[gtowey]

It's because technology doesn't change the fundamentals of global geopolitics. Which is that nearly all of history can be explained as a struggle to control basic resources such as arable land, oil, minerals, etc. Everything you're seeing today is because those resources are becoming either increasingly scarce, or increasingly valuable.

[vladms]

Technology can change things but people that profit today from something will oppose a change.

Case in point: switching from oil to renewables - which can lower dependency to external actors a lot as solar panels and windmills have life span of years, so even if the producers suddenly refuses to sell more, one has some time to find an alternative - was done slower than it could have because of "discussions".

Since 20 years I almost feel the discussion "climate change or not" is fueled by people that want dependency on oil, such that we don't talk about the issue of a couple of big producer points of failure (USA, Russia, Gulf countries). Not sure if oil companies are smart enough to finance green groups (to which I agree generally but is besides the point), such that the public discourse stays in a conflict area (climate) rather than a simple one (independence), but if they are that would be meta-evil.

[asdff]

Geopolitics are an entirely optional game of course that just amounts to trading seats of who gets entitled to be owner of some thing that one can hardly even say is ownable outside the legal definition. Seems to me there is no actual reason why the middle east has to look like the middle east and not midwest USA. Israel arming itself should be seen as just as absurd as say the city of Cleveland arming itself due to Detroit.

Kind of interesting how we have some areas of the world where there are no geopolitics and people live in peace and don't see any differences between the people they come across in the grocery store. And other places in the world where those vary same cultures in that midwestern grocery store might now be picking up arms against eachother.

And also kind of interesting how no one cares to highlight this cognitive dissonance we have, how an israeli and a persian can live as neighbors in the US, but in the middle east they are water and oil.

[lesuorac]

Are they?

We have so much stuff that we just throw things away if a tiny piece of it gets tarnished / broken.

The US's population density is pretty low and we have a ton of land not in cities that's very sparsely populated.

Like it largely seems that geopolitics of now is about creating scarcity.

[gtowey]

> Like it largely seems that geopolitics of now is about creating scarcity.

How else do you create scarcity except by controlling all the resources?

[pcthrowaway]

Convincing people something is scare or artificially creating scarcity.

[mrguyorama]

No actually. There's no real "resource" justification here.

This is directly caused by technology. Morons have helped the worst possible people build surveillance and coordination and propaganda networks and are all confused pikachu about that going exactly the way you should have expected it to go.

Technology was also bypassing the "resource" problem at warp speed. Solar panels are the energy future, and thanks to China being actually good at strategic planning, solar can be deployed and utilized far faster than any other energy innovation. With the sheer abundance possible through bulk solar, water scarcity is an engineering issue, about manufacturing enough plumbing and membranes to desalinate whatever you need.

We are fighting an 80s oil war because people voted for an 80s TV personality to run our country after he was known to rape kids, brag about Mein Kampf (even though everyone knows he doesn't read for fun), and attempt to invalidate the 2020 election.

Israel saw a clear opening to wildly advance their imperialist ambitions and because Donald Trump is so damn stupid we have jumped in to this absurdist situation because Donald Trump wanted to be seen shooting first, because he thinks that looks "Strong".

[Schmerika]

You still think this problem is one sided?

Dems had Trump dead to rights for insurrection. They had everything in the Epstein files and didn't drop it. They told you they were working tirelessly for a ceasefire - while unilaterally vetoing 4 of them at the UN.

Genocide. They armed genocide. Which we could all see on our phones.

They loved arming it so much, they decided they'd rather keep arming it than gain millions of votes in swing states vs Trump.

Trump is worse. Yes. But when both parties in the two party system are pro-genocide, pro-torture, pro-ICE, pro-Epstein etc etc etc, you can't blame the whole problem on just half the people involved.

[constantius]

A controversial take unfortunately.

Americans are under the delusion that Democrats are the second coming of Christ, even after it enabled and took part in genocide. To anyone outside of the West, the differences between the two parties are inexistent.

The memoryholing of all Democrats' failures, corruption, and horror is painful to watch. But they do it with a different kind of posturing, and this seems to be sufficient to most.

[Schmerika]

> this seems to be sufficient to most.

Yeah that's the really painful bit alright. The pretence isn't even good.

But they'll get so mad at you for pointing out the obvious.

It's been this way for a long time - MLK pointed all this out 6 decades ago. It's gotten worse since, to the point where over 98% of US voters in 2024 didn't hold enabling live-streamed genocide as a red line for their vote.

I'll keep talking about it, and USians will probably keep getting mad at me for it. Ah well.

[bryanlarsen]

> increasingly scarce, or increasingly valuable.

Neither of which is actually true for oil. We're still finding oil reserves faster than we deplete them, major users such as China are rapidly decarbonizing, and the price was relatively low before the war.

But the people in power thought it was true, which is all that matters.