Comments by "Fredinno" (@innosam123) on "Whatifalthist" channel.

  1.  @ElGrandoCaymano  It means that Austria can’t resupply and reinforce the Netherlands. It’s hard for them to maintain control (which is why half of it separated successfully in the first place.) In the end, the Austrians traded it out for land in Italy for convenience’s sake. They probably should have asked for more, but...eh.
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  2.  @ElGrandoCaymano  France had very little good coal as well, and yet it still industrialized. Honestly, it doesn’t seem resources were the problem, and even if Austria kept the Netherlands, one would imagine it developing and not so much anywhere else.
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  3. Jackson Wu I’m going to respond to the rest later. I was thinking more urban landscapers. Horticulture is the wrong term. I think it’s ridiculous to act as if all (or even most) services are ‘useless’ because marketing exists. You could say that for every economic sector, and that the entire economy is an unproductive fraud because marketing exists and people are convinced to buy things they don’t need. :/ People in welfare states already are supposed to have enough of a safety net to ‘decouple’ income from work (at least enough income to live). It solves the mental problems related to poverty, but not joblessness. Again, it doesn’t solve the root problem behind it. People not working who don’t want to work still cause societal problems and have psychological issues relating to lack of work.
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  4.  @Hysteresis.Actual  Except no one in the developed world eats 1200 calories. Are the excess jobs from the excess calories ‘unproductive’ because they’re ‘made up’ because people want to eat more? The economy being ‘made up’ is not an economic model. The economy is an abstract concept used to describe transactions between people for goods and services. As a result, it is ‘made up’. It exists in the same way trust ‘exists’. The financial sector does provide value for the real economy, though, by financing the real economy. I don’t know. I feel like you focus too much on what’s ‘productive’, when from the beginning of human civilization, we’ve basically used marketing to ‘create’ demand out of thin air. Were building cathedrals and fighting wars (and the spears for those wars) ‘productive?’ Objectively, no. But they happened because of the ‘marketing’ from kings and religion. Perhaps that’s wrong, but it’s kind of normal for humans to ‘create’ demand.
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  5.  @Prof.GoodFeels88  nvm
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  6. King of Kings & Ruler of Rulers HK needed the new territories to function due to things like utilities being in the New Territories.
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  7. Baxter Mortimer Burma and Sri Lanka we’re NOT under the same partition as India. They held onto those places for long after.
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  8. Asuka-san They did support the Whites- not that much (aside from the Japanese) after the end of the war. In context I was implying at the end of the war- point is that most of the allies just wanted to go home.
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  9. ethan brinkman Whilhem also lost most of his authority by the end of the war and the country was effectively a military dictatorship.
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  10.  @boxingboxer  Chile and Japan also face devastating Earthquakes. This is not an insurmountable issue.
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  11. Kowalski From Nebraska No, because Imperialistic societies are not necessarily capitalistic and vice versa. Ask how Hungarians and Poles felt about being under the Warsaw Pact. Capitalism is an economic system. Imperialism is a foreign policy objective. Lumping them together like how you’re doing makes no sense to me. I know leftists often lump the two together, but they aren’t the same thing and shouldn’t be treated as such. And I see we at least agree on the blanket support part. Note that most healthcare systems, including the American one, are highly socialistic or at least government-guaranteed. Even Singapore has a government-guaranteed healthcare system. Healthcare is a bad place to compare competencies for Capitalism vs Socialism.
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  12. Pedro Batista Yeah, but not wheat, which can’t grow in the tropics. And really, the issue was as much lack of compatibility in terms of animals as it was plants. Also, this is exclusive to the America’s, but it’s hell to get from the North end to the South compared to from Europe to China, except by boat.
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  13. Saliva My point is that agriculture is still much less compatible, not just wheat. And potato still can’t grow well in the Jungles that divide the Americas- leaving you with Corn as the sole universal crop.
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  14.  @silence6605  Mexico (its core territories) is part of Mesoamerica, meaning you proved the Potato never left the region. Also, I could only reply now. So :P It's not if agriculture isn't possible in upper latitudes. It's how easy it is vs how not.
