The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

https://gcaptain.com/end-of-the-world-is-just-beginning-book-review/

by mooreds • 4 years ago

329 466 4 years ago

Interesting to combine this line of thinking with the transition from nation-states to market-states:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1744057060106386...

The power vacuum that's arisen from populism & isolationism is about to create a gigantic untapped market for firms that provide the services of a state - defense, dispute resolution, and currency - for a fee, to gigantic multinational corporations. At the same time, there are nascent technologies (drones and robotics for defense, blockchain and the Internet for dispute resolution & currency) that dramatically lower the cost of many of these services, to the point where we may see private companies that are more effective than nation-states at it. Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

prometheus76• 4 years ago

That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

jsiaajdsdaa• 4 years ago

you're saying the quiet part out loud... it's supposed to be the arbiter of civil rights, fairness, and enablement, with the convenient side effect of enriching a very small group of people who actually pull the strings

tablespoon5• 4 years ago

That's all government has ever been and will always be: a protection racket.

Eh, no.

I think it's usually an indication of sloppy thinking when someone makes sweepingly absolute statements about vague, abstract concepts with numerous and important differences in implementation.

kingkawn• 4 years ago

Protection against rampaging business people, warlords, and run of the mill monsters.

streb-lo• 4 years ago

a protection racket.

A racket implies they're 'protecting' you from themselves. I don't think that's true.

If protection isn't important to you, you can give Somalia a try.

usrusr• 4 years ago

It's not a racket when it's consistently better than the alternative.

DubiousPusher4• 4 years ago

In the European tradition, the number 1 thing government protects is private property. There's a reason that deeds are recorded with the county amd that you must pay tax on real estate and that these are fundamental things local government does in even in the most backwater province where they may not even have a library system.

r721• 4 years ago

But in a "no-government world" protection racket will still exist, just without any restrictions at all.

hprotagonist2• 4 years ago

May i recommend Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong?

chaosharmonic• 4 years ago

I'm sorry, but Uncle Enzo and I go way back, and I couldn't do that to him -- not after I already promised him I'd go to the job fair coming up.

ticklemyelmo• 4 years ago

Almost worth it to be able to see a Rat Thing in action. Very briefly.

walleeee3• 4 years ago

Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

How do you envision the deprecation of the nuclear-armed nation state unfolding? The USSR had a unipolar world outside to stabilize and manage its disintegration. How is this accomplished in a multipolar context, with tensions inflamed by intensifying scarcity, competition, environmental instability, etc?

Serious questions, not a derogatory comment

DubiousPusher4• 4 years ago

It's not just the multipolarity you have to consider. I actually think that's fairly resolvable for something like loose nukes as basically every stable power has an interest in catch-alls for such things.

But the U.S. the EU and China are all facing internal shifts in thinking about how they relate to the rest of the world. And that's a true wildcard.

Those swings, coupled with multipolarity create a very dynamic system that I think is impossible to predict. When a country may stick its thumb in the eye of international treaty simply because it satisfies a belligerent domestic constituency and that alienates a relatively equal strength power, that's a very volatile situation.

BatFastard• 4 years ago

I would imagine that this would first manifest itself in smaller countries. For example Mali employs the Wagner group out of Russia as a supplement for its Army. And I believe they are used by other countries as well.

I don't see nuclear-armed nations using private companies, but possibly being the source of troops and technology. Really I don't see U.S. citizens joining mercenary groups, quality of life is too good. I would imagine 2nd world nations like Russia, Iraq being the main source of these troops, backed by cheap advanced armaments from China.

nostrademons2• 4 years ago

I'm not too worried about loose nukes or nuclear terrorism. Every major nuclear power other than China incorporates PALs [1] into the design of their nuclear weapons. Without a centrally generated & authenticated code, they don't function. The PAL is designed such that disabling it requires dismantling the nuclear weapon, which means you need to have the know-how to build nukes in the first place to re-enable it.

This, incidentally, is why Ukraine gave Russia back its nukes after the fall of the Soviet Union. Without the codes in Moscow's possession they were just radioactive waste.

I do expect a number of smaller conventional conflicts to break out in the transition, because that's what always happens when a hegemon loses its monopoly on physical force. It's going to be a bloody few decades, but not the end of humanity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link

idiotsecant2• 4 years ago

there's no reason that things need to unfold such that a nuclear armed state exists one day and then doesn't the next.

It could easily evolve from regulatory capture, increased influence of large corporations in governance, capture of public discourse by corporate sponsored narratives, and eventual de-facto private control of government. You'd end up with a nation with a nuclear force exists on paper but in fact the corporate interests were in control of that entity.

In fact, of the preceding 5 conditions I would say 4 are already either done or in progress.

yoyohello13• 4 years ago

This is basically the premise of Metal Gear Solid 4.

fartcannon• 4 years ago

RoboCop, too.

vecinu• 4 years ago

As well as Borderlands!

mooreds3• 4 years ago

Might we see the nation-state get replaced by a web of competing mercenaries, each of which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, explores this possible future. Great book.

awillen• 4 years ago

Red Mars doesn't go quite as far, but does look at a world in which multinational corporations are competitive with countries in terms of global power.

timmytokyo• 4 years ago

The takeover of government functions by multinational corporations is a cyberpunk trope. See any of William Gibson's fiction from the early 80s.

anotherman5543• 4 years ago

I think Snowcrash is intentionally campy and satirical?

At any rate I don't think what science fiction writers do is "exploring possible futures" so much as "telling lies for fun and profit" as one author entitled his fiction writing craft book.

giantg2• 4 years ago

"which effectively serves as a protection racket for their customers?"

Governments have the monopoly on sanctioned use of violence. They could choose to outsource that to a 3rd party, such as privateers.

_jal• 4 years ago

The discussion is about governments losing that monopoly.

It is true that one plausible mechanism of that transition is outsourcing. Let a mercenary outfit become too competent and your vendor can become your rival.

anonAndOn• 4 years ago

Don't forget aspiring politicians.[0] They also hire hit squads with the intent on sanctioning its use once they're in charge (presumably).

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57762246

bombcar8• 4 years ago

The modern Westphalian nation-state may just be an accident of history, eventually replaced by other mechanisms.

Arguably it already has begun; tech monopolies are starting to provide "government-like" rules and enforcement.

doliveira2• 4 years ago

Feudalism, here we go

divided3• 4 years ago

It is a stretch to call enforcing terms of service “government-like” rules and enforcement. This is like calling a restaurant hanging up a “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign the same. And thus far I haven’t seen them issue fines or imprisonment over breaking their rules.

tacker20002• 4 years ago

Interesting idea, but where might the physical boundaries of such a entity be? Since we are physical beings… would the corporations buy land to live on? Would we be all just living this in a virtual world? Would we be on a gigantic spaceship?

nazgulnarsil• 4 years ago

Gated communities, like Brazil

csomar3• 4 years ago

That's like Brazil but for the whole world?

tacocataco6• 4 years ago

Sounds like the analog version of what you're describing would be (IMO) the East Indian Trading Company.

duxup• 4 years ago

I don't know how to phrase this but this feels like a lot of truisms / a few reasonable possibilities and then some pretty BIG leaps as far as predictions go.

caust1c• 4 years ago

I feel similarly. Globalization can and probably should boil down to rare materials and high-profit items, not bulk food, disposable consumables etc. I see that as a healthy reduction in globalization while still providing sufficient international trade to maintain relations. Note that I haven't read any of his work.

drcongo2• 4 years ago

There's an incredibly important "the" missing from this submission title entirely changing the meaning.

edit: It's actually missing from the page title on TFA too. Baffling.

AnimalMuppet2• 4 years ago

I think it's like this: "The end of the world" is not an event, it's a process. That process is just beginning. We're nowhere near "the end of the end".

At least, that's what I think it's trying to say.

bagacrap• 4 years ago

but the title of the book has "the"

exar0815• 4 years ago

This reads like a lot of Mahanism (He Who Controls The Seas Controls The World) in a new coat of paint. And that Mahanism is the greatest self-fulfilling prophecy combined with a big kernel of truth should be self-evident looking at human history. So, while not false in itself, also nothing earthshatteringly new.

mountainb• 4 years ago

I've read most of Mahan's books and I've read at least some of Zeihan's books. Mahan's view is essentially that battle fleet dominance combined with ownership of key naval strongpoints (think Gibraltar) makes military success and overall dominance more likely.

Zeihan's view diverges somewhat from Mahan's points, in part because he has different views, and partly just because we're in a different era than the one Mahan was writing for. Mahan earned a lot of credibility because the late 19th century and early to mid 20th century was one in which there could be decisive naval battles, and a powerful battlefleet could virtually guarantee sea dominance.

