Peter Zeihan
- Thread starter Cherico
- Start date
f1onagher
Well-known member
I tend to think he suffers from the common predictive afflictions common to economists and he's done the same damn lecture since 2015 with only minor variations, but he proved to be rather correct about fracking and more correct about Trump than most so I tend to turn him a listen from time to time. More importantly, he's entertaining and succinct which is far more important than it should be.
I like him, but I'm always leery of people telling me what I like to hear and I like a lot of what I hear from him.
Also, I like his style so would it kill him to feed my starving mind some new information. Get a new spiel!
I like him, but I'm always leery of people telling me what I like to hear and I like a lot of what I hear from him.
Also, I like his style so would it kill him to feed my starving mind some new information. Get a new spiel!
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I find that every six months or so there's another 5 minutes of new material in his presentation(s).
He's a very engaging speaker, which is good, but I wonder how much he over-emphasizes the importance of his own field in people's thinking.
As a plus, compared to a lot of other economists, he does understand that people aren't often thinking macro-economically, and that the last predictable state of certain trends is 'then chaos happens, and I have no idea what comes out the other side.'
f1onagher
Well-known member
Was listening to a few of his interviews on the road and when he talked about how he did research he brought up an interesting issue. Back in the day, most major newspapers had foreign offices that reported on events in other countries. With the rise of social media and digital communications most if not all of these offices have been shut down and with the exception of the occasional roving reporter all foreign news is picked up over the internet and reported from that information. It certainly explains a lot about modern reporting.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
No, the internet and social media only exuberated that situation. 24/7 reporting and focusing more and more on the profit motive (and all that it entails, including outright lying in some respects) explains modern reporting.
The thing is, Bush Jr., for all his faults and insecurities, tried to give the GOP a way out of its current situation by trying to get the Latinos aboard the SS GOP. Problem is, the party itself told Bush Jr. to literally fuck off. That is why Texas is going blue: the GOP has been fucking over the Latino voter block so hard that they have to go Blue in order to not get a more modern rendition of the shit the Nazis pulled (which are happening now with the ICE centers).
The problem is that dubyas faults and fuck ups pretty much tainted all of his efforts.
After what happened in new orleans, Iraq, and the great recession the man was tainted good and to be perfectly honest he completely and utterally deserves his bad reputation.
As for Texas going blue, thats possible but we are also going through a political realinment and that means our politics will be disfunctional for at least 10 years and that no one knows what the parties will look like when its finished.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
No, he had the same flaw as Grant in the fact that he's too trusting of his friends, which leads to bad situations... and from what I gathered it was partially the fault of Louisiana that the situation at New Orleans got as bad as it did.
Lousana politics being utterally corrupt is a given, that's why when there is a disaster that affects the most strategically important port city in the country you send out your very best people onto the ground, and you run rough shod over the state and local government until the crisis is over. Then you let them take some of the credit for the recovery after you fixed it.
And you defiantly dont' put some one who's previous experience is with horsies in charge of Fema EVER. There are jobs for pure political postings FEMA is not one of them.
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As for trusting his friends, putting your country ahead of your friends is a central part of the job.
And then theres Iraq, which became a hidiously expensive war of choice that ended up distabalizing the region and some how making it even worse.
Care to provide some statistics for that champ?
Because I find that claim to be fucking fascinating, considering no respectable political science major has ever asserted that the GOP of being supported by a significant voting bloc of white supremacists or white nationalists. I mean, I'd really be fucking interested. Let's go down a list of respected geopolitical minds, shall we?
Peter Zeihan?
George Friedman?
Robert Kaplan?
Tim Marshall?
None of them.
So please, fucking illuminate me.
Because of all the voting blocs, the whole "kill dat wetback" bloc hasn't come to my attention. Or maybe that's just my white privilege. C'mon, show me the statistics. From a respectable geopolitical or political scientist. Not some blue haired spinster with a hooch as dry and barren as her face.
went in and looked at the photos of the detention centers.