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  15.  @narsimhas1360  The easiest place to colonize is around the Earth. Venus is good if you want a planet, but it’s still farther away. You can argue it’s the best , but... we don’t really have any idea how to maintain a self-sustaining biosphere and modern economy. No space agencies are focusing on it because it’s not their goal. And Elon isn’t even pretending to take a stab at the problems with actual colonization.
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  16.  @semigeo6911  It won’t even get to 10x. Hell, I’d be happy if they could get the price down to F9 equal /kg- about 250-300 mil. But few would use something that expensive. F9 hasn’t spurred massive a massive new commercial satellite boom other than the as yet unproven business model of Starlink (and Starship is overkill for Starlink) But F9 launches 24 times a year and is far less complex than Starship. Reusing the 2nd stage is only likely to mitigate the extra complexity, since F 9 is already reusing the majority of the rocket. Prices /kg have not decreased much, despite new competition arriving on the market. When Tesla was facing competition, they cut prices. But not SpaceX. Why? I appreciate the comparison to a successful scientist. ;)
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  17.  @lilemont9302  Because we already have bases on the ocean. We have ONE base in Space, which has less people than even a fraction of an oil rig (which has hundreds of people). Is it self-sustaining? No. But it’s mostly because they don’t really need to. But new tech with aquaculture and underwater mining will eventually require more self-sustaining cities, especially as we move further out past the shoreline.
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  18.  StrategicFooyoo  Most companies have already been moving supply chains out of China for South Asia and Latin America due to labour costs now reaching parity with the US, adjusted for productivity. The Made in China 2025 plan was a plan to mitigate that, but it was basically dead on arrival. They really should have kept something like that more secret. The Chinese Internal Market is not that big: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets) and is highly protected and skewed towards domestic companies, making keeping factories there to service the Chinese Market pretty iffy. If I want to put my conspiratorial hat on, it's part of the reason MSM and Soros has no problem pissing on the Chinese now. Everyone has sucked most of the Gold out of the China mine, and now everyone's fine with shutting the mine down. It's likely actually closer to $400 mil: http://www.worldstopexports.com/chinas-top-10-imports/ And as I said earlier, Made in China 2025 was dead on arrival. Also, how does China maintain its high-tech manufacturing base without imports of integrated circuits? China really hurts badly economically if it has to ration out its FOREX, even if it can keep the lights on. And without exports, no money is coming in, either. China is an export nation, meaning the net is a loss in FOREX. Remember that China doesn't have to collapse entirely to stop being a threat. A Lost Decade or 2 is sufficient, due to demographics. Note that Japan was able to mitigate the problems with demographics by tapping the global investment and consumer marketplace, and increasing the level of outsourcing to minimize labour use while maximizing corporate profits and GDP. China likely lacks that luxury. Being on the neutral/good side of most nations that matter has its perks. Depends on why there is a slowdown in trade. If it's the economy, then sure. If it's the fact people aren't able to trade much anymore for whatever reason (say, a Iran-Saudi War), the result is a mass INFLATION of the cost of Oil, not deflation.
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  19.  StrategicFooyoo  Except if we compare it to other export-dominated Asian economies (Taiwan and South Korea), they kept growing their exports at the same pace as they did previously long after they passed the point where China has now roughly stagnated. Export values will increase as countries go into higher-end manufacturing. Either China is failing to go into higher-end exports, or China is losing factories at a rate that counteracts higher-end exports. Or both. Japan was never a massive exporting nation, despite populist rhetoric at the time. Here is a pretty good graph showing the composition of GDP per nation. Note that China’s GDP and GDP growth is dominated by investment, which is not sustainable, because it relies either on mass savings (stops once the boomers hit retirement), FDI (also slowing down since 2016), or debt. Exports also make an abnormally large % of GDP (Germany is comparable, but it has free trade and common laws to the rest of the EU). https://youtu.be/g4DFRPa36T0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets Consumption as a % of GDP in China is 39%. Abnormally low, even for developing nations. Actually, abnormally low for all nations. It’s only outcompeted by tax havens and oil monarchies. They’ve been trying to get that number up to normal levels forever. They’re not going to succeed now. Chinese GDP is unsustainable and vulnerable.
