Thread by @Dry_Observer

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast I believe we will have a world government.

Either before or *after* the technology for nuclear weapons - and equivalent weapons of mass destruction - is as widespread and easily employed as the technology for an electric toothbrush.

Before leaves us a much larger population.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast You will notice with this pandemic, all the research China made in weaponizing coronaviruses since 2015, and the increasing distribution of do-it-yourself biotechnology, that in many ways we're already there.

You'll note I'm doing what I can to give us time.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast From the technology to track weapons of mass destruction globally using generative adversarial networks.

To the ability to map illicit flows of wealth and targeted psychological operations.

But while the solution is clear, to a large degree, I'm not making that argument.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Circumstances are making it for us.

If you've noticed in the last 5 years, the "community of nations" has not been working that well in a sovereign-state system.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast As to the functions of a united, representative government, the United States does work, despite endless external efforts to subvert and undermine it, our willingness to tolerate this aggression, and far too much internal support for it, or willingness to be used.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast If anyone has an idea of how the world could plausibly work without a world government, I'm more than happy to hear it.

Even as a stopgap solution.

But we're running out of time.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Let me add, the globalization we've been engaged in for the past few decades has simply been the sovereign-state system with more trade and a few more agreements.

With the United States and her closest allies serving as a stand-in for a world government.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Only without the authority or taxation.

Essentially a US/NATO/EU/G7 core, along with a few other key allies.

With everyone else either trying to work with that core, or trying to find every crack and weakness to exploit them.

Or a bit of both.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Incorporating everyone in a world government would clearly be difficult, as the last 5 years have illustrated.

Russia tried to overthrow our government.

Russia, China and Iran pushed anti-vaccination and anti-mask propaganda on Americans online, during a pandemic.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast One which had already killed hundreds of thousands of us.

But again, what is the plan - however vague or farcical - for surviving the mass distribution of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats?

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast In the last five years we've seen nuclear proliferation, a pandemic weaponized as a WMD - if only via anti-vax psychological operations, vast theft of Western intellectual properties, the exposure of staggering networks of transnational organized crime and intelligence networks.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And the attempted overthrow of the US government.

The island of Jersey can sit offshore from France as a personal, undemocratic possession of the Queen of England with 2 trillion dollars registered there - much of it apparently laundered, or evading taxes.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Crown Colonies have all been carved out as sovereign exceptions to the rules of international finance.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And there are even stranger things afoot.

We just had Russian hackers sabotage a major piece of US infrastructure as a routine matter. The fuel supplies for a 100-million+ people in the most-powerful nation on Earth, held hostage by petty criminals or Russian intel cutouts.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Russia, serving as a sovereign safe haven for their own cybercriminals and leveraging that underworld for their own intelligence operations, engages in many hostile activities without consequence.

How many nations allow terrorist networks to take up residence?

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Or lack the power to stop them?

Or fall to them entirely?

We've seen what a 20-year war of retaliation from just one act of terror has come to.

The original leadership and organization destroyed, but at enormous cost.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Will we perpetually do it this way?

Constant attacks, whether financial, psychological, biological, terror or low-intensity warfare, until we go to war again? And again?

Nations like Russia doing everything short of full-scale invasions or nuclear launches?

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And using a nuclear arsenal - or some other stockpile of devastating weapons - as blackmail against any meaningful reply?

Is that state of affairs sustainable?

If not, what alternatives are there?

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Much has been made of the great benefits the US derives from a relatively peaceful world.

These are real, though everyone benefits from that.

And some nations literally exist because America and her alliances shield them from open assault.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But we're expected to act as the de facto world government without the authority, the taxation or even the resources.

Worse, we're trying to play by the rules in the face of adversaries who increasingly scorn all of them.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast This isn't about abandoning what works.

The world moved from the family to the tribe to the village to the city to the nation over the course of millennia.

The US has been key to this last period of shaky stability.

But remember, since the fall of the Berlin Wall...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast We've had the Russian mafiya taking over the US mafia, tens of trillions of dollars in offshored wealth for tax evasion, trafficking and money laundering, 9/11, 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, the Syrian civil war...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast The use of nerve gas by the Syrian government on their own civilians in their own capital, the 2008 financial crisis, the attempted overthrow of the US government, a pandemic deliberately exacerbated by China, Russia and Iran and so forth.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast The defeat of Russia's coup in the US in the 2020 election, or the January 6th insurrection, wasn't a fait accompli.

It could have gone either way.

So we stand at the precipice, often unseen, every day.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And endlessly oblivious not so much to what we have suffered, but how well it's been going.

One pandemic?

With the harvesting of obscure, lethal viruses and/or genetic engineering, we could have had 10.

Or 50.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast One pipeline shutdown?

We could have faced attacks across all of our infrastructure, all at once.

One coup?

You only need one.

If it succeeds.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Again, faced with so many hostile actors across the planet, how world governance emerges isn't a moot point.

What happens without it, perhaps, but not the road to that end.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast There is the simple coming together in a meeting of all powers to forge such an agreement, but other considerations aside, most nations will not be surrendering sovereignty, particularly in a compact with hostile countries, without being utterly terrified of the alternatives.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And we're trying to avoid the mass-death route, for obvious reasons.

The most-obvious alternative path, at this point, is ironically the seemingly status-quo option.

We've already gone past a tipping point in how America can handle global affairs.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast In theory, we do not have the authority, taxes or resources to continue in our role as the fill-in for an actual world government.

Neither alone, nor in concert with our allies.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But in practice, we can take on those powers to a very significant degree.

