Friday, December 1, 2023

Peter Zeihan

I have no idea who he is, but this presentation to some business leaders group gives the impression of a polymath who makes very plausible and somewhat worrisome predictions and warnings.

1. China is near collapse and we will likely get no warning of governmental collapse until stuff just stops arriving in container ships.

2. Russian raw materials come from areas largely Turkic, not ethnic Russian which are growing in population rapidly while the skilled workers largely ethnic Russian is dying much faster than ther are being born.

3. Mexico and Southeast Asia will be replacing (other videos indicate Mexico already is) China as the manufacturing center for North America and likely the rest of the world.

4. The raw materials required for a green revolution are simply not available at scale to do this.  He argues that if the U.S. military were deployed to invade and occupy the nations that are the needed sources of these raw materials (and we was not recommending it), we might have enough to green America, but the rest of the world no way.

5. His discussion of what Trump did in creating the MAGA realignment of the Republican Party has been profound. He makes the claim that both the Obama and Trump Administrations were run by people with no idea of the math required to run a national economy.  This does explain a lot, sadly.

1 comment:

  1. Hyperbole and exaggeration alert me to expect outright lies. It takes 20 to 40 days for a container ship from China to cross the Pacific to the US West Coast. So, at least 3 weeks warning before "stuff just stops arriving" -- probably not enough for institutions to effectively cope with such a catastrophe. Individuals, though, may make a bunch of decisions, about a third of which may turn out to be beneficial.

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