Big fan, but I think it’s incorrect to presuppose that China was engaging in a trade war. If there’s one thing that substantially differentiates the East from the West, it’s this: in Asian civilization, war is not the norm. Life is not a battle , it may be for many in the West, but that’s not a global philosophy. China may have reacted to an economic attack by the U.S., but it did not engage in war. There was no winner in this; unfortunately, harm was done to businesses everywhere. No, China did not win the economic war. The U.S. shot itself in the foot, some might say in the head when it allowed $300 billion of Russian assets to be seized. That was the most deadly self-inflicted wound, even if it’s not the most obvious.
Glenn, sometimes I think you are following my video subscriptions!! :)
Now watching on rumble though, bollox to enforced YT ads.
Can't see how the West can improve on Chinese efficiency though, especially with the Western corporate monopolies being in charge.
Interesting line of thought that the US might be aiming for autarky, which would indicate the Trumpists see the end of the American empire in sight, and wish to prepare for that crash-landing so it isn't more painful. To that end, slashing the military budget by 50% would make more sense than adding at least $170bn to it... but what do I know, lollol.
It is always easier to build a new efficient system than repair a system with design flaws - just as it's easier to build a brand new development on green fields than redevelop a brown field site.
The West had planned on its Thousand Year Reich (AKA, "Western Hegemony"), and now they have to face a future where the Global South starts developing, and developing peacefully without the Western countries able to start wars among them. How they will adapt to this remains to be seen.
Hope to be able to watch your reporting as this develops over the years. :)
Use yt-dlp to download videos (or audio) from whichever platform and thereby bypass add ads, play and rewind instantly and watch whenever you wish. Bollox to all browser embedded players!
It came with the OS, and unless I'm using it wrong (Quite likely, as I've usually been using the several FF add-ons - all of which are now broken too), it's not working either?
yt-dlp is a command-line tool, not a Browser extension.
When installed, you open a terminal, type in yt-dlp and then paste in the URL. Then launch your player either graphically from a file browser or via the command-line.
Yes, it came with my linux variation. And when I tried it last night after you mentioned it worked, it didn't. FWIW YT has also blocked all viewing of nearly all videos, because of the ad-blockers I use as well. I don't know if that can affect it as well.
Well, Gnuneo, we just can't have that. I volunteer to help you get yt-dlp working. We'll use the Substack's comments mechanism for communication, but not here.
That would be rude.
I've created an "article" specifically for the purpose. Its URL is:
Precisely. The outcome is already given….like it was in Ukraine between NATO and Russia. And now Trump is trying to go against China. Well so it seems because Trump isn’t stupid. He knows it’s a lost cause. He just needs an enemy as a smoking carpet against the hard and unpopular times coming to his country or else he would become too unpopular. He can blame the hard times coming on China. He has to so he can buy enough time to turn things 180 degrees around with the nearly hopeless economic situation in the US.
He didn’t have to choose this hard line against China but when he did, this is his next move on the chess board. He has already lost his Queen but hopefully not his King in the end.
It seems to me that the failure of the West is not so much a response to poor immediate / pragmatic decisions on economics, politics and structural arrangement of society but a failure at a fundamental level that drives human endeavour.
The move away from a balance between individualism and common good (I’ll call it socialism even though this word has been made dirty in the West) to a system of culture that has taken on individualism to a degree that would, to me, seem insane.
Friedman economics sums it up “greed is good”, “the smaller government the better”. Government is about common good. Greed is one of the deadly sins even in the “Old Testament” which basically signals to me that people clearly recognised that greed was in fact not good a millennia ago. Government is in essence the machinery of the social contract. I’m not saying that massive government is good by any means, the balance is good.
Humans, Homo Sapiens, probably evolved from creatures some 200,000 years ago who most likely lived more or less as individuals. The success as an evolving species was intimately linked to and dependent on the ability to form social groups. The ability to work together for common outcomes gave humans their evolutionary success but it did mean the suppression of individualism to some extent to social contract.