Mahanism isn't really a prophecy so much as it was a political program pursued by Mahan himself and his allies in the legislature, the presidency under Roosevelt, the business community of his time, and with the general cooperation of the British. German naval leaders during WWI and WWII tried to implement Mahanism as if it were an ideology, but failed in part due to German naval geography and in part because they just were never able to get the level of political support that would have been necessary to rival the Atlantic powers on water. So, at least in the US, it wasn't "self-fulfilling" -- he made it his life's work to fulfill it. At a time in which most of our foreign policy intellectuals fail at accomplishing their goals, it's worth noting that he succeeded, regardless of whether or not one thinks those goals are good.

The era that we are in now is one in which coastal defenses are more powerful and unpredictable than they have been in the past. The role of aviation and aircraft carriers is also highly debatable until we have a real peer to peer war with nukes.

Personally, I found Zeihan a bit exasperating in that his analysis is often good, but he's also often glib and breezy, particularly on analysis of Russia, China, and some other countries. But he's very good at talking about some of these crucial big picture topics that get taken for granted to a popular audience.

an9n• 4 years ago

Russia is blockading Ukraine grain exports

Russia say that it's Ukraine refusing to demine the waters that it, Ukraine, mined in the first place. I've also read that the impact of the (lack of) grain exports is drastically overblown

bjelkeman-again• 4 years ago

That last statement about grain exports should be overblown requires a source. It is quite widely published that this has a major impact. An example: https://www.euronews.com/2022/06/19/global-food-crisis-looms...

01acheru• 4 years ago

Well, those ports would not have been mined if it weren't for the Russian invasion. Without Russian ships roaming the coast and ready to attack or disembark soldiers and tanks the situation would come back to normal ASAP. Anyway that's not the problem.

The grain shortage is not about an insufficient amount of grain worldwide, but because of less grain available on the markets prices went up and many poor countries cannot compete and/or afford to buy it at current prices. Also because those who can afford it are hoarding since well, you may never know.

EB-Barrington• 4 years ago

Russia also said, many times, "we will not invade Ukraine".

They are barbarians, rapists, murderers, and liars.

Arrath• 4 years ago

Yes the invader would find it vexing that the defender mined their harbor. Imagine that.

giorgosts• 4 years ago

US-centric approach. How about if China decides to fill the power vacuum that the isolationist US leaves. How about if eg. COSCO buys out the port operators around the globe. How about if they decide to protect their shipping routes with their military so that they carry on with providing goods to the globe. Globalization is still in the best interests of China, even if the US decides to abandon it.

eruleman2• 4 years ago

China's navy can't go further than 1,000 miles from the shore. They can't protect shipping anywhere outside of their coast.

AnimalMuppet2• 4 years ago

Currently.

lbrito• 4 years ago

Soon enough though

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-china-launches...

tenpies• 4 years ago

1,000 miles from the nearest naval base.

The Chinese base in Djibouti for example, is larger than the US base there.

What the US misses is that China doesn't necessarily want a fleet of expensive (and very vulnerable) carriers floating around. It would much rather have islands and coastal bases around important choke points. Sure, the price you pay is force projection, but the benefit is that it's a much more sustainable military.

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

PLANs has conducting antipiracy missions in gulf of Aden for over a decade now. Their bread and butter frigate type 54 has done port visits across the world. Most 2016 modernization has massively increased UNREP / auxillary fleet. PLAN has enough hulls and capabilities to protect at least her shipping, there's simply no reason to while uncle Sam foots the bill.

downrightmike2• 4 years ago

And 80% of their oil imports from ME go through a lot of countries that could stop the flow.

tablespoon5• 4 years ago

US-centric approach. How about if China decides to fill the power vacuum that the isolationist US leaves. How about if they decide to protect their shipping routes with their military so that they carry on with providing goods to the globe.

That already covered by option 2 in the op ("2 The Rise Of China"). It's not a very interesting option to discuss when it comes to shipping (e.g. everything stays the same, except Chinese warships substituted for American).

Barrera3• 4 years ago

How about if China decides to fill the power vacuum that the isolationist US leaves.

Zeihan argues that this is impossible on demographic grounds. The after-effects of the One Child Policy and the mass migration from farms to cities ensures a lack of soldiers, a greying population, and economic/military decline. Throw in Xi's unprecedented cult of personality that prevents anyone reporting bad news as the icing on the cake.

The US has nothing to fear from China, so Zeihan says.

giantrobot2• 4 years ago

Yeah he also predicted China and Germany were going to collapse a decade ago. He makes a lot of strong claims but does not show his work. So he's about as accurate as astrology, when he's right he's not necessarily right because of any great internal understanding.

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

This arguement is questionable because the amount of bodies and resources it takes to cultivate and maintain modern tier1 military is not substantial at PRC scale. Even PRC with South Korea TFR (worlds worst) will be generating millions of new births, more than US generates via births + immigration. Or that current PLA budget is ~2% and major powers including PRC has gone up to 7%+ during periods of "peaceful" competition. There isn't a credible scenario within this century where PRC will lack bodies or resources to field a military that is rapidly closing gap and will likely contest US for global interests within short/medium term.

johnohara• 4 years ago

From the Wikipedia entry for the U.S. Marines:

The Marines' most famous action of this period occurred during the First Barbary War (1801–1805) against the Barbary pirates,[38] when William Eaton and First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led 8 Marines and 500 mercenaries in an effort to capture Tripoli. Though they only reached Derna, the action at Tripoli has been immortalized in the Marines' Hymn and the Mameluke sword carried by Marine officers.

8 Marines, 500 mercenaries. Contractors have always played a big part in the ebb and flow of international conflict.

Barrera3• 4 years ago

Haven't read the book, but for those who don't know who Zeihan is, his work follows two threads of post-WWII history:

1. Deglobalization; and

2. Depopulation

The article focuses mostly on deglobalization, but depopulation is in the horse pulling the cart.

Many are familiar with the deglobalization idea from the last US presidential administration. The current administration kept those tariffs, and abided by the previous commitment to exit Afghanistan. Zeihan argues that this trend toward increasing isolationism goes back decades.

What may seem less familiar is the demographic implosion the entire world is undergoing - a baby bust. The vast majority of major countries with the exception of the US and Mexico have passed a point of no return demographically. Their populations will shrink with mathematical certainty. As their populations ebb, so will their economic growth prospects and place on the world stage. The problem is especially pronounced in Asia and Europe, but can be found everywhere.

The reason for the bust: people moved to cities. On a farm, kids are free labor. In a city, kids are expensive conversational pieces.

yrgulation• 4 years ago

Their populations will shrink with mathematical certainty.

Yeah you know why? Because both parents sitting in offices 8 hours a day have no means of looking after their kids. And a mother giving birth needs to return to work in a few months time, else she there's no pay. Oh and neither parent can give up work to raise these future adults because living expenses are too high. I don't know why everyone is so surprised by the raging population decline. Most of the western world is not child friendly, simple as that.

smt882• 4 years ago

This is a popular theory on reddit, but it's not true. Birth rates are extremely low even in countries that paid parents to stay at home with kids and generally have good work culture.

You would also expect birth rates to be lowest among people working 2-3 low-wage jobs, which is also not true.

As financial stability and safety increase, birth rates go down. That's the only common driver of it.

Historically, children were sources of unpaid labor. They worked (either at the family business or outside the job), raised younger siblings, and took care of elderly parents.

In short, children were (and sometimes are) a social safety net. What happens in societies that try to eliminate poverty, take care of the elderly, and ban child labor? A lower birth rate.

Low birth rates are not a problem (and reflect enormous amounts of social progress). We just need to solve the Ponzi scheme of retirement and elder care, which I think is doable with automation.

ajuc4• 4 years ago

Nah. EU is "the west" too, and it's more people than US. And maternity leaves here are around 6-12 months. Population still decreases. Significant part of EU was under communism and had baby booms then despite abysmal pay and much WORSE standards of living then than now. Now their populations go down despite the face they are much wealthier and well off. I live in Poland. There's no comparison, when I look at photos and videos made in 80s in my country it looks like 3rd world. I haven't realized then but now when I look back it's crazy how much changed. But people had kids then and don't have kids now.

What changed is perspectives. In communism you'd earn almost the same no matter where, how much, and how well you worked. And money mattered little anyway, you couldn't buy anything with them, you had to have connections to "arrange" anything (even basic building materials were "arranged" through social networks not bought from a shop). So people invested in families and big social networks to survive. And had lots of kids cause there wasn't much else to do. No career to sacrifice, no recreation other than drinking and partying. No internet. TV had 2 channels and most people had only black-and-white receivers. Culture was only accessible in big cities. Half the families had no car. You couldn't travel abroad easily. There was censorship. There were blackouts at the night.

Why not have kids in these circumstances? What are you losing?

Now your standard of living depends mostly on your education and working ethic. And it can vary greatly. Sky is the limit. You can have a yacht. You can travel all over the world. You can be unemployed and live under the bridge. And anything in between.

