Comments on: Quote notes (#91)

By: Handle

Handle — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:51:54 +0000

If Michael Pettis and the energy pessimists are right, it would be a mistake to forecast China’s future GDP by extrapolating recent trends since they are unsustainable past 2020, give or take.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:46:56 +0000

There’s no fantasy here. And it’s not based on “China’s technological prowess”. It’s based on demonstrated technology and arithmetic. You don’t have to believe in “China’s technological prowess”. Believing that the Chinese are technically incompetent, scum of the Earth and that these developments are feasible and not fantastical are entirely compatible beliefs. You can work out the arithmetic yourself if you’re so inclined. Arithmetic is white.

You’re missing the point here if every issue or development is a matter of racial or ethnic pride. There was nothing in my comment about “China’s technological prowess” because that’s not what this is about. This is about their willingness to actually do things and get the ball rolling for future developments that will have a major impact. They may not succeed. It might be white seasteaders who end up being able to successfully complete something like this. The point is that they are seriously breaking ground on completely feasible technical projects that are just begging to be undertaken, and whether they ultimately succeed or not, they are hastening the day when somebody will be successful.

By: Arc

Arc — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:08:10 +0000

Niall Ferguson calls it “Chimerica.”

By: Arc

Arc — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:02:20 +0000

Certainly, as a percentage of the population, it’s relatively small… 3% as of 2020, assuming the trend continues (again, insert linear curve skepticism here).

That being said, that’s *40 million* surplus males. Regardless of the size of the overall population, that is still a massive amount of manpower that can cause a great deal of disruption.

By: NRx_N00B

NRx_N00B — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 13:02:37 +0000

Pure fantasy. While Cathedral news outlets love to pump n’ hype China’s technological prowess, China’s Tianhe-2 cluster is based on Intel hardware running Linux—you can’t get anymore “white” than that. A more realistic thing to do might be to start a pool to allow people to gamble on the day they think the Three Gorges Dam will fail catastrophically.

By: SGW

SGW — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 08:12:27 +0000

That is pretty cool. I can’t wait to see what Singapore, Dubai and co are going to do with this technology once most of the bugs have been removed.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 03:58:15 +0000

Actually the biggest recent China related news was this:

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3031143/the-next-giant-chinese-city-will-float-in-the-ocean

AT Design Office is under contract to the Chinese construction firm CCCC with a pilot project to build a 10 square km floating city.

These artificial floating atolls have the potential to remediate civilization’s environmental footprint, permanently rewilding agricultural lands and containing all urban population effluent (including CO2, CH4, N2O and CFC emissions) for 10 billion people at higher than US standard of living, sequestering on the order of a teratonne of CO2 from the oceans and atmosphere.

Floating photobioreactors producing agricultural feedstocks in the tropical doldrums protected by these artificial floating atolls would support tremendous amounts of beachfront real estate enjoying enormous amounts of electrical energy per capita. When that happens, the bottom will drop out of land prices and not just farm land prices.

The “jobs” will move to the construction of those artificial tropical paradise locations. I quote “jobs” because it won’t be just jobs that move — it will be technological civilization. The ordinary organizing forces of civilization around trade routes will be rendered impotent by the self-sufficiency of the atolls based on cheap baseload electricity combined with advances in materials science. People will simply move to their own 4000ft^2/family beachfront condo to enjoy the Seasteading Dream as a replacement for the long-dead American Dream.

And this will be a natural step towards human space settlement.

By: scientism

scientism — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 02:57:54 +0000

Personally I think people grossly underestimate China. China’s political culture is a Sinofication machine. They can absorb anything. Marxism gave them the hiccups. Capitalism is proving much easier to digest. But it’d be a mistake to confuse it with Westernisation.

By: Aeroguy

Aeroguy — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 02:38:06 +0000

Am I the only one who sees China and USG as two sides of the same coin? So long as they depend on trade with each other they’re essentially attached at the hip. I guess you can throw the EU in there too but that just reinforces how much these systems are just different flavors of the same thing. Comparing GDP numbers reminds me of people getting excited over poll numbers for POTUS races. Granted when the financial crisis hits trade probably won’t last as all the above are thrown on their asses and war is a very real possibility. But I don’t see how a Chinese hegemony would be dramatically different than the American one, China will make a fine host body for the Cathedral.

By: R.

R. — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 02:35:21 +0000

It’s not a large surplus if it’s just 2% of the population.

Otherwise I concur.