Comment by inigyou
11 hours ago
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.
11 hours ago
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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> 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...
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>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.
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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.
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.
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?