Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Feb 10, 2022 9:55 am Surely a lot of this depends on expectations and logistics? Americans organize their lives, and more importantly their cities, around the car, so of course car journeys are optimized; even in a city with mass transit it's inconvenient.
But people used to routinely take long train journeys.

Well of course the 400km "rule" is a generalization, and political considerations will always loom over any decision about HSR. As for how it applies to America, the data it's based on is mostly from Asia and Europe, so you're right there will be caveats in applying it to the US.

I think the main problem for longer routes will be price. The shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka is already more expensive than flying (with a quick search I just found round trip flights for $80, but a round trip ticket on the shinkansen is $250. That's partly because of the time. Slower doesn't just mean you get there slower. It also means you have to pay more of the workers' salary. The longer train journeys of the past that you alluded to were all wildly expensive for this reason, and people just accepted it because they had no choice (if you wanted to take the Twentieth Century Limited (admittedly not HSR, but still) from NYC to CHI a century ago, it would cost you $850 in today's money- nobody's reviving that price model successfully*). I can only assume that this problem of expensive HSR would continue in the US, where train and plane routes frequently trade places on which one is cheaper (at least before the pandemic. Post-Covid the Acela has slashed their prices to well below what airlines can offer, but who knows if that is permanently sustainable).

None of this means that we shouldn't build HSR. It just means we need to focus on where it can do the most good. Your example of the Boswash is by far the most crucial place for HSR in the US. High-profile routes like LA to SF or NYC to CHI, on the other hand, are likely to struggle to attract enough customers to be cost effective. At least until there is a pro-train cultural shift or the politicians tax airplanes out of the sky.

* Yes, I'm aware that part of the high price is because people had more space, including individual berths for a relatively small bump in cost. But even the cheapest tickets would be unacceptable to most travelers today.

Torco wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 10:15 pm

However, I think there are at least two factors that would that China could even be worse: 1° the USA has always been democratic, unlike the PCR. 2° as Piketty says (yes, my bedtime reading of the moment), the PCR has actually a more hypercapitalist pro-rich tax system.

those are excellent reasons why China's going to be an evil superpower: but have you considered, as a contrast, that the us has done -and keeps doing- some mighty evil things itself? to be quite pointed, an example is nuking and firebombing cities full of civilians? I have this strong feeling that for every Wang Quanzhang there's a Julian Assange, or a Condor plan. I don't think there's a very good way to quantifying these things and weighing this. And sure, the US is what we call 'a democracy'... though that's not all that transcendent, it's just free and fair elections that choose representatives nominated by a small and highly corrupt set of political parties, all in the pocket of big business: better than a single party dictatorship in principle, but not by that much. it ensures that they're beholden to some degree to US voters, but I'm not one of those so it's somewhat immaterial to me, and to the rest of the world that isn't western europe or the commonwealth, they do respect those guys somewhat. Also calling the early US 'a democracy' is, while strictly speaking correct in the sense that one of the meanings of democracy is 'a government like that of the US' is in another sense laughable: so much of the population was disenfranchised it wouldn't surprise me that the proportion of the political class was about 5% of everyone: there's no shame in this, Chile was the same early on, but an interesting comparison is that the enfranchised class of the PRC (CPC members) seems to be a lot more of the population.

Of course I know some of the awful things done by the US government. It's been over a decade since I read about the 11th of September 1973 on Zompist's webpage for example. But they did that because they were a superpower. If China under the current political system gets to the same position, I am convinced that they would do as bad if not worse. I hope that they will never reach the same power level that the US has had for decades.

I think that, while American democracy could be improved (notably by applying the current voting rights legislation, the popular vote and multiparty system; as could the democracy in other countries), it having free and fair elections that choose representatives of almost only two parties is 1° not the be-all-and-all of its democracy (it also involves constitutional rights and just rule of law) and 2° by *much* a difference with the PRC, which is one of the least free countries in the world while the US is one of the freeer countries in the world, outdone by some countries, mostly in Western Europe.

Even if I have never been to the US, I do value the fact that it is a democracy because those are the values it's spreading.

The early US certainly had franchise restrictions (mentioned in later posts above), but it was still some form of representative goverment, inherently preferable to an autocratic one.

Also, Xi Jinping might be making efforts to turn the party dictatorship into a personal one.

