Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. Although newer isn't always better, like plastic components in machinery or service subscriptions instead of full ownership.
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  2. That's just conservative politics inflating if not inventing threats they say you can 100% mitigate with a gun, in accordance with the interests of their gun lobby donors.
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  3. If we can get deep-drill geothermal to work, it would bring about all the benefits that those who push for nuclear promise (since the mantle itself is heated through a nuclear process) without the risk of producing any byproducts more exotic than what Earth has experienced since life began here (worst that would happen is a modest volcanic eruption).
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  4. It's the PLA saying that. They're the ones trying to fight a land war in Asia while the US would keep to the seas and skies.
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  5. The deamplification of pro-libertarian Republicans, who still believe that private interests are gracious enough to invest in unprofitable yet vital public goods.
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  6. Not completely end, but ensure there's an alternative fab source in case Taiwan gets cut off for whatever reason. Taiwan will still be making the absolute best chips; the key is that the US itself has the capacity to fab better chips than what Mainland China can cobble together.
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  7. Just left China earlier this year. Not missing the diarrhea-colored tap water even within the 4th Ring of Běijīng.
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  8. That's to collapse the whole thing. Disabling it might just need a truck bomb or a well-aimed bunker-buster.
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  9. That's why the push to discard Huawei from 5G networks. Too many risks of hidden backdoors... which I wouldn't be surprised if Western intelligence have found and exploit themselves.
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  10. We can thank the Boomer generation for their aggressive voting that compels legislators to cut support for education and youth services in order to save the budget for the incumbent homeownership tax breaks and geriatric benefits that are so popular among increasingly dead-end retirees.
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  11. Correctable annoyances vs state abuses that people seriously emigrate out of. It's rationally not hard decision to make, really one driven by emotions.
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  12. Control of Crimea means control of the Black Sea, as well as much of Central Europe since the Danube River empties into the Black Sea along with all the cargo ships that sail up and down the Danube.
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  13. None of the exotic waste products too, any effects would be no worse than routine seismic activity.
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  14. Efficiency and resilience are competing interests. Unfortunately profit-demanding corporate laws and pro-capitalist attitudes prioritize efficiency to benefit relatively transient shareholders over longer-term stakeholders (which includes customers, employees, and the public at large).
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  15. It's receive-only though, like GPS and Galileo. Beidou is the one constellation with limited two-way communication capabilities. And with any of these systems, a specific satellite just has to be flagged as "bad" to be simply ignored from the total positioning calculation.
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  16. Most Americans originally entered without verification of identity, criminal history, or ability to work. I'd imagine "illegals" and their descendants will likewise shape up if we don't legally further steer them into less respectable occupations.
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  17. Legal isn't bad... if it's reasonably available.
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  18. Only at like the squad level, which any group of randos with guns could pull off. In terms of sustained combat, the last experience they had was their sprint north when the Incheon landings threatened to sever their supply lines had the Americans surrounded and besieged Seoul instead of slowly fighting through it.
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  19. The way they're built though, they'd be lucky to still be a salable property in 70 years.
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  20. ​ @gregmoore66 ​​Right, not all "change" is necessarily good, as Obama's critics were quick to point out back then. Trump's first term already had us driving in the shoulder, further rightward movement could have us falling into the ditch.
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  21. The appearance of fraud is how Republicans rally for votes among its overall minority voting base, even though the actual cases of voter fraud we're always found among Republican voters using their vacation home to register for an extra ballot.
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  22. Ironically it was racism that kept the US from absorbing more of the Western Hemisphere, both over questions of increasing slave states and of integrating Spanish-speaking Catholic mestizos. But yeah it would have been interesting to see how much better Latin America may have ended up as a star on the US flag 🇺🇸
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  23. There's many farms in KSA and China too, but it's not enough to feed their own population and they still have to import much more.
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  24. We'd probably automate the farm with drones and robots instead of having more kids, just like big farms have been doing for a while now.
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  25. The filters add even more costs to an already uncompetitive coal.
