Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @george2113 What were the interest rates on toy train loans back then? 😉
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  2. Russia is backing Maduro? How exactly, other than to offer sympathy and moral support? I’m sure Putin’s thoughts and prayers are a great comfort to the Chavistas.
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  3.  @willywonka4340  just a finger, not the whole hand.
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  4.  @beibei93  It’s not. But reversing population decline is a tricky thing.
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  5.  @juanzingarello4005  1) China isn’t the only source. 2) It’s not clear if EVs really reduce carbon emissions. They shift them.
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  6. How about and try having a decade first, and see how it goes? Maybe but together a few decades before you start proclaiming a century.
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  7. I think calling it a “fortress” is overstating it. All three countries have resources, but I do think that more economic cooperation and more trade will be a necessity. I wouldn’t look for any sort of political unification, however (and I know you weren’t suggesting that). The main stumbling block is the xenophobic 21st century “know nothings”.
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  8.  @scubamaz1 trollolololo
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  9. Where do electrical service providers offer bulk discounts? And during what hours? Every electric utility I’ve encountered had substantial discounts for low consumer consumption, a normal rate, and a pretty steep climb if you crossed a certain threshold. Currently I’m paying about $20/month for electricity. All my lighting is LED. I use gas for heating water and climate control (another $20/month max for three months a year, otherwise about $10/month). I run a 40 gallon compressor a couple of hours a day. OK, I’ll tell the truth. The compressor belongs to my friend, who does shade-tree autobody work in the street in front of my house, and keeps his equipment and supplies inside the front door stairwell. Our deal is that he pays the electrical bill (but I still receive the bill). So I’m actually paying $0/month for electrical. Where do you live where the utility has overbuilt, has too much capacity, and can’t sell the excess to other markets?
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  10. ⁠ @sailinghaldis  After Peri awkwardly asked Mary to go on a date, Mary thought peripatetic.
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  11. You don’t seem to understand any uses of humor.
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  12.  @LaFonteCheVi  The fundamental problem of “general AI” isn’t the hardware (which might be a limitation as well, if you can solve the fundamental problem). The fundamental problem is that we do not know what intelligence is or how it arises from the biochemical processes of the nervous system. Intelligence is a black box and it might be impossible to reverse engineer it. Turing recognized this issue and came up with the concept of the Turing Test, which incorporates the unknown/unknowable black box aspect of the problem—while also opening a philosophical can of worms.
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  13. NG that can’t be sold is burned as waste in the U.S. We have more than we can use. And you want to build a pipeline to bring Canadian gas onto our market? 😂 Yeah, I don’t think the problem here is with your PM.
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  14.  @justinhogue9861 That’s the most surprising aspect of the assassination. This is something terrorists do to highlight their cause to the world. This is something a mafia boss might do to a rival. Was Prigozhin a serious challenger to Putin’s dominance? He was more of a disobedient subordinate, imo. That Putin assassinated him in such a theatrical manner says more about Putin’s fragile ego and sense of insecurity than anything else.
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  15. That’s basically what the North American automotive industry has already done. The expensive models are made in the U.S., and the lower cost models are made in Mexico. However, all the components and subassemblies are made on both sides of the border and shipped back and forth as needed. So your high end made-in-USA SUV contains components made in Mexico, and your economy car hecho-en-Mexico has components built in the U.S. Incidentally, Mexico is increasing becoming a supplier of precision parts for the aerospace industry.
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  16. How can I monetize my ignorance?
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  17.  @billberg1264  An impossible return to the past is more reactionary than conservative. Even Burke didn’t advocate for a return to the past, he wanted preservation of what was good in traditions and institutions to avoid the bloody chaos he saw in the French Revolution. I think Burke would be horrified if he saw populist “conservatism”. What populist “conservatism” is selling is a nostalgia for a past that never really was. The consequences of the past are the present. They are promising a return to something unchanging, because freezing the perfect moment in time is the only way to avoid future consequences. And all of that is an absurd impossibility.
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  18. Are you talking about Doge-BRICS or BRICS-coin? How about we conduct trade in a physical currency, like Lego. Your BRICS currency has been in the talk about it stage for over a dozen years, and there been no progress. Why do you think there will be a surprise unveiling at the next summit? You know, this isn’t like iPhones. You don’t promote an alternative trading/reserve currency with a surprise announcement.