I actually do think a HSR to, say, Valdivia, or Puerto Montt, would have excellent demand if it a) went faster than 200kph (making it a four or five hour trip, instead of the 10 hours it generally takes by bus), b) was a milk run (say, a short stop every hour) and c) you could park your car in a train wagon and then go to sit in a normal passenger seat. This would be excellent for a variety of reasons, and I'm told was a feature of the chilean system pre-dictatorship (autotren, i'm told it was, and really there's no reason why it wouldn't be common: one of the cheapest possible wagons is just a closed box where you can stow cars. 3,3 meters, which is I gather a typical wagon width, is more than enough for a car to maneouver into a diagonal position. This makes the train the only option if you want to arrive at your destination and then have a car since airlifting a car would only be cheap if we were to get some sort of extremely cheap kwh batteries, and perhaps not even then. I mean okay there's renting but that sucks. What zomp says is my least favourite thing about planes: it takes me all day to get to valdivia (a town I like and visit relatively often) by car, and it takes me all day to go by plane as well: the perverse thing is that plane tickets to the south are super cheap, cheaper than a comfortable bed bus.

MacAnDàil wrote:But they did that because they were a superpower. If China under the current political system gets to the same position, I am convinced that they would do as bad if not worse. I hope that they will never reach the same power level that the US has had for decades.

Perhaps, but also perhaps not. different empires empire in different ways: China says it wants to just be economically and politically hegemonic without messing too much with the rest of the world's internal affairs and, though I know very little about the history of chinese foreign policy, I understand it has done so before, more establishing tributary relationships than outright annexing and invading, a la russia, or funding insurrectionary fascists and religious fundamentalist groups in order to closely control policy, like the US tends to do. we can say that China is worse and will therefore do worse things, but I don't think I have a very solid view that China is inherently worse: after all, it has done less bad things.

And like, I get it, this is a very subjective thing: the US has been a decent ally to english-speaking countries, and it's understandable you think it's a preferrable overlord, but I don't think I share this predilection: this is likely because the 'is a democracy' thing is really not that big a deal to me, not because I don't value the idea of democracy -i do- but because... you know, just because we call something 'a democracy' doesn't mean it is actually democratic. liberals tend to speak of whether things 'are a democracy or not', and the only way of being a democracy is being a multi-party, freedom of enterpreneurship, parties funded by private individuals and companies, liberal parliamentary-presidential representative democracy with universal suffrage, direct national elections and the rest of it... but if we see that this system is not perfect, and that it's in some ways anti-democratic, then the question's about being democratic, not about being 'a democracy': regarding the rule of law, this notion somewhat falls down under class analysis: I know how things are like in my own country which is called 'a democracy', and I don't expect these things are very different in yours:

wage theft, for example, is much more money stolen -and much more important money, too- than muggings and bank robberies, and yet it's very weakly enforced, commonly criminals get away with it, and generally does not involve jail time: from this we gleam that it is the private property of rich people that the court and police system protect, and fuck the poors (so, a flawed democracy, just like a single-party one is flawed: or, perhaps not harshly, false democracy in both cases). this has a long corollary I expect I don't need to elaborate too much: the crimes rich people engage in are in general weakly investigated and punished, rich people get away with great evil simply cause they're rich, and the crimes poor people do are harshly punished, and all -to put it in Zizekian terms, so on and so on. from this we gleam that rule of law applies mostly ti rich people, the rest of us be damned. btw this is also true regarding non economics crimes: if you're a rich 30yo and run over a random guy you're likely to not see jail, but if you're black and get caught with 10 grams of weed we know what happens. the rich friends of epstein got away scott free, blablabla.

The free and fair election thing is also weak: sure, there's no state intervention in elections in decent 'democracies', but there is intervention by other, equally undemocratic powers, and I see no reason to regarding one as a greater violation of democracy than the other.

The constitutional rights, weeeell.... I meean... you know, surveilance state, military industrial complex, the CIA, political opponents and opponents of corporations getting suicided -happens routinely in my under-the-sphere-of-the-us 'democracy', and in all latam for that matter: they both seem weak in this sense: where the chinese have social credit points the yanks have, you know, credit credit points. freedom of speech is nice, but kind of token if you can get fired for discussing, for example, unions. freedom of association is nice, but when you can be fired for getting into a union it's also kind of token. same with right to property: it's mostly an excuse for rich people to fuck poor people, and the property of the little guy is much less protected. political and legal equality would be nice, but when rich people can buy politicians and I can't it's the same. and we already know we're not equal under the law with wealthier people than us in our 'democracies', so...

