Comments by "bighand69" (@bighands69) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @Katoshi_Takagumi  The problem with Raw materials for China from Russia is that there is no means of transporting them at scale. China gets the majority of its oil via the middle east because it can be transported on the sea's but to then try and take that via the sea from Russia would quadruple the cost of the raw material.
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  2. Boring is better and does not cost the lives of people.
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  3. The Canadian system focuses on skilled workers that have college degrees and 10 to 15 years of post qualified experience. Most will not own a home until they are in Canada several years. I know this may not seem important but it will most certainly have an impact on the birth rate. For Canada to survive it really needs to now start having several children per birth age women which is impossible at this point. Canadian immigration is also too small to deal with the scale of the demographics trap that Canada is in. I will ask you a question do you think that Canada is capable of doing it right which means lowering the skills requirements for immigrants so that the numbers coming in would be focused on young people?
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  4.  @gausselim1474  There is several different combinations of overseas outsourcings. From simply buying of products made by factories based in an Asian countries through to full plant build out in an asian country and lots of different options in between that as well. There are medium sized companies that would have revenues in the hundreds of millions that have invested into Asian countries because for many that was the environment they functioned in. I for years had my businesses undercut by businesses that were outsourced and I had whole firms of consultants trying to advise me to outsource to bring down costs. There was lot of pressure out there on small and medium sized enterprises. The good to come out of this is that new competitors will pop up in the US hence why a market economy has all the advantages.
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  5. Peter has never said that Russia was strong compared to the west. This is really Ukraines first tango so it was assumed that Russia would flatten them. The war is not yet over and for all we know Russia could outlast Ukraine. Will need to wait and see how this all goes down.
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  6. Trades and technical college qualifications are going to star to come back into fab. What will happen is that many companies that do not have the labor market will start to create that training. Companies with a small investment can easily fund a local trade college.
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  7.  @karlcx  Still better than the European "free" colleges.
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  8. His point was that a small high output plant could complete with large plants in Asia. Now when that is applied to the whole of the southern cotton industry it will be enormous. He is not literally saying to set up a micro plant with just two software engineers. He is saying it will take a lot less staff than an Asian plant and have far higher outputs. It is the reason why a US worker has about 20 times more productive output than a Chinese worker. To staff the machines in a asian plant takes about 250 workers and that is just production staff not maintenance or technical staff. US plant production will be automated.
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  9.  @thomasherrin6798  None of the regions of the UK or Ireland has that sort of time or luxury to settle their problems. Ireland has no natural resources of significance that would allow it to function independently. Ireland only produces about 20% of its energy which is nowhere near where it needs to be. So what is more than likely to happen to the UK and Ireland is that the world will pass them by before they realize what they should have done. Irish culture is also so heavily invested into the EU project that it will be collapsing and they will still be out selling its virtues of a gone by era.
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  10.  @davidpnewton  The UK does not have a constitution it has a system of crown government. So what on earth do you mean by not true?
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  11. What the US footed for many years was a price worth paying as it meant there was no major conflicts in the world.
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  12. That reads like some school academic project there. A lot of wishful thinking.
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  13. Cry cry cry all you want but the facts are the facts.
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  14. It will be a mixture of new models and older models. All of them are probably been fitted out with modern comms and firing systems. As long as they can communicate with a level of precision the older tanks will be formidable and probably capable of outperforming the most up to date Russian tanks.
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  15.  @klowen7778  Automation still requires employees to run the businesses. Some of the most automated business organisations on the planet are the web tech companies but they still require thousands of people to oversee all of that. Google has 100,000 employees, Microsoft has 200,000 and Apple has 300,000. No matter what people tell you about automation it still requires humans to operate it. What are you going to see is small companies in the US outputting like a large company and having a few hundred employees and this will be replicated throughout every county in America.
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  16. I do not think they can fix it. Germany will have an energy cost increase at the same time it has a population decrease. That could end up with their products cost much more than it does. A VW golf at £25000 is a lot more attractive than one at £45000.
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  17. If you are near a farm that supplies them you may get a good price.
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  18. The EU does not have the ability to actually federalize.
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  19. That is all fantasy.
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  20. They are only games and not reality. War that is fought on the battlefield is not the same as war games.
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  21.  @adamkoslin9302  War games over estimate Russian and Chinese capabilities.
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  22. Why would you be excited about something that will take 60 years to play out. There are things that are much closer to be excited about such as mini fission reactors, natural gas, clean coal, robotics, ai, nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer interfaces such as VR.
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  23. That is just a fantasy idea. If narcotics was to be legalized there would always be a black market for something.
