Comments by "Louis Giokas" (@louisgiokas2206) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics"
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Drones are important but the kind of disparity you discuss has been around since WWII when aircraft really came into their own. Don't forget, the biggest, strongest battleships ever produced were both sunk by aircraft with a similar price disparity.
Drones are another tool in the toolbox. To understand my point, you have to answer the question of why the infantry, armor and artillery on both sides is not shrinking in significance.
The US pioneered the use of drones in the GWT. What Ukraine has done is to us them to supplement their inadequate artillery and total lack of airpower. They are, of course, innovating but you also have to consider their adversary. If
Don't get me wrong, the Ukrainians have been very creative. They have to be. But, as I mentioned, the drones are not allowing them to shrink the size of their military, especially foot soldiers.
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Excellent take on the issue.
The aspect that was left out was the role of local governments. Property sales to these developers have been one of their largest sources of income. They have used this to build a lot of the infrastructure projects that the central government has pushed on them. On top of that, the money that flows through this system is a major source of corruption. So, not only are the average people affected, but the party officials and their cronies would be screwed. Add in the probable involvement of criminal gangs, and Xi has more to worry about than the common people.
Oh, and the whole financial system, bank and non-bank, is underpinned by the property sector. If they used mark to market accounting, all the banks in China would be insolvent. Default rates are though the roof. To add insult to injury, 60% of loans for Xi's belt and road initiative are nonperforming.
The Chinese courts are NOT big on rule of law. In fact, one of their top judges (the top judge?) said that the role of the courts was to support the CCP. The rule of law was, at best, a secondary consideration.
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I see differing takes on this. On the spot market, Urals crude is trading at a slight discount. The big customers, India and China, are switching to Iranian crude because it is cheaper.
This market is very quick moving. A few days ago it was $100+ a barrel, now we are running at $85. That's a big difference.
There is another aspect of Russian oil being available. While the price is currently higher than the $60, it is not as high as oil was at the peak after the invasion. One economist pointed out that keeping the Russian oil in the market, with restrictions, keeps the world price down. This is, of course, true. It provides Russia with some income, but it is also a source that could be interdicted at any time.
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Excellent overview of the situation.
The land and mineral rights ownership difference between the US and Europe (and probably most everywhere else) is something that is fixable but deeply embedded in European culture.
I ran into this when I was living in the UK. In the US the landowner not only owns the mineral rights, but also the hunting and fishing rights. These are two activities that I enjoy. So, when I got there, I was asking about opportunities to partake in both. That's when I found out that they are all separate.
Being a history buff (purely amateur, my field in technology, software and hardware) I looked into it. It really goes back to feudal times. In England, the monarch actually owns the whole place. Obviously, this has evolved, and the monarch would have difficulty claiming many of the old rights and prerogatives. He gives permissions to various people to use the land for particular purposes. Hunting rights, and to some extent fishing rights, were (still are) jealously guarded by the monarch. On the fishing rights, I had two interesting experiences where I lived which was Winchester in Hampshire. The River Test (the hallowed Test) was near the city. There was a town, Stockbridge, where I learned to fly fish. There is a hotel there and in the early 18th century they obtained about 12 miles of fishing rights on the Test. Then they set up a club. Prospective members had to live a day's ride (by horse) away. This was all done to generate business for the hotel. The club is still in operation. It costs about 400GBP to rent a small stretch of the river for the day for up to four "rods". On the other hand, the River Itchen runs through the city of Winchester, and anyone can fish there within the city limits (with a normal fishing license, of course).
I tell this story because it is indicative of the many land use conventions that one finds all over Europe that are drastically different from the US, as Peter has pointed out. That would be difficult, from a purely cultural point of view, to change.
One other thought. In Communist China the CCP owns the whole place. They don't actually sell land there, although one often hears about people buying land, or a home (usually and apartment). Actually, they are only paying for the right to use the land for anywhere from 40 to 70 years.
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@awm9290 Yes, they need a written constitution. So do the British. Actually, in the latter case, someone I admire and follow, David Starkey, is critical of the US with its written constitution. The Brits bang on and on about the constitution (small "c" intentional), when they have suffered from the effects of not having one. The best example of this is the Supreme Court in the UK. Under Tony Blair and Labor, they had, for a time, a very large majority. So, the legislature made massive changes to the structure of the government (devolution, House of Lords reform, Supreme Court) simply through legislative means. They are still struggling with these changes, and it is not good.
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In modern times Russia "won" once using these tactics. In WWI, they lost even with superior numbers. In the Polish-Soviet War in 1920 they had rough parity with the Polish forces. They lost. In fact, this conflict convinced Lenin to draw back on his internationalist drive to spread communism. He coined the term socialism in one country, which was a stark contrast to the ideology of the time. In the Winter War with the Fins Russia had overwhelming numbers. They technically won but suffered massive casualties and failed to conquer the country. The situation in WWII was aided by the allied attacks in the west, including Italy. The big Soviet offensive in 1944, Operation Bagration, only happened after D-Day. So, bringing out the trope of Russia being able to overwhelm any enemy just by throwing bodies at them is missing the effect of modern weapons and command and control. Just look at the Iraq War. In less than a month the US collapsed the Iraqi army while being outnumbered by over two to one. And, of course, there is the example of the Israeli Army. Same situation as Ukraine as far as numbers and the source of support. As far as I can tell no Soviet/Russian equipped and trained military has defeated a western equipped and trained military. Finally, as you point out in your books (I have read them all) Russia's demographics are horrible. Add to that and the fact that about 500K men of military age have left the country and you get a recipe for disaster.
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Elections in the US are generally very clean. I have served as an election judge in the past and a lot of care is taken to ensure votes are counted and counted accurately.
On the other hand, there are areas where there might be some issues. From what I can tell, these are not enough to sway national elections. People are, I assume, aware of the quips regarding elections in Chicago. Well, I live in the suburbs, and I used to have a business associate who lived in Chicago who claimed to vote for his grandfather. He told me he made sure that his deceased grandfather was kept on the election rolls and then voted twice. I have no proof of this. This is what he told me, in all seriousness, but it is plausible. I could tell some other stories of stuff that goes on in Chicago.
There have been issues in elections, including presidential elections, in the past. I read an authoritative biography of LBJ, and it was mentioned that people were paid for votes in places like Texas. Many of these people were migrants. This was not considered a controversial statement. Just saying.
I firmly believe in in-person elections, with photo ID, with absentee ballots only for specific reasons. I have voted absentee, but only because I was living on another continent on a foreign assignment for a large US company. In Illinois we have in person polling starting, I believe, three weeks prior to election day. I usually vote on election day but have used the other service on occasion.
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Great point. What irks me is that there is all this talk about the "global south". As you have said in your books (I have read them all), those countries, depending on how bad things get, may end up being colonies again. This may be economic, or literal. It doesn't matter what form it takes. What matters, and has always mattered, is economic and technological power, not population or land area, Frankly, the "global south", and the non-aligned movement are both a joke.
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@bwarre2884 All very good points. The Cold War changed everything. I miss the Cold War. I got to do lots of very interesting research with basically unlimited funding. But I digress.
Yes, the percentage of the US economy is a measure that may not be useful in looking at the impact on the US. Even at the height of the Vietnam War the US never spent over 10% of GDP on the military. Contrast that with projections that the Soviets spent 40% of their GDP on the military. That fact was a major factor in their downfall.
The US does, indeed, profit from some conflict, as you say. It is, though, not purely a profit motive. To have conflict you have to have two sides involved. For example, you don't see the US and the EU gearing up for conflict with each other. On the other hand, the US helps to arm Taiwan, and now Vietnam, because of a credible threat.
As for the "middle America" thing I was being a bit pedantic. I understood what you meant by the context. I guess I also suspected that you were not American, but I couldn't help myself.
I appreciate your insightful comments. I certainly learned something in the conversation.
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I like how you are thinking. There is no one size fits all. For every place where green energy is applicable, that lowers the overall emissions. We should be concentrating on the overall picture. This will evolve over time. Activists tend to just see their local situation. Actually, most activists are just tools of other actors who have little or no interest in the activist cause I have seen it.
Long distance power transmission, with small loss, is now possible. Ironically, it is with DC transmission. DC originally lost out to AC for transmission because of the technology of the time. Technology changes.
As for the cost comparisons, that is going to be interesting. I liken this to how we compare ICE powered vehicles to EVs. There is an attempt to force fit a measure that tries to emulate MPG for EVs. That is stupid. The real measure, now that we have completely different "fuel" sources is cost per mile. Interestingly, I have seen reports that it costs about the same per mile in the UK (and I expect most of Europe). To get back to the subject, we don't pay for electrons, we pay for the reliable delivery of electrons. A measure that can take that into account across different power sources would be the best way to compare. After all, it doesn't matter to the end user where the electrons come from, just that they are available when needed.
