That is a factual question, not a philosophical one. It is just as factual as whether water boils at 100.C.

And the answer is?

There is the philosophical issue of whether humanity has it in itself to survive. We do in theory, but will we act on that and be successful. Or do we just turn on each other and collapse civilisation again like we have done many times in the past.

Are we capable of securing our long term survival and what would that involve.

But won’t there come a point where it will become cost effective to send out swarms of drones to take out the hordes. Some evil genius will come up with the idea that it’s better to just get it over with quickly and without too much fuss. That to reduce the global population to a million or two workers is the way to mitigate.

So, here and there some individuals and communities survive -- probably more because they were lucky than because they pivoted, adapted, and adjusted continually. The title is too optimistic. It should be "How we might POSSIBLY survive in a post-collapse world, but don't bet on it".

I think the survivors would likely be those who happen to be in a favourable micro climate, like a high valley in the Himalaya. Or a mountainous Island away from the tropics.

That poster is a troll, or a bot. That’s what the issue is. I gave up replying, it just sets your head spinning.

Is this a bot?

It's not incoherent. Ceteris paribus, slapping tariffs of imports will tend to reduce a country's trade deficit. Whether this is a worthy goal is another thing. However, it will tend to increase domestic production, particularly in a country with a huge trade deficit. This might very well be a benefit if the country is one in which the top 10% account for over half of all consumer spending, since the people taking jobs in new production and benefiting from increased domestic investment will tend to be part of the 90% who are not consuming most of the goods.

In principle yes, perhaps this is what some of these voters thought when they voted for him. But this isn’t what they got, they got a vindictive trade war which will bring in economic turbulence which will drown out any increase in domestic production and alienate all their allies.
Anyway my use of the word incoherent was probably too nebulous, there is coherence in the message, but when it comes to implementing it in the real world, it’s unhinged. There may well be a way, a policy framework which can address the imbalances highlighted in this thread caused by globalisation etc. But this isn’t it, this is a wrecking ball and now it emerges that this “liberation” wasn’t about what people thought it was about, but rather it was about turning Trump into a demagogue bestride the world stage arm in arm with Putin.

Did these people vote for recession, destruction of the apparatus of state, the alienation of all their allies around the world. To make Russia great again. Contempt for the constitution and the rule of law. I could go on, but I don’t remember this being on the ticket.

At any rate, it's not the worst timing. Apparently, there is a decent likelihood that the next decade will see a tumultuous shedding of white collar jobs due to AI (the looming crisis in academia as enrollment peaks and declines only adds to this) and this will lead to a rapid acceleration in the tendency of wealthy nations to have most of their income come from capital, not labor. Production is certainly liable to become more automated, but not in the sea change way that white color work might soon be getting reduced. So, there is a sort of impetus there for an increased focus on production as well.

Yes, I agree on the direction of travel you describe here. Presumably you’re suggesting some kind of UBI (universal basic income). The trouble with this is that people on the right of politics will never stomach such a thing. They believe that every cent and dime must be earnt with sweat and toil, or genius innovation. For such people UBI is tantamount to communism. Better to have people who can’t earn a living some way to be poor, destitute. In the U.K. this is literally what they want a return to Victorian squalor.

When tundra thaws, it becomes soft and squishy and will produce tons and tons of methane which will add to global warming.

Millions if not billions of tons of methane. This is one of the tipping points, it’s already well under way.

FFS, learn how it works!

Agree to disagree will just spin you around in circles until you’re dizzy.

The tariffs and the return of "industrial policy" that differed radically from the neo-liberal orthodoxy that had dominated the GOP for decades were discussed throughout the campaign. You can find all sorts of articles on this from before Trump was elected, and he had rhetoric focused on the trade deficit in his speeches on a regular basis.

I’m only focussing on this issue. The gaslighting is that Trump and his associates assured voters that their policy is economically coherent and that it would work. Just like Liz Truss did in the U.K. she remained in office as Prime Minister for 45 days, before the markets sent her packing.