We find in the West, highlighted by the war in Ukraine, the result of a moving too far from the fundamental balance required between individualism and socialism. In the West, in particular the USA and Europe we find that they have a problem with maintaining the fabric of war. They cannot, not just because of deindustrialisation over the past 3 or 4 decades, produce the material of war but cannot ramp up production in the near future either. It has become a fundamental cultural problem. For every item produced in “private” factories in the West both China, Russia and other more social orientated countries can produce this material of war cheaper and faster. They work together not for a select few individuals.
In the West greed has driven up cost and strangely enough driven down reliability and functional fitness for purpose. An example could be provided by Lockheed Martin share prices which have soared over the past year by over 50%. The technology is excellent in theory but in practice is too delicate for the realities of the battle fronts. Or in a more direct way the delicacy of the Leopard 2 and Abraham tanks and various Caesar artillery manufactured by the French (the barrels need straightening out after every 3rd round is fired!) fail repeatedly on the battle fronts and proved next to worthless.
The shareholders of firms like Lockheed Martine are of course the wealthier individuals of the USA and Europe, and generally possibly the most outspoken on the merits of a greed centred culture. After all they have the most to gain from a greed centred culture. We also find the many of these firms almost exclusively derive their profit from government contracts for military procurement. Government is the only remaining effective socialist institution, and it has been hijack by the wealthy as a kind of individualistic project. The only remaining effective socialist structure is used to maintain individualism and greed. It is almost exclusively run by the wealthy – especially in the USA. Poor people do not have an opportunity to enter politics in the USA, nor do they have any voice. A strange parody of Democracy.
The wealthy of course like to promote the narrative that Russia and China are for example totalitarian states, but this seriously mis represent how these societies are organised. It can easily be seen, by even the most superficial review of their government systems and how individuals enter the social governance system, from grass roots of local government and eventually to the top, that they are in fact likely to be more democratic than the West’s greed centric systems where only the rich have a voice.
Deindustrialisation is also I believe a manifestation of the move to individualism – greed if you like, the cheapest options is maintained even though it clearly undermines the common good and fabric of society. Individualism has no interest in common good even though the eventual outcome of it is complete cultural failure.
For the West to reverse its decline, it can play around with the periphery of the problem, that is mess about with tariffs, start new wars, make up fantastic narratives, kill millions of poor people and create huge amounts of misery but fundamentally it needs to move back to the balance between individualism and socialism to find its strength, purpose and ethics.
I would like to note that in the USA, Lockheed Martin and similar weapons manufacturing firms are making huge profits from government funding that predominantly derives from the poor - the taxpayers. The rich generally have very effective ways of minimising their tax to a small percentage of their income. This is the case in all Western countries. Also, that in the land of free enterprise laisse fair the poor taxpayers, that is the Fed, has bailed out Ford, GMC, Chrysler, most of the major banks etc in the GFC and Boeing in the last year several times. The poor would do well to note that these firms are largely owned by the rich. And that this is not in their interest. The rich get richer with less effort every day and less numerous, the poor get poorer and more numerous every day. The poor in the US have voted for cultural change, by installing a rich person as their hero – well they had no choice, only the rich can enter politics in the USA.
So China has been following USA “up the value chain” but isn’t going to end up in the same place as the USA because … (silence).
The USA is a heavily financialised economy with a great dependency on services rather than industry because services are high value / high margin business (top of the value chain) but China isn’t going to end up in the same place as the USA because … (silence).
The economic war is already won by China? So what should the USA do? Was the economic war over when the USA controlled 90% of international trade in the late 40’s? Or was it over when Britannia ruled the waves? Maybe when the Romans occupied most of Europe, Britain and the Middle East?
No?
No.
Because the economic war is never over and the only right thing to do is to fight and never stop.
This whole interview is like an economic version of Animal Farm: China successful, USA failing.
