> each country can either: a) mutually agree to cancel all debt
Sovereign debt doesn't mean that countries owe money to each other. Most of the debt is owed to private investors (banks, funds, etc).
Sovereign debt doesn't mean that countries owe money to each other. Most of the debt is owed to private investors (banks, funds, etc).
I'm just describing the nature of the debt, and pointing out why countries' debts don't "cancel each other out" because it's a common misconception.
I think that the larger the world economies get, the closer we get to totalitarian policy being the only thing that works to mitigate disaster. Think economic collapse, climate change, viral epidemics. None can be solved by individual initiative, slow moving government policy, etc. They require large scale, immediate, dictorial action by large nation states.
Totalitarian policy is a disaster all its own.
More importantly: it is perfectly possible to implement totalitarian policy while maintaining the aesthetics of freedom. There is a famous book about this, 1984 something... Sorry for the cliché, but here we are.
Let's say, for example, that you convince the population of the most powerful economy on earth that they are the most free, most amazing society ever, while the rest of the developed world actually enjoys affordable health care and vacation time. Meanwhile, most of your citizens not only spend the vast amount of their time in an endless rat race that only benefits economically the top .001%, send their sons and daughters to stupid wars, while aggressively demanding the continuation of this state of affairs.
Another important trick to maintaining this state of affairs is to create very violent political debate about a very narrow and irrelevant set of topics (e.g. bullshit topics such as "cultural marxism", "red pill", "cucks and soyboys", "cultural appropriation", the corrupt blue guy vs the corrupt red gal... you get the picture).
What do you mean "mutually"? the government is the debtor and the banks/funds/citizens the creditors. There's no mutuality.
> Send in military, seize all assets, wipe the records.
No need for such drama. If a government says they won't pay back, that's pretty much the end of it. Maybe check out UN Charter Article 2 (4). Of course such unilateralism is quite stupid so governments tend to avoid it