So what you are calling for is an imbalance in the world's economy, such that a smaller population in the "West" has a larger part of the production...

No, (although it might be a maybe), I’m observing an economic malaise in Western countries and suggesting a remedy, based on a removal of the cause.

Even if Trump does “negotiate” away some of the tariffs, or row back due to worries about a crash. It’s too late for their credibility. It’s shot, the reset across the rest of the world has already happened and investors and capital flows may turn away from the dumpster fire. As Simon Nixon (formerly of The Times) suggests;

Yet there is a danger that this kind of orthodox analysis risks underestimating the wider consequences of what Trump has just unleashed. Some of those consequences are psychological, not least to confidence in the credibility of US economic policymaking. As George Saravelos at Deutsche Bank notes: “there is a very large disconnect between communication in recent weeks of an in-depth policy assessment of bilateral trade relationships with different countries versus the reality of the policy outcome. We worry this risks lowering the policy credibility of the administration on a forward-looking basis. The market may question the extent to which a sufficiently structured planning process for major economic decisions is taking place. After all, this is the biggest trade policy shift from the US in a century. Crucially, major additional fiscal decisions are lining up over the next two months.” Trust in US economic policymaking once destroyed will be hard to regain.
Even more importantly, it is surely naive to think that the consequences of an upending of the global economic order on this scale can be limited to trade. As Harnett and Bowers have noted, few investors recognise how closely global capital flows and global trade are linked. A crucial question now is what happens to capital flows. If it leads to lower cross-border capital flows, that could have consequences both for the dollar and US private lenders, which depend on foreign capital. As Wealth of Nations has been consistently noting since it was first launched, much of the extraordinary performance of US assets in recent years has been fuelled by vast exports of European and Asian capital. Even more consequentially, as trade becomes weaponised, will capital go the same way? After all, if countries are being forced to become more self-sufficient, they will need to be self-sufficient in capital too. The real risk is that Trump triggers a disorderly exit by foreign investors from US assets. History may record that it was not just the global trading system that Trump blew up on Liberation Day but the financial system as we knew it too.

Blog here;
https://nixons.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-economic-world-as?utm_campaign=post&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Voters need to feel like it’s a disaster for their quality of life. That’s the only way to be rid of Trump.

Won’t be long now then.
I wonder if he can outlive a lettuce, which the UK’s last PM but one failed to do (when she implemented neo-con policy).

People are getting what they voted for.

Only a few voted for this. Most voted for populist promises.This is more a failure democracy, a breakdown in the dissemination of sound political narratives to the population. Mass gaslighting from media and social media organisations captured by vested interests.
Trump is the opportunist who took advantage by riding the wave of disinformation. Unfortunately he is a snake oil salesman, a conman. Not the sort of person to pull off such a seismic correction in global trade. If it doesn’t crash and burn, it will be a miracle. Like the miracle that supposedly caused Trump to dip his head when the bullet grazed his ear.

Wouldn't you expect half of the world's population to produce half of the stuff and get half of the profits?

Yes, in an ideal world, but it is not an ideal world.
Anyway I was talking about the imbalance that has produced the poor economic circumstances in Western countries. There are numerous other factors, but the largest one is cheap labour and remarkable efficiencies in the East undercutting labour in the West.

The locals are around 10x the cost of the same printing from China. It's higher quality here, but still. Damn.

I think you’ve hit the nub of the issue here. All the woes (well most of them) of the U.S. economy, along with the EU and most Western countries are as a result of this. The undercutting of consumables, product and tech by China and some other Far Eastern producers. Over a period of about 30years.

Along with Western producers outsourcing production to these countries.

This is the imbalance that needs correcting. And yet Trump is going after other Western countries and small countries, for a problem caused by and in cahoots with China. As a result he will cause an unnecessary global recession and the collapse, or re-ordering of global trade.

