Why assume an ethical dimension? — Voyeur
apokrisis
4.7k
↪Frank Apisa Navies and bases spell empires. A big army is good for beating up a geographic neighbour. Projecting power globally is about bases and carriers.
Until the UK started getting back into the game, only the US had a fleet of Nimitz and Ford class super-carriers. And the US has its global network of bases to match.
China and India are an order of magnitude behind in these terms.
The US could downsize drastically and still be a huge regional power. The real question is why would it even care about being the world policeman these days?
And the problem is also that power has shifted in ways that no-one could take its place. The thought of stepping into America’s shoes as the global cop also makes no sense if you are a China or an India.
The US experience shows that bases and carriers topple regimes but don’t build stable allies, or even reliable dictatorships. Warfare has adapted to the times and become asymmetric. Most of the world has also moved from developing to developed. Old school colonial empires can’t function anymore.
So the US certainly has the big stick military power. The flip side of this is that no one is going to rule the world - turn it into its well run colonial empire again - just by owning a big stick.
So the measures of might have changed along with the state of the world. Military power still counts. Yet forging regional communities of interest is what matters for successful statesmanship in a post-colonial, post-cold war, setting. — apokrisis
. Most aircraft carriers will be totally destroyed during the first hours of any major new confrontation — Frank Apisa
apokrisis
4.7k
. Most aircraft carriers will be totally destroyed during the first hours of any major new confrontation
— Frank Apisa
Full on nuclear war is different issue. The question here is about the global projection of power to run a world system.
And the US wouldn’t have continued to invest in supercarriers if they were as vulnerable as all that. — apokrisis
It's a practical political question for many nations when the US and China are demanding you pick a side and yet you depend on a healthy economic/security relation with both. — apokrisis
Marchesk
3.6k
↪Frank Apisa I should have specified in terms of funding and global reach. — Marchesk
The stable existence or the decline of any society should not be measured just by its material resources. The decisive factor is social capital. It can be defined as the system of a particular set of informal values, norms, and beliefs shared among members of a society that permits cooperation.In the US, there has been the deepening corrosion of trust in political and social institutions. The lack of belief in what constitutes America can undermine its social capital. Similar processes had led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.The US has a base within spitting distance of every possible enemy. And none of its enemies can claim the reverse applies. That is what empire looks like.
The US through dumb leadership can misuse that investment. But it doesn’t face a serious rival for its dominance on that score. — apokrisis
Whether that state of affairs carries ethical consequences/connotations... that seems less clear to me. — Voyeur
The stable existence or the decline of any society should not be measured just by its material resources. The decisive factor is social capital. — Number2018
In the US, there has been the deepening corrosion of trust in political and social institutions. The lack of belief in what constitutes America can undermine its social capital. — Number2018
Similar processes had led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. — Number2018
The United States is no longer a leader among nations. — Banno
Is there something - anything - positive in this? — Banno
I'm a pragmatist rather than an idealist so ethics becomes just another way of talking about an optimisation function. — apokrisis
Nature isn't about right and wrong. — apokrisis
It's about systems with the balances to achieve purposes. — apokrisis
whether America is unraveling or not, evolution is always chaotic. Natural or Political. — Voyeur
Life is arranged to maximise long run entropy production. — apokrisis
The long term outcomes of exponential entropy production have now come into view. What is now “good” will be whatever counts as a shift to a long-run sustainable balance within environmental limits. — apokrisis
It is the main point! If we answer this, it could help us to understand where is the US right now. Is there a contest of interest groups? What are the group's goals? What are the current riots about? One could say that what is on stake is not a set of particular policies reflecting different groups' interests. There are different visions of America, and this existential conflict cannot get settled in a 'regular' way.could the US now crumble because of a few riots, a bit of woke activism, a lot of redneck moronicism? The US has always been characterised by its freely vitriolic approach to social discourse. That can indeed be a competitive national strength as much as a flaw.
Society ought to be a contest of interest groups. That is how differences eventually get settled and a society stays well adapted to the challenges and goals as it understands them. So is the current level of discord an actual problem or evidence of stuff being sorted? — apokrisis
What about China? This communist country has not collapsed so far.:smile:Communism collapsed because it is brittle. It isn't a system in which interest groups can contest and sort out their differences to arrive at a mutual accomodation. It lacked a marketplace of ideas. — apokrisis
What actually happened was Gorbachev - in a moment of desperation - made a fateful decision to allow free speech. His hope and expectation was that this would allow some kind of graceful transition. The people would be so grateful that the Communist Party would win in open elections. The voters would ignore the economic stagnation.
But unmuzzled, the population took its opportunity. Every republic wanted to assert its own identity. The grip on the entire Eastern Bloc was lost. — apokrisis
My argument is that the system can tolerate a Trump because it is basically uncollapsable. — apokrisis
And the point is that good and bad are social constructs used to encode thermodynamic outcomes. — apokrisis
There appears to be inconsistency between these two. — Metaphysician Undercover
The virtuous activity of living, is to seek neither of the two extremes, death nor survival, as the good, but something completely different — Metaphysician Undercover
It is the main point! If we answer this, it could help us to understand where is the US right now. Is there a contest of interest groups? What are the group's goals? What are the current riots about — Number2018
What about China? This communist country has not collapsed so far — Number2018
When the population stopped to rely on a set of existential social presuppositions, the Soviet Union collapsed. — Number2018
Your argument could be understood as a piece of evidence that there is indeed a deep fundamental belief in America as an a-historical, eternal entity. What can happen if the waste majority of the population would challenge this existential value? — Number2018
I agree that what is truly at stake has become hard to discern. What we are presented with in the media are two caricature extremes - woke cancel culture against meathead rednecks. — apokrisis
Even thermodynamic outcomes are probabilistic, which gives rise to the possibility of chaos. — Voyeur
Of course, we know that entropy rises in the long term, but it's important to remember the reason for this is an atomistic probability (a probability which allows for temporary decreases in entropy as well), and not a Hegelian Zeitgeist leading us by the hand. — Voyeur
On a side note, I wonder whether a multi-polar or uni-polar world is a higher entropy state of affairs? Could this be calculated? — Voyeur
Once photosynthesis had evolved, and bacteria had “poisoned” the atmosphere with sufficient oxygen, and so long as the climate generally favoured liquid water, then the conditions for life were very steady state — apokrisis
Not to mention we are stuck with the trapped waste in terms of CO2. — apokrisis
So the story is that life will entropify as fast as it can. — apokrisis
Why would you call this act which prepared the atmosphere for evolution to proceed, an act of poisoning the atmosphere? — Metaphysician Undercover
A moment ago you said oxygen in the atmosphere is poison, now it's CO2 which is "waste"? — Metaphysician Undercover
But entropy is just an arbitrary designation, dependent entirely on one's perspective. Is O2 more entropified than CO2? What about O3? "Entropy" is completely perspective dependent. — Metaphysician Undercover
And the point is that good and bad are social constructs used to encode thermodynamic outcomes.
— apokrisis — Voyeur
...and hence while it might not tell us what we ought do, it will tell us what we in fact will do, and hence that ethics is rendered irrelevant.Ethics only comes into it as a backfill of decisions taken for other reasons - unfortunately perhaps. — apokrisis
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