RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
is a significant-but-not-overwhelming amount to the scale of the US economy, which in 2023 the world bank estimated was over $105,435,000... million USD.
27 trillion, not 105 trillion.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If something can be done wrong, rest assured the Australian Navy is doing it wrong!
Analysis prepared by the Parliamentary Library confirms the number of "star-ranked" officers in the Australian Defence Force now totals 219, up from 119 in 2003.
The figures, commissioned by the Greens Party, confirm that for every senior Australian Defence Force (ADF) officer, there is just 260 other lower ranked officers or regular personnel serving below them.
Star-ranked officers, or 'flag officers' are those who serve at the Commodore, Brigadier or Air Commodore level and higher in the Navy, Army, and Air Force respectively.
In the United States there are 863 star-ranked officers, with the ratio of one senior officer for every 1526 personnel, while in the United Kingdom the proportion is one star-ranked officer for every 1252 other enlisted members.
I want to take a leaf out of Xi's book and purge these jokers, give them one of the brutal Royal Commissions we reserve for covering up sex offenders. Bungling national defence with their (well-paid) ineptitude is in some ways worse than kiddy-diddling.
This year Australia’s Chief of Defence will collect a salary of over $1 million, far higher than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the United States who earns $329,304 and the UK Chief of the Defence Staff who is paid $534,509.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
See this doesn't necessarily any problem with trade as such, as this is an internal dynamic
I meant to say sucking wealth away from productive enterprises around the world. Suppose Zhang in Chongqing makes an iphone that goes to a product manager who doesn't do any useful work, just sits around in meetings all day. This is an unstable dynamic in my book. It would be unstable even within a country if you have a class of elites who laze around all day and a class of workers who make goods for them. When Onlyfans whores delight in their paid-off houses it incites a lot of resentment amongst people with shit jobs. Elites are supposed to lead wisely, that's why they're supposed to get goods from the workers.
Other Western countries are poorer than the US. Not everyone is cut out for productive work, there are internal status games and politics... But the US is unusually rich and has a high trade deficit, the US is the biggest offender. The rest of the West (with some exceptions, though German industry seems to be declining fast) is relying on prestige, not production. Degree mill universities, immigration ponzi schemes, selling enterprises overseas. Selling assets to pay for consumption is bad, profits and capabilities head overseas.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Fourth, they can invest in and install factories in America
Australia is literally doing this. Taxpayer money is going to the US to build dockyards in the US, where submarines might be bought at some stage.
But the US shipbuilding industry is so inefficient they can't even meet their own needs, let alone Australia's needs. Naturally there's no clawback agreement in case they take the money and run:
VADM Mead: The US has committed to transferring two nuclear-powered submarines and a third one…
Sen Shoebridge: So, there’s no clawback provision?
VADM Mead: …we are investing in the US submarine industrial base.
Sen Shoebridge: Whether we get one or not? You cannot be serious.
VADM Mead: The US has committed to this program.
Sen Shoebridge: You know it depends on a Presidential approval, don’t you? The US has made it 100% clear that it depends on that approval.
VADM Mead: That is your statement, which I refute.
Sen Shoebridge: VADM, you know that the US legislation says that the US can only provide an AUKUS attack class submarine to Australia if, first of all, the USN gives advice it won’t adversely affect their capacity. Secondly, after receipt of that, the US President approves it. Do you understand that?
VADM Mead: Yes.
Sen Shoebridge: And if neither of those things happen, we don’t get a sub. Do you agree with that?
VADM Mead: I agree with that.
Sen Shoebridge: Does the agreement provide – the one where we are shelling out $1.5 billion next year and $1.8 billion the year after that and another $1.7 billion or more over the rest of the decade – if the US does not provide us with an AUKUS submarine then we get our money back?
VADM Mead: The US will provide us with an AUKUS submarine.
We were cuck-maxxing even pre-Trump.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Everyone is saying this now but Trump wasn't campaigning on throwing down tariffs on everyone in the world. He had a softer stance on Tiktok than the Biden administration!
The rhetoric was mass deportations, law and order, no men in women's sports, Puerto Rico is a shithole, drill baby drill, lower taxes.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
A lot of Americans have completely made-up jobs, working in DEI or consulting or HR, compliance (with bizarre laws), educating people with ridiculous nonsense... it's not productive activity. Some of those jobs are useful but much are not.