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Hey, Peter, you should read this book I found. Something about the end of the world and the economy. Very prophetic.
All kidding aside, I just started reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about just this topic. The title is "On the High Seas, a Pillar of Global Trade Is Under Attack". So, far I have not seen a reference to your books in it, but it sounds like a Peter Zeihan piece. Did they contact you about it?
The question is, and always has been, who will pay for the freedom of navigation we take as a given. The CEO of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges at least asked that question. Almost no one else does. If you follow the people who follow shipping on YouTube and other sources (yes, one must use other sources) then the freedom of the seas is just a given and they react from that vantage point.
If we are going to "police" the seas, then we need a police force. Regular police forces in the US actually adhere to standards for size of the force based on population and other factors. It is a fairly well researched field, and in many jurisdictions, there are statutory requirements on the size. This in turn is a major factor in setting the cost. In the naval realm, the US Navy has lots of research on this topic as well. The number of destroyers (the cops) that you routinely point to is not something you made up (I assume).
Policing the seas has been the responsibility of the US Navy and allies, although as you point out, they are limited. As with any police force, you have to pay for it. That means taxes. Who do we tax? If the answer is just the American people, I think you know what the answer will be.
This issue is critical. For a historical example, one has to understand that the British would have given up their empire anyway, primarily because of the cost. It is not just cost, really, but the cost benefit ratio. Maintaining an empire is expensive. When what that empire provides is no longer providing enough benefit, it ceases to be viable.
Having the conversation about what we are doing is something you have long advocated. We have never it, and as you like to point out the last US president who wanted to have it left office over 30 years ago. That conversation is much more complex than who pays for the ships.
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@Libertarianmobius1 Well, I look at lots o things. Not all are unbiased, and not all are solely focused on China. The bias of some of the YouTube channels is obvious, but if the facts presented can be verified, they give useful information. In some cases, government and think tank reports are referenced and these can be easily obtained. I am an old codger and have a lot of foreign policy analysis experience, and have lived abroad (not in Asia) so I am comfortable piecing things together myself. I also look at news and opinions from other regions, including their take on Chinese events.
So, with all those caveats, the following are some of the sources I look at the WSJ, of course. There are other geopolitical resources such as the Council on Foreign Relations. China centered YouTube channels include, but are not limited to: China Update, China Observer, China Insights, China Truths, Lei's Real Talk, etc. Some are, as I said, obviously anti-CCP, but all are pro-Chinese. Other channels have occasional China information that is very useful in cross checking.
These are just some sources to start with. I hope that helps.
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For once I completely agree with Peter.
I would add that Bush was also a Navy Aviator in WWII and Ambassador to the UN.
Another thing to understand is that Clinton's campaign had a tag line which went "It's the economy, stupid." That is generally the determinant of US elections, not foreign policy. Even in 1980 and 1984 Regan, while strong on foreign policy was primarily running on economic issues. He was all about a strong military and deterrence (Trump has made similar statements) but it really was about the economy. I have seen surveys from this election of the reasons people voted and the top three never included foreign policy (Ukraine) or climate change.
The thing is that I would not be too certain that the world order ever could have "fixed". In fact, Bush was impressive not because he was talking about how to cement the world order of the time, but that he wanted to discuss it. His approach gave people, as we would say in today's parlance, "agency". I think he was smart enough, experienced enough and honest enough to know that this was a whole new era. It was a situation that had never happened before. That just adds to his stature in my opinion.
Just to enhance Bush's stature a little more, it was under him that the "Powell Doctrine" was put forward. He was talking about military action by the US assuming that diplomacy, etc. had failed.
The following list I copied from Wikipedia:
1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?
Now, just think about this in light of the Ukraine War. We don't have troops there (I think) but we have committed military assets.
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Good assessment of the situation. Actually, my son married a Georgian woman he met while traveling there.
The only weakness in his argument regarding the Europeans is a demographic one. This is surprising considering that is one of his main areas of study.
All this talk about WWIII and comparing the current situation to that just prior to WWII etc., ignores a lot of things. All of these are in Peter's wheelhouse. Markets, population, agricultural production and raw materials access are all major drivers of all previous conflicts along with the strategic positioning Peter talks about. Guess what, everything about all those areas is different today. Everything!
So, his nervousness about the Europeans getting together and "doing stuff" is overblown. Why do you think they abandoned their empires after WWII? The cost benefit equation did not work anymore, and US told them to do it.
On the other hand, there are many, many places in the world which were better off in the imperial age, and which have turned in hellholes and sh*tshows since the end of that period. That doesn't mean the answer is to bring back imperialist colonialism, but it does mean we have to totally rethink the borders of nation states. Woodrow Wilson actually brought up the issue. The European powers resisted him on that.
Look at Syria and Georgia. Look at the separatist regions in Georgia and their history. Really look at both situations. These are prime examples of what we are dealing with.
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Everyone talks about protectionism in the US as a problem. Really? How has the unrestricted free trade model worked out for the US? Think about it. We need something different than what we have been doing. That much should be obvious to anyone.
The other thing that bugs me is talking about Trump or Biden, or any of our political leaders, as if they were thought leaders. In a democracy, this is not the case. Anyone, no matter how smart or idealistic, will not be able to lead in a real democracy without reflecting the will of the people in general.
Just a basic lesson in politics for those that don't follow these things. The idealogues in US politics, such as the Green Party and the Communist Party, do not do well in the US. It's not because of the two-party system. It is because, thankfully, the US is not an ideologically driven population. Look back at the 20th century. The best performing third-party candidate was Ross Perot. Was his campaign ideological? Heck no! He was channeling frustrations within the populace. Interestingly, these are very similar to the frustrations people are feeling today.
Think of those countries that are/were ideological. Germany in the 1930s. Russia in the first two decades of the 20th century. China from the mid 20th century. Real democracy is a balancing of sometimes competing wants and desires of the populace. Democracy generally does a better job of it than any other system.
Just one of my pet peeves, and also my favorite rant.
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@tonywilson4713 My experience is similar to yours, I think, but I also have experience with large scale data processing, although some of that was in a "near" real-time environment. I agree with you that many people making the opposite transition would have a problem. My background spans statistics and analytics, as well as aerospace and defense. I often half-jokingly say (only half, mind you), that I miss the Cold War. I got to do lots of incredibly interesting research with unlimited budgets. Oh, those were the days. I look at the type of crap people, for example, at Google do as "research" and I have to wonder. Mind you, they do have some interesting technology, but a while back I was interacting with them, and most of what they were doing had nothing to do with their business. It also did not have much application elsewhere It often was not actually very good. They just had so much cash that they could fund anything they wanted.
As for an example for getting something wrong and having consequences in the real world, I have a little example from earlier days in the space program. We were told about this example to ensure we would not make the same mistake. A measurement on a spacecraft was taken in little-endian form. Then when it was used in the control program the programmer assumed that it was in big-endian form. So, instead of the spacecraft pointing toward the earth, when they went for a correction burn to establish the correct orbit, the spacecraft shot into space and was lost. Not life threatening, but a big mistake. There is just so much more to consider.
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Insightful as always.
This demographic change is, I expect, going to drive fundamental changes in capitalism. I fully expect it will strengthen it. I have been on all sides of this, management, ownership and labor. Making change is generally good, except for the entrenched interests.
What I think has changed is that we are no longer capital constrained. I know Peter is talking about how it will become more expensive, but that will not be a major factor. The last decade or so is not normality. Cheap or zero cost capital is not the part of economic history at any time except right after the 2008 financial crisis. What this reminds me of is the expectation that the 1950s was a normal period in American society. Are you kidding me?
Just look at the situation with China, and the developing world (started typing "third world", then stopped myself, then didn't, oh my). The west has been throwing capital at it for over 100 years now. I am talking about the "modern" economy. Capital is not the constraint. We in the west always have much more capital than we can absorb here and have been looking abroad to deploy it for centuries now. Just look at the SBF situation! I rest my case.
Look at it this way. For a long time, we were production constrained. (<<<<NOTE: This sentence was flagged in red by YouTube when I typed it. I cut and pasted it and now it seems fine! Beware the algorithm!) Before that it we were resource constrained. None of these is true today.
We can have a whole debate on the resource issue, but if you argue against there being enough you will lose. What we have is unreasonable policies regarding resources, not a problem with the resources themselves. For example, I just saw testimony in Congress where a Congress person just claimed that her state (I think it was New Mexico) had enough lithium for 80 years of US requirements. Look at the situation with oil. Weren't we supposed to reach peak oil sometime in the last century? Come on man. The number of examples is legion.