Their actually not that bad some of them seem to be nicer then where I currently live and nicer then some of the communities I've lived in.
A few of them do need work but they look like buildings that have been scrambled together to deal with a crisis and even then their nicer then a lot of the fema camps set up after New Orleans was hit.
Their actually not that bad some of them seem to be nicer then where I currently live and nicer then some of the communities I've lived in.
A few of them do need work but they look like buildings that have been scrambled together to deal with a crisis and even then their nicer then a lot of the fema camps set up after New Orleans was hit.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
It's pretty simple; when you're looking for an offense, for conditions to somehow be inhumane, you'll find it.
The pictures I saw were nicer than the homeless shelter I once stayed in.
The blatant manipulations, like the whole 'go drink from the toilet' thing, really just highlight how the outrage-driven left are looking for an excuse for what they already believe to be true, not looking for proof that can show it to be false or not.
To loop back around to what the subject is about, for a lot of us patriots, this is something to be aware of with Zeihan; don't let the fact that his outlook says the US is an extremely strong position work into a sort of confirmation bias, just because you want that to be the case.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Zeihan isn't wrong about us being in a good position; though I will admit, it's entirely possible that we could throw away every advantage we have, if the far left somehow manage to get into power. I mean, it's not like they've shown themselves to be hesitant in throwing everyone else under the bus, out of some misguided attempt to prove their moral superiority. An extensive expansion of welfare, combined with open borders, would probably be enough to cripple us as a country in less than a generation, if not outright kill us.
The derail about ICE has been moved to a new thread, if anyone wishes to continue this discussion please do it there:
f1onagher
Well-known member
I'm not convinced it will. Gun control is just never going to fly in Texas, its why Beto danced around it when he was running for senate, and immigration isn't quite the easy wedge issue it is in California. Things may go purple, but as Cherico has mentioned the parties are still rejiggering and I don't see Texas sticking with the commie-friendly party once things settle out. Trump is a huge turn off for lots of moderates in the short term, but I'm watching the Democratic debates and they just look like one long Republican attack ad from where I'm standing.
We can screw up a good thing, but unless we let other polities get set up inside our little habitat I think we're largely safe from a strictly geopolitical standpoint. (i.e. We don't starve or get invaded.) At the end of the day, America has always been its own worst enemy.
Returning to the actual topic at hand I do find some of Zeihan's tentative predictions interesting. Like Japan being a winner in the future and the possible return to a psedo-imperialism. Like, in a world with globe-spanning weapons systems, satellites and nukes how does imperialism work anymore? Is going to be the low key 'investment' stuff China is doing in Africa or will there be resource extraction colonies again? The world just seems a bit too small for more than one or two empires these days.
Because the US is the only nation with those globe spanning weapons systems and satellites while nukes get sidelined hard; and the US isn't all that interested in stopping other powers from playing games so long as those games don't harm the US.
Starship is going to result in the US being both functionally immune to ICBM's and SLBM's along with having prompt global strike and 24/7 global surveillance within a decade; and no one else is going to be able to match that capability for a long time after.
Seriously, the only thing holding back Star Wars today is launch costs. Once Starship is proven, LockMart is getting that contract about a day later. Starlink is a nice communications platform, but imagine doing the same thing with surveillance satellites; again that is a contract the NRO is issuing about a day after SpaceX proves the entire concept viable.
Now imagine putting twenty thousand cruise missiles into LEO for a constellation able to precision target any square meter of the planet in fifteen minutes and virtually immune to interception; all targeted by a surveillance network that can (day or night and regardless of cloud cover) provide real time global coverage accurate enough for targeting purposes.
All of that is only economically possible because of the launch costs that Starship promises. And the US government isn't going to allow any US launch provider to launch any National Security payloads for foreign nations, nor will it allow them to launch any massive constellations. Even with a crash program, everyone else is at least a decade behind where SpaceX is today. And that assumes that those nations can find the billions to throw at the problem, and that the US is willing to allow them to compete.