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  20.  StrategicFooyoo  Why not? Why do high value added products have to be specialized to a single nation? China is big. I need a source for your claim about Japan. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. Yes, because a country with millions to Urbanize creates ghost cities that take half a decade to see people. It’s not market manipulation and government policy. Secondly, China has 60% of its people in Urban areas now, up from 50% a decade ago. This excludes rural-urban migrants. Most developed nations have 80%. It’s not sustainable. No, but when one section of your economy is stupidly bloated and is inevitably going to have a hard correction, people are going to lose their jobs and investment portfolios. They literally can’t consume in that scenario. It’s basically 2008, but for China (and worse). Even discounting that, the point is that China has shown no real progress in being able to wean itself to consumption led growth despite saying it will for a decade now. And they’re running out of time, before the Chinese have to spend all of their economic excess on the military and healthcare.
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  21.  StrategicFooyoo  I asked why one country has to specialize in one high value added sector. You haven't answered that. Well, no, they won't, but construction has to slow down *at some point*. The problem with both financial assets and infrastructure development is that in both cases, you eventually run out of things that provide a positive return. That's more obvious in the stock market with QE, but if you've seen a Chinese ghost city, you'll know it also applies to China's housing market. You're right, their problem IS overproduction. If they can't find consumers, GDP starts to fall because eventually the factories have to shut down. That leaves them vulnerable to the outside world. China does not have the ability to ensure its own economic growth. They will never have enough consumers in their own system to keep growing and cut themselves off from the rest of the world. It's a gordian knot. Again, China doesn't need to collapse to lose. They only need to stop growing, and demographics takes care of the rest.
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  22.  StrategicFooyoo  The scale of construction in China is unprecedented compared to the rest of the world. The issue isn’t that they stop constructing, the issue is that they have to slow down because eventually there’s not enough demand. And sure, I guess if the quality is shitty enough they might have to do the job twice, but that’s basically the Parable of the Broken window, and not an actual net benefit. Therefore, investment driven growth must end. Also, this isn’t a video game where you can just dump tech points and money into certain sectors and expect results- especially when corruption is endemic in the system. The Soviet Union had a cult of technology and failed to use it to gain a general technological edge over the US (they did in some sectors, like military, but not *overall*). You have to be able to use it. Oh sure, China’s not going to run out of things they can do, but they’re going to run out of things that generate returns and growth, especially in a reasonable time frame. Arguably they already have. Debt defaults in SOEs are rising due to failed investment projects and the coronavirus.
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  23.  @shubhendudash5534  ???
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  24. Ivan the Great 2.0 Guns can’t get you to orbit because of how orbital dynamics work. Not to mention literally everything would have to be manned. Rockets are needed for any railgun system. Plus, there were easier targets in the 19th century. East Asia was never really partitioned, after all. Also, a habitable moon would be so large it would make the Earth and Moon tidally locked, which would turn both landmass areas to merely equatorial bands, like on Titan. Habitable Mars and Venus only work if they’re practically deserts (or in the case of Mars, with far more greenhouse gases) due to being at the edges of the habitable zone (water is a greenhouse gas and increases albedo if ice. In either case, with Mars, you would still need a mask system to breathe properly with all the greenhouse gases (even low increases in CO2 levels can cause the brain to not properly function https://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Carbon_Dioxide_Hazards.php ). And seasons on Mars would be extreme due to its orbit.
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  25. Ivan the Great 2.0 I know HAARP. ANY railgun needs a 2nd stage rocket to achieve orbit, it’s physically impossible to build a big enough gun to get to orbit. That means there needs to be someone on board to fire and direct the rocket engine. Doesn’t matter, it wouldn’t happen in the 19th century anyways due to how difficult it’d be. Someone might try to launch themselves to space, or send a packet to the Moon, but that’s about the extent. Technology was still too primitive until you get into the early 20th century.