The early US certainly had franchise restrictions (mentioned in later posts above), but it was still some form of representative government, inherently preferable to an autocratic one.

I mean, but the chinese also have elections! sure, they're somewhat limited in their options, though so are the yanks, corrupted by state interference, though so are the yanks, gerrymandering and lobbying and corporate donors and the rest of it. the relevant elections in China are all inside the CPP, but the CPP is not six rich guys in a room, it's got a hundred million members, and presumably they get to elect their local party committees, and then those elect the higher up party committees and so on: it's not a perfect system, but then again, neither is the US one: They just both look like imperfect and corrupt democracies from where I sit. Don't get me wrong, I wish the PRC did some democratic reforms, but hopefully those won't be 'state and party no longer interferes, instead big business does', you know.

Since when do great powers set up rival powers? That's what would happen if one hegemonic democracy set up another genuine hegemonic democracy. The real challenge of democratic socialism is to rid democracy of its hegemonic tendencies.

The entire 21st century concept of societies spreading their values is one big, oppressive lie.

Just because American democracy is not perfect by any means and because the US does have very strong hegemonic tendencies does not mean one can establish an equivalence with the PRC or somehow claim that the PRC is better than the US. Remember that the PRC is well on it's way towards being a personal dictatorship right now and it has imprisoned countless Uyghurs in concentration camps just for being Uyghurs (and while the US does have it's own concentration camps they are not on nearly the same scale).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 11:12 am Just because American democracy is not perfect by any means and because the US does have very strong hegemonic tendencies does not mean one can establish an equivalence with the PRC or somehow claim that the PRC is better than the US. Remember that the PRC is well on it's way towards being a personal dictatorship right now and it has imprisoned countless Uyghurs in concentration camps just for being Uyghurs (and while the US does have it's own concentration camps they are not on nearly the same scale).

I agree that enabling China's hegemonic power is a bad idea.

At the same time, I predict that you'd be a lot less enthusiastic about democracies creating other genuine democracies on their doorstep after reading History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. (Note: Athens wasn't socialist either, and the franchise was severely limited.)

This is not anyone's "fault". It's not that America has wrong "values" or anything. The problem I'm looking at is systemic. India has made numerous attempts to hijack other democracies on the subcontinent, arguably succeeding with Bangladesh, though that was a clusterfuck from the get go, with Pakistan and/or the CIA pushing ultraconservative strongmen as though their lives depended on it.

Of course, non-democracies push non-democracy too. It's simply convenient for your foreign policy when the dignitaries you are dealing with represent puppet dictators placed there to do your bidding.

To understand the problem, place yourself in the shoes of a people pleasing yes man serving as the leader of a representative democracy. You can't challenge the profit margins of the corporations that got you elected. At the same time, the people demand improvements to their quality of life, and you'll lose their votes in a more direct way if you don't give them what they want. So who DO you get to screw over? The answer is: filthy foreigners. You could install a dictatorship in a shitty third world dystopia to get your people cheap oil, for example. That would benefit your countrymen in a holistic way without any need for anxiety-inducing class struggle.

To an extent, this logic applies to non-democracies as well, and people should be wary of China. It's just that when you DO get to screw over your neighbors with impunity, you are under much less pressure to screw over foreigners.

If the third world that cheap raw materials come from became genuinely democratic, the natives would demand higher prices for their products. That is to say, they would be hegemonic, if only in a local way. If that happened, the current model of centrist Western democracy may become unviable.

For all those that think that China isn't hegemonic, they forget that they are not as hegemonic as the US only because they do not have as much power globally as the US and that they very much desire such power, and once they have such power they will be just as hegemonic if not more so. I would much rather have an imperfect democracy as global hegemon than a personal dictatorship, and I fear the day when China displaces the US in this role.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 11:12 am Just because American democracy is not perfect by any means and because the US does have very strong hegemonic tendencies does not mean one can establish an equivalence with the PRC or somehow claim that the PRC is better than the US. Remember that the PRC is well on it's way towards being a personal dictatorship right now and it has imprisoned countless Uyghurs in concentration camps just for being Uyghurs (and while the US does have it's own concentration camps they are not on nearly the same scale).

this makes total sense if one assumes that a country is better simply because it's 'a democracy': democracies are better than non-democracies definitionally, because democracy is good, and so non-democracies are not democracies and therefore bad, therefore china is inherently worse no matter how flawed a democracy the US is: is this not somewhat circular, though? also, the US treats its population somewhat better, but is that so relevant for us not us-citizens (nor citizens of, say, Ireland or so on?) besides, china hasn't nuked cities, or established fascist and religious fundamentalist dictatorships throughout the world: that, at least, is a point in its favour.

