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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> this is not a race worth trying to win

Earnestly, why not?

Edit with my concerns:

America is still a bastion of personal liberty. I'd shudder to think of a world where something else throws around all the weight.

We're already censoring American entertainment to appease the juggernauts in the search of profit. I don't think the coming world will be comfortable.

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> Earnestly, why not?

Because trying to win "who consume the most" race specifically requires making dumb decisions. Which is why it is not good thing to win.

It completely escapes me what "quantity vs quality" and trying to be the most consumerist country has to do with personal liberty or entertainment censorship. Whether we are talking about past liberty + censorship issues strategies and gatekeepers or about contemporary ones.

Also, I have a bit trouble to square "bastion of personal liberty" with highest incarceration levels in the world.

Because consumption isn't necessarily what makes America great, there are externalization effects which make it a 'bad thing' - and you're not going to 'out consume' 2 nations (India and China) of 1 Billion each.

Time for a different strategy.

Notably one of working with EU/UK/Canada/Mexico/Brazil/SKorea/Japan etc. towards stabilizing things, making sure China+Russia don't get out of hand, dealing with climate change, and hopefully not having to suffer a reduction in quality of life.

Other first world (mainly European) countries are, in general, far happier than we are, despite having significantly smaller consumer economies. Why is that?

Edit: America is only a bastion of personal liberty if you look and act a certain way. Is personal liberty such an important thing anyway? It seems to be creating huge problems for us at the moment. I am not an advocate for an entirely collectivist society, but I think a small dose of collectivism would help us all. People refuse to acknowledge the benefits they get from our society without wanting to play their part by paying taxes.

Probably because they spend less on the military and more on their people.

But would they be able to do that if they couldn't rely on US protection via NATO? If the US suddenly disappeared, would Europe be ripe for invasion by, say, Russia?

The European nations have been dealing with Russia since before there was an America, and it’s not clear that Russia would benefit from forced occupation of countries that don’t already have a large population that supported it. Irrespective of whether the Crimea annexation was legal, the population there already had a signification portion of people who supported it.

Russia trying to march into France or Germany, for instance, wouldn’t be a fun thing for anyone, including Russia.

Europe as a whole no.

Baltic states yes. Moscow views them as lost provinces with nontrivial Russian minorities, blocking land access to Kaliningrad.

France and the UK have a few hundred operational nukes. Even though Russia has more than a thousand, I doubt they’d risk it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_...

Europeans do underspend on their own security, and Russia is a threat, but not quite in the 'all out invasion' sense.

But 'military spending' is a pretty small part of the 'difference between wealth creation' factors on either side of the Atlantic.

Against Russia, I'd back an Anglo-French-German alliance any day.

Surely you mean you'd back the defender?

NATO protection is a myth. Do you really believe the US would risk nuclear war with Russia just for Europe?

But why do you believe Russia would risk nuclear war just for Europe, what would they gain?

The first time NATO is not acting on it's obligations is the last day of NATO. Who need an alliance that does not work?

What did NATO do for the Greeks when Turkey invaded a good portion of Cyprus?

What do you they should do?

They do what they do because they have the US protecting them. Also, Liberty is taken for granted until you dont have it.

> Earnestly, why not?

Because it’s going to suck when the oil runs out.

if we run out of oil, we have much, much bigger problems.

even if you take claimed reserves with a healthy dose of skepticism -- which you should, because oil-producing nations treat those reserves as assets that they can borrow against -- if we burn all of that oil we'll be at something like 5C+ of warming.

for reference, when the planet was 4C cooler than the modern era, during the last ice age, the place you sit now was likely under 1km of ice.

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