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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31620 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Banana republics either had to accept the trade deals they were offered or go back to the 1700s. They sold bananas to the west that were delivered on GM trucks using Exxon's oil and that were paid for with US dollars using american financial institutions. The profits were used to buy goods made in the US. Today Huawei telecom products are used to sell bananas shipped on Chinese ships using Saudi oil and profits are used to buy clothes from Cambodia and software from India.

The problem with Banana republics isn't that they could only trade with one partner, it's that their elites are able to extract all the natural resource wealth and are anti-incentivized to educate their populace. Being able to trade with different countries that give even less of a shit what they do to their slaves doesn't really spell their ascension.

A world without western hegemony isn't a many polar world where poor countries take an equal place at the top, it's one where the US no longer protects oil shipments from the middle east along the somali coast if they aren't bound for US controlled markets and the price of energy rises for developing countries multiplying their problems.

Modi isn't envisioning India and Nigeria running the world together in a revanchist alliance, he is telling the people who live on a skyscraper on Manhattan that the world doesn't revolve around them.

The response of the global south to the world no longer revolving around safe manhatten board rooms should properly be terror and trembling, not triumphalist speeches.

A world without western hegemony isn't a many polar world where poor countries take an equal place at the top, it's one where the US no longer protects oil shipments from the middle east along the somali coast if they aren't bound for US controlled markets and the price of energy rises for developing countries multiplying their problems.

In other words a world in which countries aren't dependent on the US for oil It is essentially like not being on a bus where one person has a gun and everyone else is unarmed. It is a world in which countries have their own ability to protect their oil shipments, write their own laws and aren't controlled by an american elite who rig global trade in their favour. It is a world in which millions of Iraqis won't be bombed to death, a world in which European countried don't have to ask the US for permission to sell things in the middle east, and a world in which companies don't have to dance to the tune of wall streets ESG-ratings.

It is a fundamental prerequisite for sovereignty in this world and for the survival of what makes our countries unique so that we don't all become a giant wallmart.

A world without western hegemony isn't a many polar world where poor countries take an equal place at the top, it's one where the US no longer protects oil shipments from the middle east along the somali coast if they aren't bound for US controlled markets

I have never understood if Zeihan seriously thinks this is a hard problem or merely uses it as a way to gesture at an entire class of unclear novel threats.

Poor countries could hire Wagner or something to hunt pirates. In a world without Western hegemony these challenges would be possible to solve on a functional safety market.

I think this is ignoring the obvious, opposite incentive- Saudi wants to be able to ship their oil safely, so they're incentivized to suppress piracy. They will probably choose far less humane means to do so than the USA would, partly because the Saudi military is built around terror to incentivize accepting Saudi bribes, but a bunch of Somali camel herders being ruled under a brutal islamic theocracy that bans sea travel is not terribly relevant to goings on in the capitals of the world.

When you have a hegemon above the conflict you really do prevent a lot of incentive patterns from forming. If there is no world police committed to totally free trade to appeal to what actually stops state level piracy or looting? Sure, you can hire some mercs to stop some small time Somalis on fishing boats but what happens when Japan notices that their idle navy can keep themselves sharp by doing a little state supported piracy? What if china decides to do this? Who is going to stop them?

This is the old stationary vs roving bandit thing. The Japanese don’t want to pirate so much that they stop shipping activity altogether, because this would be a loss for them. Instead, they want to introduce moderate tax, extracted by threat of their state approved piracy. This is, of course, bad, but this is not much different than the status quo, it’s just the tax proceeds will go to different recipients.

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