel Not as expensive as today- but still expensive.
    1
  1117. Joao vMR Do you have proof Simon is a billionaire? Because that’s be amazing if he was.
    1
  1118.  @TimCheong  Does it take to account internal security spending?
    1
  1119. Zeath The Grim Nice edge Pepe.
    1
  1120. Johan sigurdson Say that to the 10% of France that was Muslim pre- migrant Crisis.
    1
  1121.  @frogandspanner  The empire was the free trade zone.
    1
  1122.  @xtc2v  The EU.
    1
  1123.  @Joel86543 Chinese housing is super costly…
    1
  1124. Thing is that owning your own currency means you pay interest to yourself, making public debt much less of a problem.
    1
  1125.  @starkiller578 They’re not just Latinos passing through the border now.
    1
  1126. Nigel has retired.
    1
  1127. Kay y. Hong yes, because it’s viable to compare a century of being a world power to a decade.
    1
  1128. AntonioR Software Japan was another trade conflict like this and was used to leverage a deal with Japan, which happened, and the tariffs were lowered. If you’re going to use that as an excuse... and Tarriffs actually are just a form of taxes, not direct involvement in Corporate affairs. Indirect involvement in the US is also just normal regulations mostly. In China, that often means bribery. Note that China also puts tariffs on American goods, so the feeling is mutual. China also bans way more foreign products. You can’t buy a foreign video game console in China, for instance.
    1
  1129. Chinese Companies are notorious for massive government influence because they rely on the Government to survive (or be eliminated from the market)
    1
  1130. Dan Strick NATO prevents Russia from getting too aggressive in Eastern Europe.
    1
  1131. billy jenkins TBF, GE did not see their financial division being such a huge problem. Big mistake on their part, but it’s understandable why they acted the way they did.
    1
  1132.  @youngz13o  Overall trade fell dramatically. The issue with China is that they already fired their one main shot in the Trump tariff fight- agricultural goods- which is why the nominal deficit increased. The trade war was pretty tame in comparison to eg. sanctions vs Russia.
    1
  1133. un_COG He IS a lefty.
    1
  1134. Josh G I think it wouldn't on the short term, since the science funding Brits get will have to be renegotiated-though in cases like ESA, may still be able to get the funding either way because EU membership is not required.
    1
  1135.  @drumpfdon760  Not any more, due to sanctions.
    1
  1136. The Corn Lord lost his position due to that, however.
    1
  1137. Lol, did you even watch the video?
    1
  1138.  @donnydrumpf9563  This channel showed that China’s forex reserves are much smaller than the headline number because Chinese companies pool their forex into the pool.
    1
  1139.  @augustus331  Near Zero? You want a source for that? Note that cost reductions for Solar and Wind have largely plateaued in recent years. Advancements are being made, but it’s not really a ‘singularity’ situation.
    1
  1140. @_____ Didn’t Trump do a regulatory purge in office? Also, regulations are a double-edged sword. They have some positive economic effects (eg. Environmental regulations cutting health costs.)
    1
  1141. Grayson Youngman Like a decade ago?
    1
  1142.  @yamuiemata  Do you realize how much of government debt is just governments pretending to owe money to themselves? (Central bank-held debt interest is paid back to the government.)
    1
  1143. mark jones Neither did Ebay, Twitter, Amazon, etc. in their early years- they were financed 100% by the tech bubble. Elon Musk is doing this because he can get away with it because he has been able to build up a sort of 'fanbase' and also convince investors to invest in Tesla even though it dhas never made a dime. Plus, Quantitative Easing meant that investors had WAY too much money to work around with regardless.
    1
  1144. Philip Reynolds Hey, I was disgreeing with the other guy
    1
  1145. HistorywithNathe lol
    1
  1146. Sultan Samurott Well, that alliance didn’t last, did it? Reality is, they’re not really inclined to join forces.
    1
  1147. Sultan Samurott As far as I know, the Ottomans at this point we’re basically subservient to the Western powers. They’re unlikely to join the Soviets, considering you know...Russians. If Iran goes into revolution, the Turks are basically a bulwark against them. Unless they join the Nazis. Though that probably results in a Nazi Victory TL.
    1
  1148. Sweet Candy hi
    1
  1149. Beau Kennedy The British mostly just wanted to keep Fort Vancouver on the West- that was the Center of power in the region before the Partition. Like 53'40 or fight, I don't think the British would go to war when they got most of what they wantes anyways.
    1
  1150. The Nova renaissance All the people who have conquered China are horse warriors for a reason.
    1
  1151. Johny Ricco Eh, those sorts of things don’t stop Iran from trying to set up puppets in the Middle East.
    1
  1152. Kowalski From Nebraska No, because Imperialistic societies are not necessarily capitalistic and vice versa. Ask how Hungarians and Poles felt about being under the Warsaw Pact. Capitalism is an economic system. Imperialism is a foreign policy objective. Lumping them together like how you’re doing makes no sense to me. I know leftists often lump the two together, but they aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be treated as such. And I see we at least agree on the blanket support part. Note that most healthcare systems, including the American one, are highly socialistic or at least government-guaranteed. Even Singapore has a government-guaranteed healthcare system. Healthcare is a bad place to compare competencies for Capitalism vs Socialism.
