Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation"
No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.
Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation"
No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.
> Some people are calling it the "American century of humiliation"
They should wait until some or all of the following things have happened:
1. Camp David is sacked, looted and burned to the ground by foreign troops. [1]
2. Foreign naval vessels patrol American rivers to protect foreign corporate interests in America. [2]
3. Foreign nations have unrestricted access to American ports and trade. [3]
4. America pays a large indemnity for attempting to resist. [4]
5. Foreign nationals become immune to US law. [5]
6. Multiple military defeats and territorial losses. [6]
7. This goes on unfettered for 100 years.
All in all perhaps it is a bit early to call it that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace#Destruction
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_Treaties
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Indemnity#The_clauses
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality#China
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation#History
I won't give in to doomerism.
Germany, Italy and Japan are all wealthy, stable democracies right now. Not without their problems and baggage, but pleasant places in a lot of ways.
All three have active US military bases on their soil and enjoy the economic surplus of living under the US defense umbrella.
The post WWII system was imperfect in many ways, but it was also mutually beneficial and worked out pretty well despite the problems.
And we're throwing that all out the window.
US military bases aren't what made those countries modern, prosperous, democratic places. It took the will of the people to rebuild something better after the war.
don't make it out like its a favour. The US have done very well out of their defense umbrella ensuring its global dominance for most of last century.
Most powers have to pay in blood to do what they want geo politically without question. The US inherited a global state where many potential rivals were weak and helped keep them weak. It was a cost worth paying and its a shame that current US leaders are so cheap and foolhardy to not see what they're throwing away.
You seem to imply the US reaps no benefit from providing security?
Britain essentially ceded its bases to the US at the end of WWII - these things aren’t as durable as they may seem.
that's cos WW1 financially broke Britain, then WW2 happened.
All that economic surplus - and much more - flows back to the US. How do you think the US can sustain that amount of USD printing without inflation ? The rest of the world is buying those dollars.
Germany: functionally paralyzed government that has the far right knocking at the door because the fractured coalition of left-centerleft-centerright continues to refuse to do what voters ask for.
Italy: Nominally center-right government, similar problems as Germany, less the energy issues
Japan: just elected a landslide right wing government that is going to change the constitution so they can build an offensive military again
Curious.
I don't perceive those problems to be inherent to the territories or peoples of the countries. All have had potential to change and have done so extensively since the Second World War. There isn't a universal explanation or root behind the issues these countries are facing today, unless you are willing to abstract it to just "economics".
They got bombed to shit first
It'd be nice to avoid that part.
Then it won't work. The current iteration of Germany is fully based on having been bombed to get a fresh start. If you already have something, you won't change it. If you have to re-build, you will implement improvements. No bombs, no reset, no joy.
It is not inevitable that you come back improved. It is not inevitable that you come back at all.
Ok what about the Netherlands, Spain, Nordic countries?
Very different countries.
The Netherlands for example got their last reset by completely losing the Dutch empire.
Also, some societies have flatter curves than others. That really maps 1:1 to your style and culture of living and where the priorities are.
If your priorities are to be the best as fast as possible (Germany) you will have less time between resets. If your priorities are "let's chill and wait until the coconut falls from the tree into my hand", your society might be able to have a far longer time between resets.
But in the end: It's an iterative process. Which means: There must be iterations.
This sounds about as scientific as phrenology.
No, it's really simple: Programming, Math, AI, blabla - those are all abstractions of what we have seen in nature.
Once you have understood that, you can just apply the rules learned backward, and they will typically match pretty well. I can buy fractal veggies in a supermarket.
And also, it's just data. Just take some random samples. That even civilizations like the Mayas who have faaaar more time on the clock than say than the US had multiple full resets.
Another random sample I've just pulled out of thin google air: San Francisco Fire of 1851. Everybody knew that wood burns. And that wooden buildings burn. And that wooden cities burn. Did anyone decide to tear down their house and re-build with a different material? No. This happened after everything had burned down to the ground. That was the reset needed.
I think it is very clearly an iterative process. Have a look.
>And also, it's just data. Just take some random samples.
You are not at all working with "data" or "samples". You are just making arguments and supporting them with examples. That's not science, that's philosophy or persuasive essay writing.
You are generalizing those arguments in insane ways. Just like the worst philosophy. You are drawing conclusions from extremely weak claims that don't even map to reality in the first place.
You can't say "Math works to describe the head of broccoli so I can just think hard enough and understand geopolitics". That's emphatically not science.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. What you are saying has a lot of truth to it. It is directly observable in the history of nations.
Germany has to be forced to accept that, although it was advanced, it could not have the European empire it thought it deserved. Japan had to learn a similar lesson. The speed and horror of the reset was in direct proportion to the potential for advancement and high society in these nations.