And largely by exerting authority on ourselves, more so than others.

How?

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast We've been over this before, but between the oceans of financial evidence, from cryptocurrency, to the mandated reports from Coinbase to the IRS on many of their +/-43-million customers, to other exchanges, to suspicious activity reports...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast To FinCEN being able to demand cooperation from any bank in their investigations lest US banks no longer be permitted to countersign them - which ends you as a bank, to the Panama and Paradise Papers, to the US NDAA unmasking the ultimate beneficial owners of LLCs...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast To banking reforms and transparency laws in Switzerland, Cyprus and the Crown Colonies...

To the head of the IRS and the Secretary of the Treasury commenting on the likelihood of trillions of dollars in US tax evasion...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast We can assume the US is going to start taking all of that money back.

And everything purchased with it.

And using our immense authority in international finance to wield force at an incredibly precise scale, internationally.

The precision makes it very hard to fight.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast No one is willing to lose everything to save a single offshored bank account.

To keep a single perpetrator out of prison.

To preserve single network or cartel.

The Second Economy of the criminal underworld will not become the Second World of the Cold War.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Everyone with that kind of influence will be filtered out, stripped of their wealth and power, and brought down.

Thousands at a time.

Perhaps even a few million will be chastised, given time.

Not every crime or act of tax evasion is a capital offense, after all.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But the offshored wealth is far from the limits of America's unseen power.

We have agreements about recklessly expanding our money supply with other allies, but in practice, there's a great deal of flexibility there.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast And as the global reserve currency, we suffer fewer consequences from expanding our supply of cash.

This possibility inspires fury from many discussing the hyperinflation suffered by post-war Germany in the face of military defeat and crushing reparations.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But the real fear is that a nation which generates so much of the world's wealth will realize they can bypass debates and fund whatever they want.

Within reason, of course.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But the means is there, and will likely only be neglected in coming years because of the trillions of dollars in recovered wealth from asset forfeiture, back taxes, and fines.

Finally, there's the small detail of how much our adversaries built everything they have on us.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Russia has oil, gas and weapons sales, whatever their intelligence and mafiya seized of the US mafia money-laundering wealth and other underworld assets.

China has a manufacturing economy built on exports, and has had a trade deficit with virtually everyone besides the US.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Leaving any massive financial leveraging of their economy.

China has also engage in immense and pervasive theft of intellectual property from the US and her allies.

Then there are authoritarian economies driven solely by fossil fuels, and the criminal regime in North Korea.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast The underworld money of the Second Economy is fast coming to an end.

Between America's ability to seize everything back, and to map and track everything, and the increasing ability of generative adversarial networks to trace drugs, weapons and human trafficking...

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast That wealth will be strip mined away.

The IRS has made it clear their going after everything, and the last US NDAA made tracking the money and trafficking networks a requirement under US Federal law.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Fossil fuels are likely to be decimated as a major source of profits with a decade.

The supply-demand tipping point is too precarious, we're moving rapidly away from oil, and it's not a question of just the overall volume, but the real profit per barrel which is critical.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast China is facing too many consequences of their past actions, from Uighur genocide to intellectual-property theft to everything going on with the pandemic.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast There are plenty of reliable, lower-wage manufacturing partners to source from, the US is moving to source more domestically, and advanced nations can automate assembly lines.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Particularly in industries at last deemed to critical to put at risk overseas, especially in the hands of avowed adversaries.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Perhaps most important of all, in terms of taxes, authority, and resources, is America's ability to generate and deploy emerging and disruptive technology.

With a vengeance.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Our adversaries have made it clear they intend to leverage every emerging technology they can to their benefit and our detriment.

Along with any other resource that comes to hand.

Which seems clever, until America accepts that the rules have changes.

Which we have.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Our would-be rivals and conquerers have spent 5 years trying to knock over the chessboard when they couldn't win by any legitimate strategy, while we have gone to great lengths to calm them down and try to keep them in the game.

But we don't have to play this game at all.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast We can rewrite the rules at any time.

Technologically, scientifically, financially, economically.

The Great Game requires not only our patience, but our participation.

We no longer require the chessboard.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Over a hundred years of American restraint has not only been felt in our reluctance to go to war, or our desire for an international rules-based system.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast America's desire to avoid sweeping away the foundations of industries and economies at our convenience has been underappreciated.

But not unfelt.

Oil and gas and coal are in various stages of sunset.

Outdated weapons are following a similar path.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Low-wage industrial manufacturing has reached its effective limits.

And still, they play their games.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Fusing that kind of power in America isn't a long-term vision.

You'll note, many of the people first to betray us were among those most loudly proclaiming their patriotism and aggressive championing of our values.

While taking coin from any source they could manage.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast But democracies and the rule of law may help pave the way to a better future.

In our bodies, we filter out the toxins in what we bring into ourselves.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast It may be that a more effective application of our laws and a continuing expansion of the actual community of law-abiding nations will serve the same purpose.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast We've almost forgotten the TTP - the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

And certainly it's European counterpart, the TTIP - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

The TPP would have merged the US and a host of Pacific economies under a single market and set of rules.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast The TTIP would have effectively done the same thing with the US and the European Union.

Lost in the last Administration's dismissal of President Obama's trade deals - and the cries of many other critics - is that the US would have stood at the heart of it.

@ericgarland @ProfPaulPoast Two vast wings, merged together in a single point of mutual contact.

America.

We will see what the future brings.

Once more, if you have a better plan, or even a farcical one, I would love to hear it.

Anything would be better than blind faith or fatalism.