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starbright
Bannon recommends an all-out economic war with China.
To be fair, he said we're already in an economic war with China. He recommends we stop losing.
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starbright
An all-out economic war between A and B make both A and B losers, and makes C to Z winners (which is why Russians like Kstatida will strongly support it!). People in the USA and in China will have to take economic damage in exchange for prolonging American hegemony. I think you could plausibly delay Chinese hegemony by some years, maybe move it from 30 years in the future to 40 years in the future, with unilateral economic sanctions, but at the same time the USA will also suffer.
I don't think the electorate as it stands today has this kind of appetite. Most voters care about their bread-and-butter, their jobs and their comfortable lives. To ask them to sacrifice their comforts in exchange for some vague notion of a prolonged American dominance is difficult. You'd have to actively lie to them and twist their minds with propaganda, and make them believe that China is out to kill them: this is a dangerous policy and can conceivably lead a democratic society on the path to initiating war against a non-aggressor target.
Some, like myself and
Paul Krugman and
Andy Grove, recognize the economic war with China and recommend taking action.
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starbright
The really big disparity between China and the USA is human resources. China have more people, and their people are better.
Or the cost of living is substantially different so China draws industrial manufacturing away from the U.S. which creates wealth for China. Trying to contribute the picture below to having better people is silly.
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starbright
(0) Change the culture. The cycles of civilizations can be pithily summed up as: "Hard times make strong people. Strong people bring good times. Good times make weak people. Weak people bring hard times." Of course there is much more involved, but this is a valid point. Americans are softer and lazier than they used to be. How many of you can honestly say you worked as hard as the average Chinese student in school, or the average Chinese worker at work? You may pity the Chinese their hard lives, but those "hard times" they suffered made them strong people. Hard work and discipline makes you happy, and gives you the capacity to achieve your goals. A happy and healthy society must revolve around a solid work ethic.
Chinese didn't have better educations historically, yet they still were able to create wealth. This is because the cost of labor was substantially cheaper than other countries. I agree the U.S. does not have a great work ethic, but the bottom line is all that matters to most companies. If a Chinese man is willing to work for 1/3 the USD of an American, then he gets hired. There aren't enough hours in a week to make up for that.
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starbright
(2) More immigration of talented migrants. This was the USA's secret weapon. Being anti-immigration is throwing away your secret sauce. The USA is an immigrant society, built primarily from migrants from Europe (white migrants). European migrants have integrated seamlessly into American society. You don't call yourselves German-Americans and Irish-Americans. You're all Americans. But this isn't often the case for non-white migrants.
Talented migrants is the key. If you recognize that all cultures are not equally beneficial to creating a prosperous society, then you want to discriminate when you let in immigrants. Having an indiscriminate immigration policy can be the end of a country. We have to look at the culture of the people we are letting in.
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starbright
2 (a) Become more welcoming to non-white talent. Talent happens in all populations, non-white as well as white. Welcome all talented migrants even if they're purple, or orangutans. As a talented non-white person myself, the disadvantages associated with being a minority are a significant barrier to my considering moving to the USA, and this is true for all talented migrants. Talented migrants live where they like, where they are welcome. They don't have to take shit from people. Being unwelcoming to other races means that talented non-white migrants won't come, but the untalented ones are desperate and don't give a shit. So you're skewing the migrant population towards being poor and uneducated. And this further raises racist and xenophobic tensions.
Some of you may claim that non-white migrants will still move to the USA because they don't have better alternatives: this is true only for certain non-white populations (I'm thinking Black, Hispanic, and probably South Asian) which do not have a reasonably-developed country to move to, in which they look similar to the racial majority, and whose language and customs they can easily adopt. East Asians can choose between Japan (if they can handle language/culture), Korea, tier-1 coastal cities in China, or Hong Kong or Singapore. South Asians can expect fairly decent (but still minority-status) treatment in Singapore, and I believe the UAE cities Dubai and Abu Dhabi are havens for talented South Asian expatriates where they have some degree of racial privilege.
How were European countries with their widely varying cultures and dark histories of conflict able to assimilate in the U.S.? Why should we make exceptions for people from other parts of the world? Why can't we continue to assimilate as one group and maintain a fluid yet singular culture? We need to drop the "white" and "non-white" lingo and go with human, or maybe American if you find human too broad to be useful.
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starbright
2 (b) Related to the economic rivalry with China: become more welcoming to Chinese migrants. They are, on average, one of the most talented immigrant groups in the USA. Having to deal with discrimination and laws which make it hard for them to remain there drives many of them back to China. I personally know highly-skilled Chinese engineers and scientists who have gone back to work in tech companies in China (think Alibaba, Baidu, etc.) primarily because of the discrimination. If you can steal these highly talented people away from China, rather than driving them back to China, you can make huge gains in the economic rivalry.
Discrimination based on ethnicity, sex, age, or disability is dumb. So we both agree with Bannon that we need to be colorblind.
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starbright
Nation != Race. If you are a committed nationalist and want the USA to be the best nation it can be, you have to be race-blind. Every race has good and bad people. The best nation is inevitably one that steals good people from everyone and keeps out the bad.
The question is: can the American electorate swallow their pride and become better, less-racist people? I'm not confident that this can happen. So probably it is inevitable that China will win on the human resources front (larger population).
Notice that you have the option between (1) and (2). If it's (1), then make sure that educated, productive _white_ people are reproducing more, and talented overseas white migrants are brought in and turned into Americans. If the USA is a white country, and this is core to its identity and configuration, then you have no choice. You need more white people.
Some cynics might argue that the "racial minority tax" (the disadvantages of being a minority) will never be resolved. I'm almost inclined to agree with them, because I've not seen a society which has resolved it. If you strongly believe that the only solution is to go all-out white, then so be it. Keep the USA white. I guess this is the viewpoint of many on the white-nationalist right.
Bannon was arguing for "economic nationalism" and appears to have completely eschewed ethnocentric populism, at least in that one interview.
I personally think claims of racism in the U.S. are blown out of proportion. I'd wager that the average Chinese (and East Asian) is much more xenophobic than the average American.
- Paul