Ghana, where I come form, for example, has not has to experience any massive upheaval even from its pre-colonial and colonial days up till now. Our society is laid-back, and moves slowly. Even many other African countries have had to have their national reckoning in the form of civil wars and other huge upheavals in order to settle into a viable way of existing and advancing.
And, like you said, this is iterative. Given the nature of people in a nation and its fundamental geopolitical position, the same question will need to be answered after every N generations. Germany is central to Europe, and already a generation that is far removed from the world wars are starting to rethink why it shouldn't assert itself more strongly. Same in Japan.
THe way to analyze the iterations of the US is to understand that the primary threats are from within. It may not implode complete, but civil war and the civil rights era show that the potential is there for massive unrest and violence.
[I am getting downvoted all the time because the combination of German directness with autistic directness and lack of empathy combined with dark humor is not exactly compatible with societies where it is seen as offensive, rude or even aggressive not to sugar coat your messages. If one side treats this as a data exchange, and the other side processes the data but including emotions it will obviously have compatibility issues. But that's my "problem", so I accepted that typically if I post stuff, I first get upvoted massively, and after a day downvoted to hell. And that's OK. Again, my problem to be incompatible with a standard.]
And yes, it is interesting to see that on Polymarket people are betting involving a lot of emotions. No, you will not bet on getting killed by masked militia. Nobody is going to say "Hey, I'll bet $1000 that I will get cancer soon!".
But if you leave aside all the emotions, and just look at the data: No, there is no realistic scenario the US could magically recover from all checks and balances and rules and laws and regulations and decency having been destroyed. Competence, leadership and shared knowledge had been erased in all areas of society - Science, Development, Capitalism, Arts. How are you going to rebuild all of this, especially if the best case is that 60% of the people will agree to rebuild, while 40% insist they need to keep destroying stuff?
This is not a scenario looking at historical data any prior "high culture" (or whatever to call this) had been able to recover from.
Elsewhere in this thread is was mentioned that Germany still had all the Nazis in place everywhere because else the country would not have worked. But that is not the point. The reset was:
a) All is destroyed and MUST be rebuild because else we will freeze and starve to death.
b) Your Nazi neighbor is still there, but it has been made VERY clear who is the new sheriff in town: First the allies, but then pretty much the USA. Germany is still paying for having US solders in the country, providing valuable expensive land for free, and paying for most of the supply chain that is not staffed with US soldiers. And that is the accepted normal.
c) What was left on industry was physically taken as reoperations. Especially the soviets, but also the French did dismantle hole factories and machinery, moving that to their own countries (rightfully so.)
From what I know from school, reading and talking to grandparents: Germany before WW2 doesn't have much relation to pre-WW2 Germany. Suddenly it was normal that women can to "men's jobs" (due to those being more on the dead side). McDonalds. Hollywood. etc
It really makes sense to have a look at a couple of pictures of what was left of Germany after WW2. It's just someone slapping an existing brand name onto a new product. And in this case, personally I would have regarded the brand as damaged and would have picked a different name.
I am less confident about my predictions for an uncertain future. There's all kinds of ways different things could go.
I didn't say we needed to follow their example to the letter; it was just one counterexample to the "woe and ruin for 100 years" comment.
Yes, but it is actually scientifically correct and proven on all sorts of layers. Biology, Maths, whatever. Not doomsdaying, just data analytics.
Societies are not operating like a sinus curve like say summer/winter cycles. They are upside-down "U"s. After the peak comes decline, but after the decline there is NOT recovery/growth again before you have a reset.
Germany was the huge winner of WW2 in the sense that after having had a high society they directly were allowed to get another such run. But as nobody wants to bomb us ) anymore, Germany is also in decline now waiting for a reset to come one day...
Sadly the USA will also need a reset before things can begin getting better again.
) I was born in Germany and lived there for 40 years.
References to scientific proofs?
Germany wasn't a fresh start. The de-nazification ended up being a bit of a joke and (AFAIK) the first governments were full of ex-Nazis.
James May did a documentary loosely based on this. "The Peoples Car"
Basically analysing the economies of WW2 participants via their automobile industries.
Its staggering how being bombed into the ground has forced technological and economic innovation. And how the inverse, being the bomber, has created stagnation.
I don't think it would matter even if the us did have to start again. The entire us alliance after ww2 benefited from the same structural causes of increased pluralism and egalitarianism. A fractured elite, complex international trade, expanding and increasingly difficult to control communication channels, and a growing bureaucracy. These all inhibit autocratic concentration of power. International trade became uncomplicated, there is one manufacturer that is not a consumer, and many consumers. This leads to an increasingly less fractured elite. The structural reasons for democracy and rules based order are all fading. The us is just a really big canary.
The people running the show are all building generational fallout shelters in new zealand. As seems to be the real 'whitehouse ballroom' plan too. They seem to be expecting that part.
