The World in 2030?

[Ice_Tyrant]

The South will rise again.

 

[Tahuti]

Having said that, I don't think that concerns over adding new constituents come even close to the relevance of international pariah status or the military difficulties inherent in maintaining control of conquered and restive territory.

Quite the opposite in fact. Nowadays, countries generally accept international pariah status and insurgency over accepting the conquered as equals, which would render the former two points moot. Israel could have annexed Palestine and made the Palestinians Israeli citizens. That would mean Israel wouldn't face any international pressure and the Palestinians themselves would have little reason to oppose Israeli rule anyway - because they would rule Israel! Needless to say, Israeli politicians would never accept that, because they would basically surrender their own powers, which is something no sane politician would ever do.

 

[Dachs]

Quite the opposite in fact. Nowadays, countries generally accept international pariah status and insurgency over accepting the conquered as equals, which would render the former two points moot. Israel could have annexed Palestine and made the Palestinians Israeli citizens. That would mean Israel wouldn't face any international pressure and the Palestinians themselves would have little reason to oppose Israeli rule anyway - because they would rule Israel! Needless to say, Israeli politicians would never accept that, because they would basically surrender their own powers, which is something no sane politician would ever do.

Israel is possibly the most unique case in the entire world in that sense - the ostensible avatar of a self-segregated ethnoreligious group which itself has been preoccupied with its own purity for over three millennia. It's not a representative case at all.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

There is no one best metric for whether a state qualifies as a superpower or not; it's generally agreed that it's some sort of aggregate of various forms of soft power, e.g. ideological, cultural, economic, etc., and hard power. Some of that stuff has to do with population; some of it doesn't. Some of it can even theoretically be ******** by having a high population without the capacity to properly manage it.

You're right, and I didn't say that bigger is always better. My point was that Japan's size and population doesn't meet the minimum requirements to become a superpower while China's does. Therefore bringing up the Japan craze of the eighties is not a good counter to today's China craze.


Btw you're missed in the Mass Effect 3 thread .

 

[Dachs]

You're right, and I didn't say that bigger is always better. My point was that Japan's size and population doesn't meet the minimum requirements to become a superpower while China's does. Therefore bringing up the Japan craze of the eighties is not a good counter to today's China craze.

Perhaps, although I'm not sure that population had much to do with why Japanese economic power receded so drastically in the early 1990s. Then again, I don't know much about the crash there at that time.

Btw you're missed in the Mass Effect 3 thread .

Meh.

 

[Core Imposter]

The South will rise again.

Since you brought it up..................

I do expect that in the aftermath of the total and utter destruction of the dollar, which is certain to happen within the aforementioned time frame, and in the aftermath of the general global nuclear exchange which is also a lead pipe cinch, that the new confederate political structure of the next Republic will be centered around the surving red states and habitable rural areas of former liberal territories. This will be the new South.

Advice for all: Move away from the cities.

 

[kramerfan86]

You must have a radically different definition of "sure thing" than most people.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

Since you brought it up..................

I do expect that in the aftermath of the total and utter destruction of the dollar, which is certain to happen within the aforementioned time frame, and in the aftermath of the general global nuclear exchange which is also a lead pipe cinch, that the new confederate political structure of the next Republic will be centered around the surving red states and habitable rural areas of former liberal territories. This will be the new South.

Advice for all: Move away from the cities.

Where exactly do you come up with this stuff?

 

[Murky]

Who can say for certain.

The optimist in me says it's going to be a lot better in 2030 than now.
The cynic says it will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

 

[wilycoyote]

You're right, and I didn't say that bigger is always better. My point was that Japan's size and population doesn't meet the minimum requirements to become a superpower while China's does. Therefore bringing up the Japan craze of the eighties is not a good counter to today's China craze.


Btw you're missed in the Mass Effect 3 thread .

I would say the point isn't about this population limit of yours twenty years after the fact. The point is that projecting countries to triple (or more) in economic strength (and whatever else) isn't very reliable. Smart people have tried to do so in the past and failed.

China may rise, but SO much will have to happen that anyone saying it is a given is AT LEAST overstating things, if not demonstrating complete arrogance and ignorance.