You don't need other people to survive. Money are very important. Career is an option. There's LOTS of ways to spend time and money. Having a kid is a big sacrifice in this world. So people work more and have smaller families.

The parts of each country that are less wealthy are usually also the parts with highest natural growth.

Basically - economic growth and development reduces natural growth. Pro-family laws are nice, but they don't change the basic calculation of pros vs cons as much as the changes in societies did.

puranjay7• 4 years ago

Birth rates are collapsing in rural India as well. Even where women have an extremely low participation rate in the labor force.

I don’t think the issue is simply “cities have less space, working couples have less money”. Its likely more complicated than that, because nothing really explains why people in India’s vast rural areas would have so few kids.

Nasrudith5• 4 years ago

But working in the fields doing manual labor is what makes population explosions. It is crassly more a matter of economics. Kids are liabilities in urban and highly educated sections and an asset in rural manual labor situations. Urban vs rural has basically always seen that through different means.

bergenty4• 4 years ago

The worst mistake we made is normalizing working for women.

chaostheory2• 4 years ago

Even if we fixed those problems, birth rates would still be falling. Why? Even accounting for social changes like the sexual revolution, researchers have found that birth rates would still fall due to decreasing male fertility which is common in any industrialized country even for developing ones now, which is alarming. (Everyone has good theories, but no one knows definitively why it is happening.) The only continent that still has healthy fertility is Africa, and that’s only for central Africa. Even coastal Africa is starting to be affected by this Children of Men phenomena.

andrewclunn4• 4 years ago

and abided by the previous commitment to exit Afghanistan.

Ummm, what? Biden moved the date for withdrawal back, to make it coincide with a 9/11 anniversary. Then, seeing that the US would just arbitrarily change treaties, the Taliban launched an assault and reconquered the country. I get that historical revisionism is popular with political partisans, but usually you wait until goldfish have forgotten the details before attempted to do so in such a blatant manner.

spywaregorilla3• 4 years ago

Are you trying to suggest the taliban wouldn't have launched an assault if the date wasn't moved and the US pulled out? I feel your desire to throw a political punch has utterly blinded you here.

macintux2• 4 years ago

“Biden made the Taliban conquer Afghanistan” is as believable as “Biden made Putin invade Ukraine”.

briffle• 4 years ago

How does withdrawing in late August coincide with 9/11 anniversary? And how does 'delaying the withdrawl since the other side was not keeping to the treaty by attacking local governments' become 'arbitrarily changing treaties'?

bwb4• 4 years ago

Just going to chime in with a non political fact: the withdrawal treaty was done by the previous administration, the planning by the military.

It was always going to be a shit show. Presidents are not all powerful gods who control things like the stock market, inflation, or pulling everyone out of a foreign country.

andscoop2• 4 years ago

Biden moved the date for withdrawal back, to make it coincide with a 9/11 anniversary. Then, seeing that the US would just arbitrarily change treaties, the Taliban launched an assault and reconquered the country.

Are you implying that not delaying the withdrawal would have resulted in the Taliban leaving the rest of the country alone and going about their business?

From what I understand about it, the treaty was falling apart from the very beginning due to the US Government conducting negotiations without involving the Afghan government [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_tr...

[edited] verb tense

baxtr3• 4 years ago

The vast majority of major countries with the exception of the US and Mexico have passed a point of no return demographically

Where is the data to back this statement up? Sub-Sahara African countries have been growing by 2.5% over the last decades. Just one example.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW?locations=Z...

ParksNet• 4 years ago

Sub-Saharan Africa is irrelevant, economically. Majority of the population engages in subsistence-level agriculture, or resource extraction for foreign companies. IQ Is measured at an average of 70 or lower: https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php (partly due to inadequate nutrition and opportunities).

Corruption and poverty is widespread, and population expansion is directly tied to environmental degradation. This part of the world is one area where fewer or no children should be ideal.

The population of eg. Ghana could be 5 million (as it was as recently as 1950) instead of 50 million, there would just be more mechanization of agriculture (and substantially better quality of life for the people living there).

https://www.populationpyramid.net/ghana/2050/

dfadsadsf• 4 years ago

Sub Saharan African countries have population but not economy to be anything other than minor regional players. At this point it is unlikely they will be able to become industrialized and move to mid income bracket.

Emigration from Africa is likely to become huge destabilizing factor in richer countries with declining population. Similar to current Hispanic majority in California, African majority population is likely in some European countries in mid term.

puranjay7• 4 years ago

Its alarming how fast all earlier projections are being proven wrong.

Like in India, our latest survey revealed that our fertility rate is now already below replacement level - a landmark we were supposed to hit in 2050. We hit that three decades ahead of schedule.

maccolgan2• 4 years ago

Funnily enough Meghalaya Rural and Bihar is keeping us still afloat.

topher515• 4 years ago

I just want to take some issue with your characterization of "with mathematical certainty".

You're completely right that given fertility rates are under replacement rate—from memory: 2.1 children per woman—populations will decrease with mathematical certainty. But there is no universal law that developed countries must remain below replacement fertility levels; that's just what has always happened so far—given the cultures and policies which exist today.

It's not completely absurd to imagine scenarios like:

- a rich society getting serious about the fertility problem and putting it's money where it's mouth is: free childcare, free fertility clinics, generous subsidies for having a third kid, etc

- a culture shift amongst the patriotic, or the religious, or whatever subgroup, to believe it's their responsibility to have more children.

PakistaniDenzel• 4 years ago

Look at Russia's attempts since ~2006 to basically throw money at their fertility problem and see how well it has worked out for them. There is just no actual need like there used to be (farm labor) for kids these days. Unless house prices crash such that people on minimum wage can afford a large house and still have lots of disposable income to put towards children I don't see how this can be solved with money.

A cultural shift just won't occur in the span of a few years and would likely only be possible from the next generation onwards, but by then the damage has already been done. Maybe 50-100 years from now after "the end of the world" mindsets will change and we'll see a big repopulation.

maccolgan2• 4 years ago

Funnily enough only Israel has made that culture shift, but I don't think people like Haredis very much.

tacker20002• 4 years ago

Sure, the current population would shrink as is, but what about immigration? The US is a country built on that. Surely this would be a factor in preventing depopulation.

KaiserPro2• 4 years ago

THe problem with this prediction is that there is an astronomical amount of money tied up in global trade.

To stop that would be incredibly disruptive.

Thats not to say it won't happen (history has plenty of examples. WWI is a recent one).

However for the "end of shipping" to happen we need those vested interests to stop being interested in literal trillions of dollars worth of trade.

I can see a few scenarios where that happens, but russian embargoes isnt one of them. China attacking Taiwan, perhaps. Again there is a huge amount of rich people who don't really want that to happen, both inside and outside of china.

Again, this isn't to say that Xi isn't stupid enough to try.

Barrera3• 4 years ago

The point Zeihan makes is that world trade as we know it a recent invention. It exists purely as a result of the US commitment to protect trade from piracy around the world. Prior to that, the system was one of isolated empires each protecting their own routes.

As the US is largely self-sufficient in energy and will likely start becoming self-sufficient in a great many things, it needs the rest of the world less and less.

Those shipping lines, which mainly benefit the rest of the world, start to look like an expensive relic with each passing year.

All it takes for an end of shipping is for the US to stop protecting shipping lines which mainly benefit foreign governments.

bombcar8• 4 years ago

And this already exists in parts of the world the US doesn't bother with and shippers avoid them.

KaiserPro2• 4 years ago

world trade as we know it a recent invention

I'm going to be very bold here, and say thats almost entirely incorrect. Any empire in the last 2000 years has depended on global trade. Before empire, in the bronze age, there is evidence of international trade.

it needs the rest of the world less and less.

If we ignore the part where its almost entirely untrue that the USA is becoming self sufficient(its not, there is a reason why the Dollar is the international trade currency), It needs the world to export to.

Those shipping lines, which mainly benefit the rest of the world

[citation needed] ~14% of the entire economy is spent on imports: https://www.statista.com/statistics/259096/us-imports-as-a-p...

about 11% of GDP is tied to exports. (see previous link, fiddle to get exports.)

All it takes for an end of shipping is for the US to stop protecting shipping lines

What shipping lines is it specifically protecting? Unless the ship is a US flag carrier, there is no legal obligation for the US to protect it.

The % of global trade using US based ships is three tenths of fuck all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capacity...

according to the US's own stats its 0.6% of all global shipping: https://www.bts.gov/content/number-and-size-us-flag-merchant...

The US stopped all that >60 years ago.

The things that stop global trade are disasters, wars, or weird autocracy fetishes (see expelling jews(middle ages), WWI, James I & Charles I being inept, north korea.) not "the natural order".

jmyeet• 4 years ago

No, it isn't.

The US gains a lot through its ability to project power anywhere on Earth (including shipping). It's part of the total package that makes the US dollar the reserve currency for the world. There are simply too many vested interests in that status quo for the US to go full on isolationalist (aka "deglobalization").

