[NGTM-1R]

Considering their economy is pretty much based on exports to the US, that's not really going to fly...

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
Well, ultimately, the U.S. shouldn't really have a say in China's economy, so whatever.

Actually the US is merely using China as a scapegoat for its economic problems.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
Considering their economy is pretty much based on exports to the US, that's not really going to fly...

So, since the U.S. buys a lot of **** in bulk from China, it should then be able to tell China how much it's money is worth?

[Shrike]

Originally posted by BlackDove
The opposite of anything America wants to do is

Yes, because China is a paragon of goodness and light in the world.  Give me a break.

If you're going to bash the US, at least find something that's, you know, correct.  China is massively in the wrong here and is basically feeding its economic growth at the expense of the nations that trade heavily with it - this means probably almost everyone at HLP.  This isn't peanuts.   The Yuan is up to 40% undervalued, which needless to say is a whole ****load no matter how you look at it.

[Rictor]

You go girl!

Supporting one hegemonic power to replace another is stupid. Atleast the US has a traditional of domestic freedom, however fu*ked up their foreign policy is. The thing that scares me about the Chinese is that they're infinitely pragmatic. I almost prefer idealogues (which the US certainly has been in the past few decades), because when they try to tyrannize anyone, they have an automatic disadvantage. China will just keep on smiling and smiling and keeping the rhetoric to a minimum, and then one day you wake up and they'll own everything in sight.

Ideally, there ought to be several centers of power globally, and fortunately, that's the way things seem to be headed.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Rictor
You go girl!

Supporting one hegemonic power to replace another is stupid. Atleast the US has a traditional of domestic freedom, however fu*ked up their foreign policy is. The thing that scares me about the Chinese is that they're infinitely pragmatic. I almost prefer idealogues (which the US certainly has been in the past few decades), because when they try to tyrannize anyone, they have an automatic disadvantage. China will just keep on smiling and smiling and keeping the rhetoric to a minimum, and then one day you wake up and they'll own everything in sight.

Ideally, there ought to be several centers of power globally, and fortunately, that's the way things seem to be headed.

Historically several powercenters have not been very good for the people who are trapped between them, or anyone for that matter. But giving one national a dominant figure has not been really helpful either - usually that will end in sprung-up of new, competing powercenters, and in the end misery and death and other ****. And the cycle renews itself.

Hopefully we live better times now than 60, 90, 100 or 1500 years before. Peace is always more or less relative - the last 60 years have been really peaceful in Europe, and yet stuff like Yugoslavia happened. Of course we can not predict history or even give historical predecents any position of evidence or proof - what little history does teach us is that every situation is different and every situation will start and end differently. Afghanistan is a graveyard of armies? No one has ever won a land war in Asia? Germany has always lost it's wars against Russia? Middle East has always been a cluster****? Independent nations are always inherently better in all terms than autonomies?

I certainly have a better view of an slightly disturbing and self-centered democracy which values freedom of speech, property and values, no matter how distortedly, than an oppressive authoritarian society. Is it just that I have been taught that multiple values, recognizing the other part's freedom to sprout stupid bull**** and need to tolerate inane stupidity are better than living in uniform yet crushing society? Certainly. Is cultural relativity any excuse for what Chinese have done with for example Tibet, their western territories or anything? No. Does recognizing the difference between the societies help us understand why said differences exist and thus help us resolve these problems peacefully rather than via war and unnecessary threats? Certainly so.

[Zarax]

BTW, you guys fails to realize that an undervalued Yuan means that any US import will be overpriced (that's what we had with the Italian £ pre-euro).

So, if you want to adjust the exchange you just need to find a way to boost your imports there.
Needless to say, hi-tech goods are the way to go.

Not so evident but more important, with outsourcing you are doing the exact opposite, with the advantage the chinese can copy anything you make cheaply and pratically risk free...

So, there are basically two choices:

1) massive outsourcing deincentivation, it might bring a cost in terms of US$ inflation but it can be compensated by the fact you'll get the industry back home == more employment.

2) you start a commercial war with china... quite risky to mess tat way with the rising superpower but it might cripple it as well, it also means you'll have to get EU into collaborating with you (and this time the whole place, no "coalition of the willing" can work).

For the bloodthirsty and more extreme among you there's another option:
You can "bribe" Russia and India into attacking China and/or have NK launch their nukes up north... Of course one miscalculated step and WWIII will happen.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by Zarax
For the bloodthirsty and more extreme among you there's another option:
You can "bribe" Russia and India into attacking China and/or have NK launch their nukes up north... Of course one miscalculated step and WWIII will happen.

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Knight Templar

Why are you looking at me that way?

It's a proud US tradition since the cold war, only taken to large scale.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Zarax


Why are you looking at me that way?

It's a proud US tradition since the cold war, only taken to large scale.

Yeah, pretty large.
Durrrrrr.

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Janos


Yeah, pretty large.
Durrrrrr.

Every country that had a chance to have others messing over tried to do it, usually it involved middle east or african countries but there's plentiful of examples everywhere.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Zarax


Every country that had a chance to have others messing over tried to do it, usually it involved middle east or african countries but there's plentiful of examples everywhere.

Small nations ****in eacher other royally != two major nuclear military powers deciding to bring it on.

