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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

Globalization has lifted billions from poverty. While it didn't benefit the US middle class in a direct, more money in their pockets way, it did likely prevent horrific wars that ravaged the world in the last century. It's bad business to nuke your customers. So the US middle class did benefit from not being drafted into the global mega-conflicts we avoided.

Also, why is US hegemony a good thing? What good is it for the 96% of the world that is not the US? Does it even benefit anyone outside the US ruling class?

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> Also, why is US hegemony a good thing? What good is it for the 96% of the world that is not the US? Does it even benefit anyone outside the US ruling class.

I’m from Bangladesh. The US backed world order has been amazing for the country. The World Bank and IMF have helped countries like Bangladesh modernize their economies, and they’re US-led institutions.

As the US pulls out, China displaces it. In Bangladesh, Chinese investment is flowing in, along with middle eastern culture. Neither of those things are good in my opinion.

I don’t think the US needs to continue footing the bill alone. But the other western powers don’t seem interested in helping. When I think about what I want the future of Bangladesh to look like in 50 years, I want it to be basically like the US or Canada, only with different food and religious holidays and movies and literature. And that seemed like the future in the 1990s, but it’s getting cloudy today.

This. US isolationism along with its "take my $ and going home" attitude to global institutions in order to court "one world government" conspiracists has created myriad political vacuums such as this. It would be nice if we weren't dealing with a poorly-handled pandemic and consequential economic crisis that will take all our attention for the next 3 years. But I'm optimistic that we will develop an outward-thinking foreign policy before the end of this presidency.

> Also, why is US hegemony a good thing? What good is it for the 96% of the world that is not the US?

To paraphrase Churchill: "The US hegemony is the worst hegemony for the world, except for all the other hegemonies."

The US retreating into isolationism would likely open up a vacuum eagerly filled in by less, well, liberal-minded states. The globalization you describe was pushed by the US-EU-(Japan/India/etc.) alliance, with the US's armed forced being the big stick in case someone would object. At least this is my current understanding.

That’s correct. This was the only way for the world to pay for WWII and for the US to stem the tide of communism and Stalin’s Russia. Now that the Cold War is over, the US middle class isn’t sure it wants to foot the bill for maintaining this system that no longer seems to provide it much benefit and, in fact, has seemed to harm it. I think the world will see a decent amount of chaos as the US pulls back from protecting global trade routes. Unless all of the other countries of the world want to agree to a global socialistic society, I think the US will likely focus on building back its manufacturing base, opening and maintaining markets for those goods to flow to, reducing the Medicare and Social Security overhead so that this isolationist system can actually survive, and then politics will be focused on traditional values vs progressive ideas. Of course the internet will make this conversation much messier than it used to be in the pre-WWII days.

I’m interested to see how the shifting demographics affect this conversation. The three biggest things that shaped history are demographics, geography, and information flow. Two of these three are going to be significantly different since the last time the US moved towards isolationism.

>"...with the US's armed forced being the big stick in case someone would object..."

Yup having big stick lets one tell the rest of the world to shut up and do what the're told to do. Nice example of democracy and mutual respect in action.

> Nice example of democracy and mutual respect in action.

Is that supposed to be a back-handed way of making a point? I don't understand what those things have to do with global stability.

Someone will be the de facto world police by force, now that the technology to utilize energy is so efficient. This situation has nothing to do with some sort of (USA-centered) Politically Correct philosophy. This situation is the eventuality of our time.

>"...Someone will be the de facto world police by force..."

>"...This situation is the eventuality of our time."

This it what you say. I disagree.

The laws of the world are enforced through violence. It's the ultimate power when it comes down to it, so yes, if you want maintain peace then you must also have the capacity to engage the most violence.

This is how peace is kept, regardless of how you feel about it. More importantly, power fills a vacuum, and the choices in the absence of the USA are not exactly better for the world.

>"The laws of the world are enforced through violence. It's the ultimate power when it comes down to it"

And the sky is blue. Everyone including my cat knows it. Of course one with the biggest club gets to write the laws and to ignore those when it suits. Just stop pretending to be a knight in a shining armor. And being not as shitty as some others is not a reason to claim high moral ground.

I believe America is the best country in the world with the strongest ideals. American is not only not as bad as others, it's also better.

You're free to believe something else of course, but then again most people have no perspective or experience of the suffering and violence in the world while they throw out these casual statements about how terrible America is.

America has many things I admire. And yes it is better than many countries. And some countries are better than the US. The US had also done a lot of awful things to other countries and killed/maimed/made destitute/etc way too many people. I do not see what is so casual about this.

And given the rival hegemony is the Chinese I think I prefer the US one. The CCP is not so hot on the democracy and human rights stuff.

> "Also, why is US hegemony a good thing?"