Change is coming. It will be interesting to see what form it takes.
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We can only hope he keep his word that he will not make a habit of doing this. Peter's TDS is in full swing right off the bat. Trump packing his cabinet with functional incompetence? Really, Peter? So, Biden had the A-Team in place. What about Obama. Let's just mention some of the stellar Cabinet and top advisors Biden has. The list is long, so just some highlights will do, including Pete Buttigieg, Janet Yellen, Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. These people have presided over some of the most disastrous policies and events we have seen in a long time.
What Peter doesn't understand is the role of the Cabinet. The Cabinet is not there to manage. These positions, down at least one level from the Secretary, are policy positions. They are also not independent. The Cabinet members are there not to make their own policy, but to implement the policies of the President, who is the elected official. That Peter does not seem to know this is a good indication that he should not be opining regarding current policies and personalities, or at least we should not listen so closely. His whole value as an analyst is in detecting and revealing global trends and their potential impact on a large scale.
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It's a model that works when the people the US is supporting are motivated to fight for themselves. Korea was one of those situations, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were not. Ukraine is also one of those situations where this works. The thing is, in the situations where it did not work, we really knew that it wouldn't, or at least some people did. George H. W. Bush was correct in his decision not to take over Iraq after the Gulf War. George W. Bush was wrong in his decision to invade Iraq. That country, as is true with many in that area of the world, is a mess. There are ethnic tensions that no amount of military power would resolve, unless one was willing to commit genocide. This is, of course, a hangover from the imperial period when the European powers created most of these states. Blame it on the Brits. They deserve it.
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Your take on Brexit is so silly. You are not the only one, though. How is the EU doing economically, socially, etc.? As President Joe likes to say, "C'mon, man!" In fact, I think I recall a guy named Peter who said something like the EU is a protectionist cartel and that it was going down? Another thing I am seeing reported is that the UK is poised to surpass Germany in GDP within the next decade. Heck, it may do so by the end of this decade.
As for losing access to food from the EU, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Why would the EU stop selling to the UK, or anyone else? They need markets for their products. Being a protectionist cartel, they might not want to buy British products, but as you say there is not much on offer there anyway.
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Myanmar is one of many, many "countries" around the world that make no sense. These are spread all over Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. Considering that most of those countries, as we know them today, were once ruled by Europeans it all makes sense.
The situation in Myanmar is more than just ethnic and geographic, but religious as well. A typical case. Combine all those and what one is left with is former colonies or former empires or both that cannot, in my opinion, be brought into a "more perfect union". We cannot impose our western values and norms on them without getting much more involved and dictating terms. That would require time and blood and treasure to try to make it work in such places and that is just a waste of resources.
I tend to think Peter is generally correct that the world is fragmenting into a situation reminiscent of, well, all of history minus the last 40 years or so. China and Russia want a "multipolar world order". They will get it. It is called imperialism and colonialism. They did not do well the last time and will not do well this time.
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@portuguesewalrus I fully agree. There is a cost to outsourcing. When I was working at a spacecraft plant several years ago, one of the manufacturing theories was that then current was that there should be a tight interaction between engineering (where I worked) and manufacturing. Moving supply chains outward broke this bond, and leads to increased manufacturing costs and lower quality. For those that try to keep the quality high, there is a significant cost to creating that function in dispersed enterprises. After leaving the aerospace industry, I was consulting with a small manufacturer who had some components of a system he was selling made in China. He, of course, could not station people in China. The Chinese manufacturer had trouble sourcing a couple of components, so they substituted them with what turned out to be inferior components. The systems were selling well, and were installed in some large customer facilities. Then, about six months in, they started to fail. All of them. Of course, we could not save this company. I could go on with several examples I was either involved in or that were related to me.
Just one other example from industrial history comes from GM. It was in the 1980s, I am fairly certain, that GM came out with their "world" car concept. They would build factories in target markets that were all set up the same way. Their suppliers would set up their operations collocated with the GM plant. Thus, no inventory problems and no supply chain problems. It also gave GM total insight into how their suppliers were performing. Who knows, we may see something like this brought back.
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Peter, I like and have bought and read all your books. I think you have a great take on the long-term trends in the economy and the world in general and the reasons these things happen. As for your take on the short-term issues (not trends) that is not so valuable. I watch, but as you have seen in the comments, I have a lot of issues with your prognostications on the details.
I know you are trying to use the platform to make some money from your audience. No problem with that. The mass market is always more lucrative than the specialist market. There are two things you might consider, though.
One is that I find that you are doing something that many, many YouTubers do. You are branching out into peripheral topics. For example, there is a science communicator on YouTube whose area is fundamental physics. Now she opines on anything even slightly technical, such as AI, quantum computing, superconducting powerlines (her latest video). These are engineering and computer science issues for which many other people have more information. Get the parallel?
The other is that many YouTubers seem to assume that their audience gets their information primarily from them and that they are the font of all knowledge. If you hadn't noticed, we are watching this on the Internet. Your audience has access to about as much information as you do. We come to these channels to get the creator's take on the substance of the issue. We can look up particular details with just a click or swipe. I find this in more traditional sources, even including things like Wall Street Journal articles and editorials, as well. I don't need the history or background. In many cases I am just as informed on that (sometimes through sources like the WSJ itself) or, again, I can look it up. As you can tell, this is a pet peeve of mine.
So, until I have a pressing business need for your take on things in real-time, I will be watching on YouTube.
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Having lived through the Saudi oil shocks of the 1970s I would sort of like to see the Saudis get their comeuppance. There was all kinds of crazy talk at the time. Some wanted to invade and just take over the oilfield part. Others talked about turning the desert to glass (if you don't know what that means, just ask). The embargo, by the way, was all about supporting the Palestinians. That should be remembered. These Arab states are all tribal groupings. There were never any modern states along the current lines prior to WWI. The European imperialist powers created them. I love the part at the end regarding Turkey. The Arab oil states territory was taken from Turkey, by the way. Personally, I think that Turkey swooping in is close to what will happen. Then the Turkish (Ottoman) empire and the Persians can go at it again. Oh, joy.
There are a lot of "unfortunate" situations in the world going on now that a lot of people would not have predicted (remember the "end of history"). There are a lot of concepts in governance and foreign relations that are poorly developed. This is an issue in our politics. The politicians talk about doing this tax break or that regulation, but never why. That is a whole dissertation. What is important here is that the world went from colonial imperialism to the ideological rivalry of just two powers to ... what? No one is talking about that? As Peter likes to point out George H. W. Bush was the last US President who wanted to have that conversation, and was the last one qualified to do so, so we voted him out of office.
The world we live in is not the world pre-WWII. I will let you take one guess as to why. On the other hand, it might well, as Peter points out in his work, resemble the pre-WWII situation quite a bit. I am seeing outright talk by some Europeans of a return to colonial control of places in Africa. This is low level rumblings and not from national leaders, but that is how it often starts. This is another one of Peter's prognostications which I bet will come true.
There is another thing to remember vis-a-vis the Saudis. Yes, they have easily exploitable oil. That does not mean that it is essential. Look at many of the flashpoints around the world today, like the South China Sea, Venezuela, Africa. Many, many of them have a lot to do with oil. I also saw that Pakistan just found massive oil reserves. The quantity of oil available is not an issue. There is lots of it and we get better and better at finding and exploiting it all the time. Then you have the trend of electrification. That probably won't take over completely, but it does dampen the demand growth for oil (on an aggregate worldwide basis). Then you have the soon to come peak of world population and followed by a reduction. For the Saudis, as the robot said, bad, not good.
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I prefer the American system. Before you react, I have also lived in Europe and had to deal with to political situation from a business point of view. So, I have lots of experience, but this is also just my opinion. I also have in-laws who were a part of the government in Germany, not the legislature, but the government. The family history is long and interesting.
Of course, the system in Europe is also what gave us Mussolini and Hitler.
What Peter neglects is his US history. In the US the two parties, prior to this century, each had their extreme left and/or right wings. The Democrats, had, until Regan came along, the Southerners. These people were on the right of the spectrum, and in many cases outright racist. This is why there were many successful US Presidents from the Republican Party who were legislatively successful with Democratic majorities in Congress and some Democrats who were not. The two best examples and Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy respectively. Another interesting example is in the Democratic Party and FDR. Look at his first Vice President, John Garner from Texas. He was about as far right as you can get.
The parliamentary system was developed in an environment of hereditary leadership, in other words kings and aristocracy. It morphed over time to the proportional representation we see today. Interestingly, in the UK they still have first past the post. The US system was basically a clean sheet break with the past.
The parliamentary system is also prone to instability, and it is not uncommon for it to take six months or more to "form a government". This has even happened in Germany.
