If it’s not America it will be China and I don’t think you want to live in that world.

Depends on how far down the US is going to slide. It's sadly well underway to become much, much worse than China is (or will become).

It's not clear to me that China is batting that well. I do not wish bad upon the Chinese citizenry, and China has done well in its own day since the 1960s.

But don't forget at the same time where China was during the end of the British power, nor Chinese revolutions, nor the state control over the Chinese populace.

Although the US vastly overweights what we think non-US-democracies would do (think Middle East and our meddling there) given the chance for US like freedom, I do not think we're seeing China in the natural so to speak. HK, for example, was not pleased with the "two systems one country" rule the CPP landed on.

Add in the fact that trade can no longer be assumed to be Chinese central, and China is slowly getting dragged into wars through Russia, and China still hasn't tried its mettle with Taiwan. A post invasion China will hit different. It's got internal issues of employment, real estate, have v. have nots ... it's got its hand full.

My guess is that China, like the US is seeing now on stretches, will be the master of its own demise. In the US a major contributing factor to Trump is the fact the US Congress has become an institutional zero especially since Gingrich. That power vacuum has been filled by the Executive branch under Trump. There's more to it of course, but this two-part crisis is an important matter to keep in mind.

China takes its state craft more seriously in some sense, but that seriousness may get it into trouble. And in fact, several articles in the Economist have argued that if China wants to keep 5%+ YOY GDP growth, the CCP will have to take a back seat which is the one thing it will not do. CCP political power is foremost; good economy is damn nice to have to when you can get it -- and the CCP will go after it hard -- but there are limits ...

> US Congress has become an institutional zero especially since Gingrich.

This and Citizens United.

With their population pyramid I doubt it'd stay that way for long, though.

It doesn't have to be China or any other country. It can be corporations who move to capture the governments in other countries the way they've done in the US.

Yes. My personal view is that the era of the nation-state is slowly ending and the era of corporate feudalism is beginning.

Why does it have to be China and why does it have to be any one country? Why can’t it be China, EU, and the US all having about the same influence?

But besides, with the rightward, populist/religious nut tilt of the US and corporations being able to bribe the President to get what they want without repercussions (Disney, Paramount, Meta, X, etc), I don’t see how the US is much better. All of the branches of government are giving power to the President that should be theirs.

Because there will always be someone with an advantage over the others.

Equilibriums in geopolitics are inherently unstable, states naturally compete for their own self-interest. No state will be willingly co-equal with another unless some actor with greater power forces it into that position.

To your last point, given the state of the US, it would probably be better for the world if the EU were on top at the moment. But they will not be.

While I’ve only personally spent a day in an EU country so far - a day trip from London to Paris last month (more coming over the years) - I would much rather see European values exported to the world than US values - lack of universal healthcare, gun violence, corporate takeover of government, anti-vax, anti-science nut cases, etc.

I would too. If we agree that monopolies are bad for private industry, why isn’t it just as bad as having one world power. I think Trump and MAGA are uninformed idiots. But they have caused the EU to start building up their own military industry, countries to focus more on their own research and decouple themselves from the US. I can’t see how that’s a bad thing.

The US has given me all sorts of opportunities I wouldn’t have anywhere else in the world as a native born citizens. I plan to extract as much as I can from it and keep my eyes open to retiring somewhere else.

I continuously vote and advocate for policies like universal healthcare, pre-K education, etc. But what are you going to do when voters vote for politicians thst ars against their own interests - getting rid of FEMA when the states that need it the most are Republican, Medicaid, etc.

This isn’t a pie in the sky shrill “I’m leaving the US tomorrow”. But my wife and I already did the digital nomad thing domestically for a year starting in late 2022 and going forward starting next year, we are going to be spending more time out of the country in US time zones while I work remotely starting with Costa Rica.