Comments by "Fredinno" (@innosam123) on "Wars of the 2020s and 30s." video.

  1. The issue with desalination isn't the cost, it's the energy requirements. We know how to solve that problem. Nuclear Energy. The issue is getting there.
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  2. Peter Zeihan says hi. ... OK, no, but seriously, you should probably watch his stuff. This is a pretty interesting perspective though. I skimmed parts of it, but I've wanted to add my take as well, so here we go: I have studied China a lot: I would point out that Land-based trade orders are inherently inferior to sea-based ones in terms of cost of trade, and if the US was to blockade China, even if everything worked out well with the Belt and Road, it would still be a massive blow to Chinese manufacturing and trade. China is not the only cheap manufacturer, and it's not really especially good at high-end manufacturing (assuming the trade war doesn't kill that option in its cradle). China has also relied on the Belt and Road to prop up its 'Rust Belt' Northeast, which WILL inevitably decline even further eventually- and it will have the same problems as the American Rust Belt. Debt has also increased to levels at or exceeding the US in relative terms, assuming you choose to take Chinese data at face value. That's not encouraging for a developing economy. China may become a global power. But my worry is that Xi knows that the Chinese have already squandered its opportunity to be one, or are losing their chance as the world turns against them, their population ages, and their debt turns bad. Desperate people will do desperate things. Like invade Taiwan or India. In other words, the issue isn't that China is going to overtake the US. It's that China wants to- and is losing its chance.
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  3.  @SteelSagas  That assumes China doesn't turn fucking livid and goes all out ballistic, because losing Tibet means the USA/India controls its headwaters. And China is already running out of water. Fast.
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  4. Dan oz No, you can solve it. By getting rid of the salt. Either use it as salt beds to extract salt from. Or by moving the brine further out to sea where it is more easily diluted. Desalination is definitely a win if you literally have no other way of getting water. The Colorado no longer goes to sea because of the hunger for water.
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  5. John Wilson Yes, we have a China Problem. Especially if you’re Taiwanese, Indian, or Japanese.
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  6. StrategicFooyoo 1. China is a developing nation with less ability to pay. Absolute Debt does not matter, only relative debt. If I make $1000 a month and am in debt $10,000, I can probably pay it off. If I make $100 a month and am in debt $10,000, I’m screwed. Assuming you trust official public & private debt and GDP figures, China’s facing a financial crisis. If you don’t, they’re facing economic collapse. The US already had a financial crisis, and public&private debt-to-GDP has been on the decline since. Also, much of their debt is denominated in foreign currency. “Unfounded liabilities” are not debt. They’re designated future possible debt that would materialize if the US Government can’t find more money (taxes) cut benefits, or cut interest (ie. asking the Fed for money without going through the bond market, allowing for the direct printing of money). 2. China nukes US ships. Then what? You’ve basically set a precedent where the USA can now nuke all Chinese Naval bases (and ships), thus making the maneuver pointless. You’re still trapped. Geography also dooms it, because unless you also take out all American military bases in the 1st Island Chain, China, air power can also be used to interrupt shipping. That’s still not a guarantee, because you can use pretty much any flat, empty strip that’s long enough as an air strip. This discounts drone warfare, and the fact that US foreign and trade policy is in a state of disorganized, self-injuring flux as it reorganizes against China. That assumes the USA hasn’t already destroyed all those naval and coastal air bases, which tends to happen in a naval war.