If you review history, large wars broke out between the major powers vying for dominance on a regular basis in the 19th and early 20th century, culminating in the First and Second World Wars. For all the negatives of what the US has done with its military since then, they're not a hundredth as bad as what went on before by any objective measure.

The Pax Americana has been good for stability and with stability comes prosperity. If the United States truly gave up its hegemony and turned isolationist, you'd see a resurgence of rearmament and jockeying for power among nations, inevitably followed by a new era of war after war.

What Pax Americana? The US has been in multiple wars every single year[1] since the end of World War II.

Not to mention the Cold War, which only stayed cold because of the nukes holding both sides back.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

Rome was involved in multiple periphery wars during the "Pax Romana" as well. Instead, the historical term refers to internal peace within the empire.

Pax Americana usually means the same thing, though the borders of the empire are a little less clear.

Complete BS. The US has unilaterally kneecapped the U.N. and every other international organization capable of facilitating a fair world order. We don’t need the US to build a fair world order, contrary to the neocon ‘Pax Americana’ crap. Honestly I was surprised to see that phrase in a hacker news comment.

I'm a European lefty, and I always hated the American imperialism. I was kinda happy about Trump talking about pulling out of all the foreign wars.

Then I thought about it a bit more, and realised (and the last four years have shown) that if America withdraw, the Russians and the Chinese will move right in, and while I'm not a major fan of American imperialism, I'm even less of a fan of the Russian or Chinese flavours.

And the US built the UN and all the other multilateral organisations post WW2, so yeah they work for the US, but they're also pretty good for everyone else.

The UN only "works" because everybody understands that either you do what the US wants or you have a problem. Now? As terrible as the US is, I don't see how a country like China having the space to expand its influence is a good thing, considering the CCP's values compared to the West's values.

> For all the negatives of what the US has done with its military since then, they're not a hundredth as bad as what went on before by any objective measure.

I owe that to hundreds of years of human progression and development, not to the US.

No particular fan of the current administration here, nor do I disagree with you much.

But you have to understand, the shift of manufacturing from the US has just devastated the economies of entire regions. You have children fleeing where their families have lived for generations. I'm convinced a factor in opiates getting a toehold in these areas was due to people going on disability to try to stay economically afloat, and getting prescribed painkillers as cover for faked injuries or in recovery for real but unneccessary surgeries (I have no proof, just anecdata).

US hegemony was good for them. It helped payed their mortgages and their kids' tuitions. It's easy to magnanimous when you aren't the one losing your house or kids aren't ODing from fentanyl. And the resentment is real when you see new grads at Google or Facebook making 10 times what you make, or CEOs making 1000 times what you make.

edit: the president did little, if anything to help their situation and channeled that resentment for his own benefit. It is a matter of national security that we all fix this and I hope the new administration will prioritize it.

> I'm convinced a factor in opiates getting a toehold in these areas was due to people going on disability to try to stay economically afloat, and getting prescribed painkillers as cover for faked injuries or in recovery for real but unneccessary surgeries (I have no proof, just anecdata).

IME it's less about disability fraud and more about treatment of the physical injuries sustained from blue-collar work. Those faking it are the ones with enough foresight to sell their pills to others.

But you are otherwise right from what I've seen; the opiates are addictive, the demands of the job do not lessen (they only increase) and the rest writes itself.

Of course you are right. It can be hard work and takes a toll on the body. I know this directly. I didn't mean to imply it was all fraud, and apologize if it came off that way.

The people in those regions you mentioned are largely conservative. By that measure, isn't their issue with the Free-Market system which they prostrate themselves at the altar of? Conservatives also cite laws as being something that should be left up to the states. And they say that marginalized groups should simply move if they don't like the laws of the state they are in. So isn't the system working as they desired since people are leaving places they don't find suitable?

The free market only works within nations where the mobility of labor is on par with the mobility of capital.

It never is and never has been. But that doesn't stop people from invoking it in modern society repeatedly. And I would argue that people leaving these economically dead zones IS representative of labor meeting capital in terms of mobility.

The Rust Belt didn’t need to be an economic zone, politicians made it that way.

They were union and democrat, and when the jobs left, they looked for someone to blame. I think most people can agree it's a complicated situation. But a lot of them really, really hate NAFTA and there's a reason for the post-Clinton shifts in the midwest. At this point, you have people stewing in partisan radio or tv all day. It takes a very strong person to resist that influence. Most of us wouldn't.

Almost everyone just wants to be safe, happy, economically secure, and the same for their kids. That transcends nationality, religion, or party. I think trying to frame it around economic policy reversed the way the mindset was bootstrapped.

The function of both parties is to convince their constituents to believe in policies against their own interests.

As someone not steeped in it, I think the charitable interpretation is that these people like working a job for the dignity of supporting themselves. The jobs went away, but the desire for that dignity hasn't. So social welfare policies remain uninteresting. In fact any top-down analysis sets off their "government handout" detectors, so they're left pining for the age before the need for labor dried up.