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  19.  @ColonelFredPuntridge  Luttig 100%. Bolton, yeah, maybe too much, but I don’t think of him as a first tier FP conservative. He was second or third tier and got lucky. Bolton is an interesting guy. As a second tier FP adviser, he was a careerist street fighter (which is how he pulled himself up through the FP jungle). He had extreme views that he used to garner attention—he was a good counterbalance. I find it interesting that became a little more moderate and more adult when he was elevated to the top tier. At the end of the day I’ll ding him 25% for being too damn self-interested and self-promoting, so he gets a 75%. What about Kasich? He was often billed as a moderate but I’d still call him a conservative where it matters. A supposed “moderate conservative” can pull the country more to the right, whereas a hardcore conservative will divide the country. Edit: What about Romney? 100% conservative, 100% honorable. Discarded by the GOP because he couldn’t unseat Obama. He’d be the perfect antidote to Trump fever if only the GOP was willing to admit it was sick. If the pro-Trump delusions in this thread are any indication, the GOP is happy in its fever dream. 😢
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  20.  @scottshawn70  The most insidious aspect of YouTube moderation is the non-transparency. They refuse to provide explicit guidelines to creators with the explanation that explicit guidelines will allow people to “game the system”. Hidden rules that aren’t applied evenly is basically arbitrary in its total effect.
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  21.  @Will-xk4nm  Two and a half out of three ain’t bad. 1) reserve currency: yes, 2) balances: sort of, but they don’t add up to zero. The point is that you don’t want to them to diverge wildly, 3) the bargain: resounding yes! How we approach balances (2) is something we can and should address politically, meaning intelligent debate before an audience with a basic understanding of the economics involved. We can easily run deficits indefinitely, the question is how high? (How high at any given moment, since global economic conditions constantly change.) What are the theoretical limits and how close do we want to approach those limits? There are conservative and liberal tendencies to reach practical/contingent answers, and in a democracy we should be able to reach a compromise. Unfortunately, the (so-called) conservatives have lost the thread. Our formerly conservative party has forsaken an intelligent approach and devolved into an uneducated and lazy populism.
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  22. Probably longer than that. I think closer to 20 years, although it was on a much smaller scale back then.
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  23. Is that still a concept taken seriously?
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  24.  @zuster6962  In this job market, he can probably find a gig in less than two days. As far as that other stuff, I think you’re judging not by results but by conformity to your norms. He didn’t disclose his situation regarding family, etc., so you’re assuming. If you don’t know what the results are, it’s silly to compare them to your current results or your expectations. We GenXers know that stability is just one part of the equation. It is often overrated. It is often too narrowly defined to mean only financial stability. There is more than one way to live a happy life. I hope your life continues along a smooth trajectory of happiness, but remember that if your circumstances change drastically, you are infinitely adaptable and can find happiness in different forms.
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  25.  @nathan_486  Same here. I voted for Reagan in my first presidential election, in 1984. Apparently you and I were RINOS all along.
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  26. At the end of the day, at least a goldbug or tulip speculator had some gold or tulips to show for their bad investments. What will your cryptocurrency maven have when the market plummets? A crypt?
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  27.  @williewonka6694  “Money is the root of all evil”. I say that not to moralize, but to point out the obvious: we should attack the root of the problem, which is the flow of profits, the laundering and the flow of money. Whether it’s the cash businesses or the illegitimate investing in legitimate businesses, it can be tracked. Even money transfers on the dark web can be tracked. Take away their money and the cartels (or any other corrupt criminal enterprise) have less power. Then interdiction has a better chance of succeeding.
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  28. The Russian air force follows Pete around, trying to interfere with the audio quality of his videos.
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  29.  @Tommeadowcroft  Even if true, it doesn’t address the hundreds of workers that were replaced. The people arguing that automation won’t replace 100% of workers are missing the point. The fact that his dad was the last irreplaceable employee ignores all the rest, and the fact that the plant lay idle for a year raises questions about surplus capacity. If the company could let the plant stay idle for a year, does that indicate increased efficiency at other plants it had automated? The real issue is does automation decrease demand? And that issue raises a host of other issues, from the practical to the philosophical.
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  30.  @RustyStringz  They kept you on, but did they keep everyone on. If they did keep all your fellow machinists, did they have to hire replacements as workers retired, or did they just increase your workload? Was the company able to expand while hiring fewer workers and/or less skilled workers? Anyway, I think the real question is quite different than “are humans completely replaceable?” That question is missing the point. The real issue is “does automation decrease demand, and what happens if it does?”
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  31.  @deriznohappehquite  Not anymore. 😉
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  32. You’ve read this report? What is its title, so I can go look it up.
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  33.  @henrylicious  The EU’s predecessor, the EEC (European Economic Co-operation) was the tool that unified Europe as a trade coalition. If the EU’s main utility is fostering trade, the EEC or something like it would suffice.
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  34.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  Economic issues? Like component shortages? I’m thinking specifically of modern CPUs used to build Electronic Warfare systems. Apparently Russia’s own chip making capabilities are, at best, 70 nm processes. That’s 2004 technology. Contrast with 5 nm current technology and 3nm manufacturing processes being developed independently by Samsung and TSMC (projected to be commercially available in 2023). Russia’s future war making capabilities are being technologically crippled by sanctions.
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  35.  @TheBandit7613  So, should we provide HS with the resources to do these background checks, or continue creating bottlenecks by underfunding those who interview and investigate asylum seekers?
