Future of the European Union

[Montmorency]

Hmm, then I shall resume my fear of Chinese hegemony until their demographic crisis undermines their treasury.

Not sure what your focus on the treasury is, the Chinese state exists on its centrifugal force of action, which isn't reliant on mere balance sheets, just like budget deficits will never bring down the United States. It's the social conditions that matter, and those aren't favorable anywhere, let alone undergirding a fantasy of Cold War. Birth rates in the US are and have also steeply declined, and it's not merely because people are more "educated". "It's the economy, stupid."

The post-Mao CCP state relies on concertive control and diffuse authoritarianism coupled with bread and circuses to maintain stability above a certain threshold. Obviously China has some capacity to go full totalitarian given its massive state organs, but this would be a last resort and therefore the real test of the Chinese model. Throne of bayonets and all that. In a global market capitalist society, China collapses last, after it loses control of its supply chains as the world system disintegrates. Rather than a traditional Cold War, you should be thinking in terms of a new world order that can subvert and obviate Chinese mercantilist aspirations and preserve our civilization in the long term.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Not sure what your focus on the treasury is, the Chinese state exists on its centrifugal force of action, which isn't reliant on mere balance sheets, just like budget deficits will never bring down the United States. It's the social conditions that matter, and those aren't favorable anywhere, let alone undergirding a fantasy of Cold War. Birth rates in the US are and have also steeply declined, and it's not merely because people are more "educated". "It's the economy, stupid."

The post-Mao CCP state relies on concertive control and diffuse authoritarianism coupled with bread and circuses to maintain stability above a certain threshold. Obviously China has some capacity to go full totalitarian given its massive state organs, but this would be a last resort and therefore the real test of the Chinese model. Throne of bayonets and all that. In a global market capitalist society, China collapses last, after it loses control of its supply chains as the world system disintegrates. Rather than a traditional Cold War, you should be thinking in terms of a new world order that can subvert and obviate Chinese mercantilist aspirations and preserve our civilization in the long term.

Well if you want to talk about social conditions, China's debt has increased rapidly to levels on par with the US (as % of gdp) which is just a balance sheet as you say however:
* China's GDP per capita is only 8,800ish which is below Russia. The average wealth per individual is just not at Western standards despite Western levels of debt.
* China's birth rates are below that of the United States (1.6 vs 1.8). My understanding is that by 2029 China's population will start to decline (see point below why I think US pop won't decline). By mid century, US is projected to have 20% of it's population 65+ years, while China will be at 25%. This is assuming that those numbers don't change dramatically (don't count on that).
* Despite the steady 6-7% growth for the past decade, China's economic growth will eventually cool off and attitudes in Chinese markets will shift accordingly. Likely before the big demographic transition hits. I don't think this is a particularly outrageous prediction.
* US policy towards immigration (ignoring Trump), is much more accepting and encouraged than China. I do not anticipate social conditions to change in China to point in which China becomes a more multicultural country. If Japanese society has yet to yield to corporate demands for outside labor (despite declining in total population for the past few years), I doubt China's society will either.

My thinking is in terms of policy and demographics. Debt is a metric by which the performance of government policy can be measured. The amount of debt may not matter so much, but the rate at which the debt increases and anticipation towards management of future debt does. But sure, it is just one metric among many. As long as US maintains domestic policies that keep the population stable, and relatively young we will maintain our competitiveness.

Honestly, I think as long as the United States can keep itself composed and dedicated as the liberal democracy we wish for it to be, we can wait for the cumulative effect of bad Chinese domestic policy to catch up.

Hasn't China already gone full totalitarian on the Tibetans and Uyghurs?

[Montmorency]

Well if you want to talk about social conditions, China's debt has increased rapidly to levels on par with the US (as % of gdp) which is just a balance sheet as you say however:
* China's GDP per capita is only 8,800ish which is below Russia. The average wealth per individual is just not at Western standards despite Western levels of debt.
* China's birth rates are below that of the United States (1.6 vs 1.8). My understanding is that by 2029 China's population will start to decline (see point below why I think US pop won't decline). By mid century, US is projected to have 20% of it's population 65+ years, while China will be at 25%. This is assuming that those numbers don't change dramatically (don't count on that).
* Despite the steady 6-7% growth for the past decade, China's economic growth will eventually cool off and attitudes in Chinese markets will shift accordingly. Likely before the big demographic transition hits. I don't think this is a particularly outrageous prediction.
* US policy towards immigration (ignoring Trump), is much more accepting and encouraged than China. I do not anticipate social conditions to change in China to point in which China becomes a more multicultural country. If Japanese society has yet to yield to corporate demands for outside labor (despite declining in total population for the past few years), I doubt China's society will either.

My thinking is in terms of policy and demographics. Debt is a metric by which the performance of government policy can be measured. The amount of debt may not matter so much, but the rate at which the debt increases and anticipation towards management of future debt does. But sure, it is just one metric among many. As long as US maintains domestic policies that keep the population stable, and relatively young we will maintain our competitiveness.

Honestly, I think as long as the United States can keep itself composed and dedicated as the liberal democracy we wish for it to be, we can wait for the cumulative effect of bad Chinese domestic policy to catch up.

