Iran, the Red Sea, and the West (tm).

[Lexicus]

I hope you realize how stupid this post is when you consider that the word "capitalism" did not even exist before 1850.

Aw gee, I had no idea!

And also this is really more a conversation about the end of the American imperial superstructure, it's some can't-analyze-jack's who want it to be a pointless cry for the end of capitalism. End of capitalism? We've still yet barely gotten it started. Not even atomic hellfire can end the power of industrial production. Capitalism might as well be stronger than ever once "American discipline and morality" has finally asphyxiated to death. This is a conversation about how capitalism is the very thing that has no more use for the American empire.

Ah, now this is more better. I don't entirely agree with this (or at least I think declarations of the death of American hegemony are premature) but at least it's an actual argument.

 

[Narz]

Ah, now this is more better. I don't entirely agree with this (or at least I think declarations of the death of American hegemony are premature) but at least it's an actual argument.

Is it? Care to translate?

 

[Crezth]

That's nothing new. I don't think most militaries try to 'win' wars anymore. That seems to be an outdated framework of what war is and who it serves.

Right, so, signs this thing is wearing out: the mittelklasse manufactured consent lines now try to explain why losing wars is a sign the empire is actually more invulnerable than ever. Because “winning” wars is pointless. Said nobody trying to conquer someone and take their sh** ever.

 

[Narz]

Right, so, signs this thing is wearing out: the mittelklasse manufactured consent lines now try to explain why losing wars is a sign the empire is actually more invulnerable than ever. Because “winning” wars is pointless. Said nobody trying to conquer someone and take their sh** ever.

Doesn't seem we need to win wars to dominate, cultural and economic control is more important.

War is profitable. It makes more money for those who benefit to keep it going than to win quickly just as it makes more trillions for health care to monitize twenty different illnesses for the last twenty years of someone's life than getting anywhere near the root of any of them.

Are these systems 'wearing out'? Maybe, maybe not, I thought environmental and fossil fuel issues would've hit a breaking point over a decade ago.

No one knows.

But if the US goes down the rest of the world will come along as well.

 

[Crezth]

Cultural and economic “control,” yeah. Right. Someone’s been playing a bit too much civ I think. Yeah, war is profitable. But it’s even more profitable when you win, capisce?

 

[innonimatu]

Doesn't seem we need to win wars to dominate, cultural and economic control is more important.

War is profitable. It makes more money for those who benefit to keep it going than to win quickly just as it makes more trillions for health care to monitize twenty different illnesses for the last twenty years of someone's life than getting anywhere near the root of any of them.

Are these systems 'wearing out'? Maybe, maybe not, I thought environmental and fossil fuel issues would've hit a breaking point over a decade ago.

No one knows.

But if the US goes down the rest of the world will come along as well.

No it won't. The current world's oligarchs, they fear going down. But the world won't go down with the end of the US "empire". That empire is just wasting away, fragmenting.

The US empire, a kind-of almost worldwide sphere of influence, wasn't based simply on brute material power. It wasn't an old-fashioned territorial empire, like the British Empire. It wasn't even based on cultural influence. It was based on a deal: protecting and promoting oligarchs in each country, in exchange for them making the countries they controlled vassals. It wasn't a classical empire, it was a federation of mobs with a ring-leader.

But the mob families don't stay in their places for long. It's like in The Godfather. Some oligarchs go their own way because they reach a point where they no longer need any protection. Some get offended and risk going their won wany. Some lose power despite the protection offered (hard to invade every country where leftists take political power, and some never fell). The US protection for the comprador oligarchs was not so much military (there was that, repeatedly, but there is such a thing as imperial over-extension) as it was "rules-based": ease of hiding stolen money, "international organizations" to blackmail and prescribe pro-comprador politcies, a model of media corruption (corporate advertisers, oligarch owners...) directed from the imperial centre, "non-governmental organizations" to spread bribes among the up-and-coming upper classes in wach country, co-opt the most ambitions - all of these were handy, they were the carrots for enticing vassalage. And there was also the stick, to threaten those who disobeyed the "rules-based order" with, ultimately, direct military attacks. Some examples now and then, and harpies like Madeleine Albright saying that half a million dead iraqui children were a good price to put Saddam in line, or Hillary Clinton with we saw and we killed, these were suppose to be enough to keep the mob, pardon me the "rules based" order going. They were not faux-pas or lips, they were deliberate messages: the mob boss making its threat plain.

All this fails when teh US ceases to be the foremost military and economic power. The carror and the stick are no longr the best carror and the biggest stick. The mob breaks up. Does not vanish, unfortunately. But the families go each their own wayy, the capo di tutti capi becomes just one more mob boss squeezing the shopkeepers and workers in its own territory. Bad news for you, as american, because that predation which now snacked around teh world is going to be having to feed more and more on you anmd your fellow citizens... and those of the remaining vassals, of course. Europeans are in for being the big snack in the short term.

