[meremortals]

Balaji says

[0] (on Jackson, Mississippi's lack of running water)

> There is no first world and third world anymore.

> There is the ascending world, and then there is the descending world.

> And this is the descending world.

[1]

> A similar phenomenon began right before the fall of the Soviet Union. Life expectancy for men fell from a high of 65 years in 1987 to a low of 57 years in 1994

[0](https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1564853661351628802)

[1](https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1564859125829230592?t=fYc...)

[bryanlarsen]

This is a really annoying narrative. The Dutch empire "fell" in the 18th century, and they never regained their former glory. Danish glory fell in the 11th century. The Swedish empire fell in 1721. Today those are three of the best places in the world to live.

[SketchySeaBeast]

It does have a "if we can't belligerently shout 'we're #1', what's even the point of living?" to it, doesn't it?

[tomjakubowski]

1986 and 1987 were unusually good years for life expectancy in the USSR. The early 80s were about halfway between those and the mid 90s.

https://www.prb.org/resources/high-death-rate-among-russian-... `

[simonebrunozzi]

Remember, correlation <> causation [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

[incomingpain]

Is there an expectation for something similar for the USA? Several more years of drop?

[meremortals]

That's how I interpret his statements, at least. He goes into more detail in his book The Network State, but essentially says America is descending and the future will be the Anarchistic West vs Communist China. He advocates exiting most systems into a "cloud country" which would ultimately manifest in the real world (aggregate online over similar values, purchase physical land, etc)

[incomingpain]

>That's how I interpret his statements, at least. He goes into more detail in his book The Network State, but essentially says America is descending and the future will be the Anarchistic West vs Communist China. He advocates exiting most systems into a "cloud country" which would ultimately manifest in the real world (aggregate online over similar values, purchase physical land, etc)

I'm curious if he is expecting an anarcho-capitalism type system or he's predicting wildwest/dystopian.

I feel like that's one of the big political divides.

Why is China dominant and being made the boogey man in the USA? They opened free trade zones on their coast. They beat the USA at their own game who contemporarily are increasing taxes.

You have everyone piling into Africa to bring them low tax capitalism especially China. They see their peasant war coming because of the ultra wealthy coast and impoverished west. Africa is about to become the next china with ultra cheap labour. China loses those contracts and must rush to replace them.

For the USA to beat China, anarcho-capitalism is the likely option. That's the #1 scary unspoken thing about Trump. He represents exactly this.

I am intrigued about the cloud country. It almost feels like Estonia might be that place? Or perhaps their attempt?

[fallingfrog]

Anarcho-capitalism? Not to beat a dead horse, but there's no capitalism without a strong central state. The state is not organized in opposition to capitalism; the state is a central component of the capitalist system. It's not a coincidence that the modern state and modern market capitalism appear in the historical record at precisely the same moment.

I think our big problems are mostly due to inadequate control over capitalism due to globalization making it too easy for large companies to avoid oversight and become parasitic and attack their host. The need for short term profit then becomes the only thing that those companies optimize for, leading to a death spiral of short term thinking.

Anarcho-capitalism is certainly not going to help any of that.

[meremortals]

> I'm curious if he is expecting an anarcho-capitalism type system or he's predicting wildwest/dystopian.

I believe he likens it to BLM Riots:Jan 6 every day, type of dystopia.

> I am intrigued about the cloud country. It almost feels like Estonia might be that place? Or perhaps their attempt?

He is super bullish on Estonia, IIRC.

The Network State is free as a PDF or to read online if you're interested: https://thenetworkstate.com/