The entire 21st century concept of societies spreading their values is one big, oppressive lie.

truth!

Torco wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:59 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 11:12 am Just because American democracy is not perfect by any means and because the US does have very strong hegemonic tendencies does not mean one can establish an equivalence with the PRC or somehow claim that the PRC is better than the US. Remember that the PRC is well on it's way towards being a personal dictatorship right now and it has imprisoned countless Uyghurs in concentration camps just for being Uyghurs (and while the US does have it's own concentration camps they are not on nearly the same scale).

this makes total sense if one assumes that a country is better simply because it's 'a democracy': democracies are better than non-democracies definitionally, because democracy is good, and so non-democracies are not democracies and therefore bad, therefore china is inherently worse no matter how flawed a democracy the US is: is this not somewhat circular, though? also, the US treats its population somewhat better, but is that so relevant for us not us-citizens (nor citizens of, say, Ireland or so on?) besides, china hasn't nuked cities, or established fascist and religious fundamentalist dictatorships throughout the world: that, at least, is a point in its favour.

One has to consider though that much of how the PRC is "better" than the US is simply a function of it having less power - had it the power, it would probably be no better than the US.

Torco wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:59 pm this makes total sense if one assumes that a country is better simply because it's 'a democracy': democracies are better than non-democracies definitionally, because democracy is good, and so non-democracies are not democracies and therefore bad, therefore china is inherently worse no matter how flawed a democracy the US is: is this not somewhat circular, though? also, the US treats its population somewhat better, but is that so relevant for us not us-citizens (nor citizens of, say, Ireland or so on?) besides, china hasn't nuked cities, or established fascist and religious fundamentalist dictatorships throughout the world: that, at least, is a point in its favour.

China does make friends with fundamentalist regimes abroad while persecuting fundamentalists at home. Cynially promoting fundamentalists abroad takes a special kind of finesse that I don't believe the current Chinese regime has.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:20 pm For all those that think that China isn't hegemonic, they forget that they are not as hegemonic as the US only because they do not have as much power globally as the US and that they very much desire such power, and once they have such power they will be just as hegemonic if not more so. I would much rather have an imperfect democracy as global hegemon than a personal dictatorship, and I fear the day when China displaces the US in this role.

I would actually prefer a global hegemon to locally be a dictatorship than a non-socialist democracy, if only because a dictatorship would be weakened internally. Nevertheless, I slightly prefer America as a hegemon over China because America is less capitalist these days than China is.

Don't you see how ridiculous it sounds to be arguing about which of two nearly identical catastrophes are less bad? It could be better for a hurricane to hit a district with 1% fewer people, but there are so many factors here that pushing on this one point makes no sense.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:03 pm At the same time, I predict that you'd be a lot less enthusiastic about democracies creating other genuine democracies on their doorstep after reading History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. (Note: Athens wasn't socialist either, and the franchise was severely limited.)

Er, what? We happen to get the word from Athens, but Athens was not a modern democracy and doesn't have much to tell us about modern politics.

Of course, non-democracies push non-democracy too. It's simply convenient for your foreign policy when the dignitaries you are dealing with represent puppet dictators placed there to do your bidding.

Definitely. At the same time, the US hasn't always created dictatorships. After WWI it insisted on autonomy for the new Eastern European countries, though this can be called a geopolitical mistake as they were easy prey for Russia and Germany. The US was extremely uncomfortable with the British Empire, and basically forced Britain and France to give up the Suez war in 1956. Jimmy Carter's turn toward human rights resulted in a wave of democratization in Latin America.

FWIW China and the West competing in finance and development is probably a good thing, because it's good to have options besides kowtowing to the IMF. I doubt that China would be any better at managing debtor countries than the Western countries. But if (say) Argentina has a debt crisis in 2050 with one side, maybe the other side is motivated to offer a deal. (Or maybe China and the IMF join forces to be nasty-- but that's no worse than the IMF alone.)

