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starbright
Bannon recommends an all-out economic war with China.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but keep in mind that Bannon is renowned for being a brilliant media strategist. Take that for what you will. He'll say things like in this article:
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"We’re at economic war with China ... It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path."
Some of this is hyperbole to get folks worked up; notice how it is conditional, to plant a seed, and also, that it is precluding one or the other ("one of us"). What I mean is, he's not simply saying, "China will be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years. Period." Note the difference. My following arguments need to keep that in mind.
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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.
The Chinese economy is almost completely dependent on exporting cheap goods and labor. They have a long way to go if they expect to become the sole hegemon without relying on the economies of Western nations. Not to mention in 30-40 years they'll hit a population and labor bottleneck where the masses of labor and producers will become dependent on resources, and likely overwhelm production, in lieu of other means to replace it. There are also many social and political issues they'll have to resolve to get there as well. I'm not convinced China's ultimate hegemony is an inevitable conclusion like you appear to assume.
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starbright
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.
Why would you have to lie? Why do we have to be convinced that China is out to kill us? I'm genuinely curious why you would think these are the only means to this end.
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starbright
For reference, China isn't out to kill USA. They're out to slowly supplant the USA as the dominant economic player on the planet. Militarily, I don't see them trying to replace US security guarantees. They benefited strongly from US-provided maritime trade routes and security, they're happy to let the US continue to be policeman, as long as the police stay out of their backyard (East Asia). This is more or less the same as Russian policy towards USA. The only difference is that Russia is not a credible challenger for hegemon status, but China is. In that sense Bannon is correct to focus on China.
I pretty much agree.
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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.
Whoah there. Their people are "better"? What does this even mean? Honestly, can you elaborate? Higher average IQ (okay, maybe)? "Better" (edit:) without specifying why or how it is better(/edit) doesn't mean much. That said, the reason they have a much higher labor output per cost is that the average worker is paid literal pennies on the dollar of what laborers in western nations are paid. This won't last forever, if history is any indication. Also, to reiterate- at some point there will be a labor bottleneck which is going to be a problem for their competitive advantage, to say the least.
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starbright
What should the USA do instead, if it wants to really be on top?
Quite simple: an all-round change in culture and society.
(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.
I'm actually doubtful that a democratic country can achieve a shift towards a more austere, hard-working culture. You'd probably need a war or something to unlock that famed steel that lies underneath the softness covering the modern American. No one is going to give the USA a war though, that would be stupid and suicidal on their part. The USA is like a giant tiger that's eaten its fill and is going to take a nap: why poke it?
I agree Chinese culture in general tends to hold education in higher importance than in American culture. However, I would say I worked harder than most in school; though there is no way I could know that objectively, so yeah.
And I think it is a very poor stereotype that Americans are "soft".
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starbright
(1) Raise the birth rate, especially of productive and contributing members of society. For various reasons, probably including genetics but certainly including upbringing, children of productive families have lower criminality, higher income, all the good things. You want to target a population of 600m, get close to half of China's. The rest of the shortfall can be made up with USA's vastly superior natural resources and geographical location.
(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.
(1) I'm not convinced is a very great solution. (2) I agree. In fact, the current administration is trying to do just this.
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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.
Again, the current administration is trying to do this-- welcome talent of any race. The operative word is "talent", not "race".
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starbright
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.
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.
Interesting indeed. I work in tech in California, and don't see literally any discrimination toward Chinese, Indian, etc. Not once in 17 years that I can remember. In fact, they are sometimes highly sought after by tech employers.
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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).
In general, Americans aren't racist. It is apparent that the media will make you think that we are though.
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starbright
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.
Option (2) sounds pretty reasonable to me. (1) will never, ever even come close to gaining traction here in the US, believe me.
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starbright
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.
Honestly, there's like, so few people on the white-nationalist right. Seriously, I've never even met anyone who thinks like this.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2017 12:13PM by Jib.