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Very good take on the issue.
I am a supporter of Israel, so take what I say with that in mind. I am also definitely NOT a supporter of the Palestinians.
Beyond what Peter points out in the current day, this situation with Israel is as old as, well, Israel. This split between "secular" and religious Jews is all over the Bible. It is also one of the reasons (the main reason?) for disasters Jews have suffered throughout history.
Layer on top of that the current (last 100 years) situation. One of the differences between the situation of Israel today is that it is... what? Is it an ethnic state? Is it a religious state? Do you see what I mean? What are Israel and the Jews in our modern context? Read the history of modern Israel. It is a set of contradictions wrapped in an enigma with a dose of real tragedy thrown in.
So, Peter has it right. Is all of that history, which by the way is what garners support for the state of Israel, going to mean much to younger generations. People already question why we should support countries like the gulf states, which are illiberal, tribal absolute monarchies.
This last point is the most important and applies to almost all (maybe all) of our major geopolitical tensions around the world. The Cold War was a conflict between two ideologies vying for world domination. The current conflicts are between two civilizational models, with only a hint of the old ideology left. Over the last 30+ years the US has been open to working with all sides. This has not worked. We see that it has not worked.
The Chinese and Russians want a multi-polar world. They will get it. As Peter points out so well, that would result in self-interested imperialism and probably colonialism. Is that what they really want? They did not do so well the last time, and there is no reason to believe that it will be any different this time. Back to the bad old days.
I mention all this because, in the case of Israel, as we go forward, the costs of supporting them will be all out of proportion to the benefits. The US, and the west in general, already paid a high price in the 1970s. A very high price. The Holocaust was still fresh in the minds of the electorate back then. Will the west do it again?
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You might have noticed that "right leaning" parties have been winning in Europe lately. We have the latest win in Sweden, for example. Even in France, Marine Le Pen's party is the largest party in Parliament, even though Macron won the Presidency. And Macron is a centrist, not a leftist.
So, why is this happening? As you say in your books (and I have read, and enjoyed, them all) maintaining the order is no longer necessary for the US and it is expensive. Well, that is the same for all the globalists that want to impose their system on the world. It costs a lot of money, and the US is the only entity that can maintain it. China is already starting to pull back. Their Belt and Road initiative is winding down. Two reasons here. One is the projects are not very effective. Second, they are actually running out of money. Without a very large economy to drive any system that wants to impose itself on the world, the effort will fail. When the US started the order its economy generated about 50% of global GDP. The US is still about 25% of world GDP, and has been for a very long time. I recall many, many times when people were projecting that its share would slip. This never happens. The transition from 50% to 25% did not reflect a shrinkage of the US economy, but a growth of the rest. The summary of what I am saying is that the globalist left is a minority, and generally do not control the resources needed to impose an order. So, the things you write in your books are coming to pass, and it will not be a globalist future.
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This whole issue of the shifting makeup of the political parties in the US is not new. It is not even particularly violent today or significant in the sweep of US history. Just look at Ronald Regan. Do you remember the time when sitting Congressmen were publicly switching parties? This was mostly the southern Democrats, who were conservatives but were not Republicans because of the lingering effects of the US Civil War and its aftermath. The closest thing we have to that today is Kyrsten Sinema declaring she is an independent but continuing to caucus with the Democrats. Those southern Democrats made John F. Kennedy, an East Coast liberal, fairly ineffective and allowed both Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan to be very effective.
Just listen to Peter's description of the electoral system and especially our first past the post system in the US (the UK has something similar). The situation one ends up with is that there are two parties with "factions". In a proportional representation parliamentary system, which is common in Europe, and much of the rest of the world, one ends up with lots of little parties. In many of these countries no party has had an actual majority for a long time, if ever. The coalitions are explicit.
I don't want the parties to be too powerful. They are not an explicit part of the fabric of our system of government. John Adams warned about this at the dawn of the 19th century.
I have a couple (at least) problems with the proportional representation system. The first I will call locality. I personally want the connection to place and the people in that place to be as local as possible. The parties don't pay taxes. People, who necessarily live in a particular place, pay taxes. The original impetus for parliaments and representative government in the last millennium was that of taxation. The second is that the proportional representative system with governments that are not time limited, gives too much power to small factions. Look at Israel today. That should scare the crap out of you.
There is an additional layer of problems when you add in the parliamentary system where the head of "government" (we would say executive branch) is elected by the parliament, not the people. Just look at the Netherlands situation recently. At one point, in the not too distant past, it took Germany six months to "form a government". How about France today? Heck, just look at Germany in the 1930s. Hitler's party never won a majority of the vote even in the last "semi-free" election. We are seeing echoes of fears of that right now in Germany.
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The comments on Europe are spot on. Frankly, Europe, to be taken as a serious strategic player, especially independent of the US, needs to step up. That is going to cost them. Will they spend what is needed?
The EU+UK has an economy that is ten times bigger than Russia's. It has about three times the population. It has a much more advanced defense industry, although this is in part because they are part of NATO. They should not need the US. That said, I support US aid to Ukraine and believe that the US should do more.
The UK was a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum (as were Russia and the US) and later France joined in, sort of. This is reminiscent of the situation prior to WWI where the UK "guaranteed" the neutrality of Belgium, then couldn't, or didn't, do enough to stop the Germans. The same pattern was repeated in WWII with the French and British threatening to go to war if the Germans invaded Poland. They, again, had no way to make that work, unless they aggressively attacked Germany from the west. Remember the "phony war"?
Frankly, Europe is no different today than it has been for about 2,000 years. A battlefield.
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I always wonder about the phrase Peter uses at the beginning of the video. It is (paraphrasing) "what do we have to worry about?" I know this is a bit pedantic but, in almost every case where I see that used in terms of what is going on in another country my internal response is "nothing". In most cases there is little our government can do, either to prevent it or to encourage it, depending on the situation.
I guess my main issue is with the "worry" part. We need to consider the situation, and plan for it, at least in terms of possible effects on us and our allies, but I don't "worry" about it. I would use the word "consider".
As for this whole situation in Russia, it happened before (the breakup of the Soviet Union) and that is something we wanted and encouraged. We didn't "worry" about it, we cheered it. This next level of breakup was always going to happen. The Russian Federation is one of the last traditional empires.
I have seen videos from people in the region that go into great detail about how it could collapse into a series of warlord run states. They even go into names of the leaders and regional makeup. I believe this is the most likely. There is no democratic history in this territory. The period of democracy after the breakup of the USSR was very short. It was comparable to what happened in the early 20th century prior to the Bolsheviks taking over. On top of that, the Russian people are basically serfs. I once read a book by Nikolai Gogol titled "Dead Souls". It was written in the mid 19th century and reads like a description of contemporary Russia.
So, don't worry, be entertained. As an old Cold Warrior this will just be a continuation of something I saw, and wished, coming for decades.
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I just saw an analysis on another channel putting the timescale for a Russian victory and the number of casualties at astronomical numbers. This is based on territory won by the Russians and casualties taken. Of course, the guy in question is a game theorist and political scientist, so the analysis is pretty much devoid of any military value, but it just goes to show how inferior the Russian military is (tactics, logistics, soldiers and equipment). It also shows that Putin does not have the means to win.
This was quite evident when Soviet supplied and trained countries clashed with US/NATO countries. The best examples of this are all the Israeli wars, Desert Storm (Desert Shield was the precursor buildup and air campaign) and the 2003 Iraq invasion. To some extent the Iran-Iraq War could be included, since the revolution in Iran had happened not long before the invasion by Iraq. In case you are not aware, the Soviet stuff did not fare well. The only question was whether having actual Soviet troops involved would make a difference. We now know that it doesn't.
In a previous job I dealt with simulations of precisely the conflict with the Soviets that everyone is afraid of. This was at the Command and General Staff College. We gave the Soviets too much credit. By the way, the Egyptian army command visited after their peace treaty with Israel. They wanted to use the simulator (one of the regions modeled was the Siani) but they wanted the colors changed so that they were the blue side and the Israelis were the red. It was funny, because on the old version of the simulator this required a hardware change.
In the beginning of this millennium, I was at Edinburgh Castle. In the gift shop I got a book by a British military officer looking at the possible Soviet invasion at the Fulda Gap as a scenario. That was the primary one modeled in the simulators I worked on. Actually, the book was about the western armored vehicles. That author had a much more positive view on the western equipment and chances than most American commentators.
In the case of the Ukraine war, it is clear that neither side has the offensive capability to win. This actually comes down to air power. Since WWII it has been air power that has been decisive, in conjunction with an integrated Air-Land Battle doctrine. The best, and cheapest (can't believe I am saying that) thing the west could do is to concentrate on building up Ukraine's capabilities there. Biden has been very bad on that and is thus prolonging the war.
