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Is Donald Trump Really This Sharp?
I have already mentioned and recommended Peter Zeihan to Ricochet members in previous posts. Zeihan is a best-selling author, analyst, and lecturer on topics related to or affecting geo-political events. Such topics may include economics, trade, demographics, industrial production, natural resources, agriculture, and politics, of course, and many other areas.
Zeihan thinks globalization is dead. Here’s a description of his latest book from his website:
In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.
Many, including me, have expressed concerns about the globalization movement that has been very active and visible over the last thirty years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In recent years Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF), touting The Great Reset extolling the virtues of one world government and demeaning sovereignty of nations, has been gaining adherents and pushing that agenda. I had been raging against this globalist movement until I started studying the material presented by Zeihan. Now there is a very contrary view that has my attention, and Zeihan doesn’t think we will have to wait long to see the direction he predicts to start unfolding.
What really astounds me is how well Donald Trump’s presidential policies and moves and his expressed beliefs and positions match what Zeihan sees as the developing picture of the world. Notice from the quote about Zeihan’s book above that he does not say nations will choose this new direction, he says they will have no choice in the matter. And Zeihan does not appear to be politically partisan.
Under Donald Trump as President, we had a split in the Republican Party and a major shift to the Left by the Democrat Party. These changes were brought about by differences of view in at least three major areas, trade, national security, and unions. The first two of them, trade and national security, are very closely related to Trump policies and resulted in many establishment Republicans not supporting Trump. The unions are left hanging since they are a traditional lock for the Democrats, but the Trump Republican Party is now the Party of the workers.
Did Trump see these things coming or did he just act on principle and it matches as the world turns? Of course, such questions assume some legitimacy in the positions espoused by Peter Zeihan.
Published in General
How about we invest in our own people for once instead of replacing them and bringing in an elite class of effete educated foreigners who have contempt for the average american? To hell with immigration.
How about business invests in training and educating our own citizens for once instead of always looking to a bunch of effete foreigners who pal around with effete liberals who praise them for their foreignness and their shared ability of looking down on the country and the average American as they milk it? To hell with immigration. America needs a break.
I think we should both invest in better education for people already living in the United States and increase high skill immigration for people who have many years of their work lives ahead of them, 18 years of age to 40 years of age.
Canada and Australia have more of a skills based immigration policy and I would like to see the US adopt a similar policy while increasing the number of high skill immigrants.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Democrat party is mostly supportive of illegal immigration and “chain” (family) immigration where people are naturalized into the US because they have a family member already here while some elements of the Republican party are opposed to immigration generally.
So, I don’t agree with either political party on the immigration issue currently.
Who came up with the idea that “nationalism” means conquering other nations? It is probably globalist propaganda.
Is there a generally agreed upon definition of the word “nationalism?”
Or is “nationalism” a word that means different things to different people?
We are the 3rd most populous nation on the planet. We do not need any more people. If we don’t have the skills among the 350 million people already within our borders then we deserve not to have them. That is an indictment of how poorly we are doing. And importing others while leaving those living here behind in the skills game is not a solution and only adds to more dislocation and instability. We also don’t need anymore people flooding into our cities. Prices are already high and it has become almost impossible for many to live.
I don’t see Canada’s or Australia’s immigration policy being any better other than they are more restricted. To the extent that they are not restricted they see many of the same issues. Foreigners who get on public assistance, crime, and effete victim ideology from so many of their immigrants. Those that come in with PhDs and are “highly educated” end up largely promoting and spreading the same cultural Marxist poison and identity politics that is undesirable. I am also tired to the collective “we” need. “We” don’t need anything. Business wants a permanent depressed wage market and easily replaceable workforce they can squeeze. I think it is way past time for the American citizen to move up the ladder and demand higher wages and training if business wants them. If business doesn’t want them then business is doing fine and doesn’t need foreigners coming in. America isn’t an open air bazaar for the world to plunder.
I don’t know if the word “nationalism” existed before the colonization started by Columbus but it probably got corrupted with that development. It appears that prior to that nation boundaries had a lot to do with the language spoken by the people. Still see a lot of that. That’s just off the top of my head, no expertise claimed.
I think there’s value in this argument. Our public education system, once of decent quality, has been abused and is a disaster. We have in America millions of people who could be doing better and they deserve better.