    1
  1153. Medical Art Not really, that was just Britain. Portugal, Germany, Belgium, etc had different flavours of colonialism, and what happens to China was kind of ignored.
    1
  1154. KZN?
    1
  1155.  @zuthula3847  Links don’t work here, but temperatures have been declining (slowly) since the Medieval Warm Period until around 1700, and this is part of a larger super cycle that goes on to before the development of agriculture. North Africa used to be warmer and wetter, for instance, hence why it was the breadbasket of Rome.
    1
  1156.  @bomba7197  In isolated parts of the world.
    1
  1157. @Metsarebuff 22 The dominant power at the time was Goguryeo, which extended deep into Manchuria- so perhaps Korea would be even bigger because of Northwards Imperialism?
    1
  1158.  @Hysteresis.Actual  Except no one in the developed world eats 1200 calories. Are the excess jobs from the excess calories ‘unproductive’ because they’re ‘made up’ because people want to eat more? The economy being ‘made up’ is not an economic model. The economy is an abstract concept used to describe transactions between people for goods and services. As a result, it is ‘made up’. It exists in the same way trust ‘exists’. The financial sector does provide value for the real economy, though, by financing the real economy. I don’t know. I feel like you focus too much on what’s ‘productive’, when from the beginning of human civilization, we’ve basically used marketing to ‘create’ demand out of thin air. Were building cathedrals and fighting wars (and the spears for those wars) ‘productive?’ Objectively, no. But they happened because of the ‘marketing’ from kings and religion. Perhaps that’s wrong, but it’s kind of normal for humans to ‘create’ demand.
    1
  1159. Jackson Wu I’m going to respond to the rest later. I was thinking more urban landscapers. Horticulture is the wrong term. I think it’s ridiculous to act as if all (or even most) services are ‘useless’ because marketing exists. You could say that for every economic sector, and that the entire economy is an unproductive fraud because marketing exists and people are convinced to buy things they don’t need. :/ People in welfare states already are supposed to have enough of a safety net to ‘decouple’ income from work (at least enough income to live). It solves the mental problems related to poverty, but not joblessness. Again, it doesn’t solve the root problem behind it. People not working who don’t want to work still cause societal problems and have psychological issues relating to lack of work.
    1
  1160. Tall Jakee No, it is. https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=%2FkTCTj%2FL&id=A1516F0989CB1C11E595910E28105F83FBCF320A&thid=OIP._kTCTj_Ljm14KI5ErNw9fAHaGS&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvku23lrh8i921.png&exph=1700&expw=2000&q=linguistic+map+china&simid=608014657379565992&ck=CAA105C5376AF551DAA416D06BB90814&selectedindex=2&qpvt=linguistic+map+china&form=EX0023&vt=4&sim=11&adlt=demote&shtp=GetUrl&shid=06c9e5aa-7f0f-43d7-bd71-d584ca1260f3&shtk=TGFuZ3VhZ2UgTWFwIE9mIENoaW5hICgyMDAweDE3MDApIDogTWFwUG9ybg%3D%3D&shdk=Rm91bmQgb24gQmluZyBmcm9tIHd3dy5yZWRkaXQuY29t&shhk=f3Q%2B4h7LfQrB3eUEEqDWz9Z7%2BulSwZx3HNqeELh8sK4%3D&shth=OSH.LVyRTVTqMPKDfTyHnvdOdw Note that the definition for ‘Mandarin’ includes sub dialects that aren’t really mutually intelligible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuanese_dialects For example, Sichuanese has only 47.8% lexical commonality with Northern Mandarin. For comparison, Ukrainian and Belarusian have 80% lexical commonality with Russian. Ethnically, the people of Guangdong and Yunnan are closer to Vietnamese than those from Beijing. Which should not at all be surprising, since that part of China is susceptible to tropical diseases that the rest of China isn’t exposed to.
    1
  1161. MyUsersDark Sphere of Influence =/= annexation. Also, cool - Hong Kong is literally a speck of dust compared to the rest of China.
    1
  1162.  @kevinwu193  Then at minimum, it wouldn’t have taken 30 YEARS to undo the policy- LONG after birth rates fell below replacement. Now, it’s simply too late. Any hope of demographic recovery would take at least half a century to fix. Assuming it even works.
    1
  1163.  @shiny_teddiursa  Chile and Japan also face devastating Earthquakes. This is not an insurmountable issue.
    1
  1164.  @silence6605  Mexico (its core territories) is part of Mesoamerica, meaning you proved the Potato never left the region. Also, I could only reply now. So :P It's not if agriculture isn't possible in upper latitudes. It's how easy it is vs how not.
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  1165. Saliva My point is that agriculture is still much less compatible, not just wheat. And potato still can’t grow well in the Jungles that divide the Americas- leaving you with Corn as the sole universal crop.
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  1166. Pedro Batista Yeah, but not wheat, which can’t grow in the tropics. And really, the issue was as much lack of compatibility in terms of animals as it was plants. Also, this is exclusive to the America’s, but it’s hell to get from the North end to the South compared to from Europe to China, except by boat.
