Here’s an important essay on the new shape of the world after US crumbles. This author understands the KEY role of SKILL-ESTATE.
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While money and the military are indispensable, soft power is more crucial in a world of 8 billion people, who have easy access to diverse and abundant information. Democracy is a dangerous word for an empire, which must thus ensure that people (voters) are thoroughly propagandized to support the empire. This is why the US media and social media dominate the information superhighway all over the world.
However, look how the US is losing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The annual military budget of the US and NATO countries combined is staggering $1.6 trillion. That is 25 times larger than that of the Russian military budget. Yet, after more than two years of conflict, Russia stays undefeated, while cocaine-snorting comedian Zelensky is warning that Ukraine has lost too many men and does not have much time left. More importantly, Russia is able to manufacture more ammunition than the deindustrialized US and Europe combined!
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SKILL-ESTATE is the key. Russia never outsourced its own industry to China. India and China are DOING the manufacturing and servicing jobs that we GAVE THEM. Those three countries now own most of the skill, and we only own fentanyl and Taylor Swift.
MEN NEED TO MAKE THINGS. IF THEY CAN’T MAKE THINGS THEY WILL BREAK THINGS.
Skill is especially important for a warmaking empire. We won WWII because we had most of the manufacturing skill and engineering skill. Our engineers knew how to retool our vast industry to weapons quickly and efficiently, and our highly skilled workers adapted to the change and worked double shifts to get it done. Now we couldn’t do it even if we wanted to. We no longer have the plants or the skilled workers, and China has all the industrial engineers thanks to OUR TRAINING in the 80s.
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And when the US economy weakens, China will propel way ahead. The combination of research, practical ideas, and manufacturing will give China the advantage that the US briefly enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s. However, unlike America, China will not outsource their production or embrace financial capitalism that destroyed the US economy.
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I’d quibble with ‘briefly’. Our industry was dominant from 1900 to 1975 for two main reasons.
First was Social Economics or Fordism. Our biggest companies took care of their workers and their home towns, providing some of the assistance and social structure that we lost when we switched from feudal to sweatshop.
Second was MATERIALS AND METHODS, which really started in the 1840s with Morse and Vail. We were never the main source of ideas. Our specialty was turning ideas into systems. The light bulb becomes the grid. The phonograph becomes the music industry. The printing press becomes advertising agencies and feature syndicates. The locomotive becomes a rail network.
We handed Fordism to Japan and Korea in the early 50s, then abandoned it and reverted to pure sweatshop for our few remaining industries. We handed materials and methods to China and India in the 80s when we trained thousands of their MATERIALS SCIENTISTS and coal power engineers. We never handed anything to Russia, and Russia didn’t need our gifts. Russia simply kept its own feudal system and continued its VASTLY SUPERIOR education system for engineers.
Polistra's Mill 