Even if they do, China will step in to fill the void. This possibility alone will keep the US in the picture as it won't want to cede that ground.

What I really hope is with US foreign policy the left hand starts recognizing what the right hand is doing. For example, there is need for maritime esecurity in large part because of the regions the US has directly or indirectly destabilized to serve other goals.

Russia is of course the bad guy for invading Ukraine but the US sure did leave a lot of dry kindling lying around on a hot windy day (and is then shocked that a wildfire happened).

Take security around the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a key US ally and is using US weapons to commit genocide on the Yemenese people and those that don't die from weapons are getting starved out by famine.

Maybe there wouldn't be such a need for maritive security if the US had a different foreign policy.

IAmWorried2• 4 years ago

I've read a few of Zeihan's books, and it seems like the author of this article is missing the point. Zeihan says, again and again, that basically the ONLY reason for the US pulling away from globalization is the new shale oil boom, which makes the country energy independent. My layman's understanding is that under the Biden administration regulators have hobbled these shale wells in the hope of achieving an energy "transition", whatever that may mean. So we aren't really energy independent after all, at least not until the transition is completed. So I'm not sure how the conclusions of the article really make sense, notwithstanding the many references to how you could get rich quick by betting on these outcomes.

DubiousPusher4• 4 years ago

Interesting article. This has uni econ shit-lib professor written all over it though. Not discounting that view. I think there's a lot of truth to it but they're pulling a little hard at the teet of: if you're poor, don't blame global capital!

Only those nations secluded from navigable waters – e.g. Afghanistan, Chad, Mongolia, Bolivia, etc – failed to prosper (note, the high coastal bluffs and lack of coastal protection throughout most of Africa slowed investment in most of the continent)..
In the age of globalization, everyone could get in on global access, manufacturing, and mass consumption,” writes Zeihan in a chapter titled The Americanization of Trade.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

I can definitely buy the argument that deglobalization is going to hit a lot of sectors that are increasingly viewed by domestic populations as 'critical' - things like food, medicine, energy, metals, and even computer chips. The pandemic exposed the fragility of global supply chains, just-in-time-manufacturing, and awareness of the results of 40 years of full-on neoliberal globalization policy (see The Rust Belt flipping for Trump in 2016 as evidence of this trend).

I think this is a very healthy development, because trade in goods is best thought of as a way for different countries to benefit from surplus production. There have been historical exceptions like the New World plantation economies set up to supply Europe with rum and sugar, Brazil's rubber plantations, resource extaction in the Congo, etc. but none of these resulted in what you'd call healthy economic development.

China may have the goal of becoming 'the next American Empire' but a more rational view is that the Age of Empires is quickly drawing to a close and there won't be any inheritors of the crown at all.

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

I’ve been following Zeihan since his first book. I’m yet to find a credible counter argument to his theses. And he’s being proven right at an alarming pace this year.

So far this year we’ve had:

- A land war in Europe

- Food insecurity in the developing world

- Breakdown of supply chains and shipping routes

- Nation states resorting to seizing each other’s ships (see Greece-Iran issue recently).

Everything that he had talked about in the past and in his latest book.

The thing about Zeihan’s arguments is that you can’t really argue against demographics. You can procure any resource from any part of the world, but if you want an 18 year old to consume or work or fight, you HAVE to wait 18 years. Or import them from elsewhere - which causes all sorts of cultural and societal conflicts.

next_xibalba• 4 years ago

How many of his predictions have failed? How many are timebound and falsifiable?

I am not specifically familiar with Zehain, but I am very well acquainted with figures who generate many predictions, have a small number become true, and then get treated as oracles for years before the truth is exposed: predicting the future in massive, chaotic systems is nearly impossible.

kapp_in_life2• 4 years ago

Also some of these seem like almost vacuous statements. Predicting food insecurity(or any other type of insecurity) in the developing world is not a groundbreaking prediction.

puranjay7• 4 years ago

His core arguments focus on geography and demographics, both of which are “hard” problems. Declining populations simply cannot maintain the “grow at all costs” current economic order. Even an advanced country like Japan with plenty of automation and high productivity rates hasn’t see any growth in two decades since its population itself doesn’t grow anymore.

Even if you don’t go by his more alarmist arguments, you have to agree that in the face of declining populations and ageing demographics, we will have to shift to a new economic model where growth isn’t the only goal. And any large scale shift in economic models comes with some grief, at the very least.

wmeredith• 4 years ago

Here's a skeptical look at some of his claims: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/peter-zeihan-makes-bad...

dukeofdoom4• 4 years ago

I have the feeling that we might be in our current predicament because a few billionaires are reading the same books, and trying to bring about some ideological nonsense into reality.

billbrown2• 4 years ago

I, too, am a fan of Zeihan's. I think his thesis is basically correct, but he is frustratingly cagey with detail. Timeframes matter, as does any citation of sources. Given the level of detail, it seems accurate and reliable but I just feel uneasy without the ability to verify anything.

arcturus172• 4 years ago

You can’t argue with demographics, so you wouldn’t have argued with Malthus? He was completely wrong, at the very least in timescale.

harpersealtako• 4 years ago

You can't argue with demographics because, outside of immigration, it is physically impossible to change them in the short term.

Even if e.g. Korea somehow managed to get a fertility rate of 10 tomorrow, it would takes many decades for that generation to begin to contribute to the economy as a class of high-skilled laborers. No matter what Korea does, absent implausible levels of immigration, they are still set for future economic hardship due to their demographics.

antisthenes3• 4 years ago

Malthus only has to be right once and the timeline is completely irrelevant.

boomchinolo783• 4 years ago

At the end of the day it does not matter much whether he is right or wrong. Our elites have quite the Malthusian outlook and it informs a lot of the decisions we are seeing on a global scale. Why do you think is there such a big push for reducing energy production?

puranjay7• 4 years ago

You can't argue against demographics from a economic and geopolitical viewpoint.

To create a young person, you need a fixed number of years. If you want an 18 year old to hit college and take on a $100k loan (or join your army and shoot your enemies), you will have to have started in 2004. There is no way to accelerate this.

Even if you poured all your energy and resources into getting people to reproduce more starting today, you won't see an active worker or soldier or college student/scholar until 2040.

What happens in the interim 18 years?

DennisP4• 4 years ago

I just read all Zeihan's books. The only counterargument I can think of is that maybe with our interdependent world, sanctions have gotten effective enough to substitute for US military power to some extent. Zeihan himself has said China has to be reevaluating the idea of an attack on Taiwan, after seeing the sanctions and boycotts against Russia.

Sanctions haven't stopped Russia but Russia is a food and fuel exporter. Most countries are more reliant in imports for essentials. E.g. the Saudis need food imports, so maybe going to war with Iran isn't such a good idea for them, and that helps prevent the drastic Asian oil shortages Zeihan describes.

bombcar8• 4 years ago

Sanctions are a "one time weapon" I fear, and many many countries are now including "what if we or someone we trade with gets sanctioned by the US" as part of their contingency planning.

floxy2• 4 years ago

What are some good examples of when sanctions "worked"? Apartheid-era South Africa? Maybe in delaying Iran developing nuclear weapons? Are any of the following considered success stories for sanctions?

  - Saddam era Iraq
  - North Korea
  - Cuba
  - Venezuela

Apparently the U.S. has quite a list of sanctions:

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

lenkite• 4 years ago

Well..the Biden administration is slowly removing sanctions from Venezuala after belatedly realising that sanctioning Iran, Venezuala and Russia caused a global energy crisis. And making a diplomacy visit to the Saudis to beg them to pump more oil. Despite a harsh condemnation of the Prince just last year where he said he would never speak to him again.

Sanctions are of questionable effectiveness and tend to harm other nations more than the nation that is the target of the sanctions.

CalChris• 4 years ago

18 years and 9 months. Zeihan is very funny.

I don't think he is particularly 'smart' (wait for me a second here). I think he instead makes obvious conclusions from undeniable evidence like demographics and geography. The 'smarter' more institutional types from Brookings and Hoover tend to argue from policy and politics backwards and then the facts become inconvenient.

slowhand09• 4 years ago

I recall an applicable quote (paraphrased) "it's not hard to make truthful predictions. Its hard to get the timing right."

sbierwagen• 4 years ago

tend to argue from policy and politics backwards and then the facts become inconvenient

There's the famous UN population projections where they show Europe and Asia declining for a while, then leveling out around 2050. Why? Well, they published their reasoning: https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Hig...

Evidence from surveys of childbearing preferences indicate that even in populations with low or very low fertility for decades, women continue to express a desire for around two children on average. The myriad reasons for the gap between desired and completed fertility include such factors as an incompatibility between childrearing and the demands of higher education and career building, a lack of affordable highquality child care, the decline of reproductive capacity at advanced maternal ages, and imbalanced gender roles for housework and child care.
The fact that fertility preferences remain close to two children per woman, even as realized fertility has fallen well below that level, suggests that the fertility rate in low-fertility countries may increase as populations learn to manage and mitigate some or all impeding factors.