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  26. Just casually ignore the supply shocks of Russia's invasion and China's Zero-COVID hangover, keep believing it's all Biden's fault. That'll teach those libs 🙄
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  27. Trusting self-discipline only goes so far, sadly limiting access to weapons is more consistent because otherwise the chances increase that one of the wielders is or becomes willing to self-destruct in the process of combating their enemy.
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  28. Though clothes are scraping the bottom of the price bracket. Perhaps this disruption will end extremely wasteful fast fashion of articles that fall apart on the first wash.
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  29. It’s on the way though, much like how the Soviet Union wasn’t such a bright beacon of post-war progress after the Moon Landing, but still persisted as a force-wielding state until it suddenly didn’t.
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  30. ​ @tyree9055 Not every servicemember is a shooter, in fact the "tooth to tail" ratio is like 8~12 support personnel for every one actually geared for engagement. A civilian law enforcement outfit wouldn't be much more efficient. Also you may want to look again at how sealed the Afghan-Pak border really was.
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  31. Efficiency and resilience are competing interests.
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  32. ​ @JinKee Til those drones are hacked, downed, or spoofed into attacking the wrong target, and now you've just armed the very people we're trying to keep out.
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  33. Center of Mexico is just as isolated from the ocean, and doesn't have as many places for viable port cities.
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  34. Not to mention the feudal theocracy movements the Saudis have been allowing support for, developing a Muslim World with a hair trigger against America (culminating in 9/11) but ignore even more blatant anti-Muslim campaigns from China, Burma, Serbia, etc.
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  35. Just like invading Ukraine was a consequence of NATO? No, this is what happens when self-righteous social conservatives keep trying to reverse the trend towards wider democratization and justice.
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  36. The US is already set up to regress into states and local communities, it began as a nation that way where the harder challenge was building a federal system on top of it.
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  37. Which China falsely believes is all an American conspiracy, in denial that different societies can independently converge on the same conclusion — that Beijing is the main problem.
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  38.  @hughmungus2760  It’s a collapse in the view of the ruling CPC, whose unquestioned legitimacy hinges on fulfilling the promise of tangible economic development indefinitely. Failing that, they face a Chinese people who are largely aware that a single Party setup isn’t the only way to run a country.
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  39. But those don’t happen at noticable scales constantly like our burned fuel does.
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  40. Retiree NIMBYs drive the inflation of house prices in California too.
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  41. His timeline like everyone else's often isn't precise, but the trends are ultimately accurate.
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  42. Chinese factories are getting less orders too, and foreign brands especially are offshoring operations out of the PRC.
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  43. Compounding oversold reports over a couple decades, because the Party keeps rewarding the meeting of artificial and inflating quotas based on those falsified reports.
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  44. They could bring out its people, but the heavy gear would have to stay behind. That would actually be the ideal scenario.
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  45. If not competing with the Philippines and their South Asia neighbors for exporting workers overseas.
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  46. ​ @m.deadly5952 No they can't. KSA enforces exit visas that are granted at the pleasure of the employer, who can easily petition for some vague "breach of contract" to force delays and denials in processing. Only recently did they ban employers from confiscating worker passports, but the fine for that is a measly couple hundred dollars if they're even caught.
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  47. The history of what's "legal" should be considered. Before WW1 immigrants only needed to be white and not hacking up a lung as they came off the ship, and not only was identification and criminal history often left uninvestigated but they were even offered a legal change of name on the spot. The descendants of such simple survivors of a routine boat ride makes up the majority of Americans today.
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  48. I wonder if its parent company PDD kinda wants China's deflation to continue, since apparently they're hemorrhaging money at something like USD 10 per item
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  49. They'd be technical intelligence agents, not human ones. Professional spooks could be a Sam Fisher instead of a James Bond.
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  50. Not as much as Dynamic Zero-COVID and Russia's "special military operation" disrupting the global supply network, and corporations riding on a profit-price upward spiral.
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