Re your concerns about US global domination

Come on now, enough with the hyperbole. The US has been a superpower for 60 years, the beginning of which was marked with rebuilding Europe and Japan insead of enjoying the spoils of war, then turned to creating international organizations like NATO and the UN as a response to Soviet expansion, and then worked to clean up hotspots like Yugoslavia, Kuwait, and Bosnia.

I can't say I approve every US action in that span of time (particularly in South America and Southeast Asia), but the basis of comparison is the Europeans. This is a group of people who, when they had the power to, raped and pillaged the rest of the planet for 500 years, before just about destroying themselves in two wars. Now suddenly they're the moral compass for the rest of the planet?

Well, pretty much everyone raped/pillaged etc... more or less, when views change, someone's gotta be first to do it right?

You have a good point there. US global domination is not entirely worse than feudal Europe.

>>1
European hegemony  was a long time ago. Europe then is so different from Europe today that your comparison is not only invalid, but laughable.

In the same vein, blaming America for its past sins is stupid. I'll agree with you that some people are way too concerned about US domination, but we haven't really had a situation like this one before. The US is not only a superpower, but the only superpower these days. That scares some people, mostly because they have way too much respect for their own countries' pasts, traditions and culture.

>>4

I disagree with your suggestion that the U.S. is the only superpower. How do you define superpower?

Do you mean that they could militarily dominate or nearly dominate the world, like the Macedonians under Alexander, the Mongolians under Genghis, the British under Edward and Victoria, or the French under Napoleon? (all of whom were singular superpowers by the way).

Because if that is how you define superpower then I vehemently disagree. China could destroy the U.S. on its own (and they'd take the whole world with them, no doubt), so the U.S. has no option for military hegemony.

So... yeah, I'd like to hear how you define superpower in such a way that this period in history is so unique that it is the only time there was a single superpower. Here's the challenge though; how you can construct such a definition without invalidating the claims to super-power-dom of widely acknowledged superpowers, like... all the countries I named above?

MAYBE IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE SO TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED AMIRITE BECAUSE Y'KNOW THERE WAS NO TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN THE OLD DAYS

>THERE WAS NO TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES IN THE OLD DAYS

...

tl;dr ...

>>5
Militarily, China is not superior to the US. It does have a larger army, but their training and equipment leave a lot to be desired.

>>8

Sorry, I should have been more explicit. What I meant was that China could nuke the US into the proverbial Stone Age. I don't care if they have an army smaller than Switzerland's and less well equipped than Swaziland's; all they need is a nuclear arsenal sufficient to make North America unliveable to prevent even the possiblity of US military hegemony. That's all you need, and they have it.

sum-4-tl;dr peeps: nukes ftw

>>9
Could they? They don't have a large number of nukes, far fewer ICBMs. More importantly, would they? The US has a couple orders of magnitude more nukes than China.

There are other forms of dominance as well, particularly economic. However, how much longer the US will stay there is a different story.

<Inst>
China has what is called a "Minimal Deterrance Strategy". That is, they save on military spending against the US by getting the delivery systems and nukes for the American west coast. They feel that, they could protect the nation and the government from American nukage and "kill" invasions by threatening to nuke the West Coast. They don't feel it's necessary to nuke the entire US, because they don't feel the US is willing to trade LA for China.

They're very pissed off about Anti-Ballistic Missile because that means they have to build more nukes, more ICBMs, and develop MIRVs.

>>10

read >>11. That's pretty much what I would have said.

Besides if California was nuked the prevailing winds would irradiate most of the western US including the entire Gulf Coast. Hundreds of millions would die within a decade.

How bad do we want China? Not that bad I think. There is no economic gain available in military hegemony, for the US.

Btw, good point about ABM Mr. 11. It's fucking retarded. It provides 0 protection against terrorists (who will ship the bomb in via the US's sea-transport system, and use the ultimate guidance system, a really pissed off human being, not an insanely expensive and wildly unreliable ballistic missile) and starts a new global nuclear arms race. :P

As to your other point Mr. 10, I can't imagine how the US economically dominates the world in a way that the EU doesn't.

tl;dr? The US is not the sole superpower in any sense of the word.

>>12

The EU's economic co-dominance is obviously very new. Anyway, I don't understand your definition of superpower, and I also don't see why the US has to be the sole superpower in order for global empire (America or whatever) to be a problem.

Back in the cold war it was pretty accepted that both the US and the USSR were superpowers, right? Neither of them would have been able to invade China back then either. Things changed for both superpowers, but the US hasn't lost *that* much ground in it's ability to project military and economic force.

So I don't see how you could question whether the US is a superpower. The only question is whether China is also. Right? *That* would determine whether the US is the "sole superpower". And who cares? Does that make empire-building ok?