There doesn't seem to be much evidence of that actually happening, though. Japan has been below-replacement since 1973. Ukraine and Russia had TFRs of 1.23 and 1.5 respectively in 2019, and they're busy pointlessly killing a generation of young men, which won't help much with family formation. Where is the "mitigation"?

The UN's argument seems to be that it would be stupid for a country just to commit suicide for no reason, so they won't do that. Unfortunately, this report was written in 2019, before the events of the last few years. It is no longer quite so certain that countries won't pursue pointless self-destructive policies for no good reason.

selimthegrim2• 4 years ago

Zeihan is not any better than Perun about the war, and arguably much less right.

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

credible counter argument to his theses

Zeihan's thesis is generic geopolitical analysis, which is a fine model, but there's no reason to credit that to him. Really it's about the quality of his predictions which is hard to gauge other than he throws a lot of shit out to see what sticks and occasionally some do. Broken clock etc. Otherwise, he sells US exceptionalism powerpoints to wealthy boomers over expensive dinners. He tends to pile on "natural 20" dice rolls to America's favour and extrapolates from there why Fortress America will be fine no matter how much she FUBARs which undermines the quality of his prediction. It matters if supply chain break down was due to pandemic driven factors rather than active reshoring. Greece-Iran drama was Greece fulfilling US request and eventual release back to Iran - this isn't anarchy caused by US withdraw but US continued engagement/meddling while countries try to minimize fallout - essentially opposite cause of Zeihan prediction. Hard to credit right predictions for wrong reasons. Lastly if demography was destiny, India would be a super power - divident can turn into curse depending on policy and other structural factors.

ProjectArcturis5• 4 years ago

I've never heard of Zeihan. The article touts his prowess of predicting a Russian invasion of Ukraine in his book published in late 2014. Well, Russia had just seized Crimea and eastern Donbass in February of 2014, so this doesn't strike me as a particularly prescient call.

more_corn3• 4 years ago

Except that from January to March this year pundits swore up and down that Russia wouldn’t launch a full invasion of Ukraine. When it happened a lot of people were surprised. You could have made a killing in the stock market if you’d realized that Russia would certainly invade, and they probably had a deadline in order to maximize the summer fighting season. It seemed obvious to me, but not so obvious that I positioned myself properly in the stock market.

Everything is obvious after the fact. Look around for the people asserting that it’s obvious BEFORE the fact and measure their accuracy. Those people might have useful insight.

Longlius4• 4 years ago

His prediction of the Russia-Ukraine war had a specific timetable back in 2014, namely the period between 2018 and 2022.

billbrown2• 4 years ago

He's made available[1] the charts and maps used in the book. I found this one quite illuminating on demographics.[2]

[1] https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world-maps/ [2] https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/global-fertili...

achenet• 4 years ago

Reading his book The End of Everything is Just Beginning, he posits a history of early human evolution that is throughly debunked in The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow.

Not that this invalidates his future predictions, but...

pphysch5• 4 years ago

Nation states resorting to seizing each other’s ships (see Greece-Iran issue recently).

The US Navy is a major player here, having recently seized Venezuelan and Iranian tankers on the basis of violating sanctions. Only in retaliation did Iran begin seizing boats. This undermines the thesis that the US Navy is somehow protecting the stability of global trade. They're actively destabilizing to advance Washington's hegemonic interests.

The thing about Zeihan’s arguments is that you can’t really argue against demographics.

You can absolutely argue against this. It's called automation. Needing millions of young healthy bodies to push machines around is increasingly outdated. A highly technical population with "bad demographics" will easily outperform a 20th century population with "good demographics" in the 21st century. Not to mention high population growth (required for "good demographics") is increasingly unsustainable due to natural resource limitations.

Zeihan is frankly a crock. He makes pretty maps and bold claims, but his evidence-based analysis is incredibly shallow. His MO is selling books: geopolitics as entertainment, not providing useful analysis.

You are much better served by listening to experienced realists like John Mearsheimer or Michael Hudson, rather than Zeihan's pop-geopol junk.

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

You can absolutely argue against this. It's called automation.

You're viewing it from a myopic production-focused viewpoint. Whereas the problem is our consumption-led economic order and its reliant on adding an ever increasing number of consumers.

Compared to young people:

A) Machines do not consume goods and trinkets. Western economies are based on consumption, not production.

B) Machines do not pay taxes, making it harder and harder for the state to pay for the welfare of ageing populations.

C) Automation simply doesn't work for service-focused work. Otherwise there wouldn't be record number of job openings and labor shortages in the US right now.

causality03• 4 years ago

What bothers me is the sheer mass of factually incorrect statements Zeihan makes that would be trivial to check if he bothered. Things like "China only makes the low-end computer chips, anything that's going into a cellphone or laptop is made in the USA"

Longlius4• 4 years ago

He's not incorrect on that point. Huawei sources its SoCs from Taiwanese and American fabs, which is why the trade war has absolutely gutted their bottom line. HiSilicon licenses chip designs, adds their specific stuff on top of them, and has the chips fabbed by TSMC.

jjtec3• 4 years ago

What bothers me is you are obviously a chinese Shill

D_Alex2• 4 years ago

I only read the linked article, not the books. I think that the thesis (as professed by the article) that the "deglobalization" is largely due to the decline of the US Navy is pretty silly. "Decline in the standard of US foreign policy and diplomacy" - in itself an ill-judged reaction to the rise of China's economic power and influence - is much closer to the mark. Of course the Covid pandemic didn't help either.

japhib• 4 years ago

I think that the thesis (as professed by the article) that the "deglobalization" is largely due to the decline of the US Navy is pretty silly

Why?

leobg• 4 years ago

I found that when drawing conclusions for the financial markets from demographic changes such as the Boomer generation entering retirement he seems to completely ignore inheritance. People getting older forms just suck money out of the system. It also pumps money into it.

AussieWog93• 4 years ago

Or import them from elsewhere - which causes all sorts of cultural and societal conflicts.

I might be a bit biased in this regard (see username), but I've always thought the issue of immigration is massively overblown by journalists and politicians in order to get clicks/listeners/votes.

Both at home and when traveling, it's surprising how well understood "global culture" is by pretty much everyone who lives in a city or large town. Outside of language barriers, things like catching a train or buying a bottle of Coke are all done much the same way no matter where you came from.

I distinctly remember one instance where this old Ethiopian guy, who didn't know a single word of English, successfully managed to communicate that he'd forgotten to grab something and I should save his space in the supermarket queue.

Outside of specific conflicts (Serbia/Croatia, India/Pakistan), or particular instances where one particular group has turned out to cause a whole lot of trouble, the policy as a whole seems surprisingly effective.

bergenty4• 4 years ago

This sound like very high level, easy to “predict” predictions. Show me a percentage of how many predictions in a book worked out and how much detail they went into before I buy this snake oil. Yes, I’m using prediction intentionally. This isn’t an analysis, it’s prediction.

syntheweave• 4 years ago

I went and got the latest book and started reading it right then and there.

It's crap.

Demography is powerful, yes, but the interpretation matters, and the premises here are of steady-state or linear extrapolation. There is no mention of technological disruption: all the criticism assumes linear progress, allowing analysis to proceed along the lines of resource shortage. This core assumption means the book is already wrong since the progress in key disruptive techs has actually followed exponential curves(see any Tony Seba lecture). If we have the AI and robotics to fill in 18-year old roles, we don't need actual 18 year olds.

It's a work of the moment in that it explains near-term problems reasonably well, while also being extremely wrong about anything more than a few years out because it can't imagine a world that gets weirder, when every big epochal shift has made the world weirder in the process of fending off Malthusian logic.

vba616• 4 years ago

You are impressed that someone predicted a war in 2014, and it happened...?

I predict there will be a recession in the next 8 years! And another war!

I also predict there will be food insecurity in the developing world!

And bad things will happen to countries and ships, somewhere on the globe! Probably including Iran!

What do I expect from an expert prognosticator? Opinions with the potential to be wrong. Numbers or quantitative statements help a lot.

hollerith• 4 years ago

Everyone prospered from more efficient shipping but there was a cost paid by the one nation that did not need maritime security because it had two large oceans protecting it from would-be aggressors, was a net exporter of food and fuel.

Big error there: the US is a net exporter of fuel now but it sure wasn't for most of the Cold War.

How does someone writing in a magazine or blog for the shipping industry not know that? Petroleum and petroleum products make up more than half of the world's tonnage of ocean-going shipping and have since the start of the Cold War!