Big fan, but I think it’s incorrect to presuppose that China was engaging in a trade war. If there’s one thing that substantially differentiates the East from the West, it’s this: in Asian civilization, war is not the norm. Life is not a battle , it may be for many in the West, but that’s not a global philosophy. China may have reacted to an economic attack by the U.S., but it did not engage in war. There was no winner in this; unfortunately, harm was done to businesses everywhere. No, China did not win the economic war. The U.S. shot itself in the foot, some might say in the head when it allowed $300 billion of Russian assets to be seized. That was the most deadly self-inflicted wound, even if it’s not the most obvious.
Your broadminded parade of who you interview why reminds one of what it was like to grow up in the West 60 years ago .
Refreshing to keep the brainwaves running .
Fascinating.
Glenn, sometimes I think you are following my video subscriptions!! :)
Now watching on rumble though, bollox to enforced YT ads.
Can't see how the West can improve on Chinese efficiency though, especially with the Western corporate monopolies being in charge.
Interesting line of thought that the US might be aiming for autarky, which would indicate the Trumpists see the end of the American empire in sight, and wish to prepare for that crash-landing so it isn't more painful. To that end, slashing the military budget by 50% would make more sense than adding at least $170bn to it... but what do I know, lollol.
It is always easier to build a new efficient system than repair a system with design flaws - just as it's easier to build a brand new development on green fields than redevelop a brown field site.
The West had planned on its Thousand Year Reich (AKA, "Western Hegemony"), and now they have to face a future where the Global South starts developing, and developing peacefully without the Western countries able to start wars among them. How they will adapt to this remains to be seen.
Hope to be able to watch your reporting as this develops over the years. :)
Use yt-dlp to download videos (or audio) from whichever platform and thereby bypass add ads, play and rewind instantly and watch whenever you wish. Bollox to all browser embedded players!
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
It came with the OS, and unless I'm using it wrong (Quite likely, as I've usually been using the several FF add-ons - all of which are now broken too), it's not working either?
yt-dlp is a command-line tool, not a Browser extension.
When installed, you open a terminal, type in yt-dlp and then paste in the URL. Then launch your player either graphically from a file browser or via the command-line.
Yes, it came with my linux variation. And when I tried it last night after you mentioned it worked, it didn't. FWIW YT has also blocked all viewing of nearly all videos, because of the ad-blockers I use as well. I don't know if that can affect it as well.
I await input from you, as specified in the "Linux debugging" article:
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/linux-debugging
Well, Gnuneo, we just can't have that. I volunteer to help you get yt-dlp working. We'll use the Substack's comments mechanism for communication, but not here.
That would be rude.
I've created an "article" specifically for the purpose. Its URL is:
https://yesxorno.substack.com/p/linux-debugging
Precisely. The outcome is already given….like it was in Ukraine between NATO and Russia. And now Trump is trying to go against China. Well so it seems because Trump isn’t stupid. He knows it’s a lost cause. He just needs an enemy as a smoking carpet against the hard and unpopular times coming to his country or else he would become too unpopular. He can blame the hard times coming on China. He has to so he can buy enough time to turn things 180 degrees around with the nearly hopeless economic situation in the US.
He didn’t have to choose this hard line against China but when he did, this is his next move on the chess board. He has already lost his Queen but hopefully not his King in the end.
It seems to me that the failure of the West is not so much a response to poor immediate / pragmatic decisions on economics, politics and structural arrangement of society but a failure at a fundamental level that drives human endeavour.
The move away from a balance between individualism and common good (I’ll call it socialism even though this word has been made dirty in the West) to a system of culture that has taken on individualism to a degree that would, to me, seem insane.
Friedman economics sums it up “greed is good”, “the smaller government the better”. Government is about common good. Greed is one of the deadly sins even in the “Old Testament” which basically signals to me that people clearly recognised that greed was in fact not good a millennia ago. Government is in essence the machinery of the social contract. I’m not saying that massive government is good by any means, the balance is good.
Humans, Homo Sapiens, probably evolved from creatures some 200,000 years ago who most likely lived more or less as individuals. The success as an evolving species was intimately linked to and dependent on the ability to form social groups. The ability to work together for common outcomes gave humans their evolutionary success but it did mean the suppression of individualism to some extent to social contract.
