Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Bloomberg Originals" channel.

  1. The last time we had strong multipolarity, it ended up in two world wars. The reason Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana are named that way is because there was one dominant power keeping trade routes open, and not having huge conflicts with rivals.
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  2. It's the corruption that makes it risky, hence why Western aid packages limit themselves to those who promise and show improvements to the underlying governance. China isn't as picky, and their loans feed into the corruption while the people get a flaky build and practically no knowledge shared on how to maintain and expand it themselves due to the related exclusionary service contracts with Chinese companies.
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  3. The economy is doing great, it’s the distribution of that greatness we’re not experiencing.
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  4. I don't know about "trust" as much as being an available cut-rate alternative.
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  5. Inflation is caused by demand outstripping available supply. Companies have been reporting record profits. Makes you wonder how much the supply has been deliberately limited in order to inflate prices and please shareholders.
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  6. It's not China's either. All foreign aid is ultimately meant to advance the interests of the donor, it's up to the recipient to negotiate what types and how directly they'll let the donor operate based on what benefits they expect to extract from the deal going forward.
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  7. The strength of Starbucks was being a third space that you choose to hang out in, which provided decent coffee. Basically a caffeinated daytime version of a bar and lounge. Focusing on pumping out specialty drinks (especially custom ordered ones, as well as cold ones that lack a strong scent) to inflate their global growth ironically damages what drew people in to begin with.
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  8.  @samalenyo  And apparently Indonesia is so dissatisfied with the build that the government is taking a serious look at Japan again to finish the rest of the HSR to Surabaya
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  9.  @Seskoi  The PRC government promotes and supports the theft of foreign IP though. The US prosecutes it no matter whether the actor is American or not.
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  10. ... who wants them there, because the alternative is even worse. Ask the Philippines how they fared with their territorial integrity after asking the Americans to leave.
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  11.  @慕容沫子  India and Maritime SE Asia want you out of their lands. Tibet and East Turkestan too depending on who counted their existence. Russia is keeping an eye on you as you look to become an Arctic power via Siberia. And the Vietnamese hates you with their thousand years of humiliation across multiple dynasties.
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  12. ... while the whole time they were throwing sand at our skates and saying it came from outside.
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  13. Right, the PLA budget doesn't include support for the paramilitary fishing fleets ramming and fouling the boats of their neighbors, nor all the "internal security" intelligence and propaganda programs where the spending might exceed that of the military.
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  14. Because locals fear the alternative scenario where America is absent.
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  15. Millennials are entering their prime productivity years now, increasingly executive positions too.
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  16. “Learn on the job” assuming companies even give OJT anymore, rather than leaning on the public sector (schools and military) and private competitors to do the training for them.
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  17. Does the infrastructure serve them, or bypass them? Remember that entire self-sufficient communities have died and slums in the cities have grown because of otherwise straightforward changes to the national transportation network.
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  18. America's infrastructure is falling apart because it's old, like Mao Zedong just died old. I've driven on China's roads and notice that it quickly degrades if they didn't resurface the whole thing like twice a year, which makes me wonder how it's holding up underneath because inspections and retrofit projects don't seem to happen as often despite the rusting guard rails and flaking concrete. Though at least they run a street sweeper down the two-wheeler lanes like every other night.
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  19. China at the time was worried about not having enough growth and jobs to make all those kids eventually net productive, especially with all the changes that were starting to automate away jobs and the rising calls for reform that led to 1989... having lots of unemployed youth is politically very hazardous. Thing is they kept their One Child Policy for way too long, passing through their prosperous 2000s and early 2010s without birthing the people to pass it on to.
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  20. Having everyone around them permanently defanged by the Americans and British helps a lot.
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  21. The way she's completely turned the momentum, in a few months it'll be President-Elect.
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  22. "ASEAN countries have upheld peace in the region" with US presence from its bases in the Philippines. After the Philippines ejected the Americans, the PRC began expanding the conflict beyond Vietnamese claims starting with Mischief Reef in 1994. Shots at Filipino fishing boats fired, militarized airports constructed, and the seizure of Scarborough Shoal later, US forces are getting invited back to defend what's left of Philippine and greater ASEAN's exclusive waters.
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  23. Restrictions and pay cuts aren't enough, they're still far too overleveraged.
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  24.  @WorstPaperCut I have a social science degree yet make six figures. Turns out there’s a huge need to identify and shape human preferences towards best practices in cybersecurity.
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  25. It’s called the Smiling Curve model, which describes manufacturing as the least value-added and most substitutable middle stage compared to R&D (valuable IP) in the beginning and Sales & Services at the end. Specializing in designing and fulfilling orders is how America remained prosperous despite offshoring price-sensitive factories and laying off routine yield-based blue collar grinds.
