Post: #1

Y'all need a history lesson.

There seem to be a few people who don’t really get what’s happening out there vis-à-vis globalization and the scale of change that is happening right now. To accept what is happening you have to go more than a few centuries back and understand all kinds of factors that have been at play but for now this chart will suffice



Let that sink in for a moment. For all the people who tend to parrot the greatness of Western Civilization this chart might not be something they can digest easily. Interpreting this chart is crystal clear the #1 and #2 economies and civilizations on Earth for the better part of 1600 years were China and India. The decline in these two ancient civilizations corresponded to the advancement in naval technologies made by Western Societies and what follows is one of the most tragic periods in history which people are still furious about till this day. Wealth from India /China etc was systematically re-distributed back to European nations by force and the creation of pseudo markets. China’s ports were forced to cede to European control and raw materials were exported to European countries at knock down prices , manufactured using European Labor and sold back at inflated prices. The second method was widely used and led to the rise of various Euro colonial powers that got rich on the back of breaking local economies elsewhere literally - France , Netherlands , Belgium etc. On a side note , this was why the first thing the great man Gandhi did was encourage local produce of cotton and this move led to the decline of the cotton mills in Lancashire. There is a fascinating story behind this by the way – they say Gandhi’s first stop in the U.K was the Lancashire mills and people told him he would be lynched because he had cost the local populace their jobs. This was a picture taken after his visit. Speaks volumes about the man



Winds of change started gathering at lightening pace something which seemed to bypass Churchill completely . Indian and Chinese revolutionaries were gaining ground and the concept of nationalism was being talked about in these two wounded civilizations. The phrase ‘revolution is in the air’ was probably the most apt saying to describe the atmosphere at that time and the rise of Hitler meant everything was going to reach breaking point soon. The chains of colonialism were broken , India’s success inspired countless nations worldwide and soon one by one they broke free. Algeria , Indonesia , Vietnam , Nigeria , Ghana the list is endless. Europe lay in ruins after WW2 and had to survive on American handouts to re-build.


Out of these ashes and times of great turmoil a nation geographically isolated from all this that had been growing it’s economy at a steady pace and was strategically placed to take advantage of all this. The benefits of the war towards American manufacturing is well documented and the local industry benefited greatly from the free-market. There was one problem which in hindsight should have been obvious. While the free-market might have originated in America , it benefited only America at that time because it was still in it’s infancy and the political climate favored it at that time. By it’s nature it owes no allegiance to any nation. Fast forward a few decade and Euro nations which had not had a bad experience of outsiders allowed American capital to flow in and embraced the free market allowing them to re-build nations in a time-span of forty to fifty years.


Meanwhile other nations , still completely wary of outside influence shared a mistrust of the free-market and adopted the Soviet model of central planning. It did not help that for a while it looked like American Imperialism was simply replacing European Colonialism leading to the rise of one of the greatest revolutionary so far –El Che. China was bogged down by the disaster of the cultural revolution and India the most multicultural society on the planet looked as though it would spilt up along linguistic lines and was caught up in wars with Pakistan , setting up the Non-Alignment movement , and liberating Bangaladesh.

They say time heals everything and finally the moment which would change everything forever arrived in the 1960’s when a man known as Deng convinced China to adopt the free-market first in small steps. It’s overwhelming success meant it was clear the path China needed to follow now. India followed suit in the early 90’s and the rest as they say is history. Various nations in Africa a continent that suffered from ethnic groups being pushed together too soon with the drastic withdrawal of Euro nations have managed to finally move past this and are clocking impressive growth rates.


The concept of American exceptionalism was never a concept grounded in reality and the world in twenty years will prove it. Globalization is now an unstoppable force and It is true that it benefits emerging nations far more than developed ones. It’s legacy will probably be equality in various parts of the world and the creation of a global work force. In the short term , as described since various constraints have been removed there will be a decline in living standards in America etc and an increase elsewhere in the world till parity is reached. It is also clear than when the two nations China and India finish their free-market revolution they will absolutely tower over the USA in terms of economic might and the knock on effects will be fascinating but a topic for a different day.