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  26. TapOnX https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/25766/what-would-happen-if-the-polar-ice-caps-of-mars-melted Mars lacks enough water stored to form more than Titan-Style seas, assuming enough CO2 could even be sublimated to make it moderately stable, and that a singular asteroid impact would be sufficient. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars “More than 21 million km3 of ice have been detected at or near the surface of Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters (115 ft).[13] Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.[14]” For comparison, the average depth of Earth’s oceans is 3.2 km. Either way, you get a desert that can’t be breathed in properly with barely any water. That is also likely toxic due to perchlorate. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone.png This is basically the problem. Mars is outside the ‘normal’ habitable zone most of the time, but is in the ‘extended’ habitable zone, where you can have super-earths, desert planets, or extreme Venus-like cloud planets be habitable (how you get all that atmosphere on Mars being a mystery). But not Earth-like planets. Basically you need either a very low albedo or an extreme amount of GHGs. Maybe you could merge Venus and Mars into one entity, but that’s still only 93% of Earth’s mass. Maybe we can move Jupiter a bit further back to get more mass. The V3 cannon existed in WW2. It couldn’t be aimed at new targets, so it was pretty bad as a weapon overall.
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  27. Ivan the Great 2.0 The Scramble for Africa ended in 1914, just in time for the First World War. Again, why bother with the moon when it was so much harder?
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  28. Ivan the Great 2.0 1914 is the end of the scramble according to wikipedia. It had cooled down by about 1900 but there was still action in the Boer Wars, the Dervish Rebellion, and Libya as well as Morocco. Also, a lot of the claimed area was only under weak or nominal control by Europeans. And I pointed out that minus steampunk fantasy, there’s no way you can have that. Maybe you can shoot something to the Moon, but definitely not back. Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon probably depicts the closest thing to something that may be feasible, but spaceguns would have to be far large than those depicted be survivable.
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  29. Ivan the Great 2.0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun “Acceleration: For a space gun with a gun barrel of length ( l l), and the needed velocity ( v e v_{e}), the acceleration ( a a) is provided by the following formula:[citation needed] a = v e 2 2 l a={\frac {v_{e}^{2}}{2l}} For instance, with a space gun with a vertical "gun barrel" through both the Earth's crust and the troposphere, totalling ~60 km (37 miles) of length ( l l), and a velocity ( v e v_{e}) enough to escape the Earth's gravity (escape velocity, which is 11.2 km/s or 25,000 mph on Earth), the acceleration ( a a) would theoretically be more than 1,000 m/s2 (3,300 ft/s2), which is more than 100 g-forces, which is about 3 times the human tolerance to g-forces of maximum 20 to 35 g[5] during the ~10 seconds such a firing would take.” Aka: To say it’d need to be big is an understatement . Doesn’t matter either way, you still need rockets to circularize an orbit, and liquid fuel rockets had yet to exist. Even the Apollo astronauts used computers most of the time to help with or pilot spacecraft and rockets as well. So good freaking luck . Same thing with building rockets on the Moon to get back. Doesn’t matter, the British still got a serious bloody nose from the Boers- who actually won on the long term anyways since they ended up taking over South Africa. It was still going on at the turn of the century. Point is that the European powers were, frankly, busy, even at the turn of the century. You have to at least butterfly away WW1, and keep Germany (and possibly Italy and France) focused on overseas colonies. And even then, there was still the Middle East and East Asia left to partition up. The Americas if the USA or Britain can’t be bothered to stop an invasion there. AltHistHub made a video on the habitable Moon though.
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  30. Ivan the Great 2.0 And how did you find that?
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  31. Ivan the Great 2.0 ... what?
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  32. Ivan the Great 2.0 That’s not how science works. We wouldn’t have even gone to the Moon OTL without the Cold War, and only that because better missile tech= nuking your enemies.
