Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1.  @thedadstale  And the Germans are already sending their tanks there. And the Ukrainians are losing. Ignore the information war -- look at the actual front lines. Instead of retaking Crimea, which Zeihan said would happen when the Kerch Strait bridge was attacked, the Russians have taken more ground. Germany's going to have to step up and defend itself, unless it's fine with suing for peace.
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  2. His bit to counter the demographic collapse he keeps warning about?
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  3. He's in San Francisco, but decided that actually showing the facts on the ground there would wreck his thesis that none of this is policy related.
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  4. OK, so we're in Ukraine because we made an agreement with them -- they give up their nuclear weapons, and we guarantee their borders. Since we don't seem to be all that keen on guaranteeing their borders, wouldn't it be fair to give them their nukes back?
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  5. Wasn't Gorbachev basically the ultimate Russian Boy Scout, a symbol of belief in the whole idealized Soviet system?
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  6. "Operatives don't tend to be chubby" Yes, but there's a certain standard exercise routine (not to mention, haircut) that tends to make operatives "glow", as the kids are saying these days. A few extra pounds might even be seen as a disguise, in fact.
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  7.  @diptube6563  According to Peter's books, Mississippi's location on the largest navigable river network in the world makes it the best real estate possible. Ocean trade (according to him) doesn't hold a candle to its "capital-generating capacity".
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  8.  @PatrickQ4HBD  I'm impressed you made it through. (Hell, as of this writing at least two others did too, found something to like in it, and didn't find enough to object to. I'm shocked.) Should I ask what you don't agree with, or would that wreck the moment?
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  9.  @lectorintellegat  He's again speaking according to the assumptions and preferences of his class -- the Washington Elites. This the second-most interesting reason to listen to him (the first being his data analyses, which are interesting whether they're right or not.) He talks and talks and talks, and doesn't pay much mind to what the kind of "Wait, what??" moments he creates in normal Americans.
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  10.  @peetky8645  A "sensible" alternative to Biden? What, like Gavin Newsom, destroyer of San Francisco and California? Anyone who calls him "electable" is showing just how much contempt they have, for elections. The Democrats have shown themselves to be absolutely unable to produce a "sensible" candidate through their primary process. Can you really claim that Biden's terrible performance has been unexpectedly bad? Their process so heavyhandedly eliminates popular alternative candidates that any "sensible" candidate probably wouldn't bother to run in the first place.
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  11. Thank you for your vague, low-effort praise. You are undoubtedly a real human being who intellectually engaged with this specific video.
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  12.  @countchoculitis1528  A lot of what comes out of the Information-War-plagued Ukraine is The Narrative(TM), really. Most of what comes out of the legacy media like MS-NBC and CNN is, as well. It's gotten to the point that you have to spend so much time checking the context of those outlets, that you might as well just listen to independent news sources instead. I consider Peter to be one of those sources most of the time, by the way. I'm not entirely convinced that his own sources are entirely to be trusted, though, especially on subjects like this.
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  13. Fascinating. I would love to hear your thoughts as you take a cruise along the Erie Canal.
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  14. Dude, you should have done this one from Monterey, California. "Want to learn languages to fix this problem? You get to live here. (Well, on-base, because California's a disaster.)"
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  15. "Superspreader events" So, are you saying that China is about to be swept by a disease that preferentially targets the elderly and leaves the young largely untouched? Aren't you usually pointing out how China is about to collapse because soon it's going to have too many retirees for its working population to support?
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  16. We play silly legal games to make sure that Toyotas and Hondas are considered "American-built." Can we not play those same silly games to shoehorn Japanese shipbuilders into the American market, such that it would satisfy the Jones Act?
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  17. In a world of collapsing demographics, both the Russians and Ukrainians are losing this war.
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  18.  @sirrathersplendid4825  G K Chesterton
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  19. Dude, Peter, look at the charges. They're totally bogus. It's precisely a mountain out of a molehill, and the jury was instructed it didn't even need to agree on what Trump actually did, to convict him. Trump's numbers are going UP because of this sham, and his fundraising is skyrocketing. Peter, you need to get ahold of whoever you get your Establishment info from, and tell them, "If you don't want Trump in a landslide, you need to knock off the dirty tricks!" although it's probably too late at this point.
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  20.  @devincortno123  Watch him. =)
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  21.  @devincortno123  Watch him. =)
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  22. I would have preferred to hear about fracking and the energy industry, which is something Peter has more than "one data point" on.
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  23. "It's easy to crush Russia if you break through their front lines" - Franz Halder, probably Have the Russians established Defense In Depth for their occupied territories?
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  24. "The British are sunk until they find more poor countries to exploit" - Peter Zeihan, in one of his most mask-off moments
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  25. If you're someone who believes computer models about climate are capable of making accurate predictions, I'm not sure we can really trust your math.
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  26.  @kenyoung5604  Wasn't he acquitted, in fact? Twice.
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  27. How does re-shoring fit with World Systems Theory?
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  28. It's probably worth mentioning that Djibouti is strategically relevant because the Europeans base their anti-piracy squadron there, to cover the Horn of Africa.
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  29. Another morbid question: does the destruction Ukraine faces, put any of its territory into the "green field" category that many investors look for, to start industrial projects?
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  30. Half as many five-year-olds as ten-year-olds? What in the world happened between 2012 and 2017? Did the Chinese just forget how to f**k when Xi got into power?