Hasn't China already gone full totalitarian on the Tibetans and Uyghurs?

Premise: Population growth really doesn't matter, because the current growth paradigm - where everyone is a worker and consumer - is proving unsustainable and must shift into a subsistence paradigm. If we don't collectively accomplish this as a species, we will fall collectively as a species, and power politics become deprecated (or take a new form with new actors on a lower level). An aging population therefore matters not in terms of lost capacity, but increasing pressure on the livelihoods and expectations of average citizens, one of the many overdetermining factors among those like lack of responsive government; work stress; access to living space, medical care, education, amenities; hyperreal mass media expectations; lack of metaphysical grounding. These factors are crushing us throughout the world, right? This (increasingly less) latent desperation is for example what's behind events like the ongoing - ongoing! - Yellow Jacket movement in France.

China has been building a tightly-bound society in a way the United States has not. Without steady commerce binding us as Americans together, the country starts to unravel, a process we can see adumbrated throughout the developed world. (The failure of African and Arab national states to even get off the ground was always the writing on the wall for this model, and should never have been The United States has no coercive totalitarian backstop to endure an apocalypse, whereas China does - to a degree. Because they've been through it, and not just once. But all I'm describing is a difference in timescale, a difference of years. A CCP attempt to occupy Han China the way Han China occupies Tibet and Xinjiang, in the context of collapsed global markets and institutions, would probably look like Khmer Rouge Cambodia before long. Social credit is a much more clever and insidious mechanism, but it does require baseline stability, which it can't engender in itself. The CCP has made sacrifices over the years after all, to marketize its economy. When we're talking introducing a totalitarian economy, we're talking a dehybridization of the economy, the biggest in the world once you remember that electronic assets are not tangible but people and things are. Even assuming they have contingencies, despite and perhaps because of better technology and infrastructure the Chinese (and other) governments today arguably have less capacity to simultaneously mobilize, suppress, and sustain their people before disappearing into unmodern cascades of raw violence and warlord anarchism. To be clear, I'm saying China has developed mechanisms to endure such challenges more effectively in the short term, but of shorter duration than was generally possible a century ago. Analogously, how long could the UK or Germany sustain a WW1-tier total mobilization economy today? A century ago the most powerful states in the world could sustain a little over 4 years before reaching the brink.

(Note that I bring up those wars because they involved total mobilization of the economy, not because I'm specifically relating the above to a war scenario between the US and China. What I'm talking about has nothing to do with war.)


Fun fact: In 1978 the Chinese government owned almost 70% of all national wealth. Today it's around 30%.

[Furunculus]

Delightful as this is, can we make it relevant to the EU's future?

[Fragony]

Does it have one, the EU overhead is going to be in shambles, Europese as a continent Will be Just fine

[Pannonian]

Delightful as this is, can we make it relevant to the EU's future?

Those charts, the study, or the data? If the methodology is fundamentally dodgy, then how is it irrelevant? This is the fundamental basis of Brexit. Start with false assumptions to build a false foundation. Then build on those false assumptions and false foundations with yet more lies and deception.

Have you listened to Mr Trucker and read the Commons report yet? I've given your stuff a go. You've not reciprocated. Unlike your study, which uses football analytics methodology in a way not meant for use (football scouts around the world would shudder at your argument), Mr Trucker's account is an actual expert source in their specialist field, and is recognised by the government as such.

[Furunculus]

nice segway.

but as you know:
1. I was referring to chinese/american hegemony
2. You have yet to demonstrate that the methodology of the HJS paper is problematic. That you assert it to be so is inadequate.
3. Re Brexit: you could make the same claim about anything in politics, and it would still be equally irrelevant to the conduct of politics, i.e. enacting ideas
4. I'm delighted the gov't has responded to the concerns of Mr Trucker, as I indicated they should and would. As you well know, I thought I had nothing particular to learn on regulatory borders from ten minutes of youtube that I had not already gleaned from 450 pages of flexcit.

this is now just regurgitating bile on your part.

[Fragony]

Is https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YhIrgcaaXS8 is this actualy true? Here we had Merkel's little children stab and cut throats but no beheadings. Because Sweden is Sweden everything that doesn't suit their disposia must be silenced, 1984+, but did this really happen

[Pannonian]

nice segway.

but as you know:
1. I was referring to chinese/american hegemony
2. You have yet to demonstrate that the methodology of the HJS paper is problematic. That you assert it to be so is inadequate.
3. Re Brexit: you could make the same claim about anything in politics, and it would still be equally irrelevant to the conduct of politics, i.e. enacting ideas
4. I'm delighted the gov't has responded to the concerns of Mr Trucker, as I indicated they should and would. As you well know, I thought I had nothing particular to learn on regulatory borders from ten minutes of youtube that I had not already gleaned from 450 pages of flexcit.

this is now just regurgitating bile on your part.

So you urge me to read the document you've linked to, but you refuse to reciprocate and listen to the testimony I linked to. Even though the latter is recognised to be a significant expert opinion in their specialist field, while I've managed to find flaws in the former even within a brief browse. Typical of Brexit. Do as I say, not as I do.