I could give countless examples of what has gone wrong here. But I’ll give one to illustrate. In the U.K. we have an entrepreneur inventor guy, who until recently was hailed as an example of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, Sir James Dyson. Now he is hated and despised by many because of what he did when he had made his money and became very successful. At the first sign of production cost increases at home, probably caused by China undercutting us on production cost. He closed his U.K. production lines down and manufactured his vacuum cleaners in the Far East. Then he became a campaigner and cheerleader for Brexit from his home in Singapore. Apparently he recently bought the most expensive penthouse apartment in Singapore. More recently he has started buying up farmland in the U.K., which has tax breaks for inheritance and capital transfer taxes. Contributing to the unsustainable increases in the cost of farmland, which is pushing many small farmers out of business.

If only innovators like this used their brain power and worked out what the problems are and how to fix them. But no, it was class driven exceptionalism all the way.

Or it’s a dumpster fire. I don’t know enough about US politics to comment on the left right issue. I can read the runes though and to introduce an economic shock that up ends the last 100yrs of globalisation overnight does sound like throwing a torch into a dumpster truck.

But also it doesn’t make economic sense, but rather, it only makes sense if you agree with Trump’s novel views on trade. Views which he’s held unchanged for 40years and are naive and show a poor understanding of what’s involved and a deep prejudice.

In today's geopolitical circumstance, it simply cannot compete with a united Russia-China-Iran bloc.

It must have slipped your mind that Russia and Iran are basket cases and China does not do this pariah state nonsense. She will likely do a deal with Trump, which will be hailed as the greatest deal of all time.

it really is the way he incorrectly thinks that manufacturing gets back to the US.

It takes minutes to impose tariffs, but 5 to 10 years to build a factory. Also why would a manufacturer build that factory when in 4 years Trump will be gone and the tariffs may well be reversed. Not to mention that the cost of building that factory and producing the goods will be very high. There might not be anyone left with enough money to buy the goods at the end of it all.
Investors will turn away and leave the U.S. to stagflation.

Now presumably he will do deals. Deals in which he will extract something from other countries in return for a reduction in tariffs. But what can these countries offer him? With Canada and Mexico it was the same as before, so nothing really. Trump claimed a win and probably believed it was a win.

So all countries have to do now is bend the knee and dress up what they were already doing as a concession. This leaves the countries, or trading blocks he hates left with the high tariffs, the EU and the Far East. I doubt he will keep the high tariffs on China, I’m expecting a state visit to China with lots of staged handshakes and the greatest trade deal in history.

Thanks for the correction, liberation day, I’ve put it right now.

The world is a zero-sum game. America is being ripped off. Only I can fix it. Loyalty to me is patriotism. Elites and institutions are your enemy. Winning is the only value that matters."

Oh and I’m the most powerful person on the planet and you all have to dance to my tune.

Will Trump carry through his tariff war (today is Trump’s liberation Day), or will he chicken out?

Is it just posturing to do deals, or is it all about something else(more sinister)?

Is there anything in his ideology(any sense in it), or is it all about his narcissistic ego?

The fog of war. Imagine the chaos on the Russian side.

If global warming is allowed to reach 3°C by 2100 from pre-industrial levels, cumulative economic output could be reduced by 15% to 34%, the report says, while investing 1% to 2% of cumulative GDP in mitigation and adaptation to limit warming to 2°C from pre-industrial levels would reduce economic damage to just 2% to 4%.

“Rapid and sustained investments in mitigation and adaptation will minimise the economic damages and come with a high return,” says the Executive Summary. “Mitigation slows global warming by cutting emissions; adaptation reduces vulnerability to the physical impacts of climate change. Investments in both must rise significantly by 2050 – 9-fold for mitigation and 13-fold for adaptation. We estimate that the total investment required equals 1% to 2% of cumulative economic output to 2100.

This will be a conservative estimate(which one would expect with an economic assessment), it won’t include shocks and breakdowns in societies, or unexpected weather and geological events. All of which will accompany the overall trend. Which in turn will increase in frequency, as the gap between the state prior to a human induced climate change and the current state becomes wider.