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  7.  StrategicFooyoo  China needs foreign currency (like any nation without a hard currency), and they’ve got that from exports and debt. Exports to the rest of the world collapse due to trade sanctions, and all of a sudden foreign currency debt levels explode, or the Chinese starve. (They have to import food to feed themselves despite using excessive inputs of pesticide and fertilizer, causing water pollution to get even worse.) Chinese foreign currency debt is 2 trillion. Or 13% of GDP. Most Western nations are inherently considered hard currencies and are trusted in international trade. Unlike the Yuan. The USA negotiating with the Fed is not necessarily default. Also, note that the president can appoint the Fed Chairman. Also, note that the reason the Fed doesn’t directly fund the US government has to do with legal handicaps the Federal Government gave the Federal Reserve*. It’s currently *illegal for the Fed to print money and just give it to the government (effectively being the same as a US Treasury banknote). Also, note every developed economy is attempting to fight *deflation* due to the baby boomer retirees. Instead of the inflation being pumped into QE, some could be given directly to the government. Also note that implementing a 5% VAT could raise $355 billion/year (excluding rebates, adding rebates would likely increase the real rate to something like 7%). https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0721_vat_for_us_gale.pdf A Carbon Tax would raise ~$250 billion/year. That would cut the deficit by 2/3rds. Both are supported by economists as good ways to reduce the deficit ASAP. Both could easily be implemented by a competent Democratic Administration (like the Clinton Administration did in the 90s). The reason the deficit is so high is the inability for Republicans to actually cut spending. Few nations have ‘funded’ its future liabilities. Not Canada. Not the EU. Not Japan. Not China. Not Russia. Literally every country WITH pensions has massive unfounded liabilities. https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/05/global-pension-timebomb-funding-gap-set-to-dwarf-world-gdp China in particular is nearly as bad as the US. If the US is fucked, so is everyone else. Assuming the CCP isn’t sacked after being in the world to the brink of a nuclear war? The biggest issue with ANY nuclear tactical use is that it risks easily turning into a nuclear war. China attacks American boats with nukes, the US retaliates by nuking Chinese shipyards and naval bases. The Chinese retaliate by attacking US cities, because they think those shipyards were too close to population centres or because hitting land was a red line. Then the world ends. There’s the other thing that if a world war actually started and tactical nuclear weapons became a risk, the US military would dust off SDI’s Brilliant Pebbles (which was actually somewhat affordable- a couple hundred billion), which would give the US all the leverage in a nuclear exchange. It hasn’t happened yet because that hasn’t been a threat since the USSR collapsed. Launch and satellite costs have also fallen since the 80s. Of course, so could China. But then, neither side can effectively use nuclear missiles to gain an advantage on each other.
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  8.  StrategicFooyoo  Take a closer look at the numbers. https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports#:~:text=Exports%20in%20China%20averaged%20649.59%20USD%20HML%20from,February%20of%201983.%20source%3A%20General%20Administration%20of%20Customs. It's a 'record' off an overall stagnation in the numbers as companies start to divest from China despite China's Made in China 2020 plan attempting to increase trade margins on the high-end.
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  9. @anderson I mean, there is ONE other option. Build solar mirrors in space to restart the Sahara Monsoons, turning the desert back into grassland.
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  10.  @RioX001  Helium 3 is overhyped, it’s only good because of not having the issue of neutron production. Considering we’re going to have to learn how to deal with that whether we like it or not to develop fusion in the first place, Helium 3 is pretty niche.
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  11.  Luís Filipe Andrade  In math, a ‘singularity’ is generally considered to be an error. Computer tech isn’t even following Moore’s Law anymore.
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  12.  @SuperCrow02  Tibet is 90% Tibetan. Even Xinjiang has constant terrorist attacks despite being more throughly colonized.
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  13.  @johnwilson6324  Considering China is trying to conquer entire provinces of Japan and India? Yeah, no, they’re not fine. It’s the same as if Russia was trying to annex Alaska and Hawaii. And yeah, way to throw Asian-Americans under the bus. Not to mention if China starts invading shit, those refugees are going to flood into Europe and America in numbers that would make Syria look like a picnic party. Also, net migration from Mexico is now 0. You can solve the migrant problem by helping Central and Latin America develop and by defeating the Drug Cartels. Or if you prefer, with a wall on Mexico’s Southern border, because that’s where the migrants are coming from now.
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  14.  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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  15.  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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  16.  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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  17.  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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  18.  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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  19.  @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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  20.  @johnwilson6324  ... So do you believe the Cold War never should have been fought?
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  21. ​ @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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  22.  @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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  23.  @johnwilson6324  Ok, fair enough. Sorry for being hostile. I am a Korean- Canadian in Vancouver. No, I can’t speak Chinese. Yes, I know that Richmond, BC, is a thing. I would like to hear your arguments on mixed race people though.
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