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  1167. BlaBla We know for a fact that Early humans probably made the way out of Africa via the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at about the same time they used the Seuz route. They also probably crossed the Strait of Bosporus into Europe. Point is, these Straits pretty much block nothing. If you can cross it in a day on a boat, water is pretty trivial to get across. If it was way wider, it wouldn’t be the Suez Straits anymore- it’d just be an extension of the Mediterranean.
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  1168. Andrew Mitchell get out
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  1169. Matthew Chenault Keynes would still exist, so there would be something like the New Deal going on.
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  1170. Matthew Chenault And why would the New Deal not happen in TTL? And yes, but Canada didn’t separate apart. Plus, with the high amount of rights states had at the time, it seems kind of pointless.
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  1171. Matthew Chenault But would it be so bad to cause a civil war? Western and Eastern Canada along with Quebec and the rest of Canada aren’t exactly all that happy together. But it never ended up being enough to cause sufficient separatism. And Quebec has its own language. Also, the South did industrialize in the 20th century. It is feasible without slavery being as much an influence casting down in the south it could happen earlier, like her predicted.
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  1172. Austin The American The Japanese thought they could weaken the US Navy by attacking first with an air strike at Pearl Harbour, then using their early advantage to give themselves the strategic advantage. The remnants of the US Navy were to be destroyed in a decisive battle the Japanese could fight on their terms, hopefully where the Japanese were close to their supply lines and strong and the Americans were overstretched and far from theirs. Note that this is the strategy Japan famously used in the Russio- Japanese War navally- note however, that the Americans were actually competent, unlike the Russians. The other worry was that the US Navy was building up, and if they didn’t attack soon, the USA would attack them on their terms, with an even stronger navy.
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  1173. Thomas Paine Japan attacked Pearl Harbour because they didn’t want the USA screwing with Japanese supply line through the Philippines.
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  1174. @Tall Jakee Hong Kong’s government was always controlled by the CCP and was never fully democratic.
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  1175.  @livethefuture2492  The Chinese thought they had strongarmed the Taiwanese before the 2019 election and that they were under China’s influence. That didn’t happen. China also depends on resources from outside its borders and markets to export to because of its inability to develop a thriving consumer market (relative to the size of their economy, only Oil monarchies and Luxembourg are less dependant on consumption.
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  1176.  @amrahmed7856  Yes, because a blockade isn’t something easy to break if you don’t have complete superiority on the seas, which is unlikely. Leningrad held out for 900 days because the Finns let the Soviets carry food across the ice of Lake Onega. Taiwan can hold out for a long time if they have even a little bit of a supply line to the rest of the world.
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  1177.  @Donkeyearsa  To be fair, Xi has made sweeping military reforms recently that make the PLA more of a competent force. Time will tell whether it’s enough.
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  1178.  The nova renaissance  I thought China’s Navy could fight to-to toe with America’s? Because otherwise, they’re not ready for an invasion. Oh sure, they could *land*, they just wouldn’t be able to resupply. It’d be the Chinese Operation Sea Lion, and the Chinese know it. Xi isn’t that dumb. They still need to bide their time.
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  1179.  ilgamesh  China and Russia’s SOI directly compete with each other. China can’t stop itself from reverse-engineering Russian equipment. But Putin knows that turning his back on China means game over. He can’t fight both China and the West at the same time.
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  1180.  ilgamesh  Go watch CaspianReport’s video on Chinese claims.
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  1181.  @shubhendudash5534  ???
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  1182.  @johnwilson6324  Ok, fair enough. Sorry for being hostile. I am a Korean- Canadian in Vancouver. No, I can’t speak Chinese. Yes, I know that Richmond, BC, is a thing. I would like to hear your arguments on mixed race people though.
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  1183.  @johnwilson6324  It won’t matter, because this is a debate of ideas. Tell me if this is true: If I told you I am white, you would think I’m ‘infected’ by wokeness or betraying my own race. If I told you I am a minority, you would think I’m doing this because I’m not a ‘real’ American and an other. If I told you I am mixed race... well, you’ve implied that my creation was a genocide, so... In other words, it wouldn’t, and shouldn’t matter. The only thing that changes is your perception of my character. If you still insist-
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  1184. ​ @johnwilson6324  Fought by the US. Should the US, in your view, have spent so much effort to stop the spread of Communism? I think Reagan said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQm7UqF-YA And anyways, sorry for the long wait, I was busy. I'll respond to your previous comment properly now: "China doesn't want to invade Okinawa. That's fake news. One 2 star General said "Okinawa shouldn't necessarily be Japanese or Chinese"." It wasn't just the 2 star general. State-run media and Chinese historians (also controlled by the government) ran with it afterwards. The CCP didn't do anything to stop it. And 'questioning' the sovereignty is... being controlled by China. Even if just as a vassal state, which is what is implied in context. https://www.dw.com/en/japan-angered-by-chinas-claim-to-all-of-okinawa/a-16803117 Imagine if tomorrow, PBS said that Newfoundland shouldn't belong to Canada? That's a land claim, all right. There's more claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR7WgKnBTIE That link details the links between genetics and IQ passed down over *family*, which is different than 'IQ differential between races is caused by genetics'. Argentina IS white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Latin_America#Genetic_studies "A 2009 autosomal DNA study found that of the total Argentine population, 78.5 percent of the national genepool was European, 17.3 percent Native American, and 4.2 percent African.[62]" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Percentage_of_major_Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_Europe.png Greeks are comparably white. If they're 'white', so are the Argentines. No, if it's a white genocide, it's also a genocide of those minorities. Also, not sure if you know, but people have been mixing races for as long as trade and war has existed. It's not new. We can see the traces in the gene pool of different peoples. And history has shown you can have stable societies with multiple distinct ethnic and genetic identities (Switzerland, China, Iran) if you integrate them properly into your greater national identity and don't treat them like shit. The US, despite all the shit over police racism and BLM protests, honestly has its disparate peoples get along pretty well overall in the grand scheme of things. "Africa has WAY better infrastructure than China." [Citation needed] I can't even read that imgur link properly. See, here's the problem. Immigration is not an 'invasion'. There is a reason waterboarding is considered torture and drinking water from a water bottle is not. What matters is the people or society in control of the situation, and the voluntarism of the people immigrating. And invasion is forceful. Immigration isn't. And the thing is, not even Trumpists are as anti-immigration/ethno-nationalist as you are (who generally want less immigration and higher 'quality' immigration). White Nationalists are a tiny minority in American society. You don't get to dictate policy for the rest of the country.