Also, if you share a continent with a potential invader (like for example Ukraine does) then you should invest mainly in your army. It is exactly when you are secure in your own continent (or island) like the US is (and Britain before it was) that it starts to make sense to invest heavily in a Navy, to address the residual military threat. All countries with populations next to an ocean would benefit from a good navy, but only rich countries with no pressing need for a good army can afford the luxury of a navy strong enough to repel any other country's navy. All the other countries of the world with coastal populations just have to put up with the risk of an attack from one of the world's dominant navies.

And if the US didn't have a good navy, it would be vulnerable to the countries that did, regardless of where in the world that countries was located. Contrary to the sentence I quoted, an ocean is no barrier to a sufficiently well-funded navy. The only protection from a blue-water navy is a better navy. Well, that might be starting to change now (in the future, the best protection might be hypersonic missiles with advanced guidance and sensory systems plus a constellation of satellites to surveil the oceans plus an array of listening stations in the ocean) but it has been true for centuries and is probably still true.

Peter Zeihan has a point (namely, the US has less of an incentive to use its dominant navy to protect the world's shipping than it did during the Cold War) but the OP has not successfully reproduced Zeihan's argument. (Also, the US continues to have an incentive to continue to maintain a dominant navy, briefly because even if you are already the most militarily secure nation on Earth, it still makes sense to buy more security if you can do so at a reasonable cost, and for the US, a good navy is probably a reasonable cost.)

newsclues2• 4 years ago

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

looks like it’s a net exporter of oil, remember you can import, refine and export.

asah3• 4 years ago

awesome.

I'm confused about two things:

1. "Not a single ship captain works in the Pentagon or any of the major national security think tanks." - I doubt there are satellite operators, travel industry execs, farmers or construction workers either. US military leaders are tasked with zero substantial threats to US peace, security and order, and mostly succeeds, with the exceptions rare enough to be newsworthy (JFK/etc assassinations, WTC93 and 9/11, etc)

2. "Nearly everyone prospered and the oceans became safe for ships of immense size and slow speed, unlocking economies of scale that became possible only because the ocean became safe enough for shippers to put all their eggs – or at least 26,000 TEU’s worth of eggs – in one basket." - AFAICT, the TEU/container is the unit of shipping, not the whole ship. This means that ships can get larger and larger without increased financial/etc risk to producers or consumers. For many reasons, shipping companies own many ships and individual losses are a financial matter and not existential threat.

thoughts?

bombcar8• 4 years ago

A TEU is a "Twenty-foot-equivalent" or a half-container (most containers you see are 40 footers.

But the boats that carry them are huge and slow and absolutely sitting ducks to even a small navy (the Coast Guard could sink them, and improvised equipment could trash them relatively easily).

If there was any risk of losing one of those ships to deliberate activity, all hell would break loose (the theory behind the article). Weather isn't even a major an issue anymore with modern predictions and satellites. So insurers are happy to insure at low risk odds, pennies or dollars per container.

https://gcaptain.com/the-worst-containership-disasters-in-re... (same website lol) has some of the big ones that have happened, all accidental.

asah3• 4 years ago

Sure, but after a couple are lost, the military would of course step in... so again I'm confused why the doomsday talk...

agf• 4 years ago

Large, slow ships are easily found and caught. If that's a problem, then you build smaller, faster ships, which are less energy efficient.

Losses of ships are only a financial matter because losses are very rare, so insurance is cheap. If losses become common, insurance costs skyrocket and the cost of doing business goes way up, reducing the amount of trade. That's what the article is saying will happen.

I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying in the second sentence of #1. But primarily, none of the examples you cite were on the military to stop, they were the responsibility of civilian agencies.

ip262• 4 years ago

individual losses are a financial matter and not existential threat

That's entirely a function of the loss rate. If 50% of voyages are seized by pirates, that's not just a financial matter.

asah3• 4 years ago

Sure, but at that point the military of course steps in... (long before that point...) so again I'm confused...

Animats4• 4 years ago

China's Navy is now bigger than the US Navy. Few have noticed.

China's third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, was launched last week. This is the lead ship of a new carrier class. Carrier #4 is said to be under construction at Dalian. (There's so much shipbuilding in China that it's hard to tell if a new hull is a warship or just another giant container ship.)

These are not nuclear powered. That's expected with the next class of carrier.

downrightmike2• 4 years ago

But is it any good? That's the question. I don't doubt that they'll try something in the next 10 years, because now is the largest force they'll ever be able to muster. One child policy screwed them.

ok_dad2• 4 years ago

The success of the US Navy in the past was due to constant training and the empowerment of the officer corps at the junior ranks, and billions in cash thrown at tech and equipment. If China can afford to train well, has decent technology that’s reliable, and is flexible enough to allow power to disseminate the ranks, then I assume they are on the way to overtaking the US Navy in ability as the USN wanes due to lack of leadership and misplaced priorities.

dirtyid4• 4 years ago

largest force they'll ever be able to muster

PLA is still massively modernizing and expanding with barely ~2% of GDP. It doesn't take that many bodies to man modern military, even worst case combination of South Korea tier TFR (<1) and cold war ear spending (6%+) enables PRC to field a military multiple times larger than current size. This is without considering unmanned autonomous platforms that PRC defense industry is heavily focusing on. Need to properly conceptualize how fast/large PLA has grown last decade relative to how modest the amount of resources has actually been devoted.

wilsonnb3• 4 years ago

China's Navy is now bigger than the US Navy. Few have noticed.

Measured in amount of ships/boats, yes. So is North Korea's navy, though.

It is not a very helpful way to compare naval power between countries.

Animats4• 4 years ago

True. The PLAN is working towards being more of a blue-water navy, but they are not there yet.

Here's a list of shipyards in China.[1] It helps building a large number of commercial ships. China's third carrier was built in a shipyard that also builds commercial ships. The fourth carrier is reportedly being constructed in a commercial shipyard in Dalian.

The US only has two shipyards left capable of building large surface naval vessels - Bath Iron Works and Newport News Shipbuilding. Both are very old companies, from the 19th century. There's Ingalls in Mississippi for medium-sized vessels, and Electric Boat in Connecticut for submarines. There are still four US naval shipyards run by the Navy, but they just do repairs now.

[1] https://www.trusteddocks.com/catalog/country/47-china

boc• 4 years ago

I'm sorry but it's not accurate to call the PLAN larger than the US Navy unless you're just counting the number of ships. The USN has twice the displacement of the PLAN.

The USN is by far and away the strongest blue water navy with the capability to operate multiple independent strike missions in any region of the world simultaneously, including contested waters like the South China Sea. The PLAN is barely able to support missions outside of its EEZ, and has outfitted their newest carrier with EMALS despite having a oil-powered turbine engine, which basically means they're not able to launch more than 2-3 aircraft an hour without shutting down their entire onboard systems to recharge the supercapacitors. In contrast, a US supercarrier can launch it's entire flight wing of ~90 aircraft in 30-40 minutes.

The PLAN has 3 carriers. The US has 11 supercarriers and 9 assault carriers.

hintymad5• 4 years ago

This is probably an unpopular opinion: it pains me to see the manufacturing industry decline in the US. I don't really mind paying $300 for a pair of shoes. Yes, it will be expensive, but then I'll just buy fewer pairs. In return, more people get decent jobs, or so I hope. And no, I'm not talking about just the so-called "low-end" manufacturing, but also the high end. Indeed, how can we even grow "high-end" talent if we don't have a place for them to start their career? The average age of workers in the remaining few ship manufacturers is well over 50. The cost of producing things in the US is just way more expensive than in China, even if we factor out labor cost. When covid started, both GE and BYD set up factories to produce masks. GE's assembly lines are semi automatic, if not manual, and their machines looked archaic. In contrast, BYD's assembly line was fully automated and shiny.

I mean, can a country as large as the US be really competitive without manufacturing? I just can't see how services and virtual stuff like FB alone can be essential.

flashgordon• 4 years ago

+1 - Id also argue that even though that show costs $300 we have enough of a market and population to have competition drive prices down in a generation or two (if not faster).

hedora• 4 years ago

I've recently been surprised much better EU manufacturing is doing than US manufacturing. I don't think cost of labor is the only factor at play.

dntrkv• 4 years ago

In what way? US manufacturing output is almost the same as the EU in absolute value.

burntoutfire2• 4 years ago

That is because EU has Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and other places where Western Europe partially outsourced parts of its manufacturing. It was more expensive than moving it to China, but otherwise much more convenient and less risky.

dukeofdoom4• 4 years ago

Europe still kind of has regional currencies, so that makes manufacturing cheaper in certain countries, while the lower wages still can pay for an acceptable standard of living inside those countries.

Nasrudith5• 4 years ago

EU is also technically slightly larger as an entity and Germany has long been more industrial in its focus and an economic leader.

ProjectArcturis5• 4 years ago

Shoes might be more expensive, but not $300. New Balance still makes shoes in the US, and they're priced about the same as other brands.

