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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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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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