🤌

I don’t know what Omeagle is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

I ain't gay but I love me some eNuts 🤣

#eNuts

#Cashu

My daughter wanted chicken wings from Buffalo Wild Wings after her volleyball game win yesterday. Take a guess how much a 12 wing plate cost. Closest without going over will be zapped.

*The hubs and I used to pay 10 cents per wing from BW3 in dental school.

airport beer at 11am is always the move

So I read a little about Zeihan's views and watched some of his YouTube videos now. I can see why people might compare my argument to his -- he definitely makes a few of the same arguments.

But Zeihan strikes me as falling into a analytical approach to understanding the world that I simply don't subscribe to. Other examples of this are Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer.

Now, all three of these men have clearly different political views and come to different conclusions on various things. Zeihan certainly doesn't seem to share Chomsky's analysis of Ukraine war. But I think they both make the same mistakes.

They tend to view the world like a chessboard, and their theories of state action are derived from what I believe are cartoonishly simple reducios on how states make decisions. They tend to view everything through the lens of institutionally-entrenched motives of action, that treats the leaders of states and states as the same thing, and that the interests of people (like Putin, George W. Bush, or Xi Jinping) are intrinsically inseparable. In fact, they're treated like hapless puppets against the backdrop of often pernicious intractable interests. Explanations like bravado, miscalculation, ignorance, etc. are not really treated as serious candidates for a theory of state action in any case.

I happen to think these are very good theories for explaining state action in many cases.

Peter, who?

One major reason I'm pretty cool on the predictions of severe and sudden U.S. decline, is some factors nobody ever talks about.

1. The US is one of the younger countries in the world, with a growing population -- China's population is in rapid decline because of the hangover from the one-child policy. And birthrates have not recovered and continue to decline.

2. The US remains far and away the top destination for immigration in the world.

3. North America is insanely resource rich. It wouldn't be cheap or easy, but the US and Canada in particular have resources in the ground that can substitute out most mineral dependency. Including lithium and rare-earths like neodymium.

4. The US and Canada are food superpowers. Between these two countries, they produce well in excess of domestic demand, and are massive food exporters. Especially to China. China recognizes this, and has been in a rush to replace food exports from the U.S. and Canada with imports from places like Brazil. While they've made material moves here, the dependency remains very high.

5. My worries about AI aside, recent advances in artificial intelligence have demonstrated that US-based companies continue to enjoy serious advantages in terms of R&D.

These are structural advantages that were very important to the rise of the US to begin with. And they're structural advantages that persist today.

These factors matter regardless of inflation or the monetary regime.

For all of these reasons, political and moral arguments aside on whether or not the US *should* persist or decline, these factors should cause one to hedge their certainty that US collapse is certain.