On 4/19/2020 7:27 AM, Rink wrote:
Op 2-10-2013 om 0:38 schreef Dan Goodman:
<snip>
Two hundred years from now: The United States will probably remain the
most powerful country in North America. It's unlikely to still be the
world's most powerful country. (I do think it's likely the US won't be
among the weakest nations. The country which exported frankfurters to
Frankfurt, hamburgers to Hamburg, and bagels to Warsaw is adaptable.)
Why do you think this?
A good chance that Mexico will be the most powerful country in North
America.
From our vantage point in 2020, it's obvious it won't be the US, and
it's all down to whether the post-union states manage to become more
powerful than Mexico (which still needs to either 'fall' to Communism,
or to have some major reforms enabling class mobility, before it can
ever be great on its own. In a capitalist society, you can only be great
if the majority of the people working under you can buy your product).
But bear in mind two things: that Cascadia/Pacifica will immediately
have the eighth-strongest economy in the world upon independence (along
with, likely, a military that puts Mexico's to shame--though still
likely smaller than the Confederacy's),
and that the original post was from 2013--when it might have been
somewhat obvious that there'd been no /real/ racial-reconciliation
progress in our lifetimes, but it still seemed like there was no
arrangement that would lead to a path where it was impossible for a fifty-or-more-state USA to exist by 2024.
In addition, there HAVE been countries that have remained the most
powerful in their own continent for 4 centuries in the past. Mexico, in particular, still didn't seem the best possibility for being the most
powerful because unless anthropogenic climate change is stopped, more of
it than isn't, will be sufficiently hostile to human life, that it's
unlikely to rise into a rich and powerful nation.
That _might_ have happened with any Republican president, but no other Republican president would have acted so much like the sterotype of how
George III acted as to lead people to believe that only a declaration of independence from Washington would allow their own states to keep
allowing gay people to get married or their skies to be any clearer in
2022 than they had been in 1968.
And of course, the COVID issue would have been dealt with differently by
/any/ president who actually believes his own spies can be trusted,
since the CIA had known since November that the disease had jumped
between humans instead of just to them--far enough back that some good old-fashioned ultimata with warnings of forthcoming war, would likely
have got even Red China to take measures to try to get the virus's
spread controlled (of course, it's debatable whether that'd have had any long-term effect, as it seems there's no way to acquire long-term
immunity, and thus, SOMEONE was always going to be shedding the virus
every day after it mutated to go human-to-human, but it's a moot point
now as it's the most-lethal /en/demic non-sexually-transmitted disease
and will likely forever remain such. It's almost as if someOne wanted to
assure we were limited to threescore and ten forever more).
And if there *were* a way to keep life expectancies above 74, then
perhaps the irreparable ruptures wouldn't have been quite so clearly
visible as they are today.
But the point was, NO one in '13 could have predicted that mess. Climate
change /was/ already a thing, though, so the idea that CANADA might be
the powerhouse might have seemed to make some sense (and then could
somewhat have been given the lie over the next five years, as it became
clear that the place would have warmer or even hotter summers, BUT while
the median winter temperature would increase, the worst days would be at
LEAST as bad as in the past, because winter would involve an increased
number of times that the same air mass was over the Pole and running
down to about 35 degrees North at the same time, which would mean
temperatures near 40 below regularly enough to be a problem). But
Mexico? No. I think I'd actually be willing to bet a million dollars
that Mexico won't be the fulcrum around which North American life pivots
in 2213. And I wouldn't have been _much_ less likely to make that bet
seven years ago.
Sorry, I just REALLY got set off by the idea that the entire continent
should be learning Spanish.
<snip some more>
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Transgoddess, quick to anger.
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