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  1185.  @johnwilson6324  ... So do you believe the Cold War never should have been fought?
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  1186.  @johnwilson6324  https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-claiming-okinawa-japan-claiming-hawaii-15996 https://www.dw.com/en/japan-angered-by-chinas-claim-to-all-of-okinawa/a-16803117 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachal_Pradesh Both have about 1.4 million. You could literally have done a Google Search. When was the last time the US used a military base as a platform to annex land? I’ll tell you why you should care. The first move China would make against India in a war is to close off their water supply. Millions begin to starve, beginning a mass exodus to the West. The first move China would make against Japan or Taiwan is to attack their shipping. If they can’t hold off the attacks, millions starve, and those who can start moving to the West. Then what happens when they arrive? You send them back to starve in a war zone? Do you send them into ghettos until the war ends, and they have to move back under a hostile foreign power, or to a home that’s rubble and cobblestone? https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/08/14/statistics-show-iq-disparities-between-races-heres-what-that-really-means/ The idea that races solely determine economic success is ridiculous. Especially considering the relative economic success of Hispanic Americans over their counterparts still in Latin America. I guess we need to send back all the Blacks too? Asians? Indians? Maybe the Jews and Italians while you’re at it? You DO realize that’s ethnic cleansing, right? And when those happened, *millions died*. I wish that the Germans could have been let to stay in Silesia and the Greeks could have been let to stay in Constantinople, areas they had been living in for over a millennia. Especially the latter. ‘Istanbul’ my ass. They by no means were inevitable. The Germans were let to stay in Alsace after being ceded to France. If the Allies made it to Berlin, they would have saved the Silesian Germans. If a ethnonationalism never took hold in Turkey, the Armenians and Greeks would still be there. EVERY Chinese leader since Mao has publicly stated they want to annex Taiwan, if force if necessary. You don’t say that if you don’t take your territorial claims seriously. Russia has invaded Crimea and is in the process of ousting the current dictator of Belarus so he can get a more compliant person willing to ‘reunite’ it with Russia (look up Union State). The GINI coefficient of CA, a measure of inequality, is 0.49. Literally US average. What? Argentina is basically white and has an IQ of 93, and it is... well... Argentina is the only nation to have ever gone backwards from developed to developing status. Not even Greece did that. Africa never had much infrastructure. Note that infrastructure is more than just roads and bridges, but schools and hospitals as well. Plus, Africa’s geography is terrible, and requires more infrastructure to get anything done (it’s mostly plateaus that go all the way to the coast and no navigable rivers, with a few exceptions (West Africa comes to mind). Look, I consider myself a right-winger. I’m not for free borders. But what do you think would have happened if America let the Soviets do what they pleased during the last Cold War?
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  1187.  StrategicFooyoo  The scale of construction in China is unprecedented compared to the rest of the world. The issue isn’t that they stop constructing, the issue is that they have to slow down because eventually there’s not enough demand. And sure, I guess if the quality is shitty enough they might have to do the job twice, but that’s basically the Parable of the Broken window, and not an actual net benefit. Therefore, investment driven growth must end. Also, this isn’t a video game where you can just dump tech points and money into certain sectors and expect results- especially when corruption is endemic in the system. The Soviet Union had a cult of technology and failed to use it to gain a general technological edge over the US (they did in some sectors, like military, but not *overall*). You have to be able to use it. Oh sure, China’s not going to run out of things they can do, but they’re going to run out of things that generate returns and growth, especially in a reasonable time frame. Arguably they already have. Debt defaults in SOEs are rising due to failed investment projects and the coronavirus.
