Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Peter Zeihan || Deglobalization: There's No Stopping It Now" video.

  1. It’s hard to tell exactly what your understanding is about U.S. economic policy in relation to global geopolitics, but if you’re worried about trade deficits, you’re barking up the wrong tree and you do not understand the economic basis of our policies. To oversimplify, trade deficits are not owed by the U.S., they are owed by individual companies. These deficits are driven by consumer demand, as Pete points out. That demand is driven by demographics. However, those trade imbalances benefit our country, both in terms of global stability and in terms of powering our economy. The trade imbalances are part of the cement that make the U.S. dollar the base currency of global trade, and this creates a stability that benefits us. It’s the keystone of U.S. “hegemony” because it’s the keystone of global trade that benefits the greatest number of people worldwide, and those material benefits go towards those countries with internal stability that follow the international rules based order, i.e Western Democracies. This is a powerful motivation for countries to move towards capitalistic democracy. (I put “hegemony” in quotes because it’s a special kind of economic hegemony. It’s not imperialism nor colonialism as the socialists would have you believe, but clear thinking was never their strong suit.) That said, you are not entirely wrong. You’ve arrived at the right conclusion from faulty reasoning. The re-ordering of the world economic system is because of the change in demographics. The world economic system is based on growth and we’ve reached the limits of that growth. Pete frames this as the problem but I think that’s the wrong way to think about it. Problems can be solved. Instead it’s better to think about the global changes in demographics as the new conditions, conditions to which we must adapt. And part of that adaptation is global economic retraction and the slow unwinding of U.S. “hegemony”. We have to think about capitalism/globalism as a vehicle. It’s a vehicle that has served a purpose in our moving forward. Now road conditions have changed and we must adapt that vehicle to a bumpier road. The system of the world must change to meet the new conditions of declining economic growth, stagnation, or even economic decline. Keyword to the above is “system”. We must think in terms of systems and systems of systems. If we don’t, we will be totally unprepared to meet the future.
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  2.  @rickstevenson9585  Exactly. And if Pete seems forceful (and I think sometimes he overdoes it when he gets outside of his lane), it’s because so many refuse to believe in “4-2 = 2”. (I don’t know if if you were making a 1984 reference, but it certainly seems to fit.) Pete does sometimes go out on a limb in his conclusions (based on math and not merely wishful thinking), but I find it thrilling, like watching an acrobat do a death defying stunt. And I understand why he communicates without expressing doubts. He’s trying to push his signal through the noise of the authoritarian 2+2=5 crowd.
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  3.  @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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