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I wish people would stop dumping on our political party structure. Has anyone who disparages it spent even five minutes looking at other countries, especially those with proportional representation? If you have and you don't prefer our model, then I think you might need help.
Look at some "well known" examples.
Israel has never had a single party win an outright majority. This means that the largest vote getter must align with small parties, which generally will have some issue they insist be addressed for support. Read up on Israeli politics prior to the Hamas invasion if that is not readily apparent to you. Another salient fact is the sheer number of elections that have been held over the last couple of years. These have not resulted in stable governments no matter what the leanings of the largest coalition partner are.
Germany, a supposedly stable democracy is another great example. The current governing coalition is made up of three parties. They are currently, as a group, polling behind a combination of the center right and far-right, as a group. In fact, the largest coalition partner , currently running the country, is polling behind the far-right party. Results in local elections support the polling. Oh, and by the way, it is not unheard of for Germany to take up to six months to "form a government".
Then there is the UK. I have lived there, so I have seen this stuff up close and personal. Just look at its history the machinations of the political parties involved. New ones are popping up all the time, and there are "nationalist" parties as well. This means something completely different from what it does here. There are three parties, representing three nationalities within country, each of which has a national legislature. It is as if the Native Americans had their own political parties, voting in the national legislature, while still having autonomy in their own lands. To explain how messed up the system is would take a while. Time to write a book?
There will always be factions, either in our system or the others. It is relatively apparent that, for all its faults, it is much more stable than the parliamentary alternative. This is the other side of the coin by the way.
There, rant done. I feel much more relaxed. How about you?
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It's all about the chlorinated chicken!
Well, I am kidding, but only by half. Actually, chlorinated chicken helped sink the trade deal with the EU. You know, it's all about standards (and protectionism).
Actually, Peter's gloom and doom about the UK seems somewhat out of step with information I have seen. Demographically they are doing better than the continent. Part of that is due to immigration. More people want to go to the UK, and the Brits do a better job of assimilating them. Heck, they have a Prime Minister who is of South Asian descent. Could you imagine a Turkish chancellor of Germany? How about an Algerian President of France? That comes from being a multi-ethnic empire. There are some interesting stories about that. Things could have gone any number of ways.
Of course, a lot of it could do with the language. As Monty-Python liked to say, if you speak English loud enough and slow enough anyone can understand. Try that with German. People would be cowering in fear or running away.
But really, the projections I see show the UK catching up and surpassing Germany in GDP within a decade. It would be interesting to delve more into the dynamics of that situation vis-a-vis Peter's projections.
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I was okay until the end, when Peter mentioned "this is how they have won every single war in their 1,000-year history". If by that he meant those they have won, then maybe. The thing is they have lost or stalemated in a number of wars over that time. Just going back to the 19th century, there have been many they have lost using these tactics. WWII was a win, but it probably would not have been of Hitler hadn't declared war on the US and the US and UK had not supported the Soviets.
Look just before that. In WWI they lost against a Germany that was smaller and was fighting a massive war on another front. The Russians still lost. Don't forget that as the Bolshevik shenanigans were going on in St. Petersburg the Germans were closing in and the Russians had nothing to stop them with. How about the Russo-Japanese war just prior to that. Then there was the Crimean War. Read about it. A lot of the descriptions might seem eerily similar to today's conflict. They also took place in a lot of the same places.
The Winter War with Finland is actually the most directly applicable to this conflict. The parallels are striking. A former colonial possession on the border. An overwhelming disparity in numbers. What happened. Russia took some small territories on their border but failed to retake the whole of Finland or destroy the government. They also lost large numbers of troops and massive amounts of materiel. This failure was one of the reasons that Hitler was confident that he could defeat the Soviets.
Peter does admit that this may not be sustainable for the Russians this time. Good. The thing is that the effects are already starting to be felt. This latest "expansion" of the military is a plan, an announcement. It seems that Russia may not be able to equip all these new soldiers for a while. Also, it would take a year, once all of the people were rounded up, to train and equip them. If they just throw them in as they do now, they will be gone quickly. Then it will not help them. This is not a plan; it is an act of desperation.
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Um, a deep space network (DSN) is actually totally different from the satellite communication networks that are used by the military and civilians. The requirements and physics are totally different. The fact is, Russia has no deep space probes I can think of (anyone?), so they don't need a DSN.
No, these are likely the ground stations used by the military for their communication and surveillance networks. To be robust, a system has to have dispersed and disparate means of doing this. I have some experience with this.
Is this another example of Peter picking up on a technical term to spice up his presentations? The funny thing is, while I find this a lot, and it is a bit irritating, the basic tenets of his writings and research are spot on. I truly value them. Some of the end game situations are playing out before our eyes in real time. There is no need for him to act like a military expert or a technical expert in some industrial field. Such things are irrelevant to his basic work.
A thought just came to me. You heard it here first. Have you ever read the science fiction book "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov? Peter, George Friedman, and other similar geopolitical analysts are like the Psychohistorians. A lot of the details are not important, but the big factors are. This is why I get a bit frustrated by all the China analysts who live in the west who are Chinese, for example. They get into the details of who is doing what to whom in Zhongnanhai and insist that westerners can't really understand what is going on and how things will play out. For another example, just look back at the Kremlinologists. There are even lots of people today who will say that if you hadn't lived or traveled extensively in Russia you can't understand what will happen. As President Joe likes to say, come on man.
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While I love your work, I find your estimates of what it takes to get any process done are way too pessimistic in general.
As for the battery chemistry issue you are both spot on an off the mark. Spot on because lithium batteries are not the best for everything, but it ends up being the answer to everything. Bad, not good. There are other chemistries that are proven but are not usable in many of the applications we use lithium for today. An example is flow batteries for bulk energy storage at grid level which would be much more cost effective than lithium. But we have Musk pushing lithium batteries for the purpose. How long has he been at it, and it still is not significant and certainly not worth the money spent. Heck, for what he has spent we could use flywheels or supercapacitors and had a lot of money left over for a big party.
As for research funding, there has already been lots. I live in the Chicago area, and we have Argonne National Labs here. Several years ago, they got billions (about five, I seem to recall) for just such research. Lots and lots of smart people. Did I say lots. Where is the answer? Or look at nuclear fusion research. How many billions do you want? As far as I can tell, it is still at least a decade away (yes, that is what they are saying in the UK for example today) from practical use, as it has been for several decades. There are some things that may never be practical no matter how much money you throw at them. Sometimes the answer lies somewhere else.
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Some of what is said here is valid, but the thing I have a problem with is the "arbiter of truth". Think back to the COVID situation. A lot of what the government scientists said turned out not to be true. Not elected officials or bureaucrats, but scientists. If they can't get the science right, and this was because the scientists were playing politics, then what about people's opinions?
This is not something that is going to be easy. In fact, it may not be possible. I would rather hear the crazy ideas so that I know what people are thinking, crazy as it may be to me. When talk radio took off, I was doing some business in the American south. When I was driving around, I would listen to the local stations. It was like another world. Of course, the media where I was (I am from Washington, DC) would never have carried this stuff. But you can't ignore it. People think it. Shutting it down on some platform does not make it go away. That is what free speech is all about. It is basically the right to air and hear any and all opinions.
And don't ever, ever, ever forget (see how I did a Zeihanism) the government does not always have the best of motives. They are politicians after all, and many of them crave power over truth. I have seen it up close and personal. And as for the European Commission, if you are looking to them for guidance or leadership then you are either stark raving mad or at least undemocratic.
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Peter is doing something at the beginning of this video that I find strange and disappointing. Actually, infuriating is the term I am looking for. Like most YouTubers he is assuming the lowest level of knowledge in his audience. This is endemic in YouTubers in many, many fields, not just geopolitics. This is stupid and frankly shows a total lack of understanding of that audience. Of course, YouTubers are amateurs at this stuff. It shows. The stuff I am referring to here is not their own area of expertise, but communications in general.
First, a person seeking information or opinion on YouTube does it because they are aware of the issues. We are not on traditional broadcast TV people. To assume that they need you to tell them what is going on in the world is bizarre. Many viewers also may have more specialized knowledge than the person making the video. We don't come here for tutorials.
Second, a lot of YouTubers seem to assume that their viewers are coming to their channel, and their channel only, to get the full story. Who do they think they are? I was recently watching a video on a channel by an economist. It was regarding Ukraine. He mentioned a number of other YouTubers who follow the Ukraine situation. It turns out that I also watched videos by most if not all of those. He is aware of the fact that there are others out there and does not repeat basic stuff. He understands that his audience has the context.