To understand the problem, place yourself in the shoes of a people pleasing yes man serving as the leader of a representative democracy. You can't challenge the profit margins of the corporations that got you elected.

Sure you can. That's what Roosevelt did. It helps when those corporations have just destroyed the economy and their own credibility.

If the third world that cheap raw materials come from became genuinely democratic, the natives would demand higher prices for their products. That is to say, they would be hegemonic, if only in a local way. If that happened, the current model of centrist Western democracy may become unviable.

To paraphrase an old proverb, when God hates a country, he gives it plentiful raw materials.

You mention oil-- well, the Arab countries rich in oil are pretty well off; also dictatorships that oppress women and the foreigners they allow in to do the actual work. There were earlier booms (rubber, beef, guano...) which led to temporary prosperity, which vanished when the resources did. Countries with plentiful resources expect that the boom will last forever and don't bother to develop in any other way.

It's a leftist assumption that the developed world depends on exploiting the Third World. Obviously there is exploitation; that doesn't mean that there's dependency. In 2020, for instance, the US was a net exporter of oil.

China is now responsible for a quarter of the world's manufacturing, without making Western democracy "unviable". We have problems, of course, but they're not due to China, but to plutocracy.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:21 pm Er, what? We happen to get the word from Athens, but Athens was not a modern democracy and doesn't have much to tell us about modern politics.

I've read one scholar at West Point say that Thucydides is the closest anyone has come to providing an accessible explanation of power politics without falling into either optimism or cynicism.

If you're looking for an exact ancient parallel, Rome comes much closer to the US than Athens, and its record is even more terrible IMO.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:21 pm FWIW China and the West competing in finance and development is probably a good thing, because it's good to have options besides kowtowing to the IMF. I doubt that China would be any better at managing debtor countries than the Western countries. But if (say) Argentina has a debt crisis in 2050 with one side, maybe the other side is motivated to offer a deal. (Or maybe China and the IMF join forces to be nasty-- but that's no worse than the IMF alone.)

I completely agree. I can't even think of a single good criticism of this point. Surely it must ultimately be wrong, like everything everyone has said in this thread, but to find the mistakes, I'd have to know details about American and Chinese grand strategy that I'm unfortunately ignorant of.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:21 pm Sure you can. That's what Roosevelt did. It helps when those corporations have just destroyed the economy and their own credibility.

If your point is that a democratic hegemon could be good in certain parts of the business cycle, then I agree. As long as you're aware that you have very little control over the business cycle and the parts that do lend themselves to goodness aren't pretty to live through.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:21 pm It's a leftist assumption that the developed world depends on exploiting the Third World. Obviously there is exploitation; that doesn't mean that there's dependency. In 2020, for instance, the US was a net exporter of oil.

IIRC there are a number of minerals used in technology that are not plentiful in the West. Trying to become self-reliant on those could temporarily wreck the West's quality of life, at least until alternatives saturate the market.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 1:21 pm China is now responsible for a quarter of the world's manufacturing, without making Western democracy "unviable". We have problems, of course, but they're not due to China, but to plutocracy.

In the long run, I agree that your local quality of life is not the fault of foreign countries. What will be unviable is not Western democracy but centrist Western politics, and this kind of change is often painful to live through.

Jesus, much like the real Chile, every time the Americans show up in this thread it turns into Whackytown.

1) Yes, obviously Democracy is better than authoritarianism; the US is mediocre at Democracy, and China is much worse than that.
2) Yes, obviously superpowers care more about military allies and exclusive trade zones than about spreading their values, though the latter often facilitates the former, and plenty of people in any superpower believe whole-heartedly in that project. Arguably the only superpower with a good track record of promulgating their ideology was the British, who left poncy condescending assholes in their wake all over the world.
3) Yes, obviously given the choice you'd rather the country with its boot on your neck have things like enforcible constitutional protections, but that's like... 0.01% of your mental real estate when there's a boot on your neck. Better to just not have anyone's boot on your neck at all.
4) Yes, obviously dependency is real in the broad sense (i.e. countries can find it difficult but not impossible to develop when their economy is built to sell raw materials to already developed countries), though harder definitions lacking in nuance are probably wrong. Neck boots are bad, y'all.

