> This is why the EU member states (and the UK member states as well) should become US territories so that they can benefit from federal law without necessarily destabilizing domestic US politics
This is a very strange suggestion. The US federal government is not a beacon of best governance. And especially now with Trump, there won't be any takers for this.
It's certainly an untenable idea, and while I'd agree that the US isn't the best beacon of governance today, I'd also argue that the EU as a whole has not been either and most of the problems are obscured from English-speaking Americans because we don't have the time or language capacity to understand all of the nuance and problems for each member state. It's hard to understand.
On the other hand, the US is big time. We're always on the front page, and so Europeans of course begin to believe they know a lot about American politics and thoughts because they read about it all the time. That leads to outlandish understandings and expectations of the US and so even when you want to start looking at governance comparisons it's hard to have conversations because "defenders" of American systems don't know enough about the EU and European "defenders" of the EU think they know quite a bit about American politics. This leads to a lot of misunderstandings, unfortunately.
The reality is that both systems have pros and cons, and how good each system is really depends on individual circumstances, and even then those circumstances and pros/cons change over time.
To keep the fun part of the conversation going, I actually think the United States and the rest of the Anglosphere should join together in one bloc. Sometimes I fantasize about how different and perhaps better history would have turned out had the American Revolution not happened.
I think the price can only increase. There is not much competition for Hormuz. If it is exorbitant now, it can only be more expensive later on. The demand for oil is not going to go down drastically for quite a few years.
If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
In time pipelines can be made, no? 2 million per ship already gives a lot of room for exorbitant infrastructure projects to break even in the medium term
Pipelines take years, even decades, at least here in Canada. You'd be surprised at how many billions of dollars and person-years of labour you need to get the thing turned on.
Pipelines are incredibly vulnerable to being taken offline by an inexpensive long-range strike. You can't just put them in the middle of a war zone, especially when we (the US) have targeted that same type of infrastructure first.
Pipelines are usually buried under the ground. Pumping statins could be protected by short range SAM systems. An undegraund pipeline can be destroyed by a heavy glide bomd (not an option for Iran) but should be relatively safe from shahed drones. Iran's ballistic rockets are not precise enough to hit a pipeline wihtout spending multiple rockets (in which case it would be cheaper to repair the pipeline than to produce all these rockets).
sure, as the oil wells and the pumping stations and everything not underground, but right now there's not even an option to try. (also loss of a pipe section compared to the loss of a tanker is much better economically, easy to replace, not to mention that there's no loss of life, so ultimately it can bear more risk even if there's an active conflict.)
None of those have near the capacity to replace what was flowing through the Straight and will not replace the Straight for a long time. That's the whole problem.
If there were viable alternatives to the Straight, the US would have attacked Iran decades ago. Every US administration has had people in the wings desperate to "Fix" the Iran situation, but only Trump was stupid enough to try it.
Meanwhile, the actual production is meaningfully damaged, and for at least a couple years.
I think many academics are often specialized in one area of their expertise and overfit in that dimension. Journalists pick this up and promote those views a bit too much. This results in non-optimal decisions due to skewed public perceptions.
We need to promote holistic thinking considering multiple dimensions and not just one where academics are proficient in.
> many academics are often specialized in one area of their expertise and overfit in that dimension
An economist saying a national-security measure costs this much is fine. Where it goes off the rails is in turning costs into damnation without accounting for what one gets in return. In an attention-driven media environment, that sells.
The problem is that there isn't simply an efficient solution for everything. At one point every problem has solutions with pros and cons
France could do it as it is a rich and big country but smaller countries do not have a viable choice. This reasoning could have been applied to France too in another universe.
It's a balance impossible to totally tilt one way or another.
So no amount of extra information could help when it's matter of opinion at the end of the day
I think there is a realization that (1) US' checks and balances do not work, (2) Trump is not a "mistake" of voters and can repeat again.
This is the main reason that things are different. Most presidents were reasonable in their hegemony, and Trump's naked aggression makes everyone to hedge against US.
Bush invaded Iraq on completely and maliciously fabricated evidence. Literally - all of it was made up. He sought EU approval to invade, was rejected, and then invaded anyhow, starting a decades long war leaving the region in complete chaos severely undermining US (to say nothing of global) security. Other presidents happily carried on and even magnified his war in some ways.
And as you go back you can see that our more contemporary actions are just echoes of the past anyhow. Vietnam was also started on a complete and malicious lie. [1] That lie then led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, practically bankrupted the country (playing a major role in the events of 1971), left the country more divided than ever, and concluded with us running away from Vietnam with our tail tucked.
We didn't start the fire. It just always feels so different in the present because you don't know how things are going to turn out, so there's always the possibility that this time it might be something extraordinary as opposed to just this perpetual and never-ending self-crippling.
I think that people also see that government in all its ministries is becoming less competent, because of deliberate actions, firings, and flight of competent people. Uninspiring, uninterested, loyalists as leaders of each department doesn't exactly help.
And the competence of departments is crucial for the well functioning of the country, services high and low. (Diplomacy, war, and education to electricity and roads).
In my view it's both that the State Department, for example, is less competent than before, and that the administration is less likely to listen to the experts and Department officers than before.
I don't think it is about raising children perfectly. I think people knowadays are more educated about negative psychological impact to children and therefore there is a change in parenting style which takes more effort. More quality time, no corporal punishment, more understanding and kindness and so on. The effort to raise children therefore has increased (fear based parentingis rather low effort). I think it is for the good. Those who are able to make that commitment raise the kids. (I dont say that negative styles don't exist, but society in general has improved on parenting styles)
These boats may contain Tesla, Ramanujam, Röntgen and other talent people with poor circumstances.
Good social security is also investment in potential talent that could contribute to economy.
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