The age of America is coming to an end and we will all witness it in our lifetime. China is now within striking distance of the world’s largest economy and the rest are close behind and in some criteria’s the convergence has already more or less happened. Protectionism is not the answer and never will be.

Good luck! It’s a brave new world.

Post: #2

(07-16-2015 04:47 PM)filly Wrote:  For all the people who tend to parrot the greatness of Western Civilization this chart might not be something they can digest easily.

Please tell me about the people who parrot the greatness of Western Civilization today on this forum.

G

Post: #3

(07-16-2015 05:00 PM)Geomann180 Wrote:  

(07-16-2015 04:47 PM)filly Wrote:  For all the people who tend to parrot the greatness of Western Civilization this chart might not be something they can digest easily.

Please tell me about the people who parrot the greatness of Western Civilization today on this forum.

G

Dude's a race troll who's rapidly going around and posting gay shit in a couple different threads, in addition to shilling for China.

Post: #4

Head on over to the Latinos in California thread brah. Quite a few jingoistic idiots over there who probably have the same IQ level of the 'Aztecs' they're 'slamming'.

I suspect i'll get banned for this. No issues, right wing Whitey's are incapable of accepting critical analysis on their behaviour past and present and prefer to blame it on nonsensical issues like immigration from non-white countries.

EDIT : Right on cue. Lol, in the short few days i've been here it's depressingly predictable. You can slam any race and culture you want but the moment you call out Whitey you're gonna get banned and get called a 'race troll' - whatever the fk that means. Loving the hypocrisy brahs. Keep it real.

Post: #5

(07-16-2015 05:05 PM)filly Wrote:  Head on over to the Latinos in California thread brah. Quite a few jingoistic idiots over there who probably have the same IQ level of the 'Aztecs' they're 'slamming'.

I suspect i'll get banned for this. No issues, right wing Whitey's are incapable of accepting critical analysis on their behaviour past and present and prefer to blame it on nonsensical issues like immigration from non-white countries.

EDIT : Right on cue. Lol, in the short few days i've been here it's depressingly predictable. You can slam any race and culture you want but the moment you call out Whitey you're gonna get banned and get called a 'race troll' - whatever the fk that means. Loving the hypocrisy brahs. Keep it real.

Go ahead and make a race thread about blacks. Or jews. Or latinos. Or whatever race.

Same result.

G

Post: #6

I find that a huge majority of people who talk about the coming "Chinese century" fail to recognize China's massive internal problems. That also doesn't mention several companies shifting their operations back to the US because it's actually cheaper to manufacture in the US.

Here's another interesting question: if the Chinese are dominating the world, why are they relegated to stealing American technology?

Post: #7

Somebody's mad they can't get white girls.

Got a strawberry blonde gonna be here in an hour.

You mad, bro? Yeah, you mad.

Post: #8

Filly you should use your smarts for good instead of all this. Why would you wait years to join here then blow it in four posts ?

Post: #9

In before the lock.

Post: #10

Banned. I'm shocked.

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Rudyard Kipling

Post: #11

IQ need not remain constant among a country or civilization over time.

Populations can shift over time due to migration (in or out) and/or conquest, increasing or decreasing a country's IQ via personnel changes.

IQ can change among an in situ population over time via differential breeding rates between the relatively smart and relatively dumb. Cochran and Harpending, Clark, and Unz have written about this with respect to the Ashkenazi Jews, English, and Chinese, respectively.

Post: #12

Yes. I have a great idea:

Let's create a race troll thread to combat the other race troll threads.

Post: #13

(07-16-2015 05:16 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:  I find that a huge majority of people who talk about the coming "Chinese century" fail to recognize China's massive internal problems. That also doesn't mention several companies shifting their operations back to the US because it's actually cheaper to manufacture in the US.