Third, we are watching this stuff on the Internet. The frickin Internet! Get it? If there is some context or term I don't understand I can look it up, in seconds, with a few clicks and/or keystrokes, and get much more and better detail. In fact, I can decide what level of detail I want, and I can even keep those tabs open and go back to it later. That's WWW 001. So not only does that show a lack of understanding of the audience, but also of the platform and technology.
By the way, there are YouTubers that do not make these assumptions/mistakes. I find it disappointing that Peter does. I am a big fan of his books and have seen him do much better in other venues.
As you can tell, this is a pet peeve of mine.
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Great video. This is a great spin on the situation without having to go into a lot of detail about economics, etc. Classic Peter.
The whole irony of why only western systems will be successful is precisely because they are not designed and developed by the government from the top down for some governmental purpose. In addition to a "new" currency regime the Chinese keep talking about and investing in reviving the old Silk Road. There are a lot of things that are involved, and it is a long and complex history, but consider what killed it. It was not a government edict or clever plan. The Silk Road cannot compete with seaborne transport. Period. End of story. Thus, a lot of private merchants killed off this thing that governments (and in some places bandits) controlled. China trying to do the same is just daft and is a waste of their and everyone else's resources.
I mention that because in addition to the scale issues involved with a world trade currency, there are the trust and efficiency factors. What makes the whole "western" currency work is the ability to do transactions reliably across borders. This basically means the SWIFT system. That system is basically run by, and was designed by, the banks, not governments. Like all banks they operate in a regulatory environment. The government can sanction organizations and even countries, but typically only after some sort of legislative process. Now think about how that would work if the Xi and Putin were involved. As President Joe likes to say, "C'mon man!"
Just a little side note, in the 1980s I worked for a woman who had a math background and was a computer scientist. We were at an aerospace firm. She had been heavily involved in the specification and design of SWIFT with a previous employer (Burroughs). Basically, the higher-level design hadn't changed at that time, and I expect is still valid. Stability is key.
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If the Russians have such wonder weapons and are adapting, why is their progress so slow? Aadvika, like Bakhmut, was a salient in the front. These are notoriously hard to defend. That it took so long, in both cases, to take either of them is not a good sign for the Russians. Actually, I would have abandoned them much earlier if I were in the shoes of the Ukrainians. The purpose of an army is first to destroy the opposing army. Once you do that you can then walk into any territory you want. Holding, or taking, a place for its own sake is not a very good strategy.
If you want historical precedents, then WWII is a good one, The Nazis did well at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa when the goal was to destroy the Soviet army. They started out well doing just that. Later, when Hitler wanted to hold on to territory, against the wishes of his generals, things did not go very well. In fact, there were many times when German generals wanted to fall back to straighten their lines. Hitler almost always refused. This often resulted in encirclements and destruction of German forces. Fortunately, the Ukrainians got out in time to fall back to more defensible positions.
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Currency, whether asset backed or fiat, is both a method of exchange and, in Marx's view, stored up dead labor. Be thankful for that. If you could not store your labor for later use, you return to feudalism. I mean literal serfdom.
As for the fiat aspect, that is inevitable. Over long stretches of history where there was little innovation and most people lived of agricultural activities, there was no real need for floating currencies. In an environment of constant technological innovation, the question of how much currency there should be becomes quite abstract. Having lived almost seven decades, I have seen a lot of this innovation, and participated in it. Any kind of asset based system, as Peter points out, has no connection to the "real" economy.
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Yeah! End of the globalized system as we know it now. Not soon enough for my liking.
I either saw in an interview or read in one of Peter's books (or both) something that has stuck with me and which I think is the crux of the matter. The situation has to do with the end of the Cold War. President George H. W. Bush wanted to have the conversation about what comes next, after the bipolar world order went away due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. As Peter points out, he was the most qualified president in history to have that conversation. He was voted out of office. The American electorate really wasn't much different from those of the rest of the world. They just wanted the peace dividend and wanted to stop thinking about all that geopolitics stuff. As Peter would say "Welll.."
On a personal note, I voted for Bush. I was born in Washington, DC, worked in the aerospace and defense industry and was generally very attuned to geopolitical issues. I knew or had relatives in the diplomatic corps and politics, so I am not the typical voter. Once, we took a straw poll of the people in the group I was working with, and the result was a tie between Bush and Perot with Clinton getting one vote (out of 13).
There is another reason I don't like the globalization, and it has to do with manufacturing and engineering. In the 1980s and early 1990s the main intellectual trend in those fields was design for manufacturing and increased quality. GM even had a concept for their manufacturing facilities worldwide. Rather than shipping stuff all over their suppliers would build their factories attached to the main assembly plant. Remember, this was also the era JIT.
The quality issue was key in the 1970s which was a disastrous decade for many manufacturing sectors and the new movement was a response. Then, with the lure of cheap labor and large markets the MBAs took over and quality suffered. I could go on and on about that, but I will restrain myself.
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The categorization of so many companies as "tech" is so disingenuous that it has become meaningless. Remember WeWork? In the automotive industry, especially with EVs, the tendency toward stressing the software is a ruse. Actually, it is a lie. When you buy anything, you buy a particular result. For electricity, for example, you are not just buying electrons, you are buying electrons reliably delivered on demand at the point of use. If the electric companies were just selling electrons, without any other guarantees, then you would be better off with a generator. This actually often happens in third world countries. it's the same with EVs. Tesla, and many other manufacturers (especially startups) stress self driving features and entertainment, etc. Why do you buy a car? You buy it for tranportation. I took an Uber recently and the driver pulled up in a Model 3. I asked him about the self driving feature. He said he had it but never used it. So, these companies are selling something which is not core. If EVs ever became ubiquitous then the price of electricity would rise dramatically. This is already happening in Europe. I saw recently that on a cost per mile basis, taking into account just the "fuel", EVs cost about as much as an ICE vehicle. This assumes charging at a public charging point.
I believe that Tesla stock will tend down to where traditional car makers are. It makes sense, but is, of course, just a guess. The trajectory reminds me of Bitcoin. Totally different things, but a similar pattern. Something to that?
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@texasoilfields Well, you didn't read what I, repeating Peter, said. If the food were not available, along with the opportunity to trade higher value goods (i.e., globalization), then starvation would result, and the population would not have grown as much even with the overbreeding. There is a lot more to it, including healthcare from developed countries, etc.
If what you say is true, then it would have happened centuries ago. Mostly populations had lots of children because many of their children would die from disease or hunger. This was the case throughout human history. From 1950 to the present the world population has more than tripled. There was growth in almost all regions of the world until the last thirty or 30 years or so.
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Peter, a casualty is defined as wounded, captured, missing or killed. In other words, anyone no longer able to fight. In the case of all but the last, there is some chance of the individual getting back into the fight later.
So, when you distinguish between casualty and killed, that is not correct. There is a reason for the terminology.
I am also seeing more sources giving the number killed on the Russian side as much closer to what the Ukranian Army has been reporting. Ukraine reports killed, not just casualties. The visual and anectodical evidence seems to point that way. Some, like yourself assume that Ukraine is actually reporting the number of casualties as defined above.
This war stuff is very dynamic, unlike demographics, and economics in general. Just saying (got that from my younger son).
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Um, Peter, how well informed are you about the German politics? The other party that did well, named after its leader, is, as I understand it, a far-left party. The following is a quote from Wikipedia: "... and other like-minded groups within Die Linke, such as the Socialist Left or the Karl Liebknecht circles..." regarding the founding of the party you won't name. Karl, along with Rosa Luxemburg, founded the Spartacus League in 1914. They were a Marxist group advocating revolution. In 1919 Karl and Rosa were murdered by members of the Freikorps (Rosa's body was dumped in a canal). I always thought that the Freikorps was right wing.
Maybe I missed it. I thought that Marxist revolutionary parties are on the left. So now you are telling me they are on the right. Wow, things change so fast.
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Peter, I know you have a hard on for Trump, but have you paid attention to what Biden is doing (an extension of what Obama did). It is a lot more like what you say Trump did. Outside of COVID, whose economy was better for the US people?
Also, your description of fascism completely describes Mao, and all his successors, up to the pinnacle of Chainman Xi. It also describes all the Soviet leaders and the Soviet bloc leaders. It also describes the leaders of Venezuela and Cuba. Last I checked, these were all commies.
Actually, you make the big mistake of ignoring that Nazi fascism was actually a socialist, meaning collectivist, project. It's in the name man: National SOCIALIST German Workers Party.
Look, I agree that Trump is a bit...different. I think he was needed. You should read George Friedman's book "The Storm Before the Calm".