They're basically sucking wealth away from productive enterprises since they consume wealth but do not produce wealth. The US runs huge trade deficits to support a high level of prosperity, relying on the social construct of 'the US is the greatest country in the world, with the strongest military and the safest currency' so that people maintain confidence in the US dollar.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Janissary/mameluke-style military slaves performed well in battle, so possibly yes. The Ottomans were by far the strongest force in the Muslim world, probably in part because they made good use of actual Europeans fighting for them.
Without steppe nomads or Europeans, Muslim combat power seemed to be quite low.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If the apartments fall apart, then they can simply move into the ghost cities - problem solves itself.
Seriously, these things may be true to a certain extent but real estate is not the defining feature of the economy. Production is the defining feature of the economy, production of goods. All else rests on top of production. There are no services without goods, even prostitutes need condoms and lingerie...
China is good at cost-efficient production, therefore it follows that their economy is strong regardless of the situation in real estate or whatever else. If the Soviet Union was the biggest producer of manufactured goods on the planet, bigger than the next 10 combined, then it would still be here today. Soviet production was weak, nobody ever cared to tariff Soviet exports because nobody in their right mind wanted to buy a Soviet car, television or anything but oil and minerals.
But if YOU didn’t hear about it? Must be an amazing system!
This is the reverse of the truth. We in the West hear nothing but bad news about China. We hear about protests in Hong Kong, genocide of the uyghurs, trouble with the Dalai Lama, pollution, liveleak industrial accidents, people getting locked in their homes for COVID, people getting their organs stolen, suppression of Christianity, Social Credit (which is blown out of proportion), repression of the LGBT, backdoors in Tiktok and all other Chinese products... and this shadow banking crisis that has been about to destroy the Chinese economy for the last 10, 15, 20 years. I was taught about it in school.
There are positives as well as negatives, the media is only interested in fostering hatred and contempt, preparing people psychologically for war with China. It's just like the 'Iran is 6 months, 3 weeks, 5 milliseconds away from getting the Bomb!' narrative, fearmongering and warmongering. They want us to hate China and also think they'll be easy to defeat, to manufacture consent for war. But in reality China is a very strong country and we need to be more realistic. War may be inevitable but we shouldn't go in half-cocked, assuming our enemies are made of tofu.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
Consumption is indeed high but production is too low. That's my point. It's an unstable position to be in. There are lots of people in the US who are very wealthy and prosperous but shouldn't be.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
To a certain extent sure but there's a lot of mystery in what happens. WTF was Thieving Heaven up to, what was his whole deal? It was deliberately written so that commenters who tried to work out what would happen would be deceived, he'd change the plot to surprise them.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If the jet can't even be shown to the public then it must be in a fairly early stage of development. Only a few months ago it looked like the whole project was going to be cancelled or turned into a family of systems. These air-superiority fighters can't be kept hidden forever, people have to be trained about them, they'll need to be fielded to airbases...
Furthermore, the Chinese could've and surely were secretly flying their next-gen jets before revealing them.
Public reveals should have more weight than allegations of secret techniques. It shows that a design has been largely worked out and that it's closer to deployment.
Reverend Insanity fulfils your criteria almost perfectly. It's a Chinese xianxia webnovel, extremely, extremely long (albeit sadly unfinished due to a murky legal situation), translated into English.
We have a brutal but not sadistic main character who routinely intimidates non-combatants, 'strong-arming' could be his middle name, closely followed by extorting, betraying and deceiving. He starts the novel beating up fellow students for money. Later on he does some industrial-scale slave-raising of non-humans.
There's basically no sex, rape is alluded to occasionally (notoriously in chapter 1 but this is never followed up on), we never actually see it. That's the only sanitization in the story. Generally it's incredibly un-PC, there's casual homophobia and misogyny that's not even intended to raise any questions, it's just atmospheric. There's a race war going on in the background, a zero-sum struggle for dominance over the world is assumed. There are some nice people in this world, some even highly successful but this is a brutal world with dynamics that incentivize harshness and repression. There can be no political or social equality when personal combat power in their world is more unequal than wealth is in ours.
There's no hypocrisy, our MC doesn't think he's in the right or make justifications at any point, he mostly just clowns on people who are forced to betray themselves by the social constraints they're in. Occasionally he recognizes and salutes fellow people who are true to their own selves, whether they're evil like him or good or just crazy obsessed with something.
