Enough musings about petty, self-absorbed matters such as whether we are still a democracy. Let's talk about America's survival prospects as a nation.
In order to wage war/defend ourselves, we need an industrial base. A capability to manufacture all manner of low and high technology items. On the modern battlefield, above all this means a computerized, networked, mechanized army, navy, and airforce.
While it used to be that outsourced/offshore manufacturing was in easilyoverthrown influenced countries such as malaysia and their ilk, increasingly our overseas infrastructure is being centered in two countries: China, and India. Both of these have a billion people. Both have nuclear weapons. Both are rapidly modernizing, using economic booms provided by manufacturing and information processing exports to the US. Both will become primary competitors with us for global oil supplies as their billion-person populations begin to consume resources in proportion to a modern society.
To think that america will have a permanent technology advantage over these rivals is foolish. China and India both graduate armies of engineers and scientists, much as the USSR's excellent schooling systems did, which kept their military technology in arms reach (kind of a pun there) of ours despite gross economic disparities. China has begun an active space program. They are developing state-of-the-art computer CPUs and operating systems independent of american vendors (Intel and Microsoft), and already manufacture the remaining components. The growth of advanced technology manufacturing in China means a vast infrastructure of fundamental technology acquisition and transfer from the West and Japan.
But most of all, both of these rivals aren't encumbered by a backward political system such as the USSR. China, in particular, is exercising a modified form of capitalism that is extremely aggressive, selective, and so far, effective. China manipulates its currency to maintain a trade export advantage and continue to encourage countries to offshore manufacturing in its borders. It can employ despotic policies (such as ignoring its rural populations' basic needs) in order to concentrate resources on its urban manufacturing and services. It can economically repurpose entire regions without the legal wranglings that occur in Western democracies.
In the near future span of 10-20 years, I see increased outsourcing of manufacturing and technology to China and India while the oil supply stays relatively constant. By the time oil production demands (particularly due to skyrocketing demand caused by two to three billion people modernizing rapidly) could lead to actual tensions with the US, China and India will likely have closed technological gaps, as well as developed fundamental infrastructures such as an effective, technologically equipped air-ground-sea-space military, ICBM nuclear deterrent, and will have the capability to blackmail us with threats of cutting off desired material goods exports if need be, since the US's domestic manufacturing will have been nearly completely atrophied.
Apologists for globalism that ignore the fact that China and India can choose to ignore health care costs, envrionmental regulation, human rights, pensions/social security, and the like, to the point that it is cheaper to manufacture something 3000 miles away and then burn a whole lot of fuel to ship it to the US, but the only levelling effect is a tarriff (which would undoubtedly be defeated explicitly by the World Trade Organization or effectively by shipping goods through a pass-through country that we do not tarriff). But more to the point, rather than waste a trillion dollars on a pointless, ineffective, inflammatory war, we should be investing taxpayer money in fundamental industrial development, as Japan, China, and India do to this day. We should be aggressively funding education and incenting technical graduates. We should retool elementary education to include fundamental computer programming, since it is the effective language of business, science, and life in the next century.
But all I see of America is increasing stupidity, and a dominant political system feeding off that ignorance. And in two decades, America will be the #3 power in the world, behind China and the EU, and possibly India.
In order to wage war/defend ourselves, we need an industrial base. A capability to manufacture all manner of low and high technology items. On the modern battlefield, above all this means a computerized, networked, mechanized army, navy, and airforce.
While it used to be that outsourced/offshore manufacturing was in easily
To think that america will have a permanent technology advantage over these rivals is foolish. China and India both graduate armies of engineers and scientists, much as the USSR's excellent schooling systems did, which kept their military technology in arms reach (kind of a pun there) of ours despite gross economic disparities. China has begun an active space program. They are developing state-of-the-art computer CPUs and operating systems independent of american vendors (Intel and Microsoft), and already manufacture the remaining components. The growth of advanced technology manufacturing in China means a vast infrastructure of fundamental technology acquisition and transfer from the West and Japan.
But most of all, both of these rivals aren't encumbered by a backward political system such as the USSR. China, in particular, is exercising a modified form of capitalism that is extremely aggressive, selective, and so far, effective. China manipulates its currency to maintain a trade export advantage and continue to encourage countries to offshore manufacturing in its borders. It can employ despotic policies (such as ignoring its rural populations' basic needs) in order to concentrate resources on its urban manufacturing and services. It can economically repurpose entire regions without the legal wranglings that occur in Western democracies.
In the near future span of 10-20 years, I see increased outsourcing of manufacturing and technology to China and India while the oil supply stays relatively constant. By the time oil production demands (particularly due to skyrocketing demand caused by two to three billion people modernizing rapidly) could lead to actual tensions with the US, China and India will likely have closed technological gaps, as well as developed fundamental infrastructures such as an effective, technologically equipped air-ground-sea-space military, ICBM nuclear deterrent, and will have the capability to blackmail us with threats of cutting off desired material goods exports if need be, since the US's domestic manufacturing will have been nearly completely atrophied.
Apologists for globalism that ignore the fact that China and India can choose to ignore health care costs, envrionmental regulation, human rights, pensions/social security, and the like, to the point that it is cheaper to manufacture something 3000 miles away and then burn a whole lot of fuel to ship it to the US, but the only levelling effect is a tarriff (which would undoubtedly be defeated explicitly by the World Trade Organization or effectively by shipping goods through a pass-through country that we do not tarriff). But more to the point, rather than waste a trillion dollars on a pointless, ineffective, inflammatory war, we should be investing taxpayer money in fundamental industrial development, as Japan, China, and India do to this day. We should be aggressively funding education and incenting technical graduates. We should retool elementary education to include fundamental computer programming, since it is the effective language of business, science, and life in the next century.
But all I see of America is increasing stupidity, and a dominant political system feeding off that ignorance. And in two decades, America will be the #3 power in the world, behind China and the EU, and possibly India.
posted by constance eustace at 1:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home