Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market.

The alternative is trying to fight that, and if you're picking a fight with the strongest player, you're playing to lose.

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whycombigator 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree that's what the US used to do.

Now it's threatening to invade NATO allies, and other allies are deploying troops to deter that; Which makes perfect sense because you cannot appease authoritarians.

The US is in fairly rapid, self inflicted, decline at this point.

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lwansbrough an hour ago | parent [-]

I have faith that the Americans will right the ship. "Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."

	▲	whycombigator an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They're just getting started on "everything else". My sense is this is an inflection point, and it may take decades to play out. At that point, the world will have irreversibly changed.

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MrBuddyCasino an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market.

This is what an empire, that is competently run, should do. The US is not an empire, and it is not competently run. It has no attributes in common with empires of history. It does not occupy foreign lands, it does not extract taxes, it does not (directly) control foreign governments. If anything, in this case, the US is under the control of a foreign government.