Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "What Makes Texas So Successful || Peter Zeihan" video.

Did you catch Peter's argument at the beginning of the video, when he said that labor cost differentials were key to success? California being home only to the very rich and very poor, is his ideal state.
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@SignalCorps1 Listen to his talk at the beginning of the video about "labor cost profiles" again. He is explicitly arguing that industry performs best when income inequality is highest.
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If you actually listen to what Peter is saying, he's implying that economies of scale would be better if Mississippi were POORER of all things. I'm looking forward to his future video, "Klaus, are we the baddies?"
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@MarcosElMalo2 Sorry, your picture of me is exactly wrong. I'm central California born and raised, educated in the University of California system (which was in the process of going broadly insane even when I attended), worked on the CA coast most of my life in a very specific, highly technical field, now working in that specific field in Massachusetts (God help me) because California has gone straight down the shitter and MA is one of the few places that does what I do. I'm part of the "creative class". But, some people I actually care about are not and never will be, and I want them to have lives of dignity and independence, complete with families of their own. I want my family to be large and thriving, because unlike Peter I don't consider children a nuisance and I think people who do have something wrong with them as human beings. I'm content not to say much about other people's stupid life choices like that, until they make life difficult for me to NOT choose the same way they did. (Seriously, Zeihan talks so much about demographic collapse, but then seems to respond "Nope, can't think of a single thing to do about it" probably in spite of his mom asking when he's going to give her grandchildren. In a sane word, she'd be considered right for asking and he'd be considered wrong for declining.) This puts my priorities completely at odds with globalist policy wanks, but it matches up nicely with recent political movements that have recently demonstrated they provide a broad-based solution. I think we're going to see progress on that, soon. Peter, on the other hand, is explicitly worshiping large wage differentials, i.e., vast gulfs of income inequality. He bemoans that those gulfs are not available within the United States, and eagerly reports opportunities to exploit foreign cheap labor. Yes, his is the point of view of the globalist "Establishment", the entrenched politicians of both parties, and elites worldwide. I'm not a Lefty by nature (Central CA is basically a multicultural version of the Midwest) and living in California has just proven to me that government "services" are more likely to disastrously exacerbate problems than solve them. You might well call me a populist, though; traditionalist probably fits too, both by upbringing and ratified by experience, having seen my family devastated by recent "innovations" in social mores. I think that our situation with China is demonstrating to us the drawbacks of unfettered free trade and abandoning tariffs (i.e., unilaterally disarming in a trade war). I think that for everyone in the country to thrive and live lives of dignity and prosperity (not to mention keep our strategic logistics from being taken over by rivals / enemies) economic hyper-specialization is exactly the WRONG route to take. "I sold out my country's working class to China and all I got was this slightly cheaper t-shirt" sarcastically sums up the problems we're facing rather well. I don't give a damn if an iPhone costs $2000, if that's the consequence of a better quality of life for other Americans. (Not to mention those FoxCon employees). Just make cell phones that last a few years, and your quality of life won't see any degradation at all. I respect the way Peter tries to come up with honest data. I wish he'd stick to that, instead of trying to propose policies, because those policies have a ghastly effect on the lives of most Americans. Who, by the way, aren't going to take it much longer.
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@albertgaspar627 Blue staters aren't willing to die to protect their country, red staters are. So, defense budgets go red.
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"Political climate at the state level" Well, you have to do something to keep your cities from going the way of San Francisco, New York, etc. I feel sorry for you and your city, if those former Texans vote in the sort of policies that wrecked those cities.
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"We don't have great differences in labor costs in America, but we do have big labor price differences between Texas and Mexico" Peter, are you honestly speaking favorably of a) high levels of income inequality, and b) exploiting foreign cheap labor? Are you even listening to yourself?
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@RD-jc2eu I've read Zeihan's books and watched his videos. I understand the rosy picture he is painting of our current reigning economic theory. I also understand the downsides of that theory, which are ignored by the theorists because those downsides do not hurt those theorists. We need a new theory, to cover what happens when the rising tide of capitalism lifts all boats, as it can (at its best) do extremely well. That rising tide, if allowed to develop, will flatten out any labor cost gradient. If our current theorists cannot devise or discover this new theory (because they have no incentive to), the rest of us have a very strong incentive to find new theorists.
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He has respectable Establishment opinions now, which means you know what he's going to say on a subject without the bother of asking him.
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@damianm-nordhorn116 Not if there's competition from new construction. Texas has the space to expand, which keeps prices from climbing too high without falling again.
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Why does it "need" that? Wide open spaces and nice sized suburban housing lots (i.e., good quality of life) just doesn't fit with trains or mass transit. Density destroys families and causes demographic collapse, as Peter has pointed out. Texas is doing just fine with low density. Very sustainable, very enjoyable. =)
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Or fracking. Peter is getting taken over by the Establishment and The Narrative(TM).
