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derf_ 22 hours ago [-]
Sarah C. M. Paine has an excellent series of lectures on what it means to be a "continental" vs. a "maritime" power, and how the latter build wealth through trade and an international rules-based order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VSg4ZSwJs is probably the most succinct, and a good introduction if the name Alfred T. Mahan is not familiar to you. Dwarkesh Patel's channel has a more recent 9-part series (on this and other topics): https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel
Havoc 22 hours ago [-]
Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold.
What worries me far more is environmental disasters. Large parts of insurance and accountability has disappeared with the arrival of the shadow fleet model.
Only a matter of time before some pristine coastline gets fucked by an oil spill and everyone just shrugs and ignores it
robtherobber 18 hours ago [-]
> Trade will muddle through somehow. Where there is a buck to be made people can be innovative and bold.
That's what I believe as well. Once the opportunity arises, another power or group of interest will seize it, as it's always been the case throughout history. It may take a while, that's true, but just like we can't turn back to a world without countries anytime soon, we can't turn back to a world without commerce anytime soon.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that we should not want a state like the US to be the guarantor of such a system, if only because it will do everything in its power to keep this planet burning just so it can maintain various leverages of power.
Regardless of what the US does in this particular respect, the current economic philosophy is nothing short of disastrous on some key aspects and it needs changing fast, something that the US is determined to prevent from happening. As such, I suspect that there will be tremendous suffering globally regardless of this particular situation, having a so-called guarantor won't make much of a difference - it may very well be the opposite.
bryanlarsen 18 hours ago [-]
Trade will muddle through, but with a 50%+ incentive to cheat, the winners will be those who are best at cheating.
msandford 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Recurecur 17 hours ago [-]
We should get to the point fairly quickly where “written by AI” is far less relevant than the accuracy and timeliness of what was written…
Were the points made in the article valid? Mostly, it was well worth a read, with or without AI involvement.
Starman_Jones 11 hours ago [-]
Did AI add the typos as well?
senorrib 21 hours ago [-]
You know "load bearing" as an expression existed before AI, right?
msandford 21 hours ago [-]
You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right?
Nobody outside of actual engineering or engineering adjacent like construction used load bearing up until about 6-12mo ago. Now it's everywhere.
cwillu 51 minutes ago [-]
I'm calling it: if Bret Devereaux is being accused of posting slop, we have officially achieved peak unhinged claims of “this seems like AI”
everybodyknows 20 hours ago [-]
It's yet another borrowing of the prestige of technical terms -- propagated by LLMs, but in rampant misuse by poseurs even before AI: inflection point, exponential growth, order of magnitude, evolve, viable, ...
embedding-shape 20 hours ago [-]
> You know that the usage has gone up something around 1000x since AI right?
Seems Google Trends say ~50% "interest over time" around 2004, which Ngrams at that same time has about half the occurrence in books compared to around ~1926.
As the labs adjust their models to become more human, less repetitive and more of the population starts catching up these patterns, we'll see it become less used again, starting the new loop of the repeating cycle.
Recurecur 17 hours ago [-]
This was a well-written and thought provoking article. The USA bashers out there should contemplate a world where the Chinese PLAN has assumed the role of the US Navy. Hint: it wouldn’t be pretty.
Where the essay goes off the tracks is in its conspiratorial view that the US no longer wants to perform the role of securing maritime trade. Instead, the US is intent on expanding its Navy, and the Trump administration clearly recognizes that trade is crucial for future American and worldwide prosperity.
It’s America First, not America Only. ;-)
AlotOfReading 11 hours ago [-]
It’s America First, not America Only.
"America first, not only" was Obama's policy [0], not Trump's. The US wouldn't be starting trade wars with its oldest, closest allies if the current executive believed in multipolarity.
What worries me far more is environmental disasters. Large parts of insurance and accountability has disappeared with the arrival of the shadow fleet model.
Only a matter of time before some pristine coastline gets fucked by an oil spill and everyone just shrugs and ignores it
That's what I believe as well. Once the opportunity arises, another power or group of interest will seize it, as it's always been the case throughout history. It may take a while, that's true, but just like we can't turn back to a world without countries anytime soon, we can't turn back to a world without commerce anytime soon.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that we should not want a state like the US to be the guarantor of such a system, if only because it will do everything in its power to keep this planet burning just so it can maintain various leverages of power.
Regardless of what the US does in this particular respect, the current economic philosophy is nothing short of disastrous on some key aspects and it needs changing fast, something that the US is determined to prevent from happening. As such, I suspect that there will be tremendous suffering globally regardless of this particular situation, having a so-called guarantor won't make much of a difference - it may very well be the opposite.
Were the points made in the article valid? Mostly, it was well worth a read, with or without AI involvement.
Nobody outside of actual engineering or engineering adjacent like construction used load bearing up until about 6-12mo ago. Now it's everywhere.
Seems to be going up and down in usage, if you look at Google Ngram + Trends: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22load+bearin... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22load%...
Seems Google Trends say ~50% "interest over time" around 2004, which Ngrams at that same time has about half the occurrence in books compared to around ~1926.
As the labs adjust their models to become more human, less repetitive and more of the population starts catching up these patterns, we'll see it become less used again, starting the new loop of the repeating cycle.
Where the essay goes off the tracks is in its conspiratorial view that the US no longer wants to perform the role of securing maritime trade. Instead, the US is intent on expanding its Navy, and the Trump administration clearly recognizes that trade is crucial for future American and worldwide prosperity.
It’s America First, not America Only. ;-)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine