CarmineCatboy2

lathe

As I wrote in response to your question in the previous thread, why is there a need to accumulate trade surplus?

I think all countries are in a bind due to neoliberal hegemony. Being able to export a lot and accumulate currency via trade imbalances is the measure of success. Even the countries which benefit from the exploitation of the Global South like those of Europe, Japan and the United States also have this reflexive idea in their political consensus and end up making a lot of unnecessary missteps along the way. Europe should not be practicing austerity, it should not have cut off their neo-colonial relationship with Russia and it should just continue profitting, financially, from importing the fruits of cheap labour and selling it at an European Brand markup. And yet it endangers all of these things.

There is an understanding at least in discourse everywhere that the export driven models of the 1980s do not work any more; that some level of import substitution is economically desirable in the poor south and politically necessary in the wealth west. But it's all just words because financialized accumulation is how you measure success in the rich world and export driven imbalances is how you measure success in the global south.

China is of course on its own league when it comes to the export driven success as demanded by western institutions but its not the only example of such success. Brazil is in as miserable place as ever but it is also a best case scenario compared to, say, Argentina - where debt remains dollarized. And looking at Brazilian history, the last time the export driven paradigm was broken was due to 1929 and the Interwar Period. The Brazilian Elites had been talking about creating a 'national bourgeoisie' and implementing a form of national capitalism for a whole generation up to that point, but nothing was ever done until the 1930s murdered the landowner's ability to monopolize power and pushed the entire fabric of society to the brink.

Nevermind COVID or the Trade Wars. From where I'm standing China will talk about raising domestic consumption until raising domestic consumption is the only avenue for value creation.

There are americans who, to this day, maintain that the US did not lose the Vietnam War.

clippy at least had charisma after a fashion

1 percent of all humanity is still tens of millions of people with infinite money

Brazil's oil exploitation has an inertia all of its own, a century in the making. Picture a country slightly more extensive than the continental United States, but without anywhere near as much in terms of in built infrastructure of its geography, meaning natural harbours and navigable rivers. Granted, the United States in unique in its many blessings on that department. But Brazil's energy sources have been disproportionately shitty and scarce since the 1800s. In the coal age Brazil, like the rest of Latin America, only had access to substandard, hard to access and small quantities of mineral coal. In the oil age Brazil, unlike much of Latin America, simply did not have the oil to sustain its energy and transportation needs.

As the population grew and car driven development took off in the post war period, Brazilian nationalism gave way to a state owned oil company in the form of Petrobrás. But for the longest time Petrobrás was more of an oil refiner than an oil prospector because Brazil simply did not find anything that noteworthy within its continental shelf. All the massive prospecting that was not without its yields. Brazil did produce some oil here and there and did find surprising reserves of all kinds of minerals, including Iron. But the country only really struck oil in these final decades of the oil age, since the 2000s, with offshore continental reserves that it invested heavily into exploiting the shit out of. Today Brazil has maybe the 15th largest reserves of oil or something while being a top 5 oil producer. It is a disparity only slightly more lopsided than that of China and we all know the kind of energy demands entail being the world's factory and second largest by population.

There's just so much history as well as national, local and nationalist politics that go into fueling something like the oil exploitation at the mouth of the Amazon. The national education system is partially financed via these natural resource payments. States and municipalities pay off their debts with each other and the Federal government via their own shares. If Venezuela is a player in this story it is because the US offensive against both Venezuela and Brazil's refinery projects in the Caribbean cut short any sort of regional energy cooperation in the 2010s.

people might say that half in jest but planescape torment does randomly have jrpg inspirations

I don't think anything's ever really held them back but BG3's success and Sven's monarchical authority really does mean they'll do whatever the fuck they feel like doing. Which is probably for the best. If this is another Dragon Guy Action Game it will probably turn out better than if they churned D:OS3 out of obligation.

there goes my theory that the nobel foundation is principled. after all you can't get the peace prize if you don't actually deliver on a war beforehand

I understand that Germany starting WW3 4 times in a row was getting a bit stale but Iran destroying USEA is kinda on the nose lmao.

I think the open question is more towards to what extent the US will demand exclusivity. The Chinese and the Russians have complimentary spheres of influence in Central Asia in no small part because the Russians do not have the heft to be an economic guarantor and the Chinese do not have the desire to be a security guarantor in the region.

The US is a financialized oligarchy. The system of banking and finance which powers Chinese and Latin American investment and trade is theirs to destroy. They can't help themselves when it comes to, say, Venezuela's shitty oil reserves because stuff like that is easy to pillage and dole out in a centralized manner but I don't think anyone would dispute that China injecting US denominated capital into the continent to increase trade in US denominated debts, assets and goods makes the US stronger. And yet sanctions are issued anyways because at the end of the day the american oligarchy is not monolithic and the american state isn't supposed to plan or actually control anything.

People will say that the current deindustrialization of the US is untenable to the military caste and the working classes of the US so its politically unsustainable for the US to go on to remaining the asset manager of a world centralized on East Asian manufacturing. But, well, this whole Trump America First onshoring plan is turning out to be just another financial scheme to pillage the american commons and centralize assets in the hands of a sector of the ruling class. Much ado was spoken about grand plans to turn the world economy on its head but at this point if you only disregard personalized schemes like Lutnick's tariff deal it does genuinely seem like the US oligarchy just wants to use import taxes to ensure lower taxes on the wealthy which, incidentally, is the latin american way of doing things.

It's useful to draw a distinction here. American Liberal-Conservatives will always disapprove of Conservative-Liberal leadership and vice-versa. It's like how in the Obama era the Liberal caucus summoned incredible bloodlust towards Libya and Syria - their guy was warchief at the time so war was gucci.

Europeans on the other hand need this as a coping mechanism. The Reactionaries among them will rally against stupid shit like The Globalists because they can't reckon with the fact that Thatcherite and Reaganite Conservative World they live in economically hollowed out Europe together with Britain and the US. The Liberals meanwhile are married to the ongoing war in Ukraine in a way that the Reactionaries aren't, so they have less room for maneuver. Cue a discourse of European Nationalism of ambiguous strength and purchase outside of reddit adjacent spaces. Europeans by and large like the EU and european integration. Nationalist and Fascist politicians always turn flacid towards Brussels for a reason and that reason isn't just the will of the capitalist oligarchy that they are a part of.