Here's another interesting question: if the Chinese are dominating the world, why are they relegated to stealing American technology?

Meh. Long time lurker here but I just thought I'd chime in. I've been living in Shanghai for the better part of 3 years and I just have to say not many people really understand China. The guys here probably just travel to some rural area, hook up with a couple of poor women and shoot their mouth of in an attempt to sound worldly. You'd never hear any balanced perspective from them or you'd never hear that the new-money stylish Shanghai dudes rolling up in their Panameras clean house with Caucasian expat women when they want to.

That being said. Does China have structural problems? Yes it does but it is arguably in a far better position than the United States. Did anyone catch Yellen's interview yesterday? Hilarious, I thought the economy was in 'recovery' and doing super duper well but apparently a rate hike is enough to spark another recession. That is a technical discussion however.

As for innovation - it is simply a linear relation to size of economy. The building blocks of Math and Philosophy came from India and the Arab world when they were on top, Astronomy came from the Egyptians when they were on top etc. As China ascends to top spot we will see innovations start to come from there. There are already signs of it happening. The Chinese space station is on schedule for a 2020 launch and there have been whispers of people in NASA acknowledging that the Chinese will now play a leading role in space exploration. India's space program has also been doing fantastic things. They became the only nation to enter Mar's orbit on the first attempt on a budget less than gravity so yeah, times are changing.

I'm curious to know as to why the OP got banned. He posted in a tongue in cheek manner and made a rational argument but apparently he was 'race trolling'. There is some blatant garbage on other sections of this forum which are far more worthy of getting locked and banned.

As for the white hypocrisy aspect, I suspect most people would like to blame it on SJW's but the reality is that as the world becomes multi-polar more and more people are accurately pointing out the double standards.

Post: #14

How many more of these are there?
.. No "fitty" on the member list.

Post: #15

China will be licking the US's boot for a long time. If the Chinese want to be funny, they can expect a nice carpet bombing campaign on all of those adorable western funded factories.

Post: #16

Calling bullshit on OPs first chart. The calculations do not make sense given Rome and Constantinople were the largest cities in the world during their respective heyday.

The idea of measuring ancient civilazations with GDP is impossible because no one collected data on that sort of thing back then. All they can do is guess and its obvious they want to be SJW anti-west to look cool. To bad the facts about history get in the way. Largest cities then were are all in the West.

A lot of posts in here are misinformed and I will post more later.

Post: #17

(07-17-2015 05:47 AM)Rutting Elephant Wrote:  .. No "fitty" on the member list.

Huh? The mods are welcome to check my IP address. I won't be here much longer though as the pseudo-intellectualism bores me.

(07-17-2015 07:10 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  China will be licking the US's boot for a long time.

The reality is that both countries have each other by the balls but China is arguable in a better position with the proverbial 'Ace in the hole'. If anyone is in finance here they would know that the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank which was launched recently was massive news. It was barely whispered about in the USA but to put it into perspective it was born because the Congress blocked Chinese demands for more representation in financial institutions and when they announced AIIB launch the Americans warned against it. Now, the list of members basically reads the entire world minus the United States. Even, the Brits risked Washington's ire by joining. This is huge, as big as the Brits passing over the baton to the USA during the suez crisis. To put it simply a viable alternative to the petrodollar will come in our lifetime.

The Shanghai index collapse also represents teething problems for the financial markets but what is clear now is that the govt is committed to developing a more sophistical financial system which means easier access to capital in layman's terms.

I'm long China if it isn't clear and I'm long India too. While India started of with services, all the low grade crap has been moved to the Philippines and the have captured the quantitative jobs of the globalized world which benefited from the existing IT infrastructure in their country. The new leader there Modi is a man who means business too so we will see.