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  33. Ivan the Great 2.0 Not a Cold War with Nukes, which is the important part.
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  34.  ilgamesh  Go watch CaspianReport’s video on Chinese claims.
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  35.  ilgamesh  China and Russia’s SOI directly compete with each other. China can’t stop itself from reverse-engineering Russian equipment. But Putin knows that turning his back on China means game over. He can’t fight both China and the West at the same time.
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  36. Bev Bevan Conquering Northern Mexico and Cuba.
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  37. Hector Medrano I don’t think the Compromise can survive (in practical terms) after California. Not that it matters much, most land a over the line not already in states was terrible for cash-crops or unwilling to become slave states.
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  38.  @evanchen703  Less than the youngest Millennials.
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  39.  @kamikaze5528  Did your father move into a privately-run town? Because usually you still have to pay taxes (or ‘fees’).
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  40.  @PsilentMusicUK  The only way Greece could have left its debt crisis without free helicopter cash from the ECB is by defaulting. The biggest issue was that the Germanic economies didn’t think it was a good idea for them to suffer monetary inflation for the Greeks. Shocking, I know.
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  41.  @Justaguyuguys  Most places calculate unemployment like that.
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  42. Matthew Chenault But would it be so bad to cause a civil war? Western and Eastern Canada along with Quebec and the rest of Canada aren’t exactly all that happy together. But it never ended up being enough to cause sufficient separatism. And Quebec has its own language. Also, the South did industrialize in the 20th century. It is feasible without slavery being as much an influence casting down in the south it could happen earlier, like her predicted.
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  43. Matthew Chenault And why would the New Deal not happen in TTL? And yes, but Canada didn’t separate apart. Plus, with the high amount of rights states had at the time, it seems kind of pointless.
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  44. Matthew Chenault Keynes would still exist, so there would be something like the New Deal going on.
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  45.  @jacksonburnette207  Are those guys ethnonationalists? That's usually what separates the alt-right from the mainstream right.
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  46.  @michaelweiske702  Well, no party in a 2-party system is every 100% politically united. However, the never-Trumpers are now in the minority. The GOP primary polling for 2024 is a good example of this. Both DeSantis and Trump are 'Trumpian' candidates. No one else consistently polls above 10 points. The non-'Trumpians' exist, but are effectively subordinate now, no matter how much David Frum might wish otherwise.
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  47.  @johnwilson6324  https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-claiming-okinawa-japan-claiming-hawaii-15996 https://www.dw.com/en/japan-angered-by-chinas-claim-to-all-of-okinawa/a-16803117 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachal_Pradesh Both have about 1.4 million. You could literally have done a Google Search. When was the last time the US used a military base as a platform to annex land? I’ll tell you why you should care. The first move China would make against India in a war is to close off their water supply. Millions begin to starve, beginning a mass exodus to the West. The first move China would make against Japan or Taiwan is to attack their shipping. If they can’t hold off the attacks, millions starve, and those who can start moving to the West. Then what happens when they arrive? You send them back to starve in a war zone? Do you send them into ghettos until the war ends, and they have to move back under a hostile foreign power, or to a home that’s rubble and cobblestone? https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2019/08/14/statistics-show-iq-disparities-between-races-heres-what-that-really-means/ The idea that races solely determine economic success is ridiculous. Especially considering the relative economic success of Hispanic Americans over their counterparts still in Latin America. I guess we need to send back all the Blacks too? Asians? Indians? Maybe the Jews and Italians while you’re at it? You DO realize that’s ethnic cleansing, right? And when those happened, *millions died*. I wish that the Germans could have been let to stay in Silesia and the Greeks could have been let to stay in Constantinople, areas they had been living in for over a millennia. Especially the latter. ‘Istanbul’ my ass. They by no means were inevitable. The Germans were let to stay in Alsace after being ceded to France. If the Allies made it to Berlin, they would have saved the Silesian Germans. If a ethnonationalism never took hold in Turkey, the Armenians and Greeks would still be there. EVERY Chinese leader since Mao has publicly stated they want to annex Taiwan, if force if necessary. You don’t say that if you don’t take your territorial claims seriously. Russia has invaded Crimea and is in the process of ousting the current dictator of Belarus so he can get a more compliant person willing to ‘reunite’ it with Russia (look up Union State). The GINI coefficient of CA, a measure of inequality, is 0.49. Literally US average. What? Argentina is basically white and has an IQ of 93, and it is... well... Argentina is the only nation to have ever gone backwards from developed to developing status. Not even Greece did that. Africa never had much infrastructure. Note that infrastructure is more than just roads and bridges, but schools and hospitals as well. Plus, Africa’s geography is terrible, and requires more infrastructure to get anything done (it’s mostly plateaus that go all the way to the coast and no navigable rivers, with a few exceptions (West Africa comes to mind). Look, I consider myself a right-winger. I’m not for free borders. But what do you think would have happened if America let the Soviets do what they pleased during the last Cold War?