There's home the oligarchy in the US itself may collapse when it reaches the poing where it can only feed on its captive population. They are getting afraid. So are their compradores in Europe, most noticably in Germany. Journalists in the US are openly getting out of line, and saying that there are factions within the state bureaucracy that see the whole thing crumbling and try to warn against proceeding down the current path.

 

[Crezth]

I agree with the plan of eating Europe. All in favor?

 

[Lexicus]

Only if I get to eat Italy myself.

 

[Narz]

That empire is just wasting away, fragmenting

Meh, still the world's economic and cultural superpower home of most of the largest & most powerful corporations.

I think this is wishful thinking.

 

[Crezth]

I disagree actually, I think society is doing things while some people age and masturbate.

 

[amadeus]

I for one cannot wait until we are as prosperous as Cuba, as free as Iran, and as efficient as Zimbabwe.

If there is a secret oligarchy out there, we should be doing our utmost to keep it running as well as it does.

 

[Estebonrober]

I for one cannot wait until we are as prosperous as Cuba, as free as Iran, and as efficient as Zimbabwe.

If there is a secret oligarchy out there, we should be doing our utmost to keep it running as well as it does.

I'll take Cuba's healthcare and pharmaceutical policies done on USA Inc. scale tyvm. Iran Theocracy sucks and Zimbabwe I can't speak on... our oligarchy is failing us, how can you not see it? just the disparity by itself should be enough to convince you...

 

[Lexicus]

I for one cannot wait until we are as prosperous as Cuba, as free as Iran, and as efficient as Zimbabwe.

Mob soldier laughing at the businesses he and his colleagues burned down for not paying protection money

 

[innonimatu]

Meh, still the world's economic and cultural superpower home of most of the largest & most powerful corporations.

I think this is wishful thinking.

It's faling. One current example, to illustrate this.

A faction in the US military played its usual stupid games: attempting to stay in occupation of a country after it was ordered out, and after the state department acknowleged there was no legal basis for keeping a military base in this country and would withdraw. Niger. It had worked in Iraq, right?

Not just Iraq. The Pentagon refused Trump's order to withdraw from Syria, and repeatedly delayed the steps for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In consequence they had to flee Kabul in helicopters from embassy rooftops, Saigon-like. Afghanistan showed the start of imperial collapse for the world to see: the Taliban, noticing the betrayal of the agreement they got, simply moved to take power and caused any atempt to retain bases to fail. The NATO vassals present there that still believed in US imperial might were caught by surprise and had to flee in haste.

Now Niger, having a much weaker military than Afghanistan's Talibans and unabel to compel the US military to leave by their own force... simply called in the other big military that has been defearting US weapons systems one after teh other. The rest of the world notices who is winning and who is losing wars. The russians. The world is multipolar already. As this US base in Niger was for spying, they cannot operate with the russian military nearby spying on them, so they will have to leave.

Thse are stupid games because a part of the US military and administration is trying to resist a change that has already ocurred, without having the material material ability to stop the trend, much less reverse what already happened.

These news are just footnotes in western media. But they are seen outside that space. Which is why the arabs already defected, the turks ceased caring about the EU, asians refuse to enter anti-china alliances, and no one plays stupid sanction games but the remaining vassal states. The rest of the world has moved on. The US has lost the capability to intimidate even very weak countries like Niger, they can triangulate in a multi-polar world. Without that ability there is ony... I won't call it cultural influence because there is nothing cultiral about it, propaganda about the faded strenght. Deceiving the vassals to keep believing that the superpower is still the superpower, so that those at least don't defect. But reality intrudes. France got kicked out of Niger also. The glorious ukranian project to collapse Russia instead collapsed itself, and very visibly disarmed NATO. Except those few that refused to go along with it - Turkey, probably now the second military power in Europe, after Russia. So much that the "europeans" are now having to talk about rearming. And starting to discover they lost the capability to run any large-scale war industry, having de-industrialized and created a financial system that is contrary to industrial planning and investment. The ruling oligarchy would have to voluntarily abdicate, restructure the economy in a manner detrimental to their social position, in order for rearmment to succeed. But the whole point of rearming was using military power so that they could keep running rackets overseas, retaining their power. So this is a contradiction, not a solution.

I will grant this "cultural influence" one thing: it still fooled most european NATO countries to count on relying on the US to win wars for them. Much like Israel, btw. But it was the folly of their own governments that led them to intervene in the war against Russia. It took no american push. Much like Israel's stomping of Gaza also. I saw the germans much more enthusiastic about it than the US. The ruling class in these vassals really, really wanted to believe the master and fooled themselves. Drunk on their own propaganda. It will be just desserts for them when the US takes its ball and goes home. Won't stop them from blaming the US though.