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  31. Honestly, Peter's convinced me that the North Asian Plain - and adjacent Europe -- won't be at peace until it has some degree of unity. Considering that China will probably chew up all of East Asia if Russia falls, there will be a battle line drawn right across that Plain between hostile powers.
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  32. Yup. The "GDP number go up" attitude amongst our Elites that is driving endless immigration, is truly very stupid.
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  33. Fortunately, this is not "the new reality". Even more fortunately, the solution involves lots of sex, leading to lots of babies. =)
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  34.  @Jay-eb7ik  If AI can "increase productivity", it just goes to show how useless the job was in the first place.
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  35. As far as heights go, Xi is supposed to be 5'11" and Kim Jong Un 5'7". It would be weird if Xi were "two feet tall" (if I heard that right) because he appears to be about four inches taller than Putin, who is supposedly 5'7" as well. Did I mishear Peter, or is he passing us dodgy information?
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  36. See also, China and Vietnam tussling in the South China Sea.
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  37. "This won't be the last Russian-instigated war" Are you sure about that? Every war accelerates the point at which they no longer have the demographics to support one. At some point, the Russians are going to have to make love instead (and frankly, JS Bach levels of it) to repopulate their country. That point is fast approaching, and if we're not past it already.
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  38. Well, there's anecdotal evidence of Russian mathematic professors heading to America to drive taxis and similar.
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  39. "Wildly, wildly unpopular!" -- Driving through New Hampshire, you see a LOT of "Trump 2024" signs in people's yards. You see a number of Vivek signs, the occasional Marianne Williamson or RFK Jr. sign, and a scattering of Nikki Haley signs (on lots with derelict houses). You see absolutely NO Biden / Harris signs. "Unpopular" in Joe Biden's case does not equal "unpopular" in Trump's case.
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  40. '... and virgins have to be involved" Oh. No wonder nothing is getting done, they can't find any of those amongst the wh**es of Washington.
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  41. We'll do a bit of rebalancing in terms of industrial profile, probably. The Rust Belt will get polished up a bit, and workers screwed over by World Systems Theory will have much better opportunities. The people at the top will have to pay $2000 for a cell phone, but considering the fact that we can make them last a lot longer, that won't affect all that many people. Except Apple, which will collapse, but that's been inevitable since they lost the greatest salesman of his generation (Steve Jobs).
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  42.  @careylymanjones  I'm talking, if all the parts were made in America. Exploiting foreign workers and feeling fine about it just because they're foreign, won't last. Their standard of living (and cost) will simply rise to American levels. If we stay de-industrialized long enough for that to happen, all we'll be doing is losing absolutely all of our manufacturing knowhow. This is something Peter says is happening in Russia today. Why he thinks it's OK for it to happen in America, is one of the ways he's being blinded by his Establishment bias towards World Systems Theory, and the presumption of America always being a "core" region.
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  43.  @careylymanjones  "China's wages have risen so much, it's starting to price China out of the market" <-- Yes, this. Given time, it will happen everywhere. Wages worldwide will rise to the level of America's. See what I'm talking about? There will be no more taking advantage of "favorable labor cost profiles", as Peter has presented as an obvious, unalloyed good. It's not. If this process of labor cost equalization takes longer than a couple of generations (since offshoring started in the 1990s, we need to reverse de-industrialization NOW, before the last of our skilled workers die) America will totally lose its manufacturing knowhow, which was built up over at least a century.
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  44.  @careylymanjones  Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. I'm not someone who works with my hands. I'm seriously considering getting a kit car, for the purposes of giving my sons an opportunity to learn to work on something real instead of just MineCraft resource packs. I wish I were baffled by a strategic mind like Peter's ignoring the existential hazards of losing domestic broad-based industrial knowhow and infrastructure. But, he's clearly bought into the whole "we'll just get foreigners to do it. They'll never turn against us, right?" outlook entirely too common in Washington now.
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  45. Someone who will do exactly what advisors like Zeihan advise him to do. Look at his Leadership series, and this is his only criterion for judging leadership quality.
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  46. "We're not going to build a new smelter in anything less than a year" So you're saying if we started building these smelters the day Russia invaded Ukraine, we'd be in final checkout and planning the ribbon-cutting at this point? I'm hearing that if we start thinking longer-term, things will be fine.
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  47. It also allows Ukraine to concentrate manpower and materiel to defend a smaller footprint, and as Ukraine has less of each, cui bono Ukraine. Is it impossible that the Ukrainians mine the dam in the years 2014-2022? Not really. Considering we've been lied to about sabotage before [*cough* Nord Stream 2, *cough*] it's reasonable to be skeptical. If they want us to stop doubting them, they need to STOP LYING TO US.
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  48. "Fewer consumers" I thought consumption was infinite? If everyone could have a bigger house, a car for every citizen, Moon colony vacations every year, a Western standard of living for everyone in the world, and the near-infinite consumption pit that is keeping old people from passing on -- how can there ever be such a thing as "not enough consumption"?
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  49. So, if we brought the price of gas down low enough so that people did a lot of discretionary driving, we'd be a lot less susceptible to gas price shocks? You don't just drive 90% of the way to work, but if you did 20-30% of your driving for fun on weekends, you could cut that down easily.
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  50. "The end of the Russian system" How do we make sure that this doesn't simply allow China to swallow half of Asia? Is there any plan for that? Anybody?
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