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  36.  @mrwolf750  Long term, yes. Or at least that’s been the case in the U.S. since WWII. Real Estate, the stock market, etc suffer crises and then recover. Some unlucky people get hurt along the way. However, there are no guarantees this pattern will continue indefinitely. One thing seems very likely: China is taking a walloping in many economic sectors, and it will get worse. If this encourages them to play by the rules, great, but I don’t wish an economic collapse on them that would create regional political instability.
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  37. You got that mixed up in your first sentence, I think.
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  38. JAUKUS isn’t much better.
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  39.  @ericwolf9664  My cat’s sandbox runs Android.
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  40. Sarcasm
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  41. A politburo is infinitely more desirable than a single dictator who has crushed all possible dissent and differing opinions. Compared to Xi’s authoritarian rule that quashes all debate, Vietnam is relatively a democracy because it allows different opinions, albeit within a very narrow range. A politburo atop a democracy gets things done via compromise among political factions and consensus development. As crazy as this might sound to our democratic ears, the internal factions work as a system of checks and balances. If any faction becomes too powerful, the other factions will work together to undermine and limit that power. A second reason that a politburo rule by committee is preferable to a Xi-style dictatorship is that you have more eyes looking at problems and challenges. There’s a better chance that the leadership has a grasp on the reality of a situation, whether the situation is internal or geopolitical. Lower level bureaucrats and functionaries can’t fudge the data (to keep the dictator happy) to the same degree as has happened in the PRC since Xi has consolidated absolute power. They can’t just tell the leader what he wants to hear because there is no single leader. Lastly, it should be pointed out that Mexico was a single party dictatorship for over seventy years (from the early 1920s to the middle 90s) and we were fine with that. The Party of Institutional Revolution (or however you want to translate PRI) was nominally a socialist democracy with all the corruption and fraudulent elections you’d expect, but political power was never permanently concentrated in the hands of one man. Mexico had a dictatorship with term limits. Every six years the PRI would select the next presidente behind closed doors (and he would go on to fraudulently win the presidential election). Without getting too heavily into Mexican political history (and I am far from an expert), the point is that the U.S. was fine with a corrupt socialist “democracy” on our southern border. The two countries cooperated. At times we had disagreements, but the relationship worked. There is no reason that a similar relationship with Vietnam couldn’t work.
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  42.  @TrendyStone  I think it’s possible that we’ll see a replication of cross border auto manufacturing with the mid level and high level silicon, and iPhone manufacturing. Certain regions in Mexico are already into high tech and/or light industrial. I’m more familiar with Querétaro, but you’ve also got León, Puebla, Guadalajara. Querétaro is a center for aerospace suppliers/subcontractors.
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  43. Do you think that the Golan Heights could be returned to Syria with neutral UN peacekeepers as a buffer?
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  44. How long were you imprisoned for putting forward the lab leak theory? Which government agencies were tapping your phones, harassing you on the street, and issuing veiled threats towards your family? Were crowds of paid protestors outside your house every night? I assume one or more of these things happened to you, because suppression of ideas is a serious matter. Or perhaps maybe you mean someone online hurt your feelings by calling you a conspiracy nut? In addition, I hope you see the difference between jumping to a conclusion without evidence and coming to a conclusion based on investigation and evidence. They might both reach the same conclusion, but that doesn’t validate the former. Alex Jones hasn’t been proven right. He’s not even as accurate as a broken clock.
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  45. It’s good to have the values and principles of Western Democracies. Those are good ideals we should cling to. Diplomatic engagement is a tool to help promote and maintain our values and principles. It’s not an ideal in itself and perhaps that is the problem; it’s a mischaracterized as an ideal. Perhaps Germany has become very comfortable and successful using it as a tool, but it is not the only tool available to a nation state, and that is another problem. It’s sort of like the hammer problem that is used to criticize the hawks. Not every diplomatic issue is resolvable through friendly diplomatic engagement. Europe has a rabid dog in the neighborhood, attacking one of the neighbors. You don’t diplomatically engage with the dog, you help your neighbor get free of the dog.
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  46. Also keep in mind that Peter tends to oversimplify. He works in broad strokes. Sometimes he leans towards exaggeration to make a point.
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  47. How would Poland respond to an attack from Russia? Would it merely seek to defend its borders or might it seek to destroy those military elements involved in the attack?
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  48. Maybe it would be better for you to support the claim first, and then Peter can address it.
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  49. You cannot make peace by catering to the insane.
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  50. Pricing of petroleum is set in the international market. If global supply is cut, prices go up. If demand is high, prices go up. The U.S. has plenty of petroleum and refining capacity, but unless you 1) create a separate controlled domestic market, OR 2) increase global supply by exporting enough to compensate for undersupply, your(our) gas and diesel prices are going to reflect the global market and remain high. The problem with 2) is it will take investment to export more petroleum, and it’s very difficult to determine when prices will reach a new equilibrium. That makes the investments in increased export capacity very risky. The problem with 1) is obvious, I hope.
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