What did Spain produce? 😂
It collapses when they (anyone) tries to expand the empire without having the gold to do so. Debt instruments didn't exist, there was not banks issuing loans for high rise apartments 😂
So the gold in the coffers need to increase.
Soliders won't fight for free...
Exactly my point! Spain produced nothing. That’s why all the gold couldn’t save them. They became a giant import economy living off colonial wealth instead of building productive capacity.
Meanwhile, England and Holland were building shipyards, textile mills, and trading companies. When Spain’s gold ran out, they had nothing. When other countries’ trade got disrupted, they still had industries.
Isn’t that the same trap we’re in now? Living off printed money instead of building real productive capacity?
Well that's the thing too, British textiles were just imported from India. At the time, India had 33% of total global GDP, it's biggest export being textiles. Briton dismantled and destroyed that industry, usurping it to create "production" although it wasn't theirs.
Same in China with the opioids. This allowed for the transfer of wealth to the small island.
Even today, all financial flows go through London, to their offshore islands for safekeeping..
You’re 💯 right about the colonial extraction. Britain did destroy India’s textile industry to create their own. But here’s the thing: that kind of wealth transfer only works temporarily and requires massive state violence to maintain.
The countries that got rich and stayed rich were the ones that built actual productive capacity, not just extracted it. And today’s financial flows through London? That’s the same extractive model, skimming off the top of other people’s productivity.
I will argue until the end; Bitcoin eliminates that middleman rent seeking entirely. No London clearing houses, no offshore havens, just direct peer-to-peer value transfer.
So, why do you think American warships are in Venezuela?
The Americans perform merchantilsm as a means to redress their printing spree in 2020. They literally blew up gas pipelines to force Europe to buy from them Only. Now they seek to invade Venezuela, after several failed coup and assassination attempts in the past two years, under the guise of 'drug control'.
You’re connecting the dots perfectly. When you can print unlimited money, you can afford unlimited military adventures to secure resources and markets. It’s the same extractive playbook, just with aircraft carriers instead of colonial armies.
This is exactly why sound money matters. Under a gold standard (or Bitcoin), you can’t fund endless foreign interventions because the money actually has to come from somewhere real, taxes or productive output.
The printing press enables the empire. Cut off the printing press, and suddenly “spreading democracy” becomes too expensive to sustain.
Mate, if you want a crystal ball, just follow oil and gas.
The energy markets will explain EVERY geopolitical move ever made.
We don’t need a crystal ball, the empirical evidence is before us. Energy is the foundation of everything. Without energy, you can’t mine, manufacture, transport, or even think (your brain runs on glucose). Every economic activity is essentially energy transformation.
Ya and the thing is, if your money can't pay the soldiers....
History doesn't repeat but it most certainly rhymes
Well this is why Trump is trying to get factories and production back., but doing it at the expense of the Europeans
After all, they are deindustrialising Germany, Europe's biggest and most important economy.b
They literally blew up their gas pipelines and forced them to buy American gas at higher prices.
So again, here you see merchantilsm.
China since Deng Xiaoping has literally pulled itself out of poverty into prosperity through almost one thing entirely: production.
It came at a human cost, a national cost, and also uses debt (keyenisan) but still, it succeeds because of production
Exactly! You just proved Smith’s point perfectly. China got rich through production, not financial engineering. And you’re spot on about the pipeline situation being classic mercantilism.
But here’s the key difference: China’s debt is mostly invested in productive capacity (factories, infrastructure, technology). Western debt goes to consumption and financial speculation.
Well China also had the Evergrande crisis which was basically debt funding the growth, specifically into housing. 'ghost cities' became more profitable business with low interest rates, then it flipped when the production stopped (COVID Lockdown) and then it cracked.
In other words, when it works it works really well, but when production stops, then the debt markets collapse, see 2008
Agreed.
