| ▲ | kdjs7 14 days ago | |||||||||||||
Thats just half the story. What the US has traditionally done is make these countries then take Dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank to buy American defense and high tech products. When they naturally then default (right now there are more than 50 countries that cant pay back these dollar loans cause where the fuck are they going to get dollars from) their only option is to sell off their natural resources to Wall St/build a US mil base/hand over port etc. This game has been going on so long (google super imperialism) the US with 5% of the worlds population has accumulated more than 50% of the worlds market cap value. So the US starts overdosing on leisure/luxury and pace of innovation starts slowing cause they dont even need to be innovative. Try to build a ship in the US and its not possible anymore cause the experience is all gone. There is no great magic solution. When you talk about British history look at the 60s and 70s. There was major turmoil economically and socially post the Ww2 rebuild cause the entire system dependent on colonies had to restructure itself. | ||||||||||||||
| ▲ | whall6 14 days ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||
I get the sentiment, but using ship building is an unfortunate example with respect to substantiating your point. The US shipbuilders are alive and well (not to the extent they were in WWII era). Military ships, Jones Act compliant commercial vessels, ferries, tugboats, etc. All US made. Separately, your first paragraph also seems problematic. Let’s take Vietnam and Cambodia as examples: neither has a US military base, port, nor sells natural resources to “Wall St”. Finally, I’m not sure I follow how that would cause the US to accumulate 50% of the world’s market cap—especially because the vast majority of the companies in the S&P 500 have nothing to do with defense, shipping or natural resources. I haven’t done the math, but I would venture to guess that >50% of the S&P 500 market cap is tech or tech-adjacent. I decry this misplaced pessimism. | ||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | Pet_Ant 14 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||
> Google super imperialism Not sure which one the parent means but this is what I found: https://www.amazon.com/Super-Imperialism-Origin-Fundamentals... | ||||||||||||||