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But muh global warming!
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Miami went red in a big way, when blue when nuts. Blue's still nuts. I'm expecting more cities to go red, especially places like New York, San Francisco, and LA, which have become s**tholes thanks to blue policies.
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@durin3415 Highly paid creative labor and low-paid manufacturing labor is exactly what he described. I know you like Peter. I like him too. But this is the extremely rotten core of globalism that the elites he hangs out with, have been pushing on us since the 90's.
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@albertgaspar627 California IS fertile farmland. Are you seriously claiming that the San Joaquin Valley drilled all the way through the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies to steal from the Oglala Aquifer? What nonsense. If it weren't for environmentalists who care more about infamous delta smelt than people, and their unwillingness to build sufficient reservoirs to catch the water in wet years (existing ones that ran dry a few years ago, are now overflowing), Northern California would be doing just great on its own. And your lurking terror of the Sun Monster (based on wildly unreliable predictions from computer models made by programmers who should know better) is what keeps industry dead in the Northeast. "We've basically eliminated energy consumption from industry, now we have to break the spirits of residents so they won't consume any energy to reduce our [dreaded] carbon footprint", say actual government bureaucrats in Massachusetts. Leftist policies are the worst thing that ever happened to California. At some point, once the remaining Californians shake off their Leftist propagandists, we're going to see a resurgent Republican "Make California Great Again" movement that puts Trumpism to shame.
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Nah, trains make no sense in a place with the suburban good life. Choo-choos will never catch on in America. Get used to it.
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Didn't you listen to the first couple of minutes? Income inequality is a critical feature, not a bug. I'm looking forward to Peter's future video, "Klaus, are we the baddies?"
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@texasbryan Ah, but that doesn't fit with The Narrative(TM), now does it.
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"Blue cities provide traditional advantages" Like what? Name ten, if you can. Then count how many of those are irrelevant now because of networking and AI.
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@thesandman775 I'm on this channel because occasionally he goes back to his old good habits of presenting the data, instead of giving his "take".
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How else is Texas going to avoid its cities going the way of San Francisco, New York, etc? Taking power away from blue cities is like taking a shotgun away from a toddler. You wonder who was crazy enough to give it to them in the first place.
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@inabina2925 But mostly from red states.
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@damianm-nordhorn116 I'll grant you that water is a limiting factor west of the Mississippi. A place only has to be "desirable" for the person making the siting decision, everyone else just takes what they can get job-wise, and the marginal quality-of-life for the vast majority ends up the same because of all those tradeoffs you mention. Unless, of course, a place has a natural glut of one resource or other (space, energy), that can't be exported, and then all the locals get to enjoy a lot of that for cheap.
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"Companies love that small government but people don't, people in cities want services" Services like letting you s**t on the sidewalk and die in the gutter? Free drugs? De-funded police? Food deserts caused by locusts picking stores clean without consequences? Peter, you're going to see an epic backlash against the Democrats in your lifetime. You may even see it next year.
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Exiled, then? I'm pretty sure Putin doesn't care if he sets himself up as dictator of part of that continent.
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"Your workers get the services they want if they live in a city" WTF? Workers want affordable housing that isn't a sh*thole, and that is something you WILL NEVER find in a city. Peter, you're being stupid. It's painful to watch.
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@wisenber Not stagnating. Declining.
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@wisenber Population is declining. Inflation masks the futility of a lot of those numbers that are going up.
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@newellaorbana Yup, Texas is catching up. Until California elects another Republican governor and lays off 75% of its bureaucracy, this will continue.
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@wisenber Venture capital has been cut in half, in recent years, particularly in Silicon Valley. San Francisco's role as a playground for elites to entertain one another on their companies' expense accounts ended when Cliff House closed. Los Angeles is no better. Almost any other state has a better business environment. This time, California's decline is secular, not cyclical.
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@wisenber So much the worse for California, then.
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Didn't you hear? Large differentials in labor cost profiles are the cause of everything good in the economy, according to present models. The poorer regular people get, the better the economy goes, according to Peter and the globalists. I'm curious whether Peter will keep going down the shill route, or if eventually we'll see a video from him "Klaus, are we the baddies?"
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I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one here who thinks Peter's "income inequality and exploiting foreign cheap labor is great!" has some drawbacks. I'm looking forward to his future video, "Klaus, are we the baddies?"
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After the twin towers fell, I suspect.
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@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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@PatrickKQ4HBD 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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@GD1082 Same in California. Hawaii isn't any better.
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El Salvador has done a lot recently to make their country a more caring place. People are moving back there now.
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But all those wonderful services that workers want from cities! Think of the services! Yeah, I think Peter's incredibly off-base here, but it's fascinating to get the insight into how Elites think. They love income inequality. And I'm not talking about Republicans, it's Democrats that are all into wrecking the middle class today.
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