The U.S need to spend a ton to defend their "imperium" even though it is a bit different from how empires have worked in history. If it doesn't another country will take place and assume leadership of the world. The nice thing about the Pax Americana is that it is based on voluntary alliances that benefit from the relationship and more neutral third-party that are not punished for their neutrality (and thus are not available as allies against the leading coalition). So much so that you can count on your fingers the states that actually want to change the world order : Russia, Iran, China and North Korea and they are not even great allies to each other. So the status quo coalition is running the world and it's a good thing for the world. Interstate anarchy is a state of constant war and is awful for everyone.

Now you will say oh yeah but what about the war in Iraq. The thing is that it happened when US power was uncontested. It was a mistake in the sense that it has undermined the rules of the order it was supposed to guarantee. But nothing we should not be surprised that unchecked power is bad. Now that China is a (the only) real competitor with the U.S, the U.S actually has to be a good leader for the status quo coalition it gets its prosperity from. The equilibrium between leader and aspirant leader is good, let's hope it stays like that.

> The nice thing about the Pax Americana is that it is based on voluntary alliances that benefit from the relationship and more neutral third-party that are not punished for their neutrality

Talk the talk

"Trump threatens 100% tariff on Brics nations if they try to replace dollar" [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgrwj0p2dd9o

This smacks of "we need to commit war crimes because otherwise somebody else will commit war crimes". Theoretical atrocities are never justification for actual atrocities.

The "voluntary alliances" you speak of are basically the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Africa, the Middle East and Asia didn't sign up for the absolute devastation we've inflicted on them, first with "normal" colonialism, now with economic colonialism.

I once heard it described that US foreign policy is to loot the Global South and US domestic policy is to divide up the spoils. We aren't the only perpetrators (eg [1]) but we certainly use sanctions and the IMF and World Bank to bully countries to our way of thinking. And that's before we even get started on all the coups the US has instigated, supported, backed and/or planned.

[1]: https://tehrantimes.com/news/489452/How-West-Africa-s-econom...

> Theoretical atrocities are never justification for actual atrocities.

If only that were true...

War crimes are the kind of thing the international is supposed to guard against. It is hard in practice because it needs to be enforced and enforcing it when there are no econimic incentives is ... unpalatable for any state. Which is why international order and US interests are generally tightly coupled. Now which war crimes are you talking about ? You need to be more specific. On the other hand, it's been a while since I have read "US marines destroy entire village killing women and children after raping them" so I guess not this kind of atrocities ?

I know the history. Yes colonialism was bad was it was mostly before the post war US led world order. If anything both the US and the USSR have sped up the end of colonialism which doesn't mean they each haven't promoted their own dictatorships against one another. That is not the current world we live in though. Indeed the voluntary alliances are mostly what we call "The west" or the "global North". The "devastation" of Africa isn't the sole responsibility of colonialism. It is mostly responsible for the dumb borders but all humans find a way to war against each other along ethnic lines. It was the case in Europe before WWII and it is unsurprisingly the case in Africa now.

Whatever you think about the IMF/World bank and economic colonialism, by which I take you mean any country taking advantage of its better economic position (China is also doing it) it is not the same thing as say sending your army to punish rebellion against the tax you impose on them.

https://acoup.blog/2019/12/05/collections-a-trip-through-thu... https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa...

I am pro international order and totally for the allied nations not to follow along when the leader is abusing its power but I still think that world order is preferable to intersate anarchy.

Nobody ever signed up for anything. Making the world a better place is a hard problem.

> China is not without its issues but neither is the US government and at least China is investing in long-term infrastructure for their people.

Do you claim USA doesn't invest in long-term infrastructure?

>Do you claim USA doesn't invest in long-term infrastructure?

Do you have any examples of where it has invested in long-term infrastructure? I ask, because I can't think of any, beyond 'roads'.

When I think of infrastructure investments, I always think of long-term stuff, rather than, I don't know, a temporary detour.

And pretty much every functioning state makes infrastructure investments, otherwise it wouldn't be functioning.

So it it surprising to me someone would even question any big country's investing in infrastructure at all...

For example here's an announcement from dep of transportation:

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-ad...

There's roads (including bridges), but also railroads and port expansions.

Also:

- Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Flood Risk Management Project

- Ecosystem Restoration in the Upper Mississippi River

- Reactor Demonstration Program in Kemmerer, Wyoming

The information is there, easily accessible on the Internet, you didn't need to ask me.

There's plenty:

The us army corps of engineers has been working on waterways for a very very long time. Their projects allow huge swaths of rivers stay navigable, provide irrigation and/or flood control, and so on. There are huge swathes of farmland that are able to provide a stable and steady supply of food as a result of htis effort.

TVA and Bonneville are government infrastructure programs that provide millions of people with hydroelectric power, and broader grid stability as a result of the infrastucrue they put in. Not to mention rural electrification via special welfare programs for farmers - the tax for that is listed as a line item in your electric bill.

The telecom system (including the Internet) is the result of government investment - in the form of: special taxes that city folk pay for rural folks access, research investment, direct research in various agencies, investment in cables being installed (for example - billions in grants were given to AT&T, verizon, et al to upgrade trunk and last mile lines to fiber), foreign policy to allow open communications and standards, and adoption by the military and other large agencies.

