←back to thread

America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

(www.molsonhart.com)
842 points putzdown | 9 comments | 15 Apr 25 13:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
wormlord ◴[15 Apr 25 14:34 UTC] No.43693350[source]▶
I think the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires. The issues with the US being the reserve currency has been known for a while now (and was even predicted by Keynes before the Bretton-Woods summit):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma

Any discussion of "bringing back manufacturing" that doesn't mention government spending or social programs to educate and upskill the population is not genuine. The current leadership are fools and ideologs who will only hasten the decline, which might actually be better globally if it lowers emissions. Time will tell I guess.

replies(5): >>43693440 #>>43693988 #>>43694150 #>>43695222 #>>43705262 #
Herring ◴[15 Apr 25 14:41 UTC] No.43693440[source]▶
Empires come and go, that's just a fact of life. The question was whether they'd fall back relatively gracefully like (Western) Europe, now with multiple countries ranking at the top of "World's Happiest Countries", or whether they'll become Russia 2.0 with the biggest guns, richest oligarchs, and the worst quality of life.

It's still far from played out, but right now they're solidly on the road to Russia 2.0, with decades-long trends pointing that way.

replies(2): >>43704392 #>>43738527 #
1. potato3732842 ◴[16 Apr 25 12:13 UTC] No.43704392[source]▶
The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.
replies(3): >>43704598 #>>43706771 #>>43708577 #
2. wiseowise ◴[16 Apr 25 12:33 UTC] No.43704598[source]▶
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...

Very graceful.

replies(1): >>43705141 #
3. potato3732842 ◴[16 Apr 25 13:19 UTC] No.43705141[source]▶
The sum total of the fatalities column on that page is joke compared to even the most optimistic assessment of how the British middle east or French Indochina went, and that's before you add in all the crap in Africa.

Edit: You could probably even include the current Ukraine shindig and my statement would still hold.

replies(2): >>43706480 #>>43707275 #
4. Herring ◴[16 Apr 25 15:05 UTC] No.43706480{3}[source]▶
Yeah in retrospect I could probably have phrased that a little better!
5. s_dev ◴[16 Apr 25 15:36 UTC] No.43706771[source]▶
The fall of the Soviet Union was anything but graceful. Within months of the dissolution of the USSR Russia had children becoming prostitutes in order to get money for food.
replies(3): >>43707000 #>>43708563 #>>43738547 #
6. selimthegrim ◴[16 Apr 25 15:57 UTC] No.43707000[source]▶
In 1986/87 top USSR newspapers were covering high class prostitution for foreign businessmen in Moscow hotels. A few years later, foreign currency prostitute was ranked among most desirable occupations for women in an anonymous poll.
7. Danmctree ◴[16 Apr 25 16:23 UTC] No.43707275{3}[source]▶
The toll was far greater than just that of conflicts. If you look at increased mortality during the period you'll see excess death in the millions. Wiki says 3.4 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Un...

In absolute terms it's one of the harshest death tolls in the last decades. It's far from a joke. Though for completeness, AIDS was also going on there and it's hard to tell from the stats the proportion of impact

8. dh2022 ◴[16 Apr 25 18:09 UTC] No.43708577[source]▶
I think the current Russia-Ukraine war is the delayed end of Soviet Union collapse.

Boris Yeltsin in Aug 1991 called for "Russian Federation to reserve the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic" [0]. Yeltsin did that for a couple of weeks - until Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine's last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and Republic of Ukraine's first president) said he will not support Yeltsin in dissolving USSR. By then the Baltics were already independent countries, but Yeltsin still needed Ukraine's Belarus' and Kazakhstan's support to get rid of Gorbachev.

So Yeltsin acquiesced the borders at that time, four months followed up with the Belovezha Accords and USSR dissolved without a fight a couple of weeks later.

I think what we see today is are some repressed conflicts being fought out in the open.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/27/world/soviet-turmoil-yelt... - free to read with NYT registration

9. ViktorRay ◴[19 Apr 25 18:51 UTC] No.43738547[source]▶
The Fall of the Soviet Union may not have been graceful to the Russians but it was certainly graceful to the people the Soviet Empire was exploiting in Eastern Europe.

People in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and so on probably would use the word graceful to describe the USSR's end.

(And yes I know Poland wasn't part of the USSR but it was a satelite state).