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Russian tanks are being destroyed by Ukranian FPV drones. There is lots of footage. Ukraine has a bewildering array of drones. It may take several of the smaller drones, but those are cheap, and Ukraine is making lots. And, as you point out, artillery shells are arriving in numbers, not just from the US.
What this reminds me of, now bear with me, is ECM or Electronic Counter Measures. Then there were counter measures to the counter measures ad infinitum. It was hell for the acronym guys. ECM, ECCM, ECCCM, etc. So, they stopped at ECCM or EC2M.
We will see lots of innovations and adaptations as is always the case with longer conflicts. There were lots during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and occupations. Heck, the MRAPs, being used in Ukraine right now evolved out of those wars. The way drones themselves are being used is a result of all this innovation.
So, no big deal.
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The environment is, of all the concerns Peter mentions, only mentioned in passing. Forget all the climate change mania (although the Chinese are the worst offenders there) but look at the bog-standard pollution.
The conditions in factories are totally unacceptable. Where are the worker's rights advocates? For example, in the lithium battery plant lithium dust is not controlled. Bad, not good. Have you ever seen the pictures of the processing of rare earths and other materials. It is totally antediluvian. They have totally polluted up to 90% of their sources of fresh water for both farming and human consumption. The very land itself is polluted.
Remember the treated "nuclear" wastewater fracas. Well, people got concerned and checked on what was happening in China. They purchased Geiger counters. In fact, they bought them all up and the government put on restrictions. The results are that the radiation released by the Chinese nuclear plants, and present in Chinese buildings, is almost 1,000 times that of what the Japanese released.
What did we do by moving all this manufacturing to China? One of the primary effects is that we exported the pollution that we would not accept in our own countries. How much of this pollution gets into the products we buy? Think about it.
The thing is that I am not an environmental activist, but this is despicable.
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Peter, commenting on a situation like the Donbas is really not in your wheelhouse. Those situations are fluid and changeable. At the time I am writing this, Ukraine seems to be retaking territory around Bakhmut, for example. These things are all connected. There are also troops being pulled from the Donbas, and we will see the effects soon.
Also, while the Ukrainians have been showing the ability to do combined arms maneuver warfare, the Russians have not. In fact, their inability is what caused them to fail in their initial invasion. You noticed this and have commented on it vis-a-vis a potential Russian conflict with NATO.
Just an indication of how bad it is in the Russian military. The Russian State Duma is about to pass a law outlawing the use of personal electronic devices at the front such as smart phones. There is a concern, genuine, that information is being leaked by the devices, even if mostly inadvertent. The troops are using those to communicate since they have not reliable, encrypted devices provided by the Ministry of Defense. The operative word for all this is "corruption". I remember seeing videos and reading reports about the poor state of battlefield communications in the Russian army from the beginning months of the conflict. It is a clown show.
This is relevant because the Russians do not have the capability to go on the way they are and make it to any of the large cities. There have been some analyses that posit that it could take them many years and tens of millions of casualties to get to Kiev using their approach. The Russian state won't last that long. Heck, it might not even last 2024.
The whole point of this is that the Ukrainian General Staff knows all of this and is very sophisticated in their planning.
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@Haiti3063 Sounds like you work there. Maybe in public relations.
I am very aware of the capabilities Argonne has.
Given that, I still have to ask, where is the new chemistry that will both be more efficient and not use critical materials that are either in short supply or not convenient to obtain? The real goal is to have a totally new chemistry. And, it has to be safe. Anything lithium based is not, in the end, safe, especially in large use applications like transportation. It is also still very expensive compared to other storage technologies. Let's hope efforts like Form Energy are successful. At least that would be a big help for the grid. That still leaves transportation, which for greenhouse gasses is probably the more important. I also think that the utility industry barking up the wrong tree with the way they are going about grid storage and management. That, though, is another topic altogether.
To spend $5B to "facilitate" is truly mind boggling. The supercomputer was already there. The bulk of the facility was already there. All before the $5B. I guess where I am not satisfied with your response (and it is, of course, just my opinion) is that I was assuming that the whole purpose of national labs, was to do research into speculative areas that would not be commercially viable for private labs. In other words, more basic research.
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The Europeans actually stepping up in their own defense. Finally! Wasn't that what Trump was telling them they needed to do when they laughed at him in his first term? Who's laughing now?
The first thing is the Europeans have the money. Their combined economy (EU plus UK) is ten times that of Russia. If you look at some of the, as Peter would say, batsh*t crazy and wasteful programs the EU funds, you know the money is there. They only do the crazy stuff because the US has subsidized their defense for so long. And I am just talking about the EU plus the UK. Add in Ukraine, by the way, and they have additional exploitable oil and natural gas. Start fracking and building nuclear plants and they would be in good shape on the energy front.
Secondly, they have three times the population of Russia.
Thirdly, their weapon systems are light years ahead of the Russians. Oh, and by the way, they have their own nuclear deterrent.
Add it all together, and this should be a slam dunk for them. If they acted together, it is Russia who needs to be afraid.
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What Peter says is spot on. On the other hand, there is something generally left out.
Bear with me as I point out the real issue, The only thing is that all the analyses assume a model, which, it turns out, does not apply to this situation. As with any type of mathematical modeling (and this is basically what economics and financial analysis are) the challenge is not collecting the data (far from it) but coming up with a mathematical model to run all that data through. Wrong mathematical model and assumptions wrong analysis and conclusions. This is true in the hard sciences as well.
So, what are the aspects of the Chinese economy that people aren't talking about? There are two main ones. These are corruption and intellectual property theft (IP). The scale of both is breathtaking. It is rumored that over 50% of funds allocated to projects, government and private, are stollen through graft. Ever hear the term "tofu dreg". There is a reason for that. Another example is that the CCP has set up at least two massive funds to help the country compete in the chip wars. Both I have heard of failed and the people managing them have been arrested for corruption. The list goes on and on and on. IP theft has a similarly corrosive effect.
The other thing is quality of goods coming out of China. The quality level of products coming out of China is abysmal. You can blame it on the western companies as well as the Chinese. Examples of this go back well before the CCP came to power. It has been centuries since China as a country has been innovative (I am not talking about individuals). Ever since western companies decided that they would do marketing and design and outsource manufacturing, things have gone downhill. That is a bigger and more complex conversation. The biggest culprit in all this is Walmart.
Why do I prattle on and on about this? It is because no one, especially the people managing massive amounts of money in the US, is talking about this. They are looking at opportunities to profit off of fluctuations in purely financial terms. That's their business model. They do not care about (it is not their business to do so) long term issues and solutions. I am lucky to have a top-notch financial advisor. He has, for years, avoided China. He is very analytical.
As for not talking about the main differentiating issues, there is one exception. Love him or hate him, that person is Donald Trump. And it is not a new thing for him. Even Democrat leaders have made noises about this at times. We ignore it at our peril.
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BRICS as a counterweight to the west? Come on man. China and India are close to a war. Commentators and Indian officials actually expect this in the near future and are vocal about it within India. There is a lot of speculation that Xi needs a war to cement his power. Well, in the early 1960s this as the case with Mao, and he invaded India. He won, and promptly withdrew. That Xi may try something similar is not out of the question, and seems more rational given the issues with a Taiwan invasion.
As for Argentina, one of the presidential hopefuls has actually proposed that they ditch their currency for the dollar. Do you think they would switch that for the yuan? Come on man.
The Chinese will soon run out of capacity to contribute anything economically to the others. They talk a lot, but 60% of the countries involved in the Belt and Road initiative are under economic stress and probably won't pay back their loans. Then you Italy, the only G7 member of the Belt and Road withdrawing from it. Add to that the sentiment within China that, during these turbulent times within China, the resentment of all this foreign spending, and China may soon be drawing back, not expanding.
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Race, and ethnic (national) hatreds are rife in Europe. All these countries have very distinct and long-lived cultures. When I lived in the UK and traveled all over Europe for my work, I had a distinct perspective. I am ethnically 100% Greek. All my grandparents were born in Greece and immigrated to the US. In Europe my wardrobe was totally English, Saville Row stuff. So, before I spoke, people took me as southern European. Once, flying into Germany, the border officials started talking to me in German (fortunately I had studied German in college). The crux of all this is that people in these countries were quite comfortable talking to me about how they felt about people in other countries. It was generally not complimentary. Even as a teenager traveling in Europe, I saw how Parisian French spoke about, say, Normans (who, after all are just Vikings). So, none of this surprises me.
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Russia presents an interesting situation and perhaps opportunity.
Militarily, outside of nukes, it is a joke. They can't even defeat the Ukrainians who don't have nearly what they need for offensive operations. Before you jump on that, look at their four offensives. Three relied on subterfuge (a good thing in war) and the unpreparedness and incompetence of the Russians. Those are the ones that were successful. The fourth went against prepared positions and that one failed. Without air power and more armor, they will not be able punch through.