But US-made stuff, on the whole, is also better quality and longer-lasting than Chinese.

ROTMetro4• 4 years ago

Most New Balance shoes are now made in Asia. Some are still produced in the USA.

atestu• 4 years ago

The New Balance sneakers that are made in US / UK cost close to $200 https://www.newbalance.com/made-in-the-usa/

But I don't know if that makes me disagree with you or not given the price of a lot of sneakers these days...

nicodjimenez5• 4 years ago

If the opinion you share is unpopular, it's because it's correct, and the truth is the enemy of the oligarchs that are scamming citizens in the US and the West in general. US is now a scam that exports inflation and crap 2nd rate weaponry. Scam economy, scam military industrial complex, scam military, scam president, scam everything.

If you have a feeling the US is in decline, it's because it is. The situation is much worse than most Americans realize. There is no hope for either Democrats or Republicans to fix anything here. I recommend to all my friends that they emigrate if they can.

joelthelion• 4 years ago

Meh. Go to any other country and you'll soon discover that the US isn't so bad. And I say that as a European who's been to quite a few countries.

ROTMetro4• 4 years ago

And who is ascendant? China, who, oops, was overcounting their population by 100 million and now realize they have reached/passed the peak working population? Europe, who is completely dependant on the USA to maintain a unipolar world that they then take advantage of? Are you an 80s kid like me, and Japan and Russia are going to eat our lunch any day now? Maybe Dubai with their wanna be Vegas financial center in the desert is where you think is safe in a 'the world is falling apart, let's move to a self sustaining country' scenario? Is the whole world falling apart, in which case it's probably best to be in a country that is energy independent (USA), able to be food independant (USA), has the manufacturing base that if needed can onshore/bootstrap manufacturing (USA) and able to retool to be technologically independent (USA).

dstroot• 4 years ago

… emigrate if they can.

Where are you recommending they go?

Jistern• 4 years ago

The problem in the US is fair distribution of income, not lack of production. In other words, we don't need to make more stuff.

"When you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." This is faulty reasoning that probably makes sense to an engineer because, well, engineers usually make stuff.

smrtinsert• 4 years ago

I haven't seen any compelling evidence that protectionism works in the grand scheme of things. I have seen other though, frequently: https://hbr.org/1987/05/why-protectionism-doesnt-pay

Seems anti-capitalist to me.

ch4s33• 4 years ago

In the hey-day of manufacturing things like shoes and clothing in the US, these things weren't considered "good" jobs. You can easily find numerous articles in national magazines from the period decrying them as dangerous, monotonous, and otherwise awful. You can still buy a $600 pair of boots or derbys from Alden of New England (I have a pair) or Viberg. But these are niche products within a niche.

If you're talking about high end manufacturing like cars, planes, specialized steel or similar we still do tons of that in the US. In inflation adjusted dollar amounts we produce more than ever, it just doesn't take very many people to do those things anymore. Robots do most of the jobs people used to do in that kind of manufacturing.

Ship building has been killed largely by the low cost of over land transit since the highway system was built and government protectionism vis-a-vis the Jones act which allowed ship builders in the US to become uncompetitive. But realistically we never had a special advantage in ship building, beyond build a bunch of naval vessels really quickly.

I mean, can a country as large as the US be really competitive without manufacturing?

We do manufacture a lot of things, just very few people work in manufacturing. We're also a world leader in agriculture. Services are fine, and very lucrative. One of our chief exports is education, which is a service.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 4 years ago

Viberg is, or at least it used to be, Canadian.

hintymad5• 4 years ago

In the hey-day of manufacturing things like shoes and clothing in the US, these things weren't considered "good" jobs.

My understanding is that a family can afford middle-class life with a single blue-collar job with the US has a prosperous manufacturing industry.

If you're talking about high end manufacturing like cars, planes, specialized steel or similar we still do tons of that in the US.

I thought the market share was declining. The US used to have more than 68% of market share in manufacturing in the world back in 2001 or 2002, but now it is about 40%? It can't be that only low-end manufacturing that is gone, right?

IAmWorried2• 4 years ago

The only people who this is an unpopular opinion to are the rich fat cat execs who only care about their profits and share prices. Pretty much everyone I know thinks it was a bad idea to outsource manufacturing to less than friendly countries. Thanks, Krugman.

colinmhayes6• 4 years ago

This just isn't true. Maybe they think that because they're not aware of what would happen if manufacturing hadn't been offshored, but the vast majority of people would be extremely unhappy if the cost of all manufactured goods doubled.

manuelabeledo2• 4 years ago

I don't really mind paying $300 for a pair of shoes. Yes, it will be expensive, but then I'll just buy fewer pairs. In return, more people get decent jobs, or so I hope.

I suspect that this would just help keep the same returns for the shareholders and executives.

Shoes may be more expensive, but not $200 more expensive (if we take that on average they cost $100 now) if made in the US. Even for a single worker spending four hours in a pair of shoes, this accounts for $50 extra per hour, or around $100,000 per year.

542458• 4 years ago

Shoes that retail for $120-$150 don’t cost $100 to make. Normal shoes cost like $20 to make. The rest of the costs are transportation, warehousing, marketing, etc. Also remember that retail takes a 25-35% cut. I would expect a shoe that costs $200 to make to retail for at least $400.

KennyBlanken3• 4 years ago

The whole "we can't make things in America, you wouldn't be able to afford them" song and dance is a lie. When companies outsourced production of goods, they didn't drop the prices - they pocketed the increase in margin.

The reverse is true: nothing stops production from coming back except corporate/investor greed.

taylodl4• 4 years ago

It's only unpopular because it flies in the face of economics. You say you're fine paying $300 for a pair of shoes - but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value work?

The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world. Those citizens are capable of doing higher-value work. Should they do that low-value work when it can be easily and eagerly performed by other countries where the populace hasn't benefitted from such an infrastructure investment? Thereby raising the standard of living for all the parties involved? That's the economists' argument. Moreover the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries taught us that focusing on the nation-state leads to widespread warfare. Better to have those nation-states in economic cooperation that leads to peace than economic competition that leads to war.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying you need to really think through why and how we got here when considering our next steps. You're going to need to address how doing what we did before won't lead to the same problems we experienced before. I suspect you're not going to be able to do that, but I'm willing to be shown to be wrong.

ianleeclark• 4 years ago

The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world.

Remember what you said: some of the population is capable of doing such things, but a relatively large portion of the population are doing gig work. The distinction isn't "why take the highly skilled segment of the workforce and retrain them," but instead "why not take the 'low-skilled' portion and upskill them." Ultimately we know the answer, but your framing was off.

burntoutfire2• 4 years ago

Moreover the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries taught us that focusing on the nation-state leads to widespread warfare. Better to have those nation-states in economic cooperation that leads to peace than economic competition that leads to war.

I think it has taught us the opposite? Pre WWI, the world was already very integrated and globalized, to the point that many pundits said that a large war is impossible, because it would hurt businesses everywhere too much. And yet it happened.

KennyBlanken3• 4 years ago

The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars building an infrastructure that has led its citizens to being some of the best-educated and most-productive in the world.

Citation, please (and yeah, I see you using weasel words.)

hintymad5• 4 years ago

but are you okay with your livelihood being making shoes? If you're capable of doing higher-value work then isn't it a "waste" for you to be doing lower-value work?

This assumes that everyone can do the higher-value work per their standards, right? US is probably the most educated country in the world, while in the meantime we still have millions adults[1] who don't have college degree. We still have millions of kids who struggle with basic algebra. And per my interaction with kids and college students in the past many years, I have to conclude that not everyone can or like to take on "high-end" jobs. In any class except those magnetic schools, you can see the bottom 20% or more students are hopeless in learning STEM or sophisticated writing. However, they may get decent jobs if there are other demand in the market.

[1]Between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of people age 25 and older who had completed a bachelor's degree or higher increased by 7.5 percentage points from 30.4% to 37.9%. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educatio....

njharman• 4 years ago

Manufacturing left in the 70s, 80's

Some has come back but it's robots and automation. No one is getting jobs back.

Employment is a dying legacy.

derriz3• 4 years ago

US manufacturing output has not actually declined though - it has never been higher and has increased over 40% in the last 2 decades[1].

The perception of US manufacturing decline is widespread. My guess is that this perception is due to a number of factors. Other sectors of the US economy have grown more, so manufacturing now represents a smaller share. And also as productivity increases, fewer people are required to produce the same amount of output - so manufacturing workers make up a smaller share of the workforce than they did in the past. Both of these facts mean that manufacturing has less visibility in the US than it had. Finally, as poorer parts of the rest of the world have grown - the US's share of global manufacturing is smaller.