I'd like to point out the fact that the larger portion of the newest generation at legal votin ages believes mostly in their rights.  In this respect, I feel that if America were to attempt to take over other countries, the United States would erupt in a violent culture and civil war.

Other countries like Iraq?

>>13

Not to belabor the point, but I think that perhaps you just didn't have the opportunity to read the discussion you're replying to. My replies are a continuous thread criticizing the statement made in >>4:

>The US is not only a superpower, but the only superpower these days.

tl;dr? follow the >'s all the way back pls.

But here's a reply to the issues you raise in your misdirected reply:

>your definition of superpower

I don't have one. I don't believe in the concept. Any theoretical point wherein a country crosses over from national power to regional power to superpower is simply arbitrary, and presumes a naive-reductionist continuity of focus which is not available in anything but the most totalitarian nations. A country can't even hypothetically be a superpower without a superfocus, just like neither Inspector Clousseau from the Pink Panther movies, or Maxell Smart from the Get Smart TV series could be considered "excellent investigators" by any rational person. While they sometimes get things done, they do it accidentally and through coincidence, just like nations run by electoral committees stand no possibility of setting a delineable course or objective for anything but the extreme short-run. This is a good thing because some nations possess too much hypothetical capacity, so the extreme wastefulness of bureaucracy in democratic governance is an ideal method of keeping them from really fucking things up.

>>16

Ok, then >>13 is disagreeing with >>4, not you. Whether or not the US is a superpower doesn't determine whether empire building is ok.

Dunno why you'd go on about whether the US is a superpower when you don't believe in the concept. If there's such a thing as a superpower, we're it. If there isn't, then nevermind, right? Dunno about *sole* superpower, but whatever.

>>15
What about them?

>>16
So you're saying, that by keeping the really dangerous powers at each other's throats all the time, we can live a peaceful normal life?

>>19

Not exactly. Not "at each other's throats". I think that by keeping them filling out extensive paperwork allows us to live a peaceful normal life. Strangled in the red tape of bureaucratic largesse. Something like that. Who are they struggling against? Byzantine bureaucracy. Who are "they"? People who think anything anywhere needs to change.

What I honestly believe is that change usually hurts more people than it helps. The destruction of childhood diseases in Africa in the early 20th century led to the overpopulation and famines of the African mid-century, which led to the civil wars and genocides that are still going on.

In "Adventures of Ideas", Whitehead says (and I'm paraphrasing, I don't have it with me), that by the 20th century all of the lessons of history and most of the mechanisms of social intercourse were rendered invalid. Why? Because throughout human history, life was essentially stagnant; one could expect that no matter what happened, one's children would inherit the same Earth that they themselves had been born into. This is no longer the case. The force-multiplying abilities of modern technology have allowed anyone who wants it bad enough with a real possibilty to affect their environment.

This is a horrific thing.

Your average human being is using playground morality in his decision making processes. Perhaps this is fine at the microlevel, but we are too strong to use the rationale of children. It is a mind-boggling tragedy that human moral science (if there is a thing even worthy of that term) hasn't made almost any progress since Zoroaster, but our natural science has undergone an incalculable number of revolutions. This is not a comparison between Newtonian models and Relativisitic models. Our ethics are so antiquated that if our technological model was  equivalent, we'd be reading Heraclitus and musing about whether or not everything really is principally fire. :P

tl;dr? TAKE THE GUN AWAY FROM THE BABY!

So, what do you believe our new morality should be like?

Can't wait until we go to space and solve all these stupid problems

>>20
Of course you'd have to assume that powerful, organised groups  usually do more harm than good. Unfortunately there is no evidence that this is the case except for philosophical conjecture.

>>23
Historically, it leads to slavery. I would say slavery is harmful.

LIBERTARIANISM FTW AMIRITE? -_-

But noooo, they'd never stand a chance of acquiring any office of power. That's exactly the kind of mentality that will never PUT them in one. The republicans are becoming democrats and the democrats being even bigger democrats. Just bigger and bigger government, I mean hell, George Bush is the biggest spender in the history of our country, not even counting the war, that's the only reason I don't like the guy. (God help us if Hillary gets elected president...) Yay for military protection and highways, etc., but what business does the federal government have with all the other shit it does? By what right do they require we send our children to them to be educated? Why do we LET them? I could go on for a while... Time for a change, people. Vote smaller government.

>>21

Hell if I know. Thats why I advocate a period of technological stagnation or regress while we work this shit out.

>>22

Expanding the size of our environment would reduce the probability of destroying it all in one go. But it would also reduce the disincentive to destroy large parts of it. I think that going to space would just encourage us to use our nuclear weapons more freely.