Now that everything is cleared up again, we can go back to talking about the imaginary trains we want, like grown ups. A quick search of "autotren" turned up very little, except for this Muskian atrocity. I don't know if I like the idea of the sort of RORO train Torco is describing. Bringing your car with you negates some of the energy advantages of trains, and increases the chance of rural stations being accessible only by car.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sun Feb 13, 2022 2:53 pm I've read one scholar at West Point say that Thucydides is the closest anyone has come to providing an accessible explanation of power politics without falling into either optimism or cynicism.

If you're looking for an exact ancient parallel, Rome comes much closer to the US than Athens, and its record is even more terrible IMO.

Comparisons between Rome and the US are always amusing, but I don't know how valid they are. If they are, we're about due for about a century of political instability and coups, followed by a moderate liberal setting up a personal military dictatorship.

TBH, I don't think parallels with the ancient world are terribly viable. Spengler is amusing, but I don't think his theory holds.

In the long run, I agree that your local quality of life is not the fault of foreign countries. What will be unviable is not Western democracy but centrist Western politics, and this kind of change is often painful to live through.

I doubt that.
I mean, extremists of various kinds are making a lot of noise but the West is currently ruled by a bunch of bland centrists, with the possible exception of the UK.

I should point out that the one important non-centrist in recent memory, namely Donald Trump has been extremely uneffective in achieving anything of importance.
I don't claim to predict the future, but so far it looks like vaguely conservative centrism is here to stay.

On China: I generally loathe China's leadership and its policies. From a realpolitik standpoint: I can't serious blame Chile for thinking that just about anything will be a lesser evil than the US.
Interestingly, African countries are following the same reasoning. Seneral traditionally dealt mainly with French companies; now their preferred partners is China. I don't blame the Senegalese either. (China's leadership may be evil, but at least they're not trying to hold on to a colonial empire.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:07 am Comparisons between Rome and the US are always amusing, but I don't know how valid they are. If they are, we're about due for about a century of political instability and coups, followed by a moderate liberal setting up a personal military dictatorship.

TBH, I don't think parallels with the ancient world are terribly viable. Spengler is amusing, but I don't think his theory holds.

Note that I'm saying it's not an exact parallel. If this makes them radically incommensurable, then should we not read Machiavelli either, only the latest analysts?

I'm serious, read Thucydides before coming to a conclusion. I'll bet the speeches he reconstructed with artistic license are the clearest texts on the interaction between military campaigns and local politics you've ever read.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:07 am I doubt that.
I mean, extremists of various kinds are making a lot of noise but the West is currently ruled by a bunch of bland centrists, with the possible exception of the UK.

I should point out that the one important non-centrist in recent memory, namely Donald Trump has been extremely uneffective in achieving anything of importance.
I don't claim to predict the future, but so far it looks like vaguely conservative centrism is here to stay.

I never said non-centrism is necessarily effective. I said centrism may not be viable for a while if the West stops receiving shipments of cheap raw material from the Third World as well as products manufactured from them. When I say centrism may not be viable, I mean that the West will be confronted with the reality of class struggle and be forced to deal with it one way or another. The result could be democratic or authoritarian, communist or fascist, effective or ineffective. The only thing it's guaranteed to not be is something that a denizen of the early 21st century West would recognize as centrist.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:07 am (China's leadership may be evil, but at least they're not trying to hold on to a colonial empire.)

They are, but their colonial empire is much smaller: Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan, etc. Possibly North Korea.

I'm old enough to remember when it was common to teach children that America "didn't have colonies," because our colonies were less formal than the European "flag-and-border" colonies. No doubt China will have a colonial empire that is even more "not actually a colonial empire." I'm guessing they'll improve on the American model of plausible deniability. Just make sure Tanzania owes you twice their GDP and bingo-bango, totally not a colony, you guys.

Strict historical parallels aren't useful, but of course there is still a lot to learn, since very often people are trying to square the same damn circles over and over again. The trial of Charles I, for example, revolved around how you hold the King accountable under the King's own law, and the relationship between power and legal authority. It's almost exactly the same dilemma the Nuremburg trials had to solve when trying to hold Nazis legally accountable for things that were perfectly legal under German law. Thucydides is one of the most well-remembered historical accounts because of gnomic truisms about power like these. IIRC people were quoting Thucydides in Congress in the lead-up to the first Gulf War.

Damn it, now you've got me doing it. Trains, people! Focus!

Trains. Fine.