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  48.  @johnwilson6324  ... So do you believe the Cold War never should have been fought?
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  49. ​ @johnwilson6324  Fought by the US. Should the US, in your view, have spent so much effort to stop the spread of Communism? I think Reagan said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQm7UqF-YA And anyways, sorry for the long wait, I was busy. I'll respond to your previous comment properly now: "China doesn't want to invade Okinawa. That's fake news. One 2 star General said "Okinawa shouldn't necessarily be Japanese or Chinese"." It wasn't just the 2 star general. State-run media and Chinese historians (also controlled by the government) ran with it afterwards. The CCP didn't do anything to stop it. And 'questioning' the sovereignty is... being controlled by China. Even if just as a vassal state, which is what is implied in context. https://www.dw.com/en/japan-angered-by-chinas-claim-to-all-of-okinawa/a-16803117 Imagine if tomorrow, PBS said that Newfoundland shouldn't belong to Canada? That's a land claim, all right. There's more claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR7WgKnBTIE That link details the links between genetics and IQ passed down over *family*, which is different than 'IQ differential between races is caused by genetics'. Argentina IS white. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Latin_America#Genetic_studies "A 2009 autosomal DNA study found that of the total Argentine population, 78.5 percent of the national genepool was European, 17.3 percent Native American, and 4.2 percent African.[62]" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Percentage_of_major_Y-DNA_haplogroups_in_Europe.png Greeks are comparably white. If they're 'white', so are the Argentines. No, if it's a white genocide, it's also a genocide of those minorities. Also, not sure if you know, but people have been mixing races for as long as trade and war has existed. It's not new. We can see the traces in the gene pool of different peoples. And history has shown you can have stable societies with multiple distinct ethnic and genetic identities (Switzerland, China, Iran) if you integrate them properly into your greater national identity and don't treat them like shit. The US, despite all the shit over police racism and BLM protests, honestly has its disparate peoples get along pretty well overall in the grand scheme of things. "Africa has WAY better infrastructure than China." [Citation needed] I can't even read that imgur link properly. See, here's the problem. Immigration is not an 'invasion'. There is a reason waterboarding is considered torture and drinking water from a water bottle is not. What matters is the people or society in control of the situation, and the voluntarism of the people immigrating. And invasion is forceful. Immigration isn't. And the thing is, not even Trumpists are as anti-immigration/ethno-nationalist as you are (who generally want less immigration and higher 'quality' immigration). White Nationalists are a tiny minority in American society. You don't get to dictate policy for the rest of the country.
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  50.  @johnwilson6324  It won’t matter, because this is a debate of ideas. Tell me if this is true: If I told you I am white, you would think I’m ‘infected’ by wokeness or betraying my own race. If I told you I am a minority, you would think I’m doing this because I’m not a ‘real’ American and an other. If I told you I am mixed race... well, you’ve implied that my creation was a genocide, so... In other words, it wouldn’t, and shouldn’t matter. The only thing that changes is your perception of my character. If you still insist-
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