We find in the West, highlighted by the war in Ukraine, the result of a moving too far from the fundamental balance required between individualism and socialism. In the West, in particular the USA and Europe we find that they have a problem with maintaining the fabric of war. They cannot, not just because of deindustrialisation over the past 3 or 4 decades, produce the material of war but cannot ramp up production in the near future either. It has become a fundamental cultural problem. For every item produced in “private” factories in the West both China, Russia and other more social orientated countries can produce this material of war cheaper and faster. They work together not for a select few individuals.
In the West greed has driven up cost and strangely enough driven down reliability and functional fitness for purpose. An example could be provided by Lockheed Martin share prices which have soared over the past year by over 50%. The technology is excellent in theory but in practice is too delicate for the realities of the battle fronts. Or in a more direct way the delicacy of the Leopard 2 and Abraham tanks and various Caesar artillery manufactured by the French (the barrels need straightening out after every 3rd round is fired!) fail repeatedly on the battle fronts and proved next to worthless.
The shareholders of firms like Lockheed Martine are of course the wealthier individuals of the USA and Europe, and generally possibly the most outspoken on the merits of a greed centred culture. After all they have the most to gain from a greed centred culture. We also find the many of these firms almost exclusively derive their profit from government contracts for military procurement. Government is the only remaining effective socialist institution, and it has been hijack by the wealthy as a kind of individualistic project. The only remaining effective socialist structure is used to maintain individualism and greed. It is almost exclusively run by the wealthy – especially in the USA. Poor people do not have an opportunity to enter politics in the USA, nor do they have any voice. A strange parody of Democracy.
The wealthy of course like to promote the narrative that Russia and China are for example totalitarian states, but this seriously mis represent how these societies are organised. It can easily be seen, by even the most superficial review of their government systems and how individuals enter the social governance system, from grass roots of local government and eventually to the top, that they are in fact likely to be more democratic than the West’s greed centric systems where only the rich have a voice.
Deindustrialisation is also I believe a manifestation of the move to individualism – greed if you like, the cheapest options is maintained even though it clearly undermines the common good and fabric of society. Individualism has no interest in common good even though the eventual outcome of it is complete cultural failure.
For the West to reverse its decline, it can play around with the periphery of the problem, that is mess about with tariffs, start new wars, make up fantastic narratives, kill millions of poor people and create huge amounts of misery but fundamentally it needs to move back to the balance between individualism and socialism to find its strength, purpose and ethics.
I would like to note that in the USA, Lockheed Martin and similar weapons manufacturing firms are making huge profits from government funding that predominantly derives from the poor - the taxpayers. The rich generally have very effective ways of minimising their tax to a small percentage of their income. This is the case in all Western countries. Also, that in the land of free enterprise laisse fair the poor taxpayers, that is the Fed, has bailed out Ford, GMC, Chrysler, most of the major banks etc in the GFC and Boeing in the last year several times. The poor would do well to note that these firms are largely owned by the rich. And that this is not in their interest. The rich get richer with less effort every day and less numerous, the poor get poorer and more numerous every day. The poor in the US have voted for cultural change, by installing a rich person as their hero – well they had no choice, only the rich can enter politics in the USA.
Understanding Plunder Capitalism. 🤑
ALEX KRAINER - ECONOMIC UPHEAVAL AND INSTABILITY
https://rumble.com/v6sopi1-alex-krainer-economic-upheaval-and-instability.html
So China has been following USA “up the value chain” but isn’t going to end up in the same place as the USA because … (silence).
The USA is a heavily financialised economy with a great dependency on services rather than industry because services are high value / high margin business (top of the value chain) but China isn’t going to end up in the same place as the USA because … (silence).
The economic war is already won by China? So what should the USA do? Was the economic war over when the USA controlled 90% of international trade in the late 40’s? Or was it over when Britannia ruled the waves? Maybe when the Romans occupied most of Europe, Britain and the Middle East?
No?
No.
Because the economic war is never over and the only right thing to do is to fight and never stop.
This whole interview is like an economic version of Animal Farm: China successful, USA failing.
Meh.
I pity the foo
😁