(07-17-2015 01:02 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Calling bullshit on OPs first chart. The calculations do not make sense given Rome and Constantinople were the largest cities in the world during their respective heyday.

The Roman empire ended in 27 BC and the chart starts from AD. Constantinople was a city and the chart is for regions demarcated according to modern day national boundaries. It's kind of hard to have a rational conversation with someone incapable of deciphering a simple bar chart.

It is also well known the Britain became great by the factors that the OP has correctly pointed out. I suggest you get reading

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ma...te-raiders

The sources seem to check out and if you thing these kind of things cannot be calculated you betray a complete lack of understanding when it comes to certain topics.

No one gives a shit about SJW's here. Like I said, I suggest when you travel you actually interact with locals and find out their opinions, their view on the world and their history. If you get the time read their literature too or don't and find yourself getting left behind in a changing world and blaming everything on SJW's.

Post: #18

(07-17-2015 02:27 PM)fifty Wrote:  The Shanghai index collapse also represents teething problems for the financial markets but what is clear now is that the govt is committed to developing a more sophistical financial system which means easier access to capital in layman's terms.

I'm long China if it isn't clear and I'm long India too. While India started of with services, all the low grade crap has been moved to the Philippines and the have captured the quantitative jobs of the globalized world which benefited from the existing IT infrastructure in their country. The new leader there Modi is a man who means business too so we will see.

I don't get this "the government creates the economy" attitude. The economy is not a government creation, it is the source of their loot. It's hilarious when you hear that their five year plan says "we will have 10% growth", as though economic reality is just a government dictate. Like "we have decided today, that there will be rain", and it rains. Let's not have any of the "this time it will be different" stuff. Let's not have a repeat of the "the Japanese are taking over the world" of the 80s, and replacing the word "Japan" with "China". They have banking rot, empty cities, real estate bubbles, and they are due for a crash. They also don't have an age demographic situation much different to the Japanese either, by the way.

The government is not where "a sophisticated financial system" comes from, it is an inhibitory influence thereof with its piles of regulations issued by know-nothing bureaucrats who demand people call them significant and pay them for their obstructionist 'services'. Financial markets come from businessmen, and those markets becoming "more sophisticated" comes from the competition therebetween.

From what I see, hear, and read, India is corrupt and dilapidated to a truly ridiculous level. Jim Rogers says the same. I remember reading an article about the coal industry, and the level of corruption was eye-watering, like people having to pay local mafia and government officials to permit coal to be loaded/unloaded etc from trains each time. I talked to a Malaysian guy and his description of doing business in India was the most opaque, random, heel-dragging, rent-seeking government regulatory delinquency I've ever heard. Stuff like giving bureaucrats gifts for every random bullshit form you had to fill in to do any kind of business whatsoever, as a condition for the form not remaining on the bottom of the pile till the end of time. I would not put money in India. "Modi is a man who means business" means nothing. Every leader paints themselves as someone who will fix things, and none of them do because they lack the power, the desire, or the ability.

Post: #19

Solid post Phoneix.

For the most part we are in agreement, I would just point out that a well developed financial system cannot be developed with proper support structures from the ruling government. It was a reference to the point that the OP made about many countries that became protectionist especially when it came to foreign capital.

Viz-a-viz India - Yes, it is a corrupt country but I am heavily exposed to it because the only way for it to go now is up. If you follow you will know that the elections last year destroyed the ruling Congress party and brought the right-wing BJP into power. As a reference point, the last time BJP was in power they exploded the bomb, flipped the finger at the USA, refused to sign the NPT and laid the foundation for liberalizing the economy which propelled India's early 90's rise. In the multi-party democratic system of India the upper house is generally fractured with various parties forming coalitions to survive. Now, the BJP has an absolute majority without an alliance and across a lot of states which mean even though India has a federal system he can push through what he really wants. BTW the coal scam was under the Congress and was ~200 billion USD.