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  1188.  StrategicFooyoo  I asked why one country has to specialize in one high value added sector. You haven't answered that. Well, no, they won't, but construction has to slow down *at some point*. The problem with both financial assets and infrastructure development is that in both cases, you eventually run out of things that provide a positive return. That's more obvious in the stock market with QE, but if you've seen a Chinese ghost city, you'll know it also applies to China's housing market. You're right, their problem IS overproduction. If they can't find consumers, GDP starts to fall because eventually the factories have to shut down. That leaves them vulnerable to the outside world. China does not have the ability to ensure its own economic growth. They will never have enough consumers in their own system to keep growing and cut themselves off from the rest of the world. It's a gordian knot. Again, China doesn't need to collapse to lose. They only need to stop growing, and demographics takes care of the rest.
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  1189.  StrategicFooyoo  Why not? Why do high value added products have to be specialized to a single nation? China is big. I need a source for your claim about Japan. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. Yes, because a country with millions to Urbanize creates ghost cities that take half a decade to see people. It’s not market manipulation and government policy. Secondly, China has 60% of its people in Urban areas now, up from 50% a decade ago. This excludes rural-urban migrants. Most developed nations have 80%. It’s not sustainable. No, but when one section of your economy is stupidly bloated and is inevitably going to have a hard correction, people are going to lose their jobs and investment portfolios. They literally can’t consume in that scenario. It’s basically 2008, but for China (and worse). Even discounting that, the point is that China has shown no real progress in being able to wean itself to consumption led growth despite saying it will for a decade now. And they’re running out of time, before the Chinese have to spend all of their economic excess on the military and healthcare.
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  1190.  StrategicFooyoo  Except if we compare it to other export-dominated Asian economies (Taiwan and South Korea), they kept growing their exports at the same pace as they did previously long after they passed the point where China has now roughly stagnated. Export values will increase as countries go into higher-end manufacturing. Either China is failing to go into higher-end exports, or China is losing factories at a rate that counteracts higher-end exports. Or both. Japan was never a massive exporting nation, despite populist rhetoric at the time. Here is a pretty good graph showing the composition of GDP per nation. Note that China’s GDP and GDP growth is dominated by investment, which is not sustainable, because it relies either on mass savings (stops once the boomers hit retirement), FDI (also slowing down since 2016), or debt. Exports also make an abnormally large % of GDP (Germany is comparable, but it has free trade and common laws to the rest of the EU). https://youtu.be/g4DFRPa36T0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets Consumption as a % of GDP in China is 39%. Abnormally low, even for developing nations. Actually, abnormally low for all nations. It’s only outcompeted by tax havens and oil monarchies. They’ve been trying to get that number up to normal levels forever. They’re not going to succeed now. Chinese GDP is unsustainable and vulnerable.
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  1191.  StrategicFooyoo  Most companies have already been moving supply chains out of China for South Asia and Latin America due to labour costs now reaching parity with the US, adjusted for productivity. The Made in China 2025 plan was a plan to mitigate that, but it was basically dead on arrival. They really should have kept something like that more secret. The Chinese Internal Market is not that big: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets) and is highly protected and skewed towards domestic companies, making keeping factories there to service the Chinese Market pretty iffy. If I want to put my conspiratorial hat on, it's part of the reason MSM and Soros has no problem pissing on the Chinese now. Everyone has sucked most of the Gold out of the China mine, and now everyone's fine with shutting the mine down. It's likely actually closer to $400 mil: http://www.worldstopexports.com/chinas-top-10-imports/ And as I said earlier, Made in China 2025 was dead on arrival. Also, how does China maintain its high-tech manufacturing base without imports of integrated circuits? China really hurts badly economically if it has to ration out its FOREX, even if it can keep the lights on. And without exports, no money is coming in, either. China is an export nation, meaning the net is a loss in FOREX. Remember that China doesn't have to collapse entirely to stop being a threat. A Lost Decade or 2 is sufficient, due to demographics. Note that Japan was able to mitigate the problems with demographics by tapping the global investment and consumer marketplace, and increasing the level of outsourcing to minimize labour use while maximizing corporate profits and GDP. China likely lacks that luxury. Being on the neutral/good side of most nations that matter has its perks. Depends on why there is a slowdown in trade. If it's the economy, then sure. If it's the fact people aren't able to trade much anymore for whatever reason (say, a Iran-Saudi War), the result is a mass INFLATION of the cost of Oil, not deflation.
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  1192.  @evanchen703  Less than the youngest Millennials.
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  1193.  @lilemont9302  Because we already have bases on the ocean. We have ONE base in Space, which has less people than even a fraction of an oil rig (which has hundreds of people). Is it self-sustaining? No. But it’s mostly because they don’t really need to. But new tech with aquaculture and underwater mining will eventually require more self-sustaining cities, especially as we move further out past the shoreline.
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  1194.  @semigeo6911  It won’t even get to 10x. Hell, I’d be happy if they could get the price down to F9 equal /kg- about 250-300 mil. But few would use something that expensive. F9 hasn’t spurred massive a massive new commercial satellite boom other than the as yet unproven business model of Starlink (and Starship is overkill for Starlink) But F9 launches 24 times a year and is far less complex than Starship. Reusing the 2nd stage is only likely to mitigate the extra complexity, since F 9 is already reusing the majority of the rocket. Prices /kg have not decreased much, despite new competition arriving on the market. When Tesla was facing competition, they cut prices. But not SpaceX. Why? I appreciate the comparison to a successful scientist. ;)
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  1195.  @narsimhas1360  The easiest place to colonize is around the Earth. Venus is good if you want a planet, but it’s still farther away. You can argue it’s the best , but... we don’t really have any idea how to maintain a self-sustaining biosphere and modern economy. No space agencies are focusing on it because it’s not their goal. And Elon isn’t even pretending to take a stab at the problems with actual colonization.
