There are still conservatives, and some NYT progressives who fear/dream that China's authoritarianism is going to outcompete the west economically and bring in a century of Centralized control
This isn't going to happen. China is all but collapsing
2/ Thanks to the one child policy China has amongst the worst demographics of any country in the world.
According to official numbers China's population is on track to decline from 1.4 billion to 700 million by century's end, Halving...
3/
But experts who track leaks and other metrics think it is even worse than the CCP's official numbers suggest. They suspect Chinese population growth is already negative and could drop below 1 billion as early as 2050.
4/
Economists and the better China watchers have know this was coming, and known China cannot sustain its retired population with so few workers and so little wealth
So there's been a question posed since 2008: Will China get old before it gets rich?
We now know the answer
5/
Baring some insane military play, involving not just Taiwan, but old school imperial conquest of large chunks of south-east Asia there's no real way for China to get around this apocalyptic societal problem... And even that probably wouldn't be enough
6/
30+% of China's economy is tied up producing one good: Real Estate.
This should be confusing.
How can an economy with a shrinking population be that dependent on real estate?
Supply & demand. Demand is shrinking so prices must be falling
LOL... oh you sweet summer child
7/
We've all seen the photos of China's ghost cities, hundreds of cities with thousands of massive housing complexes each, almost all sitting empty.
People assume the CCP is paying to build these as a make work scheme, but the truth is vastly, VASTLY Darker.
They're all sold.
8/
The Chinese have near the highest savings rate in the world, yet they don't trust the Stock or Bond market (understandably since there's no transparency)
So all their savings they pour into real estate.
9/
As a result China has the most expensive real estate in the world, by income
Despite a GDP of 10k per person (USD) condos in China average 200k in most cities and creep towards the million mark in others.
Parents mortgage their homes to help make their kids down-payment
10/
Many of the second and third condos Chinese investors buy never get finished
Indeed since living in a Condo throws off the Feng Shui for future inhabits leaving it unfinished actually improves its speculative value, or so they claim
It certainly hasn't stopped purchases
11/
If this sounds like the worst housing bubble ever, it is. The raw force of the demographic decline will inevitably destroy this bubble.
EverGrande was a huge scandal , but now citizens are striking and refusing to pay mortgages on condos that stopped mid build
12/
China doesn't have a meaningful social security system. They can't afford it
Horrible poverty exists near those shiny towers
Third world conditions are everywhere and that's what people will be reduced back to
The world once manufactured in the rust belt too
13/
You can already find stories about homeless encampments and Mongolian nomads moving into the carcasses of these unfinished ghost cities...
Soon millions living off well under 10k a year will wonder that their unfinished apartments once cost hundreds of thousands.
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Alot of people have dismissed the possibility of civil war in the US.
But there are a shocking number of factors that make the US the most likely candidate for civil strife in the western world
2/
The raw size of the US is really unnatural.
Most wealthy countries have 1 maybe 2 major cities Paris is 12 million people then Lyon is 1.5. London is 9 mil... then next largest Dublin (1.4) broke away in the 1920s.
The US has 56 cities with a metro area over 1 Mil
3/
By contrast Canada has a similar settlement pattern to the US, but has only six 1mil+ cities
And Canada's history is one of all its founding peoples constantly rebelling, forming terrorist groups, separatist movements, etc.
Whenever I discuss history its shocking how much ignorance I encounter from even trained historians about the level of poverty in the past
Contrary to idiots and revisionists No. People in the past were horrifyingly impoverished
2/
Medieval buffs and scholars are the absolute worst for this.
Figures in the renaissance and enlightenment made bullshit up about how "Backwards" the Medievals were compared to themselves, or the ancients... and now every medieval scholar has a chip on their shoulder.
3/
Its true the Medieval period isn't some great outlier from the ancient world, renaissance, or early modern.
But that's because all of these eras were horrifyingly, unthinkably, impoverished by the standard of anyone living today.
In October it was announced 23 year old French citizen Shani De Corte died via assisted suicide, She had no medical issues but suffered from PTSD following a terrorist attack
healthy adults are being given assisted suicide in the west.
2/
Not a month goes by I don't hear an equivalent story: some depressive being granted assisted suicide, one with partial blindness, one with chronic pain
People with decades left to live activists will protest
But more horrifying:
People who could just do it themselves!!!
3/
suicide requires shockingly little: a pistol, access to an ice flow or great height, a car and a wall, under $200 of liquor
And yet of all the places on earth, healthy melancholic young people are choosing to die in hospitals surrounded by obese nurses & florescent lights
Sneering Illiterates brace yourselves... I'm just going to say it.
The great American novel has been written
and its ATLAS SHRUGGED.
Irrespective of her philosophy Ayn Rand might just be the greatest prose stylist America has ever produced
2/
What is ATLAS SHRUGGED? What is its genre?
Atlas Shrugged is a 1500 page screed against FDR, God, and non-BDSM sexual relationships, written as a cross between a very slow mystery (that's already spoiled), a long meeting on industrial purchasing, and a harlequin romance
3/
Seriously its a "Mary Sue fucks the male cast" story... Rand just didn't know she was born too soon and was supposed to write it as an erotic Harry Potter fan fic
There is no way whatsoever that this should work. It breaks every unspoken rule of not just writing, but decency
There's a lot of doomerism in the US and while some of this can verge really deranged, there are some really core insights you get from Rad Libertarians, Preppers, and geopolitics watchers, that most people simply have not internalized.
2/
Globally Every institution that makes up the modern world is about 80 years old
Every major government institution was set into place during or immediately after WW2.
Social security, education, health schemes, military policy...
And they've been impossible to change since
3/
The problem is every single one of these institutions assumes 1940s demographics where everyone has 3-4 kids and almost everyone dies of a heart attack at 65.
Medicare and Social security where minor budget items when they came out...
There's one human emotion AI can't replicate, One feature of the human experience that can't be captured by our digital replacements.
They can't create photos of people with their tongues sticking out. Peak Playful mockery and sexiness is beyond them
2/
When you ask AI to produce a photo of someone with their tongue sticking out it just doesn't know what to do... so it gives you people making the soy face