The BJP govt has promised clean governance and removal of red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy. His record in the state he ran previously - Gujarat is positive with Gujarat having an excellent manufacturing base. The moves he's made with respect to inviting foreign investors and the amount of money that has already flown is positive. The idea to bring a manufacturing base to complement India's existing pharmaceutical, IT and service sector is exciting . The fact that it has the right ideas - democracy, independent judiciary and free press obviously do not hurt and I firmly believe India is on the verge of lift-off.

BTW something to look out for is India's defense industry. It has huge requirements and they used to import the bulk of their machinery from the Russians. Now they have secured rights from Russia, France, Israel for joint development which means transfer of technical know how and the government has already announced plans of manufacturing all their defense requirements locally very soon. Big things are happening in some parts of the world.

Post: #20

(07-17-2015 05:15 AM)fifty Wrote:  As China ascends to top spot we will see innovations start to come from there. There are already signs of it happening. The Chinese space station is on schedule for a 2020 launch and there have been whispers of people in NASA acknowledging that the Chinese will now play a leading role in space exploration.

NASA would love the extra funding that comes with a space race, so trotting out the Chinese bogeyman is a bit of a ploy. I would estimate the chance that China outpaces the USA in space in the next 20 years at exactly zero percent. Here is what NASA will have implemented by then:
1) James Webb Space Telescope searching for biomarkers in the atmospheres of exoplanets (among lots of other cool science)
2) Regular commercial crew flights to ISS by both SpaceX and Boeing
3) Orion taking astronauts beyond Earth Orbit
4) Venus lander, (Which to be fair the Soviets did in the 70s but their science data return was negligible. For example their soil sample probe accidentally landed on an ejected camera lens cap)
5) Multiple Europa flybys via jovian orbiter
6) Multiple additional Mars rovers; sample caching and possibly sample return
7) Asteroid Redirect, putting a 4m / 94 ton carbonaceous chondrite in high lunar orbit
8) Robotic satellite servicing in low earth orbit
9) Monitoring of secondary climate change forcers via PACE
10) Improved ice sheet and biomass census via ICESat-2
11) New Horizons freaking Pluto and Kuiper belt object flybys
12) Census of potentially hazardous near-earth asteroids down to 30m diameter
13) Fly the new Space Launch System, a Saturn-V sized heavy launch vehicle
14) Orbit the Sun to within 8.5 solar radii with Solar Probe Plus (8x closer than Mercury)
15) Return ~100g asteroid sample material with OSIRIS-REx

That's just a list of major projects. They have countless other instruments and tech development efforts, all done on 0.5% of the fed's budget, about $0.15/person/day. I'm disappointed not to include landing humans on Mars, but that project is as almost as difficult as everything on that list combined. Unless there is pressing national urgency, my estimate is that won't happen until 2050 and I hope I'm wrong. Possibly SpaceX will get there first, but they have a different funding model than the feds.

From a white paper the Chinese space program published in 2012, their long term goals are:

Improve their standing in the world of space science
Establish a crewed space station
Crewed missions to the moon
Establish a crewed lunar base
Unmanned mission to Mars

NASA did almost all those things ~40 years ago.

Post: #21

Engineer - when the word 'now' is used in the context of space exploration I'm sure you know what kind of time frame we're talking about. .

I'd agree with your time period though I'd say convergence within twenty years is well within the realms of possibility and from then on as China starts to assert itself as the most dominant economic entity on the planet it will be all China. The white paper is typical Chinese understatedness and in addition to the kind of secrecy their space program is currently operating in it wouldn't surprise me if they were even further along the curve than expected. These are the kind of people who barely uttered a word when they first managed to put their 'taikonauts' in space. If it were us we would've been screeching it to the high heavens making sure everyone heard us.

It's interesting you say 'commercial travel' to the ISS given the difficulties it is now facing. It could even stop running by 2024 if I remember correctly ironically around the same time the Chinese space station is expected to go live.

