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Balaji Profile picture
@balajis
Jan 2, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
This article by Mearsheimer and @stephenWalt from 2016 holds up well.

I think they'll eventually win the argument as the US, by necessity, moves away from what they term liberal hegemony and towards offshore balancing.

I do have two thoughts, though… 🧵
mearsheimer.com/wp-content/upl… ImageImage
First, there is actually a structural similarity between liberal hegemony and offshore balancing.

The entire NGO industrial complex doesn't want poor countries to become wealthy. In fact, it hates those who become truly independent via capitalism.

They want pets, not partners. Image
NGOs do have a self-interest, but it's undeclared. Their self interest is in being seen as saviors.

The alternative approach? Invest in the ascending world. Shared *risk* and reward. Capitalism is for equals, equal partners in the deal. @mwiyas @iaboyeji
priceonomics.com/what-happened-…
What's the key difference between investment & NGO-style charity?

With investment, the recipient can become *richer than* the investor. This is actually the best outcome. And from this, true self-sufficiency & independence.

By contrast, NGOs mean perpetual dependence.
So, in this respect, the current NGO model actually *does* have an aspect of offshore balancing to it.

It keeps the ascending world from rising, and then attacks those that manage to rise anyway.

It's humanitarian in optics, but (arguably) realpolitik in substance.
We can understand this via the fictional Diana Moon Glampers.

The power to make everyone "equal" is in fact highly unequally distributed, and this is the whole point.

The Handicapper General makes sure no one rises above the Handicapper General.
litcharts.com/lit/harrison-b… Image
Now to the second point, shorter this time.

While many of the liberal hegemons abuse the *language* of human rights, democracy, and rule of law to justify what is in reality a half-NGO half-neocon form of neocolonialism...that does not mean these ideas have no merit.
The alternative approach is to stop entrusting the protection of human rights to NGOs, neocons, and their proselytizing surveillance state…and to move instead towards internationally transparent networks, with both algorithmic & human checks and balances.
bariweiss.substack.com/p/is-bitcoin-a…
Why bracket NGOs and neocons, btw? Aren't they implacably opposed to each other?

In theory. In practice, the hard power allows soft power to get boots on the ground, and vice versa. The warriors & priests support each other, even if they don't realize it.
OK, wrapping up.

To summarize, the US likely will move towards a more realistic foreign policy. Something like offshore balancing, not liberal hegemony.

But the ideals the US arguably once protected & now does not aren't abandoned. They live on on-chain. foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bit…

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More from @balajis

Balaji Profile picture
Apr 8
REALITY PRECEDES PROSPERITY
I think we agree on one point and disagree on two points.

THE BUKELE ANTIBODIES
1) First, yes, force alone is not the recipe for an ailing country. Ultimately you need community. Latin America suffered from generations of drug dealing and money printing. So now they have developed antibodies in the form of crime prevention and Bitcoin adoption. And Bukele is the incarnation of those antibodies. But society basically has to be ready to turn around before a Bukele can appear. He can wield force against the 1.6% of criminals because he has much of the 98.4% of non-criminals on his side.

I saw this in India as well, after generations of socialism. And in Vietnam, after generations of communism. Those societies finally had the antibodies to fight off the mind viruses that had brought them low. Of course, many societies just succumb. Is Cambodia mounting a comeback anytime soon? Or North Korea, or Cuba? Not really.

This is also the problem in the US. Many in the US have yet to even acknowledge it's declining. Many Democrats are Stalinist Bidenists, whose monthly checks are dependent on mouthing the party line. And many Republicans have replaced G-o-d with G-o-v. They see the US military as a god replacement, in its stern father form, and can't bring themselves to admit the country ain't what it was. They're Soviet conservatives, patriotic to a fault, saluting the worst because they've captured the flag.

I don't think this is true for everyone — people like @realchrisrufo and @davereaboi know what time it is — but it's true for too many. If you still think, like Biden recently said, that his empire is still "the most powerful country in the history of the world" and that it just isn't trying or is like one election away from being fixed — you are wrong in a deep way.

The values that underpin the valuations have been broken. The current society is coasting on fumes. Fixing this is at least a generational rebuild. It's not something one vote will solve.

IT'S NOT RICH
2) We also disagree that the US is a rich country. It has a fake economy, built on debt, with exponentially increasing interest payments, that doesn't have much runway left, and doesn't have factories to fall back on when the money printing stops.

For example:

^ Why are interest payments suddenly spiking? Because the bill for QE is coming due. Either die by high inflation or high rates. Or both.

