mos6507 wrote:China is playing a long-term strategy and the US can't stop thinking short-term. So that gives China the edge economically, like a chess player who can think several extra moves ahead. The problem is that China hasn't properly factored in limits to growth, which has the potential to derail their plans, high-speed-rail or no high-speed-rail. So China's top-dog status is likely to be short-lived.
I would agree especially the part about China not factoring in the limits to growth. See my following post. What China is modelling for their countries future is a copy of the west in terms of consumption and also to a certain extent in the evolution of their capitalism. The robber barons that laid the railraods in the late 19th century, the Rockefellers', Morgans etc. have their counterparts in todays China.
But as they out maneuver the US economically they are checkmating themselves because there is nothing really novel being offered in their trajectory.
Same old same old, just some role reversal.
From where will we see any significant shift in the unsustainable model that is checkmating the world?
Keeping with the chess analogy the US and China are sitting at a park bench playing this chess game. But just as China is out maneuvering the US along comes a wind and blows all the pieces off the board.
What and from where originates that wind?
That is a far more important and interesting question.
Does the wind come out of existing ideologies or policies from an existing nation or country or is this wind perhaps extra human. External forces?
Welcome to the age of consequences