>>23

I _do_ assume that powerful, organized groups usually do more harm than good (I think I said that in >>20, more or less). Indeed I do not have "proof", this is not an anthropological "law", but I think it is a good theory supported by the most readily available evidence. Read any book of human history, and find groups of people doing INARGUABLY more good than harm. Post that list. My list is easy: every war ever fought in human history. I bet you my list is bigger.

Yes it's just a theory. Yes there is no way to prove it. But it is impossible to describe evolution or gravity as a law either... so I don't feel bad that all I've got is a non-provable (and non-disprovable) theory well-supported by the facts.

Notes: When I say good and harm, I mean it in the sense of a Pareto optimality. Simply put, if at least one person is made happier, and no-one is made less happy, than a situation is "good", elsewise it is harmful. For more info pls check wiki. I wrote that article and a lot of the other one's on social economic calculus. :P

p.s. to >>26

By non-provable and non-disprovable I of course mean "not easily provable" and "not easily disprovable".

>>25
Required education is one place I agree with government, even if the only thing they can do amounts to daycare for eight hours out of the day, dumb kids at least learn SOMETHING.

You are a douche of a troll, >>25.

Libertarians would never be able to make the immediate and radical changed they want to make.  That would probably be harmful; I think the best they can do (and this is ideal in my opionion) is a partial and gradual change.

Most of the smartest people in the US are libertarian, I've noticed.

>>18

>>15 was a response to >>14, who had said that the United States would erupt in civil war if it invaded another country. Obviously this is not the case.

>>20

Eradicating childhood disease is the cause of the civil wars and genocides in Africa? Colonialism didn't play the teeniest role? Eradicating childhood disease wasn't the cause the civil wars and genocide in Europe and Asia, right?

That reads like bullshit.

>>29
Well, one thing that must be admitted is that saving all their lives in theird world countries during the 1960's with genetically modified super crops that their soil couldn't support for very long caused mass famines and death when that food wasn't available anymore. 

If you feed stupid people, their birthrate goes up, so wars and the like become more likely with the extra population.  Not saying there's a direct cause there, there might have been wars anyway.

I am not >>20 BTW.

>>26
And so, with that logic, you can justify spending billions and billions of dollars to make one person slightly happier?

>>29
<Usarname:Inst>
Argue with the guy who is arguing that society will completely degenerate after Oil is depleted. Malthus! Fun!

>>20
It's better that you argue that the advent of modern technologies is anti democratic. That is, since we, as a society, cannot march forward together towards greater ethical behavior and the psychic maturity required for powerful technologies, then we must spawn an aristocracy to do that for us. You see, during the Red Scare the popular hysteria didn't get us to drop the bomb, and JFK vs Khrushchev did not result in nuclear war.

JFK vs Khrushchev

Both were idiots who should have been shot.

Just to let everyone know.

>>29, >>30's reply is pretty much what I'd say. Except I'd remove the word "stupid". Pretty much all people's birth rate goes up when their food supply increases. So either most people are stupid or... well nm, most people are stupid. And by stupid I mean monstrously short-sighted.

Colonialism is not even a tangential cause of the civil wars and genocide in Africa. Colonialism was ending or over throughout the entire continent before the true horrors of Africa's 20th century began. I could see some sort of argument that a *lack* of colonialism caused those horrors, but I think that's simply conflating correlation with causation.

More likely I think that an uncontrolled population boom caused starvation which caused civil war which caused the search for a non-rational excuse to kill a lot of civilians to reduce economic demand for food. What's the cause of the population boom? Well, how about 7 out of 10 children surviving to the age of 18, instead of 3 out of 10.

As to why this didn't happen in Europe and Asia with the eradication of childhood disease, it's because the consumate rise in survival wasn't as great. Europe went from 7/10 to 9/10, and Asia went from 7/10 to 8/10.

tl;dr? You are not omnipotent. You do not know the effects of your causes.

>>31

Yes, spending a billion dollars to make one person slightly happier is "good", as long as it makes no one less happy. Now presume that that same billion dollars could make 1,000,000 people slightly happier. The second option would be quantifiably 1,000,000x "good"er. This is how modern economics works.

>>28
Well, if you all wanna let this country become socialist, which it's getting that way, then don't push the ideal. Don't inform your congressmen of what your ideas are. Let Hillary get elected and watch the country go a little further down the toilet. Just make sure you have an escape plan...

>>36
Uh, I've joined the libertarian party.  What more do you want?

This country started out as pretty libertarian. A lot of states follow the route of more and more central power; ie. away from libertarianism even though they were a federation of countries previously.

>>34
Er yeah, cos letting 4 out of 10 children die IS better than civil war.

What kind of logic is this?

>>35
Except economics also says you face a tradeoff. So there is no such thing as "makes no one less happy".