Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

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I find discussion on IP theft that spends too much time moralizing to be an ineffective argument, in part because of the hypocrisy, but also because it probably won't work on people with completely different values.

If we accept that we are Britain in the 1800s, and that we enjoy certain benefits to being the reserve currency of the world, then the question becomes, what strategically can the US do to remain the dominant player in the world?

Can transfer of technology know-how be stopped, given the changes in the world since 1800? If anything information is more available than ever, so it seems like a losing battle.

What about a show of force, like the Opium War forced Beijing to open its markets? Tricky as well, on one hand.. nuclear war. On the other hand, that power disparity continues to narrow over time, if there were a time to risk it all it would be now.

I'm sure there are other strategies out there as well, but those are two that come to mind.

Or instead of risking nuclear war, where there are no winners, only losers - just accept that things change and you can't be top dog forever.

That said, I don't actually think China will replace the US as top dog. It's growing faster yes, but has serious Japan-like demographic problems fast approaching. The thing about demographic problems is they're predictable and almost impossible to escape.

In absolute dollar value terms, the US is still competitive with China, which means they'll likely never close that gap before their demographics catch up with them.

Top dogs will always try to stay top dog for as long as possible and they are willing. It is what people would naturally do even if the stage was a video game, or if they were fighting for civil rights. Some people tend not to just "know their place."

I fully agree that it goes against human nature and history. However, it has to go against those things. We live in an age of weapons so terrible that the kind of global conflict that defined the first half of the twentieth century must just never happen again because the consequences would be truly unthinkable. Advanced civilization is a fragile thing. We gain a lot of efficiency from extreme specialization - but we also lose a lot of resiliency. A global nuclear war would end civilization as we know it, and who knows how long it would take to recover - especially with the easily accessible resources already consumed.

That's not to say that it won't happen - but we shouldn't permit it, or support those who would.

Culture exports. Hollywood and the internet spring to mind. The cia apparently funded a lot of modern art to show american cultural supremacy.

the simplest solution is US incorporates China. Following the previous discussion of G2.

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