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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31618 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Whether that was smart or not, historians will debate, but we were never going to keep this going much longer, certainly not beyond 2035. Fundamentally, because the U.S. government is insolvent. It burns through $10 billion a day it doesn’t have, backed by the money printer, which funds the military, which enforces global security, which props up the dollar, which keeps the money printer running.

This makes no sense to me. Why does globalism depend on the solvency of the USG? Because the US is responsible for keeping piracy on the high seas to an absolute minimum and that's not affordable? Why can't some of that responsibility be delegated to other countries? Of course, this is missing the point entirely, because the military is only the third biggest line item on the federal budget. The US is more likely to be bankrupted by boomers retiring than mowing the lawn off the coast of Somalia.

Global trade has existed for thousands of years. Spices and silk have been imported by the west since time immemorial. We're just haggling about the level.

This makes no sense to me. Why does globalism depend on the solvency of the USG?

Because the US government is the only hegemon in history willing to expend resources for a rules based system.

Europe/China/Rome/the mongols/etc all basically pillaged for their own benefit when they were in power. It's much more likely that the next power will also do this, rather than follow the US's lead (especially with a US collapse in this hypothetical giving them a good reason not to).

Britain and France have every incentive to kill pirates to keep the suez open. So do Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

How much resources have been expended to do so?

But last time either tried to exercise authority in north Africa, they were humiliated.

Because the US government is the only hegemon in history willing to expend resources for a rules based system.

Would you count the West Africa Squadron as another example? Admittedly, "Okay, we're not going to stop you from owning or selling slaves, but we'll try to stop you from taking them across the ocean" was kind of a baby step in the grand project of abolition, and in some ways an anti-globalist rather than pro-globalist step, but it was a rule based on principle that was enforced with British Empire funds and lives, against a trade that had been profitable to British slavers. They did it for a decade before the US started helping, then for two more decades before the US joined in in earnest.

Kinda, I guess. That's a relatively small expenditure of resources compared to the resources spent pillaging Africa and India.

This also seems like an attempt to enforce one rule, rather than an entire rules based system. Are there others?

Because the US government is the only hegemon in history willing to expend resources for a rules based system.

Rome built roads and pushed back on the barbarians in the north.

But also, is it really that controversial to suggest that the USG has been engaging in various forms of pillaging throughout its entire history?

Seems to me that there's always been a balance between expending resources for establishing rules, and then also pillaging. I don't think world powers establish rules out of benevolence, but because it allows lower-risk extraction of resources outside of its own borders - sometimes best-described as "fair trade" and sometimes best-described as "pillaging".

Rome built roads and pushed back on the barbarians in the north.

Rome did not protect trade for foreign nations (even trade Rome wasn't a participant in) without a demand for absorption into the Roman state.

Building infrastructure within your own borders and pushing back on the barbarians on the periphery are simply standard expectations for all states not free trade policy.

Original comment:

Because the US government is the only hegemon in history willing to expend resources for a rules based system.

Your response to me bringing up Rome:

Rome did not protect trade for foreign nations (even trade Rome wasn't a participant in) without a demand for absorption into the Roman state.

This is a bit of moving the goalposts, no? They were a hegemon, and they expended resources to establish a rules-based system.

I'm just positing a more complete theory of world powers throughout history that neatly explains everyone's behavior, rather than trying to put one more notch on the bedpost for American exceptionalism ("the only hegemon"!). World powers establish rules, and then use those rules for profit - somewhere on the spectrum between "fair trade" and "pillaging".

Building infrastructure within your own borders and pushing back on the barbarians on the periphery are simply standard expectations for all states not free trade policy.

I mean, it does count as "within your own borders" once you conquer those peoples and expand your borders I guess. People frown upon that these days but I'm sure without our modern views on sovereignty, the US would have "expanded" its borders a few more times in the past couple of decades. (But sovereignty seems to be a concept that some world leaders seem to want to leave in the 20th century, so who knows.)

Likewise, I'm sure if Rome had the capability to remotely ensure stable trade outside of its borders in the early AD centuries, it would have. A more stable silk road / spice trade? Easy to agree to. It wasn't for lack of desire ("willing"), but lack of technology.

Why can't some of that responsibility be delegated to other countries?

Past experience? The more parties you delegate enforcement to the more parties whose interests can clash.

You have four or five nations managing this stuff and you risk just being back in the great power era where people protected their own trade and spheres of influence.

Also, a lot of nations simply aren't as good at this right now due to delegating it to America. It's not Somali pirates you need to worry about but state-sponsored groups like the Houthis, and their sponsors themselves if they decide to pull a Saddam.

Global trade has existed for thousands of years. Spices and silk have been imported by the west since time immemorial.

Your example - a luxury good like silk - is telling.

We live in an incomparably more connected time and much smaller falls can lead to large changes in our standard of living.

Past experience? The more parties you delegate enforcement to the more parties whose interests can clash.

You have four or five nations managing this stuff and you risk just being back in the great power era where people protected their own trade and spheres of influence.

There's a different party on each end of the trade. The route between those parties being protected benefits both and hurts nobody.

Also, a lot of nations simply aren't as good at this right now due to delegating it to America. It's not Somali pirates you need to worry about but state-sponsored groups like the Houthis, and their sponsors themselves if they decide to pull a Saddam.

Indeed, but that's hardly insurmountable with a bit of will and training.

But I must repeat again that military spending is not the elephant in the room.

We live in an incomparably more connected time and much smaller falls can lead to large changes in our standard of living.

Agree. But I don't agree that reduced trade or living standards means the "end of globalism".

There's a different party on each end of the trade. The route between those parties being protected benefits both and hurts nobody.

This is a classic free rider problem. It’s always better to have the other guy go crack skulls for you than to do it yourself.

There's a different party on each end of the trade. The route between those parties being protected benefits both and hurts nobody.

So what? Plenty of people benefit from public goods or are not harmed by them directly and yet they often never get built or decay as parties see it in their interests to exploit the commons.

A sword is a sword. The same ability to protect sea lanes opens the risk of a party trying to control it. The more parties you have with serious navies with no absolute superior the more the temptations rise. The more a party might wonder why it must accept losing a valuable natural resource to a rival or opponent and then be forced to protect that opponent's trade.

Nations that have amicable relations today like Western Europeans cannot agree on a European army or how it is to be used. Why would we assume this would change in a world without America?

The simple temptation here is just...to not do that. Let them fend for themselves and protect your own trade. Then the next temptation for other parties is to prey on those who either can't or they have rivalries with. And then there's the temptation to lock weaker nations into trading only with you, which may strictly be worse than a totally free trading system, but balances the costs of your navy with more control because you assume someone else is planning the same thing.

Indeed, but that's hardly insurmountable with a bit of will and training.

Demographic decline is not a matter of a bit of will. The European nations that once protected their own spheres are in terminal demographic decline. They don't have the bodies, they don't have the money (because of welfare, not the military) and the world has changed.

But it also just is insurmountable for many nations.

America can blow up everyone that'd interdict its trade. How about Poland? Lesotho? Indonesia? Ghana? What about when the trade is being stopped by a legitimately powerful nation like Iran?

Agree. But I don't agree that reduced trade or living standards means the "end of globalism".

I mean, if you take the broadest definition of globalism, sure.

The trade system we know and take for granted (that some call globalism pejoratively) would in fact end and it would be a noticeable change and drop in the living standards of a lot of people.

The simple temptation here is just...to not do that. Let them fend for themselves and protect your own trade.

The interesting thing is, based on that leaked chat, the Trump administration doesn't want to do that. They want the Europeans to pay more, but they don't want to stop protecting trade.

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