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  24.  @b.griffin317  Have you no headphones?
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  25. The real question is can the US actually do anything about it.
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  26. Most major cities in the world will have aircraft coming into them. If you are in certain parts of the city it will be much more noticeable.
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  27. American still retained most of its manufacturing and industry and most US trade is internal. Other countries especially Europeans have not done as well.
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  28.  @Reynard7  It is the only tool Russia has because its weapons and military culture is not as advanced as the west. They will be using a large volume of bodies in the form of conscripts and auxiliary units to form the mass of the front line offensive. That is exactly what Peter is also saying in the video. Everybody knows it is coming even Ukraine with its demands for tanks and more artillery systems. Ukraine has the advantage of fixed defensive systems and a large mobile cohort that can try and move behind and around Russian lines. Be under no other impression about what the next phase of the war is.
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  29. What on earth are you talking about You have just conflated several ideas and rolled them into one.
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  30. It does not function at all. It is a place that has starvation as a norm, constantly has disease outbreaks and is not able to project any sort of power. At some point there is going to be a rebellion there of some sort.
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  31. It depends on how much resources the EU, UK, US, Canada, Japan and Australia throw at Moldova.
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  32. There has always been challenges with the water levels.
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  33. That Texas industry is going to creep up into border states but also make its way across into areas like Florida. It is not too hard to imagine that the southern states are about to become the main economic hubs of America.
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  34. US economic machine is the trust.
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  35. Cruise missiles can use precision guidance systems. Iranian drones are not precision systems.
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  36. That would not be enough to make the function as an industrial power. TSMC does not dominate higher end chip manufacturing and is a mid level player.
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  37. That is pure fantasy and Germany produces nowhere near 50% of their energy needs. The real figure is not even 5%.
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  38.  @metablue4454  The CIA as a whole is an intelligence organisation that does research and presents it to the presidency. I think people think of the CIA as in the movie version of the agent in the field or those analysts scheming in politics. 99% of the CIA is nothing more than a bureaucracy of intelligence and report writing. You will find that the politics of Washington is doing most of the scheming not the CIA. I am not saying there are not officers in the CIA, FBI or military that are not using their position of division for political means.
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  39.  @wesc6755  If you listen to what Peter is imply he is saying in the terms of Russia using Nuclear weapons not that they actually will use them. So what sort of scenario would Russia use them for attack. He is saying they would be more purposeful to use against those cities than within Ukraine that their own troops would then have to occupy. People are being too pedantic with what he is saying rather than trying to absorb the greater meaning.
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  40. The new systems are upgraded so who knows what variant the Ukrainians have. It could be PAC-3 or maybe even 4.
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  41. Vaccine risks have been way over played. They are not any more significant than taking over the country medications. What has made it look worse is the fact that everybody has got vaccinated at the same time so it appears like a large number have complications. The problem is that a larger number of infected people have had more complications from the virus.
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  42. People do not like to hear the truth. It sometimes challenges their world view.
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  43. Sometimes facts hurt people's feelings.
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  44. Zeihan does it to both sides but people of one side will only hear what they want to hear.
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  45. That is fantasy and you are not going to convince people of that.
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  46. It is not a banking problem. Companies are getting caught out with having all their eggs in the low interest basket. Now that interest rates are risking many are finding them self below interest water level.
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  47. Setting up semi conductor plants and industry is very complex and requires lots of capital and the ability to take advantage of market needs.
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  48. Australia has more people aged from 25 to 45 than it does 45 to 65. And it is quite a significant difference as well. Australia is probably going to have a boom because of that demographic bulge but beyond that there is not that many under the age of 20 but that could change as the current 25 year olds start to have children and get married. What Australia really needs to do is move its culture towards value added economics that means using all that natural resources to fund and supply their own industries. Australia currently has 80 million sheep and there is no reason why that stock cannot be grown and why all that wool cannot be turned into Australian made luxury clothing and use all that cheap coal, oil, gas and solar potential to manufacture those up market well made garments.
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  49. China is going to collapse and so are several other cotton producers so be lucky that he was not talking about India. His point was not about how great those cotton producing countries are but how they are going to fall out of the global supply chain.
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  50. High taxes on lower workers is one way of destroying the birth rate. Most young people in such a system realize that they cannot afford to have children and will leave it off until they feel they have a better economic situation but if you study the field you will realize that it never gets better economically. Many will be in their thirties paying rent with no ability to buy a home or start a family. They tend to work unusual hours and more hours to just break even and it is happening to both men and women at the exact same time. Every European country has gone through this exact same transition and the results are predictable every time. Yet when you point it out to people that are in power they will just not care.
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