I have the exact same caveat to Zeihan's predictions that you do. Apart from Zeihan's general overconfidence in his predictions, I think that technology is a blindspot for him. In particular, energy innovation and AGI seem like they could be fundamentally disruptive to his models.
Quite depressing for those outside of the power elite countries. It would seem that countries like Africa are headed for starvation. This sounds like a future of decreasing global population.
From an alternate perspective, what effect will the US isolation policy have on its deeply divided population that seethes with inequality?
This turned out prophetic: "Russia is also in a tough spot, as too many people are old/sick, and they need to annex countries like Ukraine and the Baltic States just to be physically secure. Once the U.S. and NATO retreat, they likely will try. "
china as the manufacturing hub of the world and the USA inability to manufacture anything (masks, toilet paper) does pose a problem, Ziehan doesn't seem to address or at least missed in your excellent summary
The US manufactures just a tad less then China with 10X fewer people in manufacturing. We just specialize in high value automated manufacturing not TP.
how would u explain the huge trade deficit and the supply chain hell of the last 2 years. if we manufactured anything close to china then those 2 problems wouldn’t be as pronounced
We (America) and China specialize in manufacturing different things and different parts of complex supply chains. China mostly is in the final assembly buisness for consumer products, America mostly is in the design and building of more complex specilty high value, industrial products as well as food and raw materials. We manufacture just below the $ value of what they manufacture ( with 1/10 or fewer people working in manufacturing) but our products are often early in the supply chain and go into final assembly. That has to go back to China and then back here for retail, thus the bottle neck. We manufacture far more than ever before both in volume and $ value, but in different sectors then we used to and using far fewer people then ever before, is good that means we have higher productivity.
I have the exact same caveat to Zeihan's predictions that you do. Apart from Zeihan's general overconfidence in his predictions, I think that technology is a blindspot for him. In particular, energy innovation and AGI seem like they could be fundamentally disruptive to his models.
Quite depressing for those outside of the power elite countries. It would seem that countries like Africa are headed for starvation. This sounds like a future of decreasing global population.
From an alternate perspective, what effect will the US isolation policy have on its deeply divided population that seethes with inequality?
This turned out prophetic: "Russia is also in a tough spot, as too many people are old/sick, and they need to annex countries like Ukraine and the Baltic States just to be physically secure. Once the U.S. and NATO retreat, they likely will try. "
china as the manufacturing hub of the world and the USA inability to manufacture anything (masks, toilet paper) does pose a problem, Ziehan doesn't seem to address or at least missed in your excellent summary
The US manufactures just a tad less then China with 10X fewer people in manufacturing. We just specialize in high value automated manufacturing not TP.
how would u explain the huge trade deficit and the supply chain hell of the last 2 years. if we manufactured anything close to china then those 2 problems wouldn’t be as pronounced
We (America) and China specialize in manufacturing different things and different parts of complex supply chains. China mostly is in the final assembly buisness for consumer products, America mostly is in the design and building of more complex specilty high value, industrial products as well as food and raw materials. We manufacture just below the $ value of what they manufacture ( with 1/10 or fewer people working in manufacturing) but our products are often early in the supply chain and go into final assembly. That has to go back to China and then back here for retail, thus the bottle neck. We manufacture far more than ever before both in volume and $ value, but in different sectors then we used to and using far fewer people then ever before, is good that means we have higher productivity.
thanks for the summary