HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Yeah, reading this post and encountering the section about the HRE, I'm surprised that Kulak did not simply predict that the US would devolve into a patchwork of "tollbooth kingdoms" just like what the HRE became.
Fundamentally, I think the challenge for the US in the future, and the solution to said challenge, ultimately comes down to culture, cf. the Noah Smith complaint about us not being a culture that builds. I think where I diverge with Kulak on this whole concept of "US dying of DEI globohomo" is that I think it eminently possible for culture to shift and for the US to get on some sort of "healthier" path of governance, of ditching unproductive ideas and ideological frameworks, before the US has to ditch them the hard way via total collapse.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Don't the people of these countries suffer from all their capable people seeking higher wages in the US?
Dunno about Guatemala, but Venezuelans suffer mostly from their country being a socialist shithole that, as yet, hasn't totally collapsed into anarchy. Venezuelans staying in their country and improving it to the point that immigration to the US is no longer as attractive first requires Maduro to be removed from power, along with Chavismo being purged so thoroughly to a degree that might look rather sinister.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I think the comment you're replying to is pretty much just FNE expressing an aesthetical-moral distaste for the concept, not exactly a disagreement on the technical aspects.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Yeah, those sandwiches you can get at 7-11 or Lawson probably are just literally built different compared to how it'd be done here in the US.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Presumably, it would have a chilling effect on no-knock raids as police chiefs and federal authorities get more antsy about using something that is only a few steps removed from the same lethal actions that lead to de facto race riots in 21st-Century America.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
We're calling them "YouTube edits" now? My aging Millennial heart hangs heavy on this day.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
"law makers trying to make it legal for you to sell your grandpa's private collection when he dies probably weren't trying to make it legal to buy and sell 150 guns, with no extenuating circumstances, in two years".
And yet, we are going to have more cases like this in time, I imagine, if they're not already happening, purely because the former will be indistinguishable from the latter, given the habits of gun owners (to speak more plainly: older people probably buy a lot of guns, thus, it is quite conceivable that a family that needs to ditch paw-paw's little arsenal might run afoul of the ATF through no genuine fault of their own).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
There is an argument that, as the de facto economic hegemon, the US should let as many people as possible come to the table to deal, but at the same time, as expressed elsewhere, there are fairly valid reasons for why the US has done the economic-warfare things it has done.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Yeah, reading that, my mind went to the Gundam franchise, but I don't think any series from that IP comes close to that description.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Isn't he still around?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I do remember people in the ratsphere saying during the Trump years that a realignment in both political parties was underway, so perhaps the definitional collapse is a necessary ingredient of that.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Hell, I just saw a Twitter shitpost where Russia repeatedly claims Ukraine or someone else did it, and not ISIS. If Russia is accepting that it was ISIS, that's apparently not being signal-boosted.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I also posted about this earlier.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
It is weird to see an anti-government anti-Tivoization rant given that I've always seen it as an anti-corporate position.
From some perspectives, there is little separation of business and state, so maybe this shouldn't be so surprising.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
In fairness, I think even the book's appendices and such almost tacitly imply that it might as well be Arizona's population stretched over an entire planet.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I think what ChickenOverlord is getting at is that Commando does contain more levity than just that one scene. John Matrix cracks quite a few puns and jokes during that whole thing.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I think 3 is the most likely candidate, helped along by 2. We've become sexually liberated in many senses, and yet, we've somehow also shied away from it in a way that may have also impacted on-screen romances.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
To echo the other replies to this comment, a modern military will need drones, but will also still need 4x4 vehicles (whether Humvees, JLTVs, or even just modified pickup trucks), transport trucks (so you still need GMC and International Harvester and the like), and men with rifles (which will be some flavor of AR-15, traditionally-milled or possibly even 3D-printed).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
This is a good point, but to echo VoxelVexillologist's comment below, I think pretty much the only reasonable response left is sink-or-swim: either Detroit manages to shape up and make the transition before they get the rug pulled out from under them, or the American auto industry will simply be forced to leave the Rust Belt and look elsewhere.
This would be disastrous if this was still the era of Who Killed The Electric Car?, but thankfully, we have something of an actual industry for EVs in the US thanks to one very-outspoken and intense tech CEO.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
And as I understand it, there's almost nothing in common between a car factory and a modern weapons manufacturer.
Well, perhaps aside from armored vehicles and firearms. WWII suggests that industrial capacity is fungible in some specific contexts.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Is that Jaibot? Did they move away from their own blog and onto Substack?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
That's probably down to culture in the Japanese business world.
Per a comment on your Substack post, I think you missed a bit of a trick: the shrinking of the material power gap in the modern era bears a similarity to that of the Bronze Age, and will be why a coming decentralization era might be short-lived: say that the Western hegemony does collapse, the US Navy is longer able to project power across oceans, and all because of weapons most anyone can have, what does happen when the supply chains that made those weapons are thus destroyed by the very same?
Pickup trucks are fairly simple, but still rely on a somewhat complex supply chain of materials, parts, and even labor that might be difficult to piece back together after a collapse. Drones rely on tiny electronics that are not easy to manufacture, and microchips are horrendously rather centralized at the moment. And, of course, whither missiles and aircraft, you better hope you have some smart cookies in your area to be able to design these weapons. Manufacturing is more capable of being decentralized nowadays, but I think it's still mostly pretty concentrated in certain areas for good reasons.
ETA: I suppose, if anything, you could always go back to the trope, as seen in 40K and BattleTech, of old technology still being used that has been long out of print, but I imagine that, in reality, it's horrid to be in a state where you're relying on aging hardware with an ever-dwindling supply of spare parts.
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