Small brain: I jumped out of a running train once because I was about to miss my stop and be late for class. Fortunately, my head was jerked away from the train when I hit the ground.

Big brain: Train tracks, like roads, can be modeled as a graph data structure. Using a GCN filter to learn this spatial data while learning time series data with a GRU in the same architecture has produced surprisingly accurate and stable models in traffic prediction. I wonder if similar models have been deployed to predict delays for trains. This class of models would only be accurate if these delays are casually linked to the geometry of the tracks and the time series data. However, if these phenomena are casually independent, then delays would show up as noise. In that case, I would try models like ARIMA first.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:29 am Note that I'm saying it's not an exact parallel. If this makes them radically incommensurable, then should we not read Machiavelli either, only the latest analysts?

I'm serious, read Thucydides before coming to a conclusion. I'll bet the speeches he reconstructed with artistic license are the clearest texts on the interaction between military campaigns and local politics you've ever read.

They're perhaps not radically incommensurable (some parts are certainly very relatable), but no, Roman or Athenian politics aren't likely at all to be good predictors of what the US will or won't do, or what it can or can't do.
(It's been ages since I read Machiavelli but I have my doubts there too.)

I never said non-centrism is necessarily effective. I said centrism may not be viable for a while if the West stops receiving shipments of cheap raw material from the Third World as well as products manufactured from them.
When I say centrism may not be viable, I mean that the West will be confronted with the reality of class struggle and be forced to deal with it one way or another. The result could be democratic or authoritarian, communist or fascist, effective or ineffective. The only thing it's guaranteed to not be is something that a denizen of the early 21st century West would recognize as centrist.

Your scenario is pretty similar to the 1973 oil crisis. It was, well, a crisis, sure, and it did change politics somewhat. But the West wasn't particularly confronted with the reality of class struggle (not any more than before or after) and dealt with it while keeping the same political system.

Aside from that, what exactly do we import from the Third World? And what makes you think imports will cease, and what makes you think we can't find substitute sources? There's a lot of talk about rare earths; these we import mostly from China (which is not Third World) -- they are also extracted in the United States, or Australia (and, in spite of the name, aren't that rare.) Manufactured products are mostly imported from China these days (again, not Third World.)
I can think of some resources France does import from the Third World: uranium, from Niger -- but in actuality, we have a diverse portfolio of suppliers, including Canada. Phosphate we do import massively from Morocco; but again, there are other suppliers and no particularly worry about finding substitutes should the need ever arise (not that it's terribly likely.)

So all in all, I don't think your scenario sounds particularly likely right now. I'm certain the West will meet more severe economic crises in the coming years; these are rough times politically but not the complete upheavals you seem to envision.

As to your final point: of course, Western politics in 2122 aren't likely to be anything I'd recognize, because, frankly, I'm not likely to recognize much of anything in 2122.

They are, but their colonial empire is much smaller: Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan, etc. Possibly North Korea.

Ah, yes, good point!

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:35 am They're perhaps not radically incommensurable (some parts are certainly very relatable), but no, Roman or Athenian politics aren't likely at all to be good predictors of what the US will or won't do, or what it can or can't do.
(It's been ages since I read Machiavelli but I have my doubts there too.)

Structures like those in game theory are universal because they are defined recursively like numbers.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:35 am Your scenario is pretty similar to the 1973 oil crisis. It was, well, a crisis, sure, and it did change politics somewhat. But the West wasn't particularly confronted with the reality of class struggle (not any more than before or after) and dealt with it while keeping the same political system.

IIRC importing oil from Saudi Arabia has always been a matter of convenience. (Edit: Recent technology has made it more so, but have the Saudis ever been a necessity?)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 7:35 am Aside from that, what exactly do we import from the Third World? And what makes you think imports will cease, and what makes you think we can't find substitute sources? There's a lot of talk about rare earths; these we import mostly from China (which is not Third World) -- they are also extracted in the United States, or Australia (and, in spite of the name, aren't that rare.) Manufactured products are mostly imported from China these days (again, not Third World.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan_mining_and_ethics

The relevant fact to consider is not whether these minerals are found outside the Third World. The relevant fact to consider is how expensive they would be if supply fell significantly. Even in this case, I already said:

Trying to become self-reliant on those could temporarily wreck the West's quality of life, at least until alternatives saturate the market. ... In the long run, I agree that your local quality of life is not the fault of foreign countries.