And by the way, there is absolutely no problem finding someone who will sell you a pair of US made shoes for $300 (or more) if that's what you want. There's a long list of US manufacturers who make high end boots and shoes.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2019&indicators=...

ren_engineer4• 4 years ago

relative output matters and the US has lost massively in terms of global manufacturing compared to what it used to be.

saying US manufacturing hasn't declined is like saying IBM hasn't declined in stature compared to decades past. IBM technically has more revenue than they did in the past, but they aren't considered a technology leader anymore and very few are impressed by them, many see them as a dying company

Nasrudith5• 4 years ago

People don't see industies where they don't work. Rising specialization and automation means that fewer are involver in industry. People are myopic and judge facts by feelings instead of using them as a proper guide of priorities.

peteradio2• 4 years ago

I'm skeptical of those numbers although they may be wholly true, they may only be technically true because final "huge value add" simple assembly is done onshore while all the base parts are produced offshore.

ren_engineer4• 4 years ago

offshoring is short term optimization and has long term negative consequences by killing the entire ecosystem it takes to go from raw material to finished products. The problem is that economists only think 1st order effects, not 2nd and 3rd order.

Charlie Munger has a pretty good take on it and how many economists and our own government officials are in complete denial about it:

Now let’s follow and second and third order consequences: You are more prosperous than you would have been if you hadn’t traded with China in terms of average well-being in the United States, right? Ricardo proved it. But which nation is going to be growing faster in economic terms? It’s obviously China. They’re absorbing all the modern technology of the world through this great facilitator in free trade, and, like the Asian Tigers have proved, they will get ahead fast. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Taiwan. Look at early Japan. So, you start in a place where you’ve got a weak nation of backward peasants, a billion and a quarter of them, and in the end they’re going to be a much bigger, stronger nation than you are, maybe even having more and better atomic bombs. Well, Ricardo did not prove that that’s a wonderful outcome for the former leading nation. He didn’t try to determine second order and higher order effects.
If you try and talk like this to an economics professor, and I’ve done this three times, they shrink in horror and offense because they don’t like this kind of talk. It really gums up this nice discipline of theirs, which is so much simpler when you ignore second and third order consequences.
The best answer I ever got on that subject – in three tries – was from George Schultz. [Schultz was an MIT economics professor before becoming Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State.] He said, “Charlie, the way I figure it is if we stop trading with China, the other advanced nations will do it anyway, and we wouldn’t stop the ascent of China compared to us, and we’d lose the Ricardo- diagnosed advantages of trade.” Which is obviously correct. And I said, “Well George, you’ve just invented a new form of the tragedy of the commons. You’re locked in this system and you can’t fix it. You’re going to go to a tragic hell in a handbasket, if going to hell involves being once the great leader of the world and finally going to the shallows in terms of leadership.” And he said, “Charlie, I do not want to think about this.” I think he’s wise. He’s even older than I am, and maybe I should learn from him.

Basically our leaders know we are in a horrible position and are counting on dying before the full consequences of their actions take effect.

it's funny how HN says outsourcing manufacturing is fine and has no negative consequences while going into a fury at the suggestion that software engineering can/should be outsourced. Both result in short term gains but long term negatives

pas2• 4 years ago

wow, that's some high-density bullshit.

But which nation is going to be growing faster in economic terms?

well, likely both. because of trade and specialization. when the US offshored shoemaking people did not just went to the beach and called it a day. both capital and labor got reallocated for better returns. (yes, not everyone moved to the service industry, unfortunately not everybody was able or willing to change to different jobs/sectors.)

maybe even having more and better atomic bombs

even one is plenty.

If you try and talk like this to an economics professor, and I’ve done this three times, they shrink in horror and offense because they don’t like this kind of talk. It really gums up this nice discipline of theirs, which is so much simpler when you ignore second and third order consequences.

was it at a xenophobic libertarian economists party?

anyway regarding higher order effects and long-term strategy and American "interests":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKVQDUQR8I4&t=117s

and https://reason.com/2022/06/07/globalization-is-alive-well-an...

nineplay• 4 years ago

Yes, it will be expensive, but then I'll just buy fewer pairs

This is key though, it presupposes everyone can buy fewer pairs. There are probably a lot of people who get by on one pair of sneakers - particularly children, who are going to grow out of them anyway. These are the people that will suffer if $300 shoes become commonplace.

hintymad5• 4 years ago

There are probably a lot of people who get by on one pair of sneakers - particularly children,

I assume that the increase of income will compensate the increase of price. Or I certainly hope so.

RC_ITR• 4 years ago

What you’re describing is “inflation” and based on how mad people are about inflation now, I fear your vision is fantastical

hattmall2• 4 years ago

Why in the world do you think it would take $300 to buy a pair of shoes???

Like what? You can buy all the raw materials for 10 - 15 dollars (way less in bulk) and a single person can make a pair in under an hour with minimal training.

Manufacturing things in the US doesn't have to be vastly more expensive.

The greatest revolution right now is the ability to do small scale manufacturing. Now the issue is that most of the equipment IS still being made in China. That's because manufacturing in China is small scale. Even on a large scale it is still just a lot of people together doing small scale manufacturing.

They don't have the crazy advanced automated processes like you see in the stereotypical american factory with lots of parts whizzing down automated assembly lines. They just have thousands of people putting things together by hand or with modest equipment.

hintymad5• 4 years ago

I was thinking of the price of shoes in the late 80s when Canada and US had not outsourced their shoe manufacturing, and my mom told me that it would cost more than $200 to buy a pair of decent shoes. Now adding inflation and subtracting tech improvements, I came up with the $300 number. The point is that I'm willing to pay more to see US as productive as when it was in post-WWII era.

tacocataco6• 4 years ago

Would 3d printing be considered modest equipment?

If not now, then soon as the technology matures.

whoomp12342• 4 years ago

your hope implies that the greed will balance and workers wont simply just be exploited all over again.

immigrantheart2• 4 years ago

Anyone else excited for de-globalization and slower economies/development? I can't think of any negative consequences of these.

On the other hand, these seems to be positives for me:

- less diversity

- less multiculturalism

- less polarization (due to 2 above)

- hopefully more inward progress looking/more defensive nations and less invasive nations

- slower tech/innovation, people can catch up with life, lawmakers can catch up with regulations

- better for the environment

I welcome the downvotes, but please give thoughtful replies.

TheCowboy• 4 years ago

The problem is you're posting these bullets without a thoughtful explanation. You're going to need a fragmentation of the internet to truly stamp out diversity and multiculturalism. Why you would want to do that? I don't know, but good luck with embracing non-existent cultural purity.

I'll pick on the "less invasive nations" part which is wishful thinking. If you have America or any multilateral global order among democracies, you're more likely to have nations trying to get away with what they can with their neighbors. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the most recent glaring example of this, except the responsive was unexpected by many. We only have all of human history of empires and warring countries as examples. This doesn't result in a balanced less polarized global equilibrium. Less cooperation among countries would be worse for the environment even if you ignore the war aspect.

immigrantheart2• 4 years ago

The fragmentation of the internet simply shows that the topic is worth it. You seem to be quite triggered by it though, which makes it even worth it.

danbolt• 4 years ago

As someone who grew up in an environment of multiculturalism, I’ve really appreciated the richness, friendship, and intellectual stimulation it’s brought into my life. I’d be quite hesitant to take that treasure away from the children of tomorrow.

People sometimes talk about this deep-seated immutable tribalism people supposedly have, but I find a lot of it comes from leadership that espouses that thinking.

bashmelek• 4 years ago

I’d argue that multiculturalism is a misnomer. I can’t speak for GP, but I sympathize with the fear of cultures being eroded and replaced with a largely corporate global monoculture.

banamamma• 4 years ago

Is there any data that backs the claim that the US is "protecting" the world's seas? Like a list of incidents where the US navy intervened to protect vs the times other countries intervened?

Without that I suspect "protect" really means "control" the seas. And if that's true - why would one country losing control of the sea mean the end of the world? Also not convinced that that automatically implies any sort of instabillity.

jtode• 4 years ago

I've been thinking for the last few years that ships moved tons of goods using just the wind for centuries, and that nowadays, autonomous schooners that cross the ocean are more of a basic engineering challenge that would require no miracles. Further, these schooners could probably be fully or mostly solar-powered - if it's wind that moves them, their operation basically means running some motors and such to adjust the sails.

Which is to say, with some adjustments in our expectations of speed and a concerted effort of building the new system, there is no reason not to think that global trade could continue indefinitely without relying on oil.

No reason, that is, other than pirates, which is the one problem I have not solved in my daydreams about these ships of the future. The one essential ingredient for such a vision, is a world in which humans do not, or at least rarely, steal.

So this is not so much a counter to the article, as a lament. Humans can accomplish a lot with some effort, and they can prevent good things with even less effort, sadly...

bacan• 4 years ago

Has anyone else been noticing an increasing trend of people dooming & glooming over low population? Just seems like fear mongering to me. Specially with all the automation today

The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

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