Predictions about the death of American hegemony may have been greatly exaggerated
http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/22/predictions_about_the_death_of_american_hegemony_may_have_been_greatly_exaggerated
The word ‘hegemony‘ in the title really caught my eye, particularly when paired with the phrase “greatly exaggerated”. Based on my understanding of history the US is on the cusp of the same slide that happened to the British a couple of centuries ago except I feel due to the modern nature of information flow, I think the downfall will be greatly accelerated. As such, I was prepared to be quite skeptical of the article and the early paragraphs only confirmed my assessment:
So, America is doomed, right?
To be honest, this sounds like a lot of pious baloney. As Michael Beckley points out in a new article in International Security, “The United States is not in decline; in fact, it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991.”
Our wealth is concentrated in the few (the ‘dreaded’ 1% to which I aspire) and those few have little to no incentive to increase their wealth when it might risk their social standing (briefly, since I can’t find the post(s) I discussed this before, since wealthy people already have everything they could possibly need they have no financial incentive to help the economy grow. Indeed, give that much (if not all) of their wealth and social status is inherited, they are (as a class) incentivized to reduce vertical mobility in the general population as a way to decrease the probability of their negative vertical movement), so the ‘now wealthier’ bit is totally misleading, our innovation as a society is being suppressed via the very patent and trademark system originally intended to foster such innovation and (as noted below), our military has been designed to stop an opponent that will never materialize. So to me, the exact opposite of ‘pious baloney’.
However, I soldiered on (I was there already) and continued with the rest of the article. While I am _very_ skeptical that the idea of spending 30% of our treasure on a military that has no realistic opponent (see here for details), I did feel elements of truth in most of the rest of the article, so for those of you (and I am using the ‘royal’ you, which means me too) who are laying awake at night running through scenarios to deal with the coming apocalypse, I suggest reading the rest of the article because it provides some hope that the world really won’t end shortly.
Specifically, the idea that due to the skyrocketing labor rates in the conventional cheap labor locations (granted the rates are still low, but keep in mind they still have huge shipping costs to deal with) is making things cheaper in the US (though that has to be caveated with the reality that a lot of new US manufacturing is highly automated) so manufacturing is actually shifting back to the US. Also, our deleveraging is proceeding well according to other countries that have gone through the same or similar events. I am a bit more skeptical on the energy front, particularly when he so casually mentioned ‘ethanol’, but I feel with the proper government incentives (that damn socialism again!) we could dramatically reduce our energy needs by increasing efficiency and decreasing utilization (such as through insulating our homes). However, I am not convinced that there will be such a dramatic change in demographics that in as little as 20 years we could achieve such a dramatic reduction in demand that we could eliminate our dependance on volatile Middle East reserves. However his arguments do not seem bogus to me, just stretched in the wrong direction.
As I have said multiple times before, I would be ecstatic to be wrong about my predictions of the looming apocalypse. I have no real desire to have to do back breaking work for 8 months out of the year (and plenty of work, just less back breaking, the other 4 months) just to survive and I would rather have the opportunities to explore some of my manifold ideas that might catapult me into the rarefied world of the 1% and finally give me the opportunity to do what I really want to do: build space stations for the masses.
