[bamboozled]

China also seems to have a sort of exciting world view in my opinion, belt and road, massive renewables investment, EVs, Nuclear. The USA seems like it's going backwards.

I think it will be harder to China to succeed without America, but I don't think it's impossible. Plenty of countries who will trade with them.

[spwa4]

Except China IS doing financial engineering on a huge scale, creating the problems the West has. Except, they're not creating those problems over the course of a century or two, but a decade. They've had 2 massive crashes now and are currently having a 2008-style financial crisis.

And, of course, it turns out that the impressive control of the central government of China is worth nothing as soon as it means local politicians get any less money at any point.

The most recent WTF coming out of China: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/business/china-stimulus-e...

[bamboozled]

That seems valid.

I have a sort of cynical view of the world which is that, governments make a huge fuss, like as if they're in control of everything, but it's really just people getting up, working and muddling through life to keep the electricity on, children growing and the food on the table that keeps everything going. If something gets in the way of that, like a plague, or total financial collapse the country is fucked.

Many governments are just a parasite that feeds off the hard work of regular people.

If this is the start of the money supply collapse, then that's something else entirely.