Do reports like this consider areas of sensitivity for population wellbeing. Such as fresh water and food supply? Because these can be greatly affected by destabilisation of weather patterns, even with the small temperature changes we have experienced so far. We have a large human population which requires fresh water and food daily, it won’t take much for this dependency to become strained. Desertification can happen quite suddenly in some regions resulting in the loss of large areas of productive farmland. Which seems to be happening in California at this time. Other areas can be susceptible to destabilised weather patterns, such as most of Europe at the moment.

What happens when there are water and food shortages. Destabilisation of populations and societies. Another likely development is societal collapse, political turmoil and the spread of warfare. Things we are already seeing in the continent of Africa.

Now when discussing mitigation and adaptation, are we assuming away these other risks? Surely if there is societal collapse, severe water, or food shortages in a country, this will reduce their willingness, or ability to make the changes required. If this were to start to happen in larger countries, it would have a more significant slowing effect on the progress of the required changes.

Then there are the political ramifications, states like the U.S. Brazil(until recently) and Russia have a drill baby drill policy. As a result of the increase in populism and authoritarianism in recent decades. Failed states won’t be mitigating, or adapting.

All in all it’s a rocky road ahead.

Now imagine a world dominated by China and Putin, or more realistically BRICS. You think there will be less genocide?

— Punshhh

Probably so. Obviously I don't expect either of them to usher in the new utopia, but continental powers work fundamentally different from peripheral powers like the US.

I think you are somewhat lacking in powers of imagination. Such states tend to use mass starvation rather than active genocide, it’s less obvious. Also genocide is not a good marker for the difference we would find. All global treaties would be abandoned, the world would become a competing world of warlords. Populations not offered protection(for a price), by a warlord would be left to the dogs. Again mass starvation, war, failed states across wide regions. And if a population is lucky enough to have protection, they will be exploited little better than slaves with few rights. While their land will be laid waste by unregulated exploitation of resources. And when climate change kicks in, welcome to Mad Max.

Doesn't the UK do automated manufacturing? Wouldn't that help the situation?

Yes, but the problem is an economic cliff edge, or an overnight change of circumstances. For industry to adapt to the new circumstances takes years, with a lot of investment etc.
Covid lockdowns were a cliff edge too. The economic repercussions of which are still going on, or are yet to be realised. Add to that the cliff edge of the financial crisis (2008) and the U.K. is reeling from 3 major economic shocks in the last 17yrs.

I don't think you would have the same stable international order if there wasn't a superior military backing it, even if it isn't used in an obvious direct way to protect it.

Yes, it would not require a level of deployment that could be described as overstretch. Also it could be a coalition.

To clarify, my goal is not to find out the truth about the matter per se, but to get a clearer picture of what their ideology is. Because eventhough the ideology isn't necessarily about the truth, it is often a sign for what they want to accomplish, and it does influence people.... and because it influences people it will have real consequences.

Well my take on this is that it’s a mess, composed of the wims of a senile wannabe dictator, a hard right reform agenda Project 25 and a process of Orbanisation to weaken democracy.

As for the goal, well I’m not sure they have one, but rather a trajectory. Again a combination of the three ideologies above.

What it will look like, a skip fire.

Don’t they have a contraption for that?

We’ve been here before. Now imagine a world dominated by China and Putin, or more realistically BRICS. You think there will be less genocide?

I'm not saying there are any guarantees that things will go the way Trump and Vance imagine, I'm just noting, especially to other Americans, that this is not rightist. The goal here is actually leftist, but American leftism died. That's what makes the present situation pretty fascinating.

Stimulating manufacturing and farming at home is a good thing in some ways, but as Benkei says prices will go up and what it stimulates might not be what we imagine. We had all this debate in the U.K. with Brexit, because we imported stuff easily from eastern and southern Europe. But because we sent back European workers and the young in our country don’t want to do a proper days work. Things have stagnated and we now import inferior product with dubious standards from third world countries.

