[mooseburger]

I see that the global center of capital is continuing its millenia long westward migration. Past the US west coast, and into China. From Prometheus Rising:

> Brooks Adams also noted that centralized capital (the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few inter-related families) seems to have been moving steadily West throughout recorded history. The first major accumulations are to be found in Sumer; the center of money-power then shifted to Egypt, to Greece, to the Italian peninsula, to various parts of Germany, and then to London. At the time Brooks Adams was writing (c. 1900) he saw the balance teetering between London and New York, and he predicted that the decline of the English Empire would shift the balance to New York within the first half of the 20th Century. He seems to have been right. Brooks Adams had no theory as to why this Westward movement of wealth had been going on for 6000 years. He merely observed the pattern. The shift is still continuing, in the opinion of many. For instance, Carl Oglesby in The Cowboy vs. Yankee War, sees American politics since 1950 dominated by a struggle between “old Yankee wealth” (the New York-Boston axis, which replaced London after 1900) and “new Cowboy wealth” (Texas-California oil-and-aerospace billionaires). As of 1997, it looks like the Cowboys are winning; which is what one would expect if there were a real “law” behind Adams’ East-West migration of capital.

Californication has come and gone.

[cscurmudgeon]

The opposite is true if we look at data.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business/china-capital-flight...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-11/china-hid...

[okareaman]

> Californication has come and gone

Californication is an old idea that has come and gone. I'm talking about the West Coast. The 2 richest men in the world live in Seattle. The West Coast is a very powerful place, otherwise AG Barr would not somewhat impotently be complaining about it.

[henryfjordan]

That quote relies on a Euro-centric view of world history (and some bad geography) and completely ignores centuries of history during the middle ages where knowledge and wealth was being concentrated in the Islamic world and basically all of Asian history.

[Nasrudith]

I think the mechanism behind that is a sort of "colonial expansion" essentially where the newer area of development and wealth have less legacy, regulatory capture, and less sunk costs into the status quo similar to general anti-cannabalization of old and large companies falling behind. That and other forms of consolidation of power to slow the overall systems down.