Congress is the problem, but not in the way most describe.
Congress has abdicated its powers because as an institution it is broken. Several inland states with total state wide populations less than that of major metro areas on the coasts have the same amount of senators as every other state has - two. This means voters in a lot of states are over represented. Meanwhile, they say land doesn't vote, but in the United States Senate the cities and localities with the most people that drive much of our growth and dynamism are severely underrepresented. The upper and most important chamber of the Congress is thus undemocratic. Given it's an institution deeply susceptible to minority gridlock that depends on wide margins to do anything, well now more often than not it simply does nothing. An imperial presidency thus frankly becomes the only way the country can actually get most things done.
This two senators for every state arrangement was a compromise agreed to when constitutional ratification was in doubt, when the USA was a weak, newborn country of about 3 million people confined to the Eastern seaboard at a time in our history where our most pressing concern was being recolonized by European powers. The British burned down the White House in 1812 imagine what more they could have accomplished if the constitutional compromises that strengthened the union had not been agreed to.
This compromise has outlived its usefulness. No American today fears a Spanish armada or British regulars bearing torches. These difficult compromises at the heart of America already led to one civil war.
The best we can do is create a broad political movement that entertains as many incriminations as possible (probably around corruption/Epstein, which must make pains to avoid any distinction between say a Bill Clinton or a Donald Trump) so we can get past partisan bickering to get enough of mass movement to try to usher in a new age of constitutional amendment and reform.
If it doesn't happen this cycle of Obama Trump Biden Trump will continue until this country elects someone who makes Trump look like a saint. It can happen. Think of how Trump rehabilitated Bush. We already see the trend getting worse. And if it does, then the post WWII Germany style reset being mentioned here will then become inevitable.
How do you think this would play out? Changing the apportionment of the Senate, aside from being a political and legal nightmare, would also create monumental constitutional crisis.
First, the Connecticut Compromise is a democratic underpinning of the US. It was central to the formation of the nation, and any attempt to alter it would be a foundational structural change to the constitution to say the least.
I understand the concerns about one generation binding another without recourse. Legal scholars differ on whether Article V, which implements the compromise, can be amended or not.
But for the sake of argument, let's say it can. It would be an insurmountable task requiring the following:
1. A supermajority in both houses of Congress (67% in the Senate and 66% in the House) to propose the amendment.
2. Ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures (38 out of 50 states) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states.
3. Consent of the states that would lose their equal representation in the Senate.
4. Overcome any legal challenges that would likely arise at every step of the process.
The result would be a dramatic redefinition of federalism and democratic representation. This wouldn't be a cosmetic change, it would be a fundamental alteration to the structure of the government and constitution.
Very few things were deemed "unamendable" and entrenched in the constitution before, both explicitly and implicitly, but now it would all be up for grabs. Now nothing is irrevocable.
What's to stop future generations from altering other fundamental principles? While we may complain of being bound by the decisions of our ancestors, we would be opening up a Pandora's box of constitutional instability for future generations, binding them to the whims of a (slim?) majority of the current generation's political agenda.
I think that is the best case scenario. The worst, and I think a very possible scenario, is that states losing representation would claim that such a drastic and material change to the constitution upends the root of the bargain that led to the formation of the union, and would likely seek to secede. You may have achieved your goal of changing the apportionment of the Senate, but at the cost of the union itself. There are far easier and less risky ways to achieve political change.
We could add new states. For example, Washington DC has 702,000 people with zero Congressional representation, and they're currently occupied by Federal troops without any voting recourse. If they were made a state, they'd be bigger than Wyoming and Vermont. Puerto Rico is also a US territory with 3.2 million people and zero Congressional representation. As a state it would be larger than 20 existing states. This doesn't "fix" the problem but it does ensure that more U.S. citizens gain access to representation in Congress, while also shifting power to more densely-populated areas.
True. I'm not as familiar with the politics of DC, but my limited understanding of the PR statehood situation is that the GOP is unlikely to approve what would presumably be 2 new safe democratic seats in the senate.
If I remember correctly, the governor of PR would appoint the first 2 senators. A tactic could be to promise to appoint 1 republican senator as an enrichment to approve statehood. It's a real shit situation.
There are more Puerto Ricans living in NYC and Orlando than in PR. I'd like to visit before the little family I have left there leaves or dies out.
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Japan's economics are mostly rooted in population issues. Have you ever been? Even though wages are stagnant, the people are among the healthiest in the world and they're known for the way their society's public services ACTUALLY work.
Not sure about Italy, but Germany, while not without its problems, is a beacon of democracy, progressivism, and self-correction.
> Germany is still extremely weird about anything to do with Jews
> I've never been to Italy but they don't seem very productive either.