We need to pay more attention to the people and less to the corporations.
I disagree. I support increased immigration among the high skill working age population.
I think doing so will make America stronger. We can do this even as we reduce or eliminate illegal immigration.
As an argument it might be a little unclear, but as an observation it’s very important. We need to understand that it’s hard to maintain distributed and subsidiaritized powers when the geographical boundaries become so porous as to be irrelevant. Back when Alexander was young, political power almost had to be distributed. Now it’s optional as to whether it’s distributed or centralized, and people will usually opt for the path of least resistance.
At one time it wasn’t just political boundaries that divided people into separately maintained communities. There were also religious and ethnic affiliations out of which communities were formed that governed their own affairs to a greater or lesser degree. Now that people can be in one country just as easily as in another, and religious and and ethnic affiliations don’t do much to bind us together, what’s left to use as a basis for distributism and subsidarity? Not nothing, but not a lot.
So in the absence of barriers, there’s nothing to stop a few corporations from scaling up, driving out the smaller ones, and becoming international in scope with no ties to any one region or nation. That does drive down consumer costs, and even though there is much that is lost in the process, people will usually vote for lower cost.
I would also note that Alexander wasn’t the only one who got caught up in the wonderfulness of the way railroads were making the old state boundaries irrelevant. A railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln worked hard to make state boundaries irrelevant to the growth of railroads.
(My previous attempt at this had the quoting all messed up in too many ways to mention. But that’s nothing compared to the way I messed up my self-haircut just before posting this. It was all in the middle of an attack of sneezing, runny eyes, coughing, etc for which I eventually took an Alavert and got myself back to normal.)
This just reminded me of one of the great benefits of what I think we are referring to “globalization” (although “globalization” could be yet another term that means different things to different people).
Thousands of years ago, when there was much less globalization, much less or zero trade between places distant from each other, if there was a local crop failure, famine would likely result.
With better transportation, people living in areas where the harvest is bad have the capability of purchases food from areas where the harvest is good.
Also, I can understand why a nation like Singapore isn’t going to cut itself off from globalization completely, if globalization means ending trade with other nations. After all, Singapore is smaller than Rhode Island and has a population of about 5.5 million. Singapore simply can’t grow enough food to feed itself, which is why it makes goods and services it can sell to other nations and then buys things that it is incapable of generating domestically.
So, depending on what one means by globalization, it would seem that ending globalization would be a recipe for disaster, at least for countries that aren’t very large. And even for large countries, they would take a huge economic hit if they didn’t engage in any trade at all with other countries.
But I get the sense that those who oppose globalization have something else in mind besides “international trade.”
Absolutely. Words like ‘you won’t own anything and you will like it’ don’t seem to be addressing trade.
America is a like big boat with a few people doing the rowing. We should try to favor immigrants that contribute more to American than they consume. Being in the top 10% of earners is one way. Maybe having a lot of capital to invest is another path. We should take an unlimited number of “super contributors”. For everyone else, we should put a cap on the % of immigrants in the country. Maybe 10%. Currently we are at about 14%.
But the UK, by using the Royal Navy to secure the trade routes for its own purposes also secured them for everybody else. The Big Navy USA followed Britain’s lead and also secured the oceanic trade routes for its own purposes. After all, the US wanted all the countries in helped rebuild after WW2 (Marshall Plan and Japan) to be able to ship their own goods freely.
Pax Britannica became Pax Americana.
Good comment. The current round of globalization may actually be number whatever. The Roman Empire established a kind of globalization in the West, and also traded extensively with India, and to a lesser extent with ancient China. The Chinese expanded westward into Central Asia to facilitate the Silk Road. The Mongols then conquered China and most of Asia and protected the caravan routes. Then the Black Death hit and nearly halted that phase of globalization. Globalization went worldwide with the rise of the West starting in the 16th century-the expansion of Imperial Spain and the trade-based British Empire and the Dutch Republic. That phase of Globalization died with WWI, the Great Depression ( Remember the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs) and WW2. It got a new lease on life with the USA becoming the dominant power after the war. And now here we are today with the apparent decline of this period of globalization. Like Zeihan, I’m guessing a world with more self-sufficient (but not completely so) nations. Watch for 3-D printing to help along this trend for self-sufficiency.