China will have to liberalize one way or another. A small group can't repress more than a billion people forever. The liberalizing force of globalization, the Internet, etc. won't allow that to happen. Perhaps the Arab Spring illustrates this. IF China expertly deals with that transition, which will take decades, then this projection of Chinese power becomes much more plausible.

Personally, I would expect, before Chinese dominance, some kind of paradigm change. Perhaps the actual beginning of a global government? Perhaps global war will change everything? Perhaps global warming will lead to the fall of all large centralized governments as food and water become ridiculously difficult to find and people everywhere riot? Perhaps oil will run out and which ever countries deals with that one aspect the best will be all powerful?

 

[Lord of Elves]

Since you brought it up..................

I do expect that in the aftermath of the total and utter destruction of the dollar, which is certain to happen within the aforementioned time frame, and in the aftermath of the general global nuclear exchange which is also a lead pipe cinch, that the new confederate political structure of the next Republic will be centered around the surving red states and habitable rural areas of former liberal territories. This will be the new South.

Advice for all: Move away from the cities.

How entirely convenient. It must be a comforting thought that only the liberals are going to die of thermonuclear explosion, fallout and radiation. Who exactly is going to fire these nukes, and at whom?

 

[kramerfan86]

I just think its cute he seems to think that some how all the cities will be nuked but the rural territories between them wont be irradiated wastelands.

 

[Narz]

No idea, just taking it one year @ a time! Hopefully I'll be living sustainably & productively surrounded by friends & family & many of the pressing problems of the modern day somehow have been or are on the way to being solved.

Don't believe we'll have flying cars or personal robots. People have been saying we'll have those in a few decades for almost a century. I'll be happy if we all still have electricity, hot water & the Internet.

 

[Vylinius]

I hope to be done with college by then. I don't know what I'll be doing. Maybe, I'll be an author, a photographer? or maybe just a history teacher. I hope to be married and be thinking at least of starting a family by then. I hope technology will have advanced some what. Maybe we'll have a way to treat Alzheimer's disease. I hope that the world is more at peace by then. I am not on the Kony 2012 bandwagon but hopefully his group (I forgot what it is called) and any organization including legitimate military organizations that commit similar actions are brought to justice. I also hope to be still posting on this forum. Hey by then I'll be a veteran of this place!

 

[AlpsStranger]

Where exactly do you come up with this stuff?

He's deep in some kind of epistemic closure. It may as well be a parallel universe.

I've read a lot of blogs/websites inside the ultra-ultra-conservative bubble. It's fun if you have the time.

 

[warpus]

Half-Life 3

 

[Skwink]

I expect to be in firm control of a small empire by then.

 

[luiz]

Agree with everyone who says trying to predict how the world will look like in 2030 is an useless exercise in futurology.

But...

Guys, saying that China will be the world's largest economy is not so much futurology as it is mathematics. The best guess by the likes of The Economist is that China will overtake the US in 2017-2018. That's close enough to feel it. Even if the Chinese growth slows down substantially and the US resumes its pre-crisis long term growth, Chine will be #1 by the very first years of 2020's.

So there's no way China won't be the world's biggest economy by 2030, save if an apocalyptic event happens (say, Cultural Revolution v2). This isn't the same as those cretinous "Japan will be the next superpower" predictions of Paul Kennedy and co., it's a palpable reality getting closer in tremendous speed.

Now, does this mean that China will be the most powerful country in the world by then? Probably not; the Chinese themselves don't think so. The US has a considerable technological/infra-structure edge, and even if the Chinese GDP becomes bigger, that doesn't mean they'll be able to spend as much on stuff like the military. The US can invest more because its population is already rich, and most of the civilian infra-structure is already adequate.

When China will become in fact more powerful than the US is indeed a futile exercise in futurology.

 

[luiz]

Found The Economist's calculator for when China will overtake the US. You can input our own estimates and it gives us the date!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/12/save_date

Their best guess is 2018, the very conservative scenario (that is, China growing half of what it does today) leads to 2012.

 

[Cutlass]

Where exactly do you come up with this stuff?

He's clearly assuming "true conservatives" will win every election between now and then to bring about that outcome.