Ok green poster. You need to look up more about world economies if you are going to confidently say things like Italy isn’t that productive. Combined with your comment on Jews in Germany I just assume you’re here to push propaganda, but if not please read up more on Italian economic output compared to, I don’t know, maybe the G7 countries?
That’s just historically inaccurate. You had massive upheavals across numerous countries throughout time, this is small in comparison to the civil war’s impact on the USA for instance. You think this is worse than half the government rebelling and revolting and killing an amount of young men that today would be equivalent to 6 million deaths? It’s bad now but your comment lacks historical evidence.
China seems to have recovered pretty well.
Not really. China only seems good because there is a war in Europe and the US is shooting themself in the foot. They're polluting and strip mining their country, suppressing wages and funneling the profit into companies all while increasing surveillance and decreasing freedom of opinion. Oh but they put down a few solar panels and then paid for people to write articles about it.
Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty. That's positive.
However, in terms of 'democracy' they're still way worse off than the US right now, even if the US is headed in a bad direction.
> Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty
This is fallacious as every economy that started at extreme poverty lifted a bunch of people out of poverty.
Unless we invent a time machine and do an A|B test we can't really attribute the success to policy when _any_ policy would have clearly lifted out a bunch of people out of poverty (basically almost impossible to not go up from extreme deficit). The closest we can do is look at similar scenarios like Taiwan which also lifted a bunch of people from poverty while retaining more human rights.
Plenty of places have managed to "keep on keepin' on" with their poverty levels.
I'm not saying what they've done was the best way, only way or anything of that sort: only that it happened.
> They're polluting
They absolutely are, but per capita, USA is polluting 49.67 % more than China.
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/carbon-fo...
Also they are making all our stuff for us. That’s our pollution too guys.
But only half as much per dollar, so the lower pollution per capita is just poverty, which is likely to decline over the next few decades as it has been (assuming we have decades left).
>Oh but they put down a few solar panels
the few solar panels in question are a united kingdom worth of green energy each year, about a royal navy worth of marine tonnage every two and they lifted more people out of poverty over the span of two generations than most of the rest of the world combined. Shenzhen produces about 70% of the entire world's consumer drones, now the primary weapon on both sides of the largest military conflict in the world. Xiaomi, a company founded in 2010 15 years ago decided to make electric cars in 2021 and is now successfully selling them.
As Adam Tooze has pointed out it's the single most transformative place in the world, if you're not trying to learn from it you're choosing to ignore the most important place in the 21st century for ideological reasons
I used to pretend China wasn't absolutely smashing the USA, but it looks like it is. They basically make everything modern civilization relies on, that's an insane amount of leverage over the rest of the world. That combined with renewables and nuclear and their diminishing need for foreign oil because of that is pretty incredible.
They're also speedrunning a world class power distribution system and deploying a massive amount of renewable power amoung a whole mess of other infrastructure. They've got the ability to focus an entire nation into achieving technical goals and they're rapidly improving quality of life in average while maintaining an industrial base that the US can only remember fondly. They might not meet western standards for individual freedoms and rule of law, but they're undoubtedly a rising world power.
This doesn't make much sense. Since the late 19th century, every country that got rich also heavily polluted the environment, though increasingly less over time. As it stands, fossil fuel demand in China has plateaued. The "wage suppression" thing also doesn't track; their citizens got much, much richer since Nixon's visit, despite being on average poorer than Westerners. Their GDP per capita is low because there's like a billion of them in the country.
The only thing to say is that it's still authoritarian. Once that gets a hold of a country, it's very difficult to shed off. Interestingly, both South Korea and Singapore shifted away from being dictatorships and were not ideologically socialist. Countries taken over by Communists remain authoritarian. The true believers will never give that up.
Agree with much of this. However: plenty of Central/Eastern European countries seem like they have pretty definitively shaken off communism in favor of pretty standard European style capitalism/social democracy.
That is true, though I chalk some of that up to disdain for Russian imperialism/colonialism, and bargaining to remain out of its influence
On eastern social media a big discussion going around right now is referring to America as being on the “kill line”.
The world knows the US is close to folding in on itself.
U.S. Civil War? Roman Crisis of the 3rd Century? Russian Revolution? England's War of the Roses? China's periodic dynastic changes?
They usually don't come back with the same political organization - that's sorta the point. But plenty of civilizations come back in a form that is culturally recognizable and even dominate afterwards.
I’d be interested to see some specific examples cited as it’s hard to take this comment at face value.
This is a laughably ridiculous assertion.
Rome was 'in decline' for 1000 years... these things are mostly feel good blather and not realistic statements on the position of nations
Is this a joke that’s going over my head? The country we all know the term “century of humiliation” from has recovered and is literally a superpower right now?
The Unenlightenment. Dereconstruction.
> No other country that went through a phase like this has ever recovered. Not even in a century.
Oh I can think of a couple in the '40s that bounced back after a while.