Of course such an attack would propably have quite severe effects on world economy: taking out China's production and manufacturing base will piss off WalMart and, well, practically everyone; cutting off Siberia will cause problems in oil, gas and uranium areas; such a war could have a tendency to escalate to South Korea, Japan, SE Asia, Taiwan, India, Kashmir and the dozen different -stans.

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Janos


Small nations ****in eacher other royally != two major nuclear military powers deciding to bring it on.

Of course such an attack would propably have quite severe effects on world economy: taking out China's production and manufacturing base will piss off WalMart and, well, practically everyone; cutting off Siberia will cause problems in oil, gas and uranium areas; such a war could have a tendency to escalate to South Korea, Japan, SE Asia, Taiwan, India, Kashmir and the dozen different -stans.

Let me rephrase...
Cold war = big nations using smaller ones as tools to screw each other

It somewhat worked (Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan) but of course now consequences would be in a larger scale.

That said, that option was there as last chance/desperate gambling more than anything else.

[Janos]

Originally posted by Zarax


Let me rephrase...
Cold war = big nations using smaller ones as tools to screw each other

It somewhat worked (Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan) but of course now consequences would be in a larger scale.

That said, that option was there as last chance/desperate gambling more than anything else.

The two situations are really not comparable. The ability of China and Russia to lob nukes at each other - and someone else as well - is a pretty big factor, for starters.

edit: Ok, ok, I get that quite a few nations used the old proxy warfare strategy in cold war. However, that does not mean that your hypothetical lolscenario would work, that it would have any similarity with cold war proxy warfare, that it's doable and that it could be contained even somehow. Also, warfare by proxy usually gives the puppeteer countries at least relative safety, whereas this could spill over pretty quickly.

[Mongoose]

To bring things back to a somewhat lighter note...

Originally posted by aldo_14
[q]
"Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich"

"But we have also run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf ability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate is something like 3 deciduous forest buying one ships peanut"

"So in order to obviate this problem, and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests.  I think you'll agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
[/q]

Pure genius The sad thing is, this about represents the sum of my knowledge about economics, and even then I don't know that much; why can't I still buy candy for five cents a pound?

[Kosh]

Ideally, there ought to be several centers of power globally, and fortunately, that's the way things seem to be headed.

That happened before, remember? It was just before World War 1. It caused big problems for everybody because they were so competitive with each other.

But it will be that way until the US economy collapses because of the rediculously huge amounts of debt (consumer and government).

No one has ever won a land war in Asia?

The Chinese won lots of land wars in asia. So did the Mongols.

Is cultural relativity any excuse for what Chinese have done with for example Tibet, their western territories or anything?

No. Their western territories and Tibet have very little in common with the eatern half of the country. China is hanging onto the west mostly for it's reasources as I understand it. Why it's hanging onto Tibet is probably because it traditionally belonged to Imperial China before the decline and eventual collapse of the Qing dynasty.

Atleast the US has a traditional of domestic freedom,

Not as much as you realize anymore. Anyone who criticizes Bush is shouted down as being a traitor and/or unpatriotic. The Republicans have used 9/11 as an excuse to eliminate any opposition.

I've also been hearing rumors that there may be no presidential election in 2008. What is scary is just how real that possibility is. Because there is no clear successor to Bush 2, they are afraid of losing the White House again. So all they need to do is "invent" a terrorist threat as an excuse.

[delta_7890]

Originally posted by Kosh
I've also been hearing rumors that there may be no presidential election in 2008. What is scary is just how real that possibility is. Because there is no clear successor to Bush 2, they are afraid of losing the White House again. So all they need to do is "invent" a terrorist threat as an excuse.

I honestly can't see that happening..

[Bobboau]

yeah, no election in 2008


like the republicans would have been able to get Bush elected again (if it weren't for the term limits) by then anyway, I predict the republicans are loseing ground. the 06 elections will have them looseing seats left and right and, assumeing the democrats can produce a half assed decent candidate (Hillery would probly be good enough) and the republicans don't do something like try to run McCain, we will have a democratic president in three (and a half) years, and nothing of consiquence will change.

realy now, were have you been hearing these rumors from? moveon? some conspericy therorist comunity? the last protest march you attended?

[Krackers87]

Originally posted by Flipside
Just goes to show how absolutely worthless 'money' actually is.

Let's go back to the Barter system, at least that didn't pull values out of it's own arse and pretend they have relevance

Barter system sucks balls

how the hell would you buy stuff online?

[Krackers87]

Originally posted by Kosh



That happened before, remember? It was just before World War 1. It caused big problems for everybody because they were so competitive with each other.

But it will be that way until the US economy collapses because of the rediculously huge amounts of debt (consumer and government).



The Chinese won lots of land wars in asia. So did the Mongols.



No. Their western territories and Tibet have very little in common with the eatern half of the country. China is hanging onto the west mostly for it's reasources as I understand it. Why it's hanging onto Tibet is probably because it traditionally belonged to Imperial China before the decline and eventual collapse of the Qing dynasty.



Not as much as you realize anymore. Anyone who criticizes Bush is shouted down as being a traitor and/or unpatriotic. The Republicans have used 9/11 as an excuse to eliminate any opposition.

I've also been hearing rumors that there may be no presidential election in 2008. What is scary is just how real that possibility is. Because there is no clear successor to Bush 2, they are afraid of losing the White House again. So all they need to do is "invent" a terrorist threat as an excuse.

Dude a good 65% of the nation hates his guts right now, at least 12% of that are just bout ready to shot the ape and his posse.

Not happening.