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  1196.  @J_X999  Something is up the same on my end, your comments are being deleted. The comments may be up for review. Oh well. Just show me the reports.
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  1197.  @J_X999  try reloading.
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  1198.  @J_X999  yes.
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  1199.  @J_X999  Can you show me the report?
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  1200.  @Joleyn-Joy  Canada was also dominated by American Multinationals and is still incredibly dependant on the US. That’s what happens when you’re right next to the US.
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  1201.  @jackyex  Uh, no. The Wikipedia article says the YES vote for independence is consistently over 90%.
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  1202.  @YamiFlyZX Considering the growth of companies like Macre Libre? They’ve been holding out pretty well, considering the circumstances. Argentina has extremely high literacy and extremely high rates of enrolment in both higher and lower education. Is it Asia? No.
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  1203.  @jackyex  Argentina is very Social Democratic, so Macri had to go slowly, and he only really had half a term to implement any reforms in practice anyways before a currency crisis killed any chance of success. The only way anyone could go fast in Argentina is for a complete societal and cultural reshuffling to occur. Which isn’t likely. Spain is so fragile because the euro was a fundamentally flawed idea that put Spain in insane amounts of debt by artificially lowering interest rates.
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  1204.  @jackyex  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_is_My_Country There have been at least one armed revolt that had to be suppressed from Southern Separatists.
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  1205.  @stapleman007  Did you try Patreon-messaging? Might be more successful, though I haven't bothered to pay yet.
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  1206.  @XZaapryca  I mean, the invasion of Crimea was a ‘surprise’ attack…
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  1207. Pat Booth The Ardenees offensive was only done because Hitler. The vast majority of the troops were in the east, and once Hitler died, Germany pretty much did everything to give the Western Allies as much of Germany as possible, and German troops pretty much stopped seriously fighting the Western Allies.
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  1208. Andreas Fly It would surround the Entente forces in Albania, forcing them to flee to Italy or be destroyed.
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  1209. Andreas Fly They can’t, not least until the war overall is won. They can take Rhodes off the hands of a defeated Italy. Cyprus... not easy, but if the Central powers win in the Mideast and Britain just stops wanting to fight.
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  1210. Andreas Fly Italy had Rhodes, Britain had Cyprus.
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  1211. Hector Medrano I don’t think the Compromise can survive (in practical terms) after California. Not that it matters much, most land a over the line not already in states was terrible for cash-crops or unwilling to become slave states.
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  1212. Bev Bevan Conquering Northern Mexico and Cuba.
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  1213. Son of Fantasy 65 million years ago.
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  1214. Jurij Popotnig No it wasn’t. Also, there are still jungles in Australia, in the north.
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  1215. Paxton Cargill The Aral Sea was fresh water and did not vastly increase precipitation.
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  1216. Sebastian Brooks-Baker Same problem.
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  1217. Ivan the Great 2.0 Not a Cold War with Nukes, which is the important part.
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  1218. Ivan the Great 2.0 That’s not how science works. We wouldn’t have even gone to the Moon OTL without the Cold War, and only that because better missile tech= nuking your enemies.
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  1219. Ivan the Great 2.0 ... what?
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  1220. Ivan the Great 2.0 And how did you find that?
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  1221. Ivan the Great 2.0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun “Acceleration: For a space gun with a gun barrel of length ( l l), and the needed velocity ( v e v_{e}), the acceleration ( a a) is provided by the following formula:[citation needed] a = v e 2 2 l a={\frac {v_{e}^{2}}{2l}} For instance, with a space gun with a vertical "gun barrel" through both the Earth's crust and the troposphere, totalling ~60 km (37 miles) of length ( l l), and a velocity ( v e v_{e}) enough to escape the Earth's gravity (escape velocity, which is 11.2 km/s or 25,000 mph on Earth), the acceleration ( a a) would theoretically be more than 1,000 m/s2 (3,300 ft/s2), which is more than 100 g-forces, which is about 3 times the human tolerance to g-forces of maximum 20 to 35 g[5] during the ~10 seconds such a firing would take.” Aka: To say it’d need to be big is an understatement . Doesn’t matter either way, you still need rockets to circularize an orbit, and liquid fuel rockets had yet to exist. Even the Apollo astronauts used computers most of the time to help with or pilot spacecraft and rockets as well. So good freaking luck . Same thing with building rockets on the Moon to get back. Doesn’t matter, the British still got a serious bloody nose from the Boers- who actually won on the long term anyways since they ended up taking over South Africa. It was still going on at the turn of the century. Point is that the European powers were, frankly, busy, even at the turn of the century. You have to at least butterfly away WW1, and keep Germany (and possibly Italy and France) focused on overseas colonies. And even then, there was still the Middle East and East Asia left to partition up. The Americas if the USA or Britain can’t be bothered to stop an invasion there. AltHistHub made a video on the habitable Moon though.