Right now, today, the way to Moscow is open. The Russians have drawn down their troops that would defend the two major cities. In the 19th and 20th centuries Moscow and St. Petersburg have been reached a couple of times.
If the current Russian Federation collapses, as I expect it will, sooner rather than later, then the land mass that contains the resources might be easier to deal with. The problem is the Russian people, and I am not talking just the Russian ethnicity. They are serfs, at heart. Just like the Chinese people under the CCP are still peasants. I don't know what the solution to that problem is.
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Wow! A run at Moscow. Just think about it. The Poles from the west. Belorussia would join in. I seriously don't believe the population there supports Lukashenko. The Ukrainians from the southwest heading northeast. Finally, you have the Finns from the northwest. Of course, a lot of other smaller countries would join in (e.g., the Baltic states). It might be best to leave the Germans behind on this one.
In Russia, to the east and south, this would be the opportunity for many of the ethnic republics to revolt. It might be easy for them as well. In the far east, China would finally grab all the territory Xi thinks was stolen by the Soviets and a whole lot more. The Japanese would resolve their territorial issues with Moscow, in their favor of course.
The thing is, looking at how the Russian army has performed in Ukraine, except for the nukes, the scenario is actually quite possible. The forces mentioned have the firepower to do this.
And don't give me any guff about needing a three to one advantage in manpower to attack. That is basically a 19th century metric. It assumes technical power parity. Look at the 20th century. In WWI, the Germans decisively beat a much larger Russian army as an attacker. Leadership and logistics were factors. The Russians had trouble feeding their people and they didn't even have enough rifles for their soldiers. In 1921 the Poles stopped the Soviets. This was one of the more significant victories in the post WWI period. It forced Lenin to propose "socialism in one country". Don't forget, Marxist-Leninist communism is an internationalist ideology. To give that up, if only for a time was a great blow. Back to the troop ratios, frankly, if Hitler hadn't been such a poor strategist, he could have taken Moscow. Actually, his best play would have been the southern arc. There he would get lots of food (Ukraine) and oil. Then a march up the Volga, perhaps.
This is so much fun to speculate on.
One further note, Peter's timeframes for things like the dissolution of regimes like Russia and China are way too long. I follow events in China (and lots of other places as well) and they won't make it 2030. Heck, they might not make it the end of 2025 (at latest). Russia seems to be on a similar trajectory.
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I'm with Trump, on this. Higher tariffs all around.
The cars and other products they produce are substandard. Look beyond the top line figures. On EVs, you will find claims of eight per week catching fire. There is lots of video evidence that gets out. Some of the situations result in a horrendous loss of life. On the other hand, there is a video of a Tesla Model 3 hitting six cars, flying through the air and finally landing. The air bags deployed, no fatalities and NO battery fire. There are other videos of a new model from one of the manufacturers where the engineering and production are so bad on the EV that the real axle detaches from the vehicle while traveling. This is amateur time.
I have lots of other examples, some of which I have been brought in to try to resolve, of products being produced to poor quality standards or where the manufacturer in China substituted components without telling the customer resulting in massive losses if not outright business failure.
What really irks me is that the environmentalists are not all over this. The reality is that in moving manufacturing to China we have just exported our pollution. They are killing their own people and the planet.
It would actually be a good thing for the Chinese if they changed course. With the real estate bubble popped, there is less employment for the millions of migrant workers.
The CCP is moving China in the wrong direction. In the end it all comes down to corruption. Kind of like Russia. Wait, who trained the Chinese commies? Oh, yes, the Soviets.
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Very interesting list and probably pretty accurate. I have seen and participated in some of these from a technical standpoint. It is always the case that more technologically and industrially advanced countries will prevail. From the time the Europeans mastered long distance sea travel and military technology in the 15th century they, and their offshoots, have dominated. Countries like China are not in that camp, and their system ensures it will not become part of that group. This is also true of the global south. The only wildcard I see in this is India, but they have their own issues.
On the AI and computing front, one has to look at the history of computing and its effects on society and economy. The very first areas affected by commercial computing were banking and insurance. Millions of back-office jobs were lost. Was there massive unemployment? No! That is because computing changes the dynamic of the economy. AI will be the same thing. It, like big data and quantum computing is just technology tools that will be applied to business as have all the other technologies. A good way to think about it is to look at the recent phenomenon of big data on which AI depends. When this became a thing (I was consulting and teaching the technology) there was all this talk about companies having to have a C suite position to deal with big data. Two pure play companies burst on the scene and attracted a lot of venture capital. I haven't heard about them for a while. On the other hand, big data is ubiquitous. AI is the same thing. Quite frankly there is a lot of the base technology that is open source. Even the hardware is not that specialized. It is basically a concept that was developed decades ago for image processing and then became big though video gaming. There are some new twists to the architectures, but these are not the neuronal chips once thought to be the way to go. As such there is a massive incentive to invest in this area considering how well the leader in the technology, Nvidia, is doing. There will be lots of competition and that will bring costs down. Again, the China situation is instructive. Frankly all their "technology" companies have developed through IP theft. They are not, and will never be, the drivers of technology.
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Peter makes some good points.
What a lot of people forget is that the Japanese, in their heyday when everyone thought they were going to overtake the US, invested in US companies and then shut them down and moved them to back to Japan. China really cannot do that these days. Fast forward to today (oh, no, a Peterism) and the Japanese are building plants in the US. One might also consider the Japanese investing in US properties. They really screwed up there. They bought signature properties at very high prices, and then when their economy started to tank, they had to sell them, back to Americans, at rock bottom prices.
We should be vigilant, but most of this hysteria is, indeed, overblown.
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The Trump comment is very telling. For one thing, Trump scaled back government and went after the administrative state. He actually targeted some Federal programs to cities with large minority populations that vote Democrat.
Trumps voters are not, as far as I can tell, looking for handouts. They just want the government to get out of the way of their getting good jobs.
For example, the US would likely have a foreign trade surplus if Biden and the Democrats would get out of the way of the oil and gas industry. Is that a handout? As President Joe likes to say: Come on man!
As for the gun toting Lauren Bobert and rural types being violent, you have to be kidding me. Where do the vast majority of the murders occur? It is in liberal cities with the strictest gun laws. Peter, I thought you were into data and facts.
My ex-wife's mother was from a rural, farming area. Probably not too far from where you grew up but not in Iowa. While I was going down to her hometown a lot, to hunt and shoot guns, there was one murder. In their history. Mind you I went down there over a period of 25 or more years and got to know the people well. The thing is that this murder was a stabbing. The victim and perpetrator were brothers, and the stabbing took place in the adjoining state. The murderer then drove across the Mississippi where he was apprehended.
I have a friend who lives in a large city and has a county place in a very rural part of an adjoining state. I was visiting him there and we were shooting a bunch of guns off his deck. His neighbor, a farmer, came by to join in. During our conversation he strongly suggested that my friend get a gun of his own to keep in the house. The people there all had guns and they didn't even lock their doors at night.
I live in a large suburban city near a large city. The people here have lots of guns. I am willing to bet that there are more guns per capita than in the big city nearby, which by the way has a high murder rate. There have been two fatal police shootings, both justified, in city's almost 200-year history. Both fully justified (and both by the same officer). Both assailants were mentally unstable an armed (one with a gun and one with a knife). I can only remember one murder in the 32 years I have been here, and it was a stabbing in a bar.
So, you may want to rethink your attitude a bit.
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The issue, and your mention of it, of whether Trump, or any President or presidential candidate, campaigns for or against something like a ban on TikTok puzzles and rankles me. Did the TikTok ban in Congress originate with the White House? In fact, it originated with the opposition-controlled chamber. State bans had already been passed in various state legislatures. This is not something led by the US President. There are lots of issues that fall into the same category.
It seems that there is too much emphasis on the information warfare aspect of this conflict. Go back and read some history. Especially in WWII, the Axis powers made a big deal of information warfare. How did that work out for them? Even in the Vietnam era, there were massive protests, and yet, in 1972, Richard Nixon won in one of the biggest landslides in US history. Having lived through that period and most of the Cold War, I am puzzled that most current commentators don't know about these things.
The only thing I can figure, and it is something I have been thinking about lately, is that the "kommentaclura" is making a big deal about this because that is what they can do. They, and I include Peter in this, have little or no impact on the real policy makers in terms of hard security decisions, etc. so going on about the information war is their only avenue. It is the only space they can really play in. Consider this carefully. Is it not playing into the adversary's hand?
These are people I like and respect, by the way. I just think it is an interesting and important phenomenon.
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