I'm curious about your opinion on Space X? Are you long or short it?

Post: #22

Pretty interesting study by pew for anyone who'se interested. In many metrics the convergence between the emerging and developed world has more or less happened so subtly we haven't even noticed it.

Post: #23

(07-17-2015 05:15 AM)fifty Wrote:  As for innovation - it is simply a linear relation to size of economy. The building blocks of Math and Philosophy came from India and the Arab world when they were on top, Astronomy came from the Egyptians when they were on top etc.

All those contributions were circulating throughout Asia, Europe and parts of Africa for many centuries, yet they were put to best use in Europe. Gunpowder is a good example of this: a brilliant invention by the Chinese, but it was the west that steadily developed and improved upon it up to the present day. Egyptian hieroglyphs sat without an audience in the Nile Valley for over a millennium before Europeans showed up and figured out what they meant.

Few serious thinkers will deny the many inventions of non-western peoples, but in the same way no serious thinker will deny the exceptional efficiency with which the west was able to adopt, codify, add to and further those strands into almost the entirety of technology we use today.

Quote:It is also well known the Britain became great by the factors that the OP has correctly pointed out. I suggest you get reading

If you were better aware of the history of south Asia, you'd be quite cognizant of the fact that the British didn't invent the policy of enrichment through the conquest of one's rivals. It was already an ancient thing by the time of Ashoka. The British were far from exceptional in this, they simply did it exceptionally well. I suggest you get reading.

Quote:Like I said, I suggest when you travel you actually interact with locals and find out their opinions, their view on the world and their history. If you get the time read their literature too or don't and find yourself getting left behind in a changing world and blaming everything on SJW's.

Most "locals" are more keen to blame the oftentimes chronic corruption, incompetence, tribalism and/or aloofness of their present governments more than European colonialism...and they're very right to do so.

Post: #24

Who is that Aamer Rahman bloke?

Only Europeans ever invaded other peoples' territory?

Ghengis Khan, the Ottomans, the Moors ; they were all European, were they?

Xerxes, that European bastard!

Post: #25

(07-17-2015 05:44 PM)Saga Wrote:  All those contributions were circulating throughout Asia, Europe and parts of Africa for many centuries, yet they were put to best use in Europe. Gunpowder is a good example of this: a brilliant invention by the Chinese, but it was the west that steadily developed and improved upon it up to the present day.

I think you've spectacularly missed the point being made.

When those civilizations were on top they innovated and pushed the human race forward, when the 'West' ascended to the top they took these contributions and pushed the boundaries forward just as whoever ascends next will continue to push the boundary of what we are capable of.

Fun fact : when ancient Hindu scientists had already predicted that the Earth was round and calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun, Galileo was yet to be born. Kind of puts the western centric education we get in school in perspective eh?

(07-17-2015 05:44 PM)Saga Wrote:  If you were better aware of the history of south Asia, you'd be quite cognizant of the fact that the British didn't invent the policy of enrichment through the conquest of one's rivals. It was already an ancient thing by the time of Ashoka. The British were far from exceptional in this, they simply did it exceptionally well. I suggest you get reading.

I'm more than aware of Asoka just as I am of the Mughal emperors who came to power after him like Shah Jahan, Jahangir etc after he took to Buddhism. None of these rulers systematically transferred wealth to a different geographical region and more importantly they did not destroy the existing education systems or create a 'false market' that has already been covered in this thread.

(07-17-2015 05:44 PM)Saga Wrote:  Most "locals" are more keen to blame the oftentimes chronic corruption, incompetence, tribalism and/or aloofness of their present governments more than European colonialism...and they're very right to do so.

Agreed. They are keen to blame these things too but definitely not at the expense of Euro Colonialism. It is still the defining historical theme in a lot of these nations and it is pointless to argue otherwise. Anyway, it's late now. Take care bro's.


The times my friend, they are a-changing.