Comments by "yop yop" (@yopyop3241) on "Why the Middle East Is So Aggravating (yet so difficult to leave) || Peter Zeihan" video.

  1. It has always been about defanging the former imperialist powers. No need to go imperialist to get resources. More importantly from the US perspective, no need to start up another global conflagration that would inevitably drag the US in.
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  2. The US military being everywhere prevented other countries from arming and seizing colonies to ensure exclusive access to resources. That kind of competition led to WW1 and WW2. The US military being everywhere thus likely prevented WW3.
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  3. The Native Americans were handicapped by not having domesticable animals. Plowing the American prairie required steel plows pulled by teams of 8-14 oxen. Wooden plows pulled by people like were used to get agriculture started? Not a chance.
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  4. Everyone is aggravated because they see the US meddling by preventing them from preying on the smaller fish in front of them. What everyone seems to forget is that they all have bigger fish behind them, looking at them and thinking the same sorts of thoughts. The biggest fish of all is the US. The US could sit back and let the global feeding frenzy kick off. The US would be the last one left. The downside is that the US would be the last one left in a radioactive pond.
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  5. You weren’t supposed to try to do it the same way that the Vietnamese do. You were supposed to use massive amounts of automation. Use 10x as expensive Australian labor to get 100x as much production. He was assuming that Aussies were better educated and therefore more proficient with that sort of tech than Vietnamese, but maybe he was wrong there? Low level materials processing steps should be very amenable to automation. The Vietnamese workers should be reserved for steps that cannot be automated. If the need for long range maritime transport can be cut, that’s another benefit.
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  6. And by “stabilizing force,” are we talking about a return to European imperialism? Europe doesn’t have the capacity to maintain the current status quo in the Middle East, but if they could go back to the methods of the Age of Imperialism— the same sort of methods that Russia has used in Chechnya and Bucha and that China has used in Xinjiang and Tibet— they might be able to make that work.
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