A whole bunch more too in the form of setting standards and providing grants to state and local governments to meet those standards (education, water and sewage systems, rail infrastructure, farm subsidies, crop and flood insurance, and so on) - some of these are more infrastructury than others, but included because (e.g.) having stable farms leads food security and therefore social stability and is kinda necessary for the rest to matter.

Maybe we should have figured out a defense justification for high speed rail. That’s the justification for the interstate highway effort at least initially. Have to move tanks and APCs when shit hits the fan. HSR on the other hand has no advocate. You have the few people who nerd out about it standing against the profitable status quo with most people not really caring.

>China is not without its issues

That is a bit of an understatement, isn't it? https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/ch...

What about all the Dreamers? Have you heard??

Yeah so, all the brown people that arrived in the United States as children when their parents "illegally" immigrated but have lived their entire adult lives here, have families here, have their jobs here and their cultural identity can literally only be American - also those "immigrants" (whose fate was also decided when I was is high school btw) we apparently are planning on the full scale removal of them from our society.

I've had people tell me "their kids won't save them anymore either" bc you kno, all the anchor babies. Literally happy about families being torn apart. That's a line the American people have crossed, not just our government.

Forced mass removal of minority population - where do you think they will end up if anything goes wrong between their arrest and deportation to somewhere that has no reason to claim them? I don't know how people can't see just how problematic this planning is.

Does this sound American? How high a horse will we ride after the bus loads of people whose lives we've upended for nothing?

We have a population replacement problem, er - well the world does really. People are exponentially valuable - the very definition of invaluable even. People provide for practically limitless potential with time and future generations considered. Money spent on immigrants is money very well spent if making money is the goal. Our goal is a color tho - well, more like a shade or an absence of color...

We have problems also. Our problems do not justify theirs and neither do their justify ours, that's not what I'm saying. We are all fucked up.

Rn tho - we should prolly just focus on our own stuff and thangs for the foreseeable future.

America 1st and whatnot.

Sry, I kno you didn't mean to overlook our issues with minorities rn and you were correct even but far too many people have shed tears to me about Ukraine and Israel and everywhere but here so much so that I just can't anymore.

>4000 ghost railway stations

lol wut. There are ~5000 rail way stations TOTAL, ~1000 HSR, of which ~30 are considered ghost, i.e. 3% wasted stations on size of PRC network is stupid efficient. The system is generating positive profit with increasing utilization, hence expansion.

Citations please

Sorry, not doing homework/playing this game for someone that posts FLQ media.

This is basic 101 level googlable information.

I don't need to waste time to post citations for basic information on the subject matter. If people want to verify something so basic, they can do it trivially. Versus trying to find supporting evidence for lol 4000 ghost rail way stations.

In WSJ article

> China State Railway’s liabilities grew to a record of about $860 billion as of September

Meanwhile it's about same as US military spending in one fiscal year.

I'd rather wasting money on things I don't need, rather than kill others.

Is 25B in interest expenses extreme here?

Edit: oh just for the rail costs

jmyeet mentioned building rails, and baserev makes a counterargument, that it isn't necessarily a good "investment".

Counterargument based on retarded data. There's only ~1000 HSR stations with ~30 considered ghost, ~3%. It's not a good investment, it's a great investment. It's already profitable. Utilization is increasing YoY. All for ~1T over 20 years. Put it this way, US excessive health spending (~5% over OECD average works out to 2T/5T per year), PRC got entire HSR network for 6 months of excessive US health care spending that still delivers less life expectancy than PRC. This isn't even mentioning the 100s of billions PRC is saving not buying US/EU aviation or importing fuel. It's literally converting steel and concrete into forever import savings, and it's doing on the cheap while labour prices were (are) low - that blue collar cohort is only going to decrease with time. Better to build as much as possible now.

This is not to mention HSR is basically ONLY option for mass fast intercity travel within PRC... 1.3B people squeezed in populated area 1/3 size of CONUS = too much air cooridor congestion. There's literally no other option than HSR. Like air travel isn't going to make Chinese New Year happen.

For context, 1 trillion US Dollars is about 50% of the cost of the Iraq War.

Citations please

What does this have to do with anything?

> China has built 30,000 miles of high speed rails it doesn't need

That's a ridiculous statement. High-speed rail is extremely heavily used in China (3 billion trips in 2023).

This is like dismissing the US interstate highway system as a useless vanity project. HSR is a heavily used, central part of China's transportation infrastructure that has made getting between major Chinese cities way easier, faster and more comfortable than it used to be.

National security angle is also often overlooked. China is not self sufficient in airplane manufacturing. Not now and back then it was only a plan.

What would they do in case of airplane export ban? They could keep existing ones airworthy, but transport capacity would be capped.

High speed trains are a viable alternative to airplanes.

China has the C919 (equivalent to a Boeing 737 or A320), which still relies on imported engines, but the country is also developing its own jet engines for commercial use. They would accelerate those efforts if there were an export ban.

Except for a couple of lines that connect the megacities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, most Chinese HSR lines operate below capacity and at a great loss.

The bulk of the rail built in the last decade was to distant poorer regions who simply aren't willing to pay for faster transit.

If a line is operating at capacity, that's a problem. That's when you start getting overcrowding and delays. Overall utilization rates of Chinese HSR lines are fairly high. Less than 100%. More than 50%.

> to distant poorer regions

Rail is also used as a tool for economic development of such regions. The US built interstate highways across vast stretches of empty land, because the idea was to have a national grid that benefits the entire country.

wow, red scare capitalist propaganda from wsj.