Manufacturing has stagnated too, due to lack of skilled workers and the inability for manufacturers to truly operate from home in an interconnected world with just in time supply lines etc. Making it uncompetitive to compete with imports from non EU countries.

Once stagflation sets in, it’s difficult to budge and the shit that Doge is up to is throwing a spanner in the real economy which will be reeling from the tariff war and shortages in cheap labour.

Preferable to Putin’s rapacious ways and a balance to China.

You do have knowledge of your colleague, that he is dead. If you have no knowledge of your colleague, how do you know that he is dead and a colleague? If he is dead, he is no longer present.

But I’m working on the assumption that my colleague is experiencing an afterlife, as is posited in the OP. By definition an afterlife is some kind of presence continuing over time. So would presumably include the next day following the day of their death. So my colleague is present today along with myself, but somehow removed.

You see I do not think Trump is some great savior, I held my nose and voted for him as I believe in his overall policy direction.

Did you vote for MAGA to pivot to MRGA(make Russia great again), or the annexation of Canada and Greenland? For a vindictive trade war with every other country, except Israel? For hire and fire policies where you are vetted for any critical opinions about Trump, before you are hired, or fired, or Trump looking to run for a third term? I could go on, but this is a fair summary of his policy direction.

Yes I think you are right, economic globalisation was the cause of the hollowing out. But they see it as sort of a package deal maybe, for globalisation you need free trade, for that you need trade routes to be save, to protect those you need a global security order... If your aim is to rely less on globalisation, the security needs also change presumably.

The security required for global trade is not a military deployment. It is an international world order. The soft power and diplomacy, creating over an extended period an atmosphere of trust, respectability and cooperation between nations and regions. Piracy (which would require a naval presence) has only been a minor issue in certain regions.

So again It is a flawed argument, a non argument. But we do know, don’t we that all the arguments coming out of Trump’s White House are flawed, or non arguments. As his modus operandi is disinformation. We have to judge him by his actions, while rejecting his reasoning in favour of the established (over a long period) narrative.

If it wrecks the US economy, it will wreck everybodies economy I would think, or at least those of the West.

There are degrees of wrecking. I don’t think we are talking of full economic collapse, just a serious recession, or depression. This would not wreck the global economy, although it would bring on a recession. But the bad effects will mainly be felt in the U.S. such changes over the short period will likely stimulate economic growth in other regions. The crisis in the U.S. is deeper than economic though, so it is very much a U.S. problem and could take a few years to sort out.

So... we have arrived. This is the afterlife. It is now. And there will be coffee again tomorrow, maybe.

But if my colleague died yesterday and I am still alive. Today our presents are the same present. Why do I have no knowledge of my colleague today?

. I collect these little predictions that are given to me and store them so when they prove to be right or wrong, I recognize whom said what. And so far you’re batting zero, my friend.

Sounds like you’re talking to yourself in the mirror, if there is a reflection that is and you’re not just talking into the void.

[/quote] Nosferatu is a vampire[/quote]

A work of fiction, I understand.

I think it does make sense if you see the global liberal democratic order, NATO, as a problem in itself that needs to be dealt with... because it was more and more overextending the US budget while hollowing out the center of the country.

This line of reasoning is false, the overstretch argument. Especially when linking it to an economically hollowing out of the country.
Any overstretch that can be identified and the hollowing out of the centre, which can be seen, is not due to global security overreach. It is due to China and other Far Eastern economies undercutting U.S. production in all areas and the drive to outsource production from the West to the Far East, capitalised on by Western manufacturers. The same effect can clearly be seen in European countries. Those European countries that are freeloading off this same U.S. overstretch.

I was going to answer your questions in your reply to ssu, in the previous post. But realised they had nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of climate change. It was some bogus question about people liking to visit warm places. More evidence of trolling and that there’s no point engaging.