Reverend Insanity is also super thoughtful in the construction of the setting, in the conflicts of the characters and the social games they play. The slave-raising chapter I mentioned is interesting, it goes into detail about how he manipulates the rockmen leadership structure, how he toys with them, making it seem like they're defiantly resisting him as he works them to death. Nothing about the story is generic, he made up his own power system with its own dynamics, a rich and strange world with its own power structure, international relations, economy, culture and so on. It all feels like it fits in its world,
However the prose is weird, it's super straightforward, almost childish to a certain level. That may be due to the translation, I don't know. So if you go in and think 'this is insanely low-level, what kind of shit taste does this guy have', sure... it is basic in prose. The author gives up on flowery descriptions quite quickly. But there is a lot more than you'd think in this story. The power of love, fate, revenge, duty, sacrifice... Possibly this is also due to it maturing over the years. While I'd say it's not an edgelord story at any point, (even the infamous bear scene has a thematic level beyond shock value) it definitely becomes less edgy over time. There's a whole meta-level with the in-universe allegories, Reverend Insanity has a claim to literary merit.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Yes I agree, much of US GDP is nonsense, it's like an inverted pyramid with the manufacturing base too small and services too large. There are of course real services like R&D but there are also more or less fake services, HR training sessions and legal compliance, managing tax... There's real education and fake education, those schools in America where nobody can perform to grade level, useless or negative-value degrees...
Just because money is changing hands, it doesn't follow that it's a good thing. Fentanyl raises the GDP after all. Metrics of production should be prioritized over financial flows.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
What do you mean by shaky in fundamentals?
They have a huge amount of industry and infrastructure that pumps out much of the world's goods. Putting finance to one side, isn't that a sound basis for an economy?
China has high corporate debt, that much is known. But debt is just paper. As long as enterprises are productive and efficient, debt doesn't matter. Regardless of what happens in the realm of paper the real productive wealth remains. All those phones, cars, ships will still be produced in increasingly automated factories. All that housing stock is still there. I remember hearing so much about Evergrande collapsing but there don't seem to be many material consequences from that. On the flipside, a home ownership rate of 96% is pretty good in my view, something is going very right there.
And they have plenty of human capital, the cohorts that will be relevant for the next 20 years have already been born, shrinking birthrates will take decades to really cause any major effect.
I think our media has emphasized China's flaws (debt, pollution, totalitarian political system) excessively and refused to cover their successes (logistics, cost-efficient industrial output, innovation) and so people fall into a state of confusion when Deepseek or Tiktok come out, when BYD starts outhustling Tesla or when the Chinese flew their next-gen fighter IRL, as opposed to in CGI like NGAD.
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1909263788295041257
Yesterday, China issued Retaliatory Tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation, despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set. Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th, 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL Tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th. Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1909411006423392583
China Ministry of Commerce has just said: "Will fight until the end if US Insists on new tariffs"
China urges dialogue with US, strongly opposes 50% additional tariffs
So the two biggest economies are now locked in a full-scale trade war... I suspect this will be more severe than previous skirmishing. In the past China imposed restrictions on imports of Australian wine, lobster and coal due to us calling for an inquiry into COVID. The Australian government basically ignored this without retaliating and eventually (with a change of govt over here to the less anti-Chinese Labour party) the restrictions were dropped. And they didn't touch iron ore, our biggest and most important export.
But nobody really cares about Australia, there's no loss of face in restoring trade relations like there would be with being seen to submit to Trump. You can show magnanimity to a weaker country but you probably can't show weakness to a peer power. Plus the US-China tariffs seem to be much more comprehensive, there's no shielded goods listed. I highly doubt that Xi will back down here like Trump seems to be asking. Giving a one day ultimatum is quite rude.
It seems that Trump's strategy is to shake down the US's weaker trading partners (the 'other countries which have requested meetings') and try to smash the stronger powers like China and possibly the EU. The EU might even fall into the 'weaker' category if Trump can link security to the trade relationship, Vance and co wanted to send Europe the bill for bombing Yemen since it was mostly European trade flowing through the Red Sea. The US has opportunities for leverage in terms of energy flows now that Russia is persona non grata and with defence via NATO. On the other hand, the EU is run by Trump-haters and they're hardened experts in economically wrecking their own countries, so they may show some backbone.
Anyway, who has more leverage between the US and China?
