Is Western Civilisation on its Last Legs?

thinkabouit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120409237#Comment_120409237

I don’t think we can ever get rid of greed & egos no matter what we try.

If your really interested in what I’m trying to say you need to watch Allan Savoury on YouTube. He puts it together far better than I ever could.

He has a 20 minute TED talk

But we are in deep deep trouble if we carry on doing what we’re doing.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120409054#Comment_120409054

True but the EU won’t achieve that either.

by virtue of flooding more people into the EU, relying on and producing more outputs of energy… that brings more pollution in Europe, so climate change isn’t really being tackled….

our leaders ? Don’t lead, they follow the prescribed EU guidelines to help everyone and anyone, but leading and being responsible for Ireland, it’s citizens ? Forget it…

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120409054#Comment_120409054

Basically Cold War 2 has started. Autocratic command type economies can ramp up production faster than democracies, so not a shock Russia, China et al are waving their willies around early. However democracies catch up and tend to out produce them and at higher quality. The US and to a slightly lesser extent the EU's biggest Doh! over the last 30 years was watching their manufacturing industries, or rather their owners, offshore manufacturing to potential enemies in order to line the pockets of those industry owners(and to provide the rest of us with cheap crap, much of it we don't actually need). Service industries are fine and dandy, but when you can't physically make stuff you're on the wrong side of the growth curve. All empires and strong nations manufacture inhouse. The British did, then America took over and blew everyone out of the water. Germany another industrial powerhouse.

Like in Cold War 1 ideology will also drive this Cold War 2, and already is. Look at Russian spin. A nation of majority non religious, with one of the highest divorce and abortion rates in the world, with the highest number of orphans and single parent families in Europe, with one of the lowest life expectancies in the developed world, with a dictator running the show and oligarchs milking their people has already convinced a fair chunk of god fearing "independent" right wing Americans(and others) that they're the hope for a "traditional conservative future". You couldn't make it up. Well they did. They've also gathered the conspiracy theorists to their bosom. While not all supporters of Russia are conspiracy theorists, it's a near given that conspiracy theorists are supporters of Russia. Then we have those in developing nations in regions like Africa where Russia, the last White "Christian" empire left and one that has amply demonstrated its imperial ambitions and realities for the last 100 years, has convinced a goodly chunk of Black Africa that they're on their side. They pretty much all see the "West" as weak and stupid and more interested in defining 50 genders and pushing for personal victimhood. And they have a point to some degree, but they miss the fact that the vast majority of that guff is surface and doesn't actually mean much beyond the permanently angry on both sides on twitter(a western platform, runing on western software on western tech built wherever it's cheaper to build under western licence).

On the other hand the "axis" powers of Russia, China et al are more than a joke the closer one looks. North Korea. Well that's all you need to say... There is no love lost between China, Russia and India. The latter two are deeply suspicious of each other and India has long and wisely played both sides during Cold War 1 and didn't get dragged into proxy wars. Western investment has also started to pivot away from China and into India and other regions because China's too expensive now and has too much government interference. China's worker demographic is tanking, yet at the same time, last year 1 in 5 workers between the ages of 18 and 26 were unemployed and that's official figures and for urban areas(they don't tally the rural areas). Of the rest of the BRICS? Brazil is shaky but getting there and a lot closer to the US physically and in trade links. South Africa is a barely functioning basket case. Iran is a very minor player. Russia is facing demographic nightmares, made worse by this stupid war. They manufacture bugger all, even under licence(and most of that left last year). They're a resource economy and the vast majority of their export routes were to the West and Europe. Now closed off. China will grab what they can at firesale prices. They were already. Look at Chinese wood imports. Ten years back they banned logging in China to protect their environment and promptly bought up huge tracts of Russian timber. Putin and Xi met to great aplomb from their gullible, but didn't actually sign any agreements including ones that were in the pipeline(no pun). Xi is just lining up Russia for a reaming and one long coming for the Chinese.

It's going to get "interesting" anyway...

silliussoddius

Haven't a lot of China's investment in Africa gone a bit sideways recently? I think the issue with China is too many people that may result in a kind of resource squeeze. Then you have India which may face a similar issue, and they have massive income disparity problems.

Western civilization is like democracy and capitalism. The worse, apart from all the rest.

dxhound2005

The Chinese are used to hard times, for a long time. If they can get through such trials and tribulations, the West can do the same.

"From 1960–1962, an estimated thirty million people died of starvation in China, more than any other single famine in recorded human history. Most tragically, this disaster was largely preventable. The ironically titled Great Leap Forward was supposed to be the spectacular culmination of Mao Zedong’s program for transforming China into a Communist paradise. In 1958, Chairman Mao launched a radical campaign to outproduce Great Britain, mother of the Industrial Revolution, while simultaneously achieving Communism before the Soviet Union. But the fanatical push to meet unrealistic goals led to widespread fraud and intimidation, culminating not in record-breaking output but the starvation of approximately one in twenty Chinese."

As far as too many people goes, there are vast areas of China which are unhabited. It's a bit like the Dublin rural imbalance here. They could easily take over Mongolia next door, which only has a very small population.

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres (603,909 square miles), with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world's most sparsely populated sovereign nation.

silliussoddius

Speaking of Mongolia, isn't that a potential flash point between China and Russia?

dxhound2005

There was a border war of sorts between The Soviet Union and China, a few decades back. I think they settled things mostly since.

silliussoddius

There's an Irish fella named Patrick Boyle who has a good youtube channel that deals with finance, his recent video is on China's overseas investments.

Not trying to do one of those "do your own research" youtube dumps, but it's a good video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfeDXy0bJb8