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  26. Right, when economists talk about the “demographic collapse” they mean that of young, skilled, and mobile workers. The senior surge only makes it worse because their dominance in politics just prioritizes funding retiree benefits often at the cost of support for the youth and young families.
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  27. China is different in that its government has never had to deal with decline... and the implications towards its legitimacy. Most other places would swap out the leadership.
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  28. Corrective surgery focuses on things like cleft palates and asymmetric limbs, helping the patient physically function like a normal human. Cosmetic ones are purely optional, done to try gaining an advantage through appearance compared to regular folks.
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  29. Until the lack of it causes widespread hoarding and Depression-level “busts”, only resolved when more gold is injected into the economy through additional conquest and colonization.
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  30. According to the Smiling Curve model, manufacturing is the lowest added-value middle of the production chain compared to R&D (valuable IP) in the beginning and Sales & Services at the end. This explains things like why factories are so cost-sensitive and easily offshored, why well paid office jobs don't stray far from high-tax coastal cities and states, and why entire countries fail to break out of the middle income trap.
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  31. Vertical integration is the ownership over multiple stages of the production process. For example Ford once owned steel mills, power plants, and coal mines when they were cranking out the Model T.
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  32. Homeowners are more consistent voters, and it’s in their interest to make sure housing prices keep rising.
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  33. It's been dubbed Late-Stage Capitalism, where socioeconomic immobilization from entrenchment of the privileged incumbents leads to widespread discontent. We experienced this before exactly a century ago during the Gilded Age, when then became the Great Depression.
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  34.  @HhhZzz-m8i  It's the same problem in California, old incumbent NIMBYs refusing to let denser living get zoned and preventing young workers and future voter-taxpayers have a bed that's within an hour drive of their workplace. A literal cartel of especially retirees who can spend all day lobbying city council is happening in the housing market even if they don't call themselves that.
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  35. Not even close. In Xinjiang they install cameras inside your home, and bring in a Han Chinese man to 'accompany' the family whose patriarch they jailed.
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  36. China is more playing SimCity, assuming traffic from outside connections will be automatic if they just build their local plots and policies well
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  37. Russia has a fence between them and three sides of Ukrainian flatlands, and are still bogged down. Now try to cross an open Strait where everyone can see you coming to try landing on a mountainous fortress that hasn't been successfully invaded since before the airplane was invented. Oh and the population is entirely hostile, has multiple powerful friends, and has been preparing for your arrival for decades. Plus you're running low on supplies with a collapse of seaborne trade, your treasury is empty paying for overland alternatives, and there's a rising uproar back at home from all the families who lost their only son.
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  38.  @r3dpowel796  Ironically the host nations just as regularly frustrate the planned closure of a base. The US has all that presence because ultimately the Americans are wanted there, and have much stronger concerns about what then happens in their absence.
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  39. It had a presence before until the Philippines deemed their services were no longer required in 1991. Three years later China seizes Mischief Reef, and America's vacancy has cost the Philippines ever since.
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  40.  @Rotated  Correct, road wear gets calculated by the fourth power of average vehicle weight. So while trucks cause concrete to want repaving every year or two, the biggest degradation from pure bike and foot traffic would instead come from mere weeds and weathering.
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  41. We have a tech boom. We are the ones telling FoxConn what to make and how to make it. We dominate the two ends of the "Smiling Curve", basically owning the high-margin irreplaceable Design and Services, leaving others with the cutthroat automatable Manufacture in between. Our scheme simply doesn't employ nearly as many unskilled, uncreative, instructions-following human cogs.
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  42. Globally is alright, it's China that's struggling. I was just there.
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  43. Which is why we need to as much as possible divorce the effect of money on politics.
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  44. Except its to benefit corporate interests moreso than government ones
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  45.  @vimalalwaysrocks  The same one that took in patients while full of roof leaks and uneven surfaces that other countries would have done cheaper and more effectively with trucks and tents?
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  46. The US and most of the world recognize Taiwan as part of "China", but not necessarily as under the sovereignty of the PRC. This is the difference between Beijing's One China Principle, and the One China Policy these other nations justify their standing "unofficial" relations with Taipei.
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  47. Too many Afghans didn't want to fight their families, no matter how disturbing and abusive they are. Plus Afghanistan is literally surrounded by anti-US sentiments (Pakistan, Iran, China, Russian-backed -stans), so insurgents had no shortage of shelters and resources to fight with.
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  48. ​ @wendyshoowaiching4161 That usually means overthrowing the government and fracturing the state. There's a reason China's history is divided by dynasties.
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  49. Reagan successfully convinced Americans to internalize the phrase "the business of America is business" and that government gets in the way, even though corporate and societal interests fundamentally conflict as much as profitable efficiency vs humanist resilience.
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  50. So you'd rather let the Chinese continue their dumping while we stop supporting our own industrial development?
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