 

[amadeus]

Mob soldier laughing at the businesses he and his colleagues burned down for not paying protection money

I think the whole mob thing doesn’t make any sense: why would we, if we could, allow other countries to get rich then? We are pretty lousy racketeers when Poland and Korea, two countries that used to be poor, can start going around and eating our lunch.

 

[innonimatu]

I think the whole mob thing doesn’t make any sense: why would we, if we could, allow other countries to get rich then? We are pretty lousy racketeers when Poland and Korea, two countries that used to be poor, can start going around and eating our lunch.

National interests are set by the groups in control of political power in each nation. The US has groups that do not care much about where they make their money. They do care about remaining in control, but even now I don't think they feel threatened and any need to worry about that. For decades they managed the state power they controled recklessly: they could get away with that, such was its capability.

But oligarchies are national, based nationally at least, that's why I compated them to mob families in a compact. The South Koreans have a very well-centered one - they'll shake out the US when they feel it's time. So will the japanese. SK and Japan played their game long and carefully, and benefitted from the relative lack of control by the US in the western Pacific: China never looked tame, the needs of the korean war prompted the reindustrialization of Japan, Korea know how to exploit off-shoring. So did China, which actually copied others. So Japan and SK managed to prosper even while acting as vassals.

If you want a more complete vassal status, and a de-nationalized oligarchy, look to the UK as an extreme case. There the ruling groups did sell out outright, I don't think they feel any connection with the country or any need of a base there:

Britain has been singled out for special treatment. The investment made by the US into the UK outweighs its spending in the rest of Europe combined. This is not just because we have a shared language and we were on the same team in the Second World War. Our political leaders have actively courted this takeover. Voters have been told that foreign direct investment, or FDI, is an unequivocal good; it means foreign investors building new factories for grateful British workers. The reality is that a lot of this “investment” is US private equity firms helping themselves to British companies that are cheaper to buy (thanks to our less buoyant financial markets) than American businesses. This is good for the financial sector, which profits from the boom in buyouts – in 2022-23 alone, US private equity firms bought 181 British businesses – but it means swathes of companies come to be owned by people for whom local employment is not a concern. The UK has lost two million manufacturing jobs since 1991. Our political class is well aware of this. Our Prime Minister worked for an American investment bank and a hedge fund based in California; his personal wealth today is largely predicated on how the New York Stock Exchange values his father-in-law’s company, Infosys. The Chancellor is a multimillionaire because the company he founded, Hotcourses, was sold to a foreign (Australian) buyer.
Sometimes it is the government itself that sells our assets overseas. Hanton highlights the 5,000 railway arches, home to thousands of small businesses, that Philip Hammond (as transport secretary) compelled Network Rail to sell at a very affordable price to the US private equity giant Blackstone. Rents promptly doubled, putting many small companies out of business and destroying jobs, but Hammond was satisfied to have created decisive change: the civil servants who had previously managed the commercial property were, he told Hanton, “hopeless people” who were “bureaucratically unable to ever get anything done”. Lord Hammond is now a partner at the private equity firm Buckthorn and a person with significant control of seven property development companies.

But I think the UK is an exception, the conloy-colonized with the elite finding it can shift effortlessly from one place to the other. Most countries do have some authonomous, different culture and barriers to that movement, however fond of cosmpolitanism their elites may seem. This concentration of US business in the UK shows that, it cannot be accidental.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Meh, still the world's economic and cultural superpower home of most of the largest & most powerful corporations.

I think this is wishful thinking.

Not really. It is obvious to me that the USA and more generally the West, has lost its lead.

Let us look at one very simple performance metric; 2023 Steel Production, in million metric tons

China 1019.1
India 140.2
Japan 87.00
USA 80.7
Russia 75.8
S Korea 66.7
Germany 35.4
Turkey 33.7
Brazil 31.9
Iran 31.1



from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production

Of course one can try to deceive oneself by pretending that crypto currency, derivatives
trading, financial services and intellectual property rights are more important.

 

[Narz]

Let us look at one very simple performance metric; 2023 Steel Production, in million metric tons

And SouthEast Asia probably produces a lot of clothes compared to US and Europe too but would you imagine they make more money off of fashion? It's not the 1800s

 

[EnglishEdward]

And SouthEast Asia probably produces a lot of clothes compared to US and Europe too but would you imagine they make more money off of fashion? It's not the 1800s

Yes they do produce a lot of clothes, and they are getting bored with western brand names driving
down prices and lecturing them on employment practices, while taking the largest profit share.
That won't last; they'l follow the SHEIN and TEMU models to sell direct to western consumers.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I think the whole mob thing doesn’t make any sense: why would we, if we could, allow other countries to get rich then? We are pretty lousy racketeers when Poland and Korea, two countries that used to be poor, can start going around and eating our lunch.

What on Earth are you talking about? Neither Koreas or Poland is eating your lunch.

Besides, Poland and South Korea pay their dues. This is like asking why the loan shark doesn't monster the man who gets his loan repaid on time.