^ Why is the country issuing debt at emergency levels, without acknowledging it's an emergency? Because that's the only thing that can keep this fake economy afloat through the 2024 election.

^ Why is China the world's #1 trade partner on just about every physical good? Because the US only exports (a) printed money and (b) technology. Anyway, I could keep going, with literally dozens of graphs like this. But X only allows four per post.

IT'S NOT STABLE
3) On the topic of whether it's a country with a "turbulent history of...violence", the level of drug addiction, violent crime, homeless encampments, squatters, road blockages, and massive BLM/Hamas mobs swarming the streets has obviously spiked in recent years.

2020 didn't represent a one-off, it's a preview of what is to come, particularly in Blue America. Crime statistics are systematically faked — in San Francisco, you can actually see some dashboards where things like car ticketing have gone to zero — so we don't have an accurate picture.

Until you see undeniable things like stores closing and people moving out of blue states. And then blue politicians yell at those companies, and try to stop them from moving out. This is systematic: blues always disable the warning lights that tell you we're crashing into the ground, just like the mortgages labeled AAA in 2008, just as a mosquito anesthetizes you before drinking your blood, just as a snake evolves to employ camouflage before it strikes. Alongside lawfare, faking the stats is a core competency of both communist reds and woke blues.

TLDR: I think we just have very different mental models of the prosperity and stability of today's United States. Wokeness is hegemonic and the damage is deep. I wish it weren't so — but agreeing on reality precedes prosperity.

A few more citations follow 👇Image
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Image
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Here's how SF fakes its crime statistics. The law is not enforced so the crime is not reported.
This is a BLM/Hamas mob.
And this is a scene from World War Z.
Complete with the fast zombies.
That guy in the car did nothing wrong.
Other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Namely, Blue America.
This doesn't happen in a stable country.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Feb 17
I just got back from Prospera.
A startup city on the island of Roatán.
It’s crypto, it’s bio, it’s robo.
And it’s not San Francisco.
We’ve started new companies, new communities, and new currencies.

Now we’re starting new cities.
My body, my choice.

That’s what personal medical sovereignty means.

If you can legally go skydiving or bungee jumping, you should be able to take a calculated risk on new treatments.

And that’s what Prospera has legalized.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Jan 21
We now understand the 2010s.

It’s when legacy media fought a ferocious but ultimately doomed rearguard campaign against the Internet.

That’s why they pushed censorship so hard and constantly thumped their chest about being “journalists.”

It was protectionism.
They were dying.
Image
Many journalists spent the better part of a decade attacking the Internet for a living.

You understand it better when you realize it was existential for them. They didn’t just lose money, they lost power.
Even legacy media now admits it. Trust in newspapers has collapsed. Image
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Nov 16, 2023
1) Ban China
2) Be China
3) Beat China

These are the options. I get the logic, but banning signals technological and cultural weakness. Yet so does capitulation of the Newsom variety. The best way is to build something *better* than China, as Elon and others in tech have done.
Image
Democrat concern about Russia is similar to Republican concern about China.

I get where it comes from. But the real answer is to build a more compelling product that can win on the global internet.

Otherwise you're giving up on soft power.
Why isn't China submissive anymore?

The unspoken truth: because they don't respect America anymore. For example, they feel they can build better cities than the US.

The best way to prove them wrong is to outbuild them.
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Nov 15, 2023
Democrats cleaned up San Francisco for Communists.
Newsom admits they removed the drug addicts for Xi.

“That's true because it's true.”
And don’t let them pretend this was just like cleaning up before some friends come over!

We are talking poop, needles, syringes — raw sewage on the streets.

And we are talking about addicts, thieves, and arsonists.
Read 8 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Nov 6, 2023
Congress blew him kisses.
Journalists gave him applause.
Regulators promised to take no action.
So it was only Crypto Twitter that uncovered his deception.

Read the actual history of what happened with Sam Bankman-Fried, before it gets memory holed.
balajis.com/p/crypto-twitt…
Meanwhile, Coindesk's Ian Allison was revealing[1] that SBF had no money, while Axios' Dan Primack was asking[2] whether SBF could cure world hunger.

[1]:
[2]:

archive.ph/y7YOi
archive.ph/nlYCj
Remember when Bankless was playing hardball with SBF[1], while Joe Weisenthal was throwing him softballs[2]?

Dunno why @thestalwart is tweeting from behind a block, but maybe you can ask him.
[1]:
[2]:
archive.ph/6Wl2t
archive.ph/wuwOp
Read 5 tweets

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