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  1222. Ivan the Great 2.0 1914 is the end of the scramble according to wikipedia. It had cooled down by about 1900 but there was still action in the Boer Wars, the Dervish Rebellion, and Libya as well as Morocco. Also, a lot of the claimed area was only under weak or nominal control by Europeans. And I pointed out that minus steampunk fantasy, there’s no way you can have that. Maybe you can shoot something to the Moon, but definitely not back. Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon probably depicts the closest thing to something that may be feasible, but spaceguns would have to be far large than those depicted be survivable.
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  1223. Ivan the Great 2.0 The Scramble for Africa ended in 1914, just in time for the First World War. Again, why bother with the moon when it was so much harder?
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  1224. TapOnX https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/25766/what-would-happen-if-the-polar-ice-caps-of-mars-melted Mars lacks enough water stored to form more than Titan-Style seas, assuming enough CO2 could even be sublimated to make it moderately stable, and that a singular asteroid impact would be sufficient. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars “More than 21 million km3 of ice have been detected at or near the surface of Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters (115 ft).[13] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[14]” For comparison, the average depth of Earth’s oceans is 3.2 km. Either way, you get a desert that can’t be breathed in properly with barely any water. That is also likely toxic due to perchlorate. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone.png This is basically the problem. Mars is outside the ‘normal’ habitable zone most of the time, but is in the ‘extended’ habitable zone, where you can have super-earths, desert planets, or extreme Venus-like cloud planets be habitable (how you get all that atmosphere on Mars being a mystery). But not Earth-like planets. Basically you need either a very low albedo or an extreme amount of GHGs. Maybe you could merge Venus and Mars into one entity, but that’s still only 93% of Earth’s mass. Maybe we can move Jupiter a bit further back to get more mass. The V3 cannon existed in WW2. It couldn’t be aimed at new targets, so it was pretty bad as a weapon overall.
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  1225. Ivan the Great 2.0 I know HAARP. ANY railgun needs a 2nd stage rocket to achieve orbit, it’s physically impossible to build a big enough gun to get to orbit. That means there needs to be someone on board to fire and direct the rocket engine. Doesn’t matter, it wouldn’t happen in the 19th century anyways due to how difficult it’d be. Someone might try to launch themselves to space, or send a packet to the Moon, but that’s about the extent. Technology was still too primitive until you get into the early 20th century.
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  1226. Ivan the Great 2.0 Guns can’t get you to orbit because of how orbital dynamics work. Not to mention literally everything would have to be manned. Rockets are needed for any railgun system. Plus, there were easier targets in the 19th century. East Asia was never really partitioned, after all. Also, a habitable moon would be so large it would make the Earth and Moon tidally locked, which would turn both landmass areas to merely equatorial bands, like on Titan. Habitable Mars and Venus only work if they’re practically deserts (or in the case of Mars, with far more greenhouse gases) due to being at the edges of the habitable zone (water is a greenhouse gas and increases albedo if ice. In either case, with Mars, you would still need a mask system to breathe properly with all the greenhouse gases (even low increases in CO2 levels can cause the brain to not properly function https://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Carbon_Dioxide_Hazards.php ). And seasons on Mars would be extreme due to its orbit.
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  1227.  @ElGrandoCaymano  France had very little good coal as well, and yet it still industrialized. Honestly, it doesn’t seem resources were the problem, and even if Austria kept the Netherlands, one would imagine it developing and not so much anywhere else.
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  1228.  @ElGrandoCaymano  It means that Austria can’t resupply and reinforce the Netherlands. It’s hard for them to maintain control (which is why half of it separated successfully in the first place.) In the end, the Austrians traded it out for land in Italy for convenience’s sake. They probably should have asked for more, but...eh.
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  1229.  @ElGrandoCaymano  The HRE ceased to exist after the Napoleonic Wars.
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  1230.  @ElGrandoCaymano  Still disconnected from Austria by half a continent. Bit of a problem.
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  1231. TheRegalSeagull The logistical situation was beyond his control (Germany needed control of Malta, and they never got it).
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  1232.  @felipeignacioavilapizarro3698 Literally every time someone has done that, we just end up creating more work for ourselves.
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  1233.  @shiny_teddiursa  Bolivia being so great.
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  1234.  @bellairefondren7389  Whatifalthist is bad at economics in general.
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  1235.  @Bogfrog1  Next time, please split up your words into paragraphs so people can actually read it.
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  1236.  @shiny_teddiursa  (Citation needed)
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  1237.  @jackyex  My argument was that Socialist nations in Latin America do poorly, and ‘doing your own thing’ in Latin America has meant native nationalism (Bolivia) and socialism. How is that the exception?
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  1238. Baxter Mortimer Burma and Sri Lanka we’re NOT under the same partition as India. They held onto those places for long after.
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  1239. King of Kings & Ruler of Rulers HK needed the new territories to function due to things like utilities being in the New Territories.