China's exports to the US ($500 billion) are mostly manufactured goods, electronics and machinery. These are ironically the things you'd need to industrialize the US, though a lot is also consumer goods. China dominates certain industries like port equipment as seen here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11jsyyf/well_thats_unfortunate/
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports/united-states
The US's exports to China ($144 billion) are a mix of agriculture/energy and electronics (semiconductors are included in this category), aircraft, machinery.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/china
Personally I favour a supply-focused view of trade conflicts. If you're losing out on $500 billion worth of goods due to high tariffs (an additional 50% on top of the 34% and the previous tariffs really add up!) then that's worse than 34% or 84% if Xi matches on a mere $144 billion. Many of those goods will be prerequisites for US production. A much smaller proportion of Chinese imports will be prerequisites and soybeans/gas can be bought from elsewhere. Plus the Chinese approach to industrial policy seems much more sophisticated, they target key sectors to build up economies of scale. They foster development in high-tech industries with huge state backing. They do plenty on the supply side, tariffs only affect prices and demand. I think China is not too concerned about losing US imports, they want to replace them with indigenous suppliers on the high-end anyway and have been working hard to do this for years and years, that's Made in China 2025. There is no equivalent comprehensive program to reshore production in the US.
And if China loses some of their exports, at least they retain production capacity. Those mobile phones and plastic toys could go to Chinese kids instead.
I've seen others online favouring a demand-focused view, so there is room for difference on this (elasticity matters a lot).
I think China will come out ahead here unless Trump manages some crazy 4D chess bullying other nations into tariffing China too. China is the central hub of the world economy in terms of trade flows, their economy is larger in real terms and their political system seems to be more stable, less erratic.
Edit: https://x.com/typesfast/status/1909362292367802840
On April 17th the U.S. Trade Representative's office is expected to impose fees of up to $1.5M per port call for ships made in China and for $500k to $1M if the ocean carrier owns a single ship made in China
This seems even crazier if true, it's like Trump is deliberately trying to crash the US economy with these hasty, no-warning orders and fines. See the thread for details. This is how you don't do industrial policy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
War deaths aren't a significant part of this, Russia hasn't lost even 1% of their population, let alone 99%.
If the Carnegie Foundation of all people is saying that 'the working class in Russia are doing well off the war and that's why they're supporting Putin' when they have every incentive to deny it, then the case in favour must be overwhelming.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
Dunno if anyone on /pol/ is persuaded of anything by Carl Sagan, they'd immediately whip out the early life check and reflexively disbelieve him.
Interesting stuff about the Kuwait oil burning, I didn't know they predicted apocalypse from that too. Seems a good prior is that the climate is fairly stable, most climate apocalypse stories turn out to be nothingburgers.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
Yeah the 4chan nukes stuff was very strange. I think pol can be a useful source of news from time to time, they were early on covid. But you really have to wonder about the qualities of all the people who respond to the 'your mom will die if you don't respond' posts. Even if you accept the potency of these images, there are retroactively acting immunity doggos who can save your bacon! Is it just a meme like 'turn 360 degrees and walk away'? Seems lame to be a meme.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
Average living standards have risen in Russia, this is the most staggering part. Inflation is high, wages growth is higher.
https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/05/russia-war-income?lang=en
From even this brief analysis, it’s clear that the main financial beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine (excluding security officials and soldiers) are those whose professions were long considered low paid and low status. Now they enjoy high salaries and a surfeit of attention from both employers struggling to fill job vacancies, and the state as a whole.
More money in their pockets makes these people—who are not accustomed to self-reflection and who do not have easy access to independent sources of information—even more susceptible to propaganda. Putin’s public image provides them with a comforting feeling of stability, and a sense that their leaders are making the right decisions. It’s unsurprising that the level of support for the Russian regime among these groups is only growing.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
4d ago
The war in Ukraine had huge effects on the average American, it was directly responsible for much of the inflation in the Biden administration (and Trump regaining the presidency). You can't just try to cut off one of the world's biggest energy and food exporters without ramifications. It's a global, interconnected system.
Investors don't like risk, how do you think they feel about prolonged, major proxy war between the two nuclear superpowers? Gold prices have skyrocketed in the last few years.
Furthermore the effort required to defeat Russia is clearly not minimal, since they're not being defeated after significant effort. Apparently the US arms industry is incapable of competing with Russia in shell production. The war goal is being reframed in real time from 'Ukrainian territorial integrity, NATO membership and EU membership' to 'at least they keep Odessa!', that may not even be the final destination.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5d ago
Proxy war with Russia in Europe is on a whole other level to tariffs.