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  1240. Thomas Farley Uhh... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Russia https://www.statista.com/statistics/305356/oil-production-in-russia-by-region/ http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=18051 Western Siberia dwarfs all other Russian oil sources in production- the Soviets in OTL were competent in developing the necessary oil +gas infrastructure. I means, even Stalin was building infrastructure in Siberia and mining it via the Gulag system in OTL. Yes, it’s worth it. Also, it’s so isolated that it’s either going to be a pariah state, a German puppet, or Japanese Puppet. The world is locked in a cold war of the great powers, you think Germany is going to deny a battle? Stalin is Stalin. You really think he doesn’t have enemies after killing all those people from paranoia? Not to mention he died in the 50s in OTL. All Germany needs is a reformist/realist like Krusnechev. All this assumes the Soviet rump state can even survive on the long run without its Russian population base without foreign support. It’s effectively a larger Canada with a bunch of Muslims (who also now are more numerous than the Slavs in their own state).
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  1241. ethan brinkman Whilhem also lost most of his authority by the end of the war and the country was effectively a military dictatorship.
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  1242. Asuka-san They did support the Whites- not that much (aside from the Japanese) after the end of the war. In context I was implying at the end of the war- point is that most of the allies just wanted to go home.
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  1243.  @Montechristoss  Macedonian was not considered ‘Greek’ by the city-states in the same way we we consider it today. Kind of like US to UK.
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  1244.  @Justaguyuguys  Most places calculate unemployment like that.
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  1245.  @PsilentMusicUK  The only way Greece could have left its debt crisis without free helicopter cash from the ECB is by defaulting. The biggest issue was that the Germanic economies didn’t think it was a good idea for them to suffer monetary inflation for the Greeks. Shocking, I know.
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  1246.  @kamikaze5528  Did your father move into a privately-run town? Because usually you still have to pay taxes (or ‘fees’).
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  1247. bbonner422 I meant if the constituent parts of its empire were integrated into full kingdoms of the UK, like Scotland. Or like what Cecil Rhodes wanted to see. Dominion status was more like leaving a puppet state with self-rule.
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  1248. The Nova renaissance I meant that Oman wouldn’t even be the capital. Muscat’s a terrible place to put a city to administer an empire.
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  1249. The Nova renaissance Because that’s like making Carthage Rome. The Omani empire was a trading empire largely based around slaves. If you changed it so that Oman could be part of a superpower, it wouldn’t be Oman anymore. It would be an Arabian Caliphate.
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  1250. ​ The Nova renaissance  So? They were 'core' territory that Austria mobilized for the military, unlike the Omanese Empire, which was trading-based, like British India. Austria also controlled the HRE (influence over Germany).
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  1251. The Nova renaissance In 1800, Austria had a population of 23 Million. Mainland France had 26 Million. Mind you, the Austrians lacked the Austrian Netherlands, Milan, and Naples at the time (Napoleonic Wars).
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  1252.  @sephikong8323  Oh, never mind. Read it wrong.
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  1253.  @godofthisshit  Belgium also industrialized very early...
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  1254.  @theemperor-wh40k18  Few really care that much what Wyoming thinks, either.
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  1255.  @nobodyherepal3292  So many racial supremecist groups (other than BLM) have turned out to be so completely inflitrated by the FBI , that I don't find it particularly likely they'd be a serious force.
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  1256.  @nobodyherepal3292  I would note that those civil wars you mentioned had both foreign involvement that increased how bloody the war was (and more importantly) Islamists who don't want stability at all. Syria has also stabilized in a truce, with both sides working together- perhaps because they're scared of Turkish encroachment.
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  1257.  @michaelweiske702  Well, no party in a 2-party system is every 100% politically united. However, the never-Trumpers are now in the minority. The GOP primary polling for 2024 is a good example of this. Both DeSantis and Trump are 'Trumpian' candidates. No one else consistently polls above 10 points. The non-'Trumpians' exist, but are effectively subordinate now, no matter how much David Frum might wish otherwise.
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  1258.  @jacksonburnette207  Are those guys ethnonationalists? That's usually what separates the alt-right from the mainstream right.
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  1259. Sweet Candy hi
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  1260.  @Prof.GoodFeels88  nvm
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  1261. Pawefrom EP Did anyone know at the time it was forged?
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  1262.  @MrStickyMouse  Americans wanted Trump to push the US more protectionist despite pro-trade elite rhetoric. Hence, why Biden copied him. Did they know the ins-and-outs of the TPP? Literally every time I pull out the 2-1 NATO statistic (from YouGov, if you’re interested), I always hear some variation of “the people are wrong”. Which to me, is asinine. Especially from self-proclaimed ‘populists’.
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  1263. David Cheney It was never about money.
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  1264. What do you think the quality of the construction will be?
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  1265. Kenny Choo Cheap Labour and protectionism by the Chinese Government are the reason these Chinese tech companies get so powerful to begin with.
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  1266. sue why As if they would have freedom if they didn’t make any.
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  1267. Ecléctico Iconoclasta State controls majority of industries directly. I thought that is what socialism was.
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  1268. The deal McCarthy signed in the House earlier barely had enough support to get through the House, so it’s entirely possible he knew that the deal couldn’t go through anyways. Meaning his negotiations would be meaningless anyways.
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  1269. This bill has no chance of passing in its current form anyways.
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  1270.  @ChrisSuperDude  W had lower approval towards the end of his presidency.
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  1271. Maybe we should subsidize having children instead of pensioners?
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  1272. The UN is thought to be impartial.
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