You receive:
risk of nuclear war
Russo-Chinese alliance consolidation
Many trillions in realized economic damage to Europe, destabilizing the political consensus there, heightened global inflation
Massive drain on munitions and capabilities
Small number of US special forces dying in combat as 'volunteers' or 'technical support'
Unknown future blowback, almost certainly negative
Many, many dead Ukrainians
A crippling blow to the Rules Based International Order due to...
Near-certain defeat in the stated goals of the war (Ukrainian territorial integrity, 2014 borders)
You gain:
Many dead Russians
All Sullivan had to do was declare that no, Ukraine wouldn't be joining NATO, or at least make some kind of basic diplomatic effort to prevent a Russian invasion.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
Their whole EV battery industry is hemorrhaging money and so desperate for overseas sales that battery prices kept dropping after the tariffs.
Really? Aren't prices falling because of technological development, ruthless competition and economies of scale? They use subsidies to build up industries but Chinese industry is so big it can't possibly be reliant on subsidies in the medium or long-term. You can't just subsidise the whole economy and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
https://x.com/alojoh/status/1778746545481126308
BYD seemingly got a mere 2.4 billion over 8 years, that's peanuts. It's profitable despite the subsidy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
Anything can seem like a good idea at the time if you're a fool. There are videos of men sticking their hand into a lion cage, clearly they thought it was a good idea at the time.
Instead of fighting a war on drugs and losing, why not win instead? It really isn't that hard to find the drug dealers and get rid of them. If the demented drug zombies can find the drug dealers, so can well-trained and organized police. People often raise civil liberties as a defence here - civil liberties disappear anywhere near an airport, where a giant, expensive and ineffective protection theatre reigns. If the TSA can feel up or browse through the genitals of the general public, surely the police can whisk away the drug dealers and break up distribution networks. America wasn't an unfree police state back when the crazies were locked up in mental institutions.
China policy was taking a huge and unnecessary risk relying on a dubious and unproven idea. Since when has capitalism induced democracy in a large Asian dictatorship? It didn't happen in Japan, capitalist democracy transformed into a military dictatorship aiming for regional hegemony. It kind of happened in South Korea and Taiwan - small US allies. But China is a big, nuclear powered US adversary. They fought against America in the Korean War and Vietnam. They famously conducted a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy students in 1989. They had another Taiwan Straits crisis in the 1990s. I can't imagine why anyone thought they were going to turn into a democracy and this would solve all the US problems faced. Even if they became a democracy they could still be rabidly nationalistic and throw their weight around.
It was total delusion. Nobody should ever need to learn not to stick their hand into a lion cage.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
Zero-K is somewhat difficult to play and niche, personally I prefer Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (which has been taken over, updated regularly and sustained wholly by fans after the official servers shut down over a decade ago). There is absolutely staying power in the concept.
It's really aiming for RTS elitists, a much higher level of complexity than Starcraft. In Zero-K there are maybe 8x more units than Starcraft, there might be 5 different kinds of air to ground bombers, not to mention the gunships. You can fight on water and beneath the water, you can terraform the ground, you're commanding armies with maybe 5-10x more units in them fighting on multiple fronts, you're managing large-scale radar networks, building tactical missile defence, upgrading your command unit, managing an entire minigame of power/mass generation. Your wind power plants are actually more effective if you build them on a higher plateau!
There is no clear meta build, Supreme Commander certainly hasn't been solved and Zero K is even more complicated. It's certainly not a popular way to make a game though.
The greatest American asset is being considered the richest and strongest country. You buy US bonds because they're safe and they're safe because people buy them in times of trouble... It's prestige that was once based on a rock-solid base of production but is now a floating castle in the air. Likewise you buy property to a large extent because it'll appreciate and it's appreciating because people buy it. Until it doesn't and the bottom falls out of the market.
No, it is fake and less valuable. People want all kinds of things, many of which they shouldn't have. Many people are perfectly willing to trade in their wealth, health and dignity for fentanyl. But this isn't a proper kind of economic activity, that's why most places ban it. There are many improper economic activities between mutually agreeing parties that most consider to be bad: insider trading, corruption, debt-slavery contracts, child labour...
Markets are not the sole arbiters of value, they're useful tools in some contexts. They need to be regulated to prevent externalities and incentivized to target the right areas. Of course much of the regulation that goes on is stupidly implemented to achieve bad ends. Nevertheless, there is more to value than prices. There's a hierarchy with material production at the top. Louis Vuitton does not have any military value. Steel, food, electronics, transport or AI are more important to an economy. When the chips are down, they're just really expensive handbags. Real value is independent from branding, real value is derived from concrete capabilities.
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