IMO a lot could have been done (and perhaps could still be) by decreasing the definition of full time work. With technological progress, offshoring, and women entering the workforce, full time employment should be around 10-15 hours per week. It's a radical departure from the status quo, but that's due to progress being held back so long. Instead we're stuck between a rock and a hard place with an economy tuned to force people into working 40+ hours a week, but little actual work to do.

(BTW the work in cities is more about communication, so the same trend manifests itself as the creation of non-producing bullshit jobs. There is less financial pain, but similar existential pain)

> the president did little, if anything to help their situation and channeled that resentment for his own benefit.

False claim

Provide a counterpoint.

Trade war with China.

I think the result of the trade war is not that great. Trade deficit with China actually went up.

Trade deficit increased > 50%... Bad execution as usual.

I think Obama's strategy of a trading block with Asia was much smarter/efficient.

> Also, why is US hegemony a good thing? What good is it for the 96% of the world that is not the US? Does it even benefit anyone outside the US ruling class?

As you alluded to in the previous paragraph, it's good for people because it means we're not participating in the kind of horrific wars that ravaged the world in the century before. And the US has been far less extractive than previous global hegemons. (So in that sense it's worse for US citizens, but better for the rest of the world)

Now, everything is a tradeoff, and perhaps this particular tradeoff hasn't been worth it. But there are most certainly good things that US hegemony has given the world.

Is it true?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-trump-brou...

Trump brought war on US soil, Americans VS other Americans, is it better?

I have no idea how this is relevant to a comment on US hegemony. Is this the comment you meant to reply to?

If you mean to say that BLM in the US is comparable to the great wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, I'd say that you're off by a factor of a million in deaths.

Well it is relevant because US egemony is dead.

And it was about time.

Also: US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil...

"Here's a benefit that US hegemony provides"

"But what about BLM and domestic conflict, US hegemony is dead, and the US has killed a lot of people overseas"

I still don't see the connection.

The US hegemony hasn't provided any benefit to anybody, except if you count millions of dead people as a benefit.

Did the impoverishment of the middle class happen before, after, or during the US hegemony?

Did the large scale wars of the past 30 years happen before, after or during US hegemony?

Did the international terrorism escalation happen bwfore, after or during the US hegemony?

The west especially is poorer and less safe.

Trump was simply the final nail in the coffin.

I think people are just connecting dots here.

I really hope Biden will realise it.

"To the families and friends of these victims it makes little difference whether the causes were U.S. military action, proxy military forces, the provision of U.S. military supplies or advisors, or other ways, such as economic pressures applied by our nation."

"The U.S. is responsible for between 1 and 1.8 million deaths during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, by luring the Soviet Union into invading that nation."

"Over the years we have repeatedly heard about the Khmer Rouge’s role in the deaths of millions in Cambodia without any acknowledgement being made this mass killing was made possible by the the U.S. bombing of that nation which destabilized it by death , injuries, hunger and dislocation of its people. So the U.S. bears responsibility not only for the deaths from the bombings but also for those resulting from the activities of the Khmer Rouge – a total of about 2.5 million people. Even when Vietnam latrer invaded Cambodia in 1979 the CIA was still supporting the Khmer Rouge."

"Some people estimate that the number of Cuban forces killed range from 2,000, to 4,000. Another estimate is that 1,800 Cuban forces were killed on an open highway by napalm. This appears to have been a precursor of the Highway of Death in Iraq in 1991 when U.S. forces mercilessly annihilated large numbers of Iraqis on a highway."

"Between 8,000 and 12,000 Nepalese have died since a civil war broke out in 1996. The death rate, according to Foreign Policy in Focus, sharply increased with the arrival of almost 8,400 American M-16 submachine guns (950 rpm) and U.S. advisers. Nepal is 85 percent rural and badly in need of land reform. Not surprisingly 42 % of its people live below the poverty level."

"Yugoslavia was a socialist federation of several republics. Since it refused to be closely tied to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, it gained some suport from the U.S. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, Yugoslavia’s usefulness to the U.S. ended, and the U.S and Germany worked to convert its socialist economy to a capitalist one by a process primarily of dividing and conquering. There were ethnic and religious differences between various parts of Yugoslavia which were manipulated by the U.S. to cause several wars which resulted in the dissolution of that country. From the early 1990s until now Yugoslavia split into several independent nations whose lowered income, along with CIA connivance, has made it a pawn in the hands of capitalist countries. (1) The dissolution of Yugoslavia was caused primarily by the U.S."

"Let us put this in historical perspective: the commemoration of the War to End All Wars acknowledges that 15 million lives were lost in the course of World War I (1914-18)." [But see the 1917-1919 flu pandemic, which may have started in the United States, making the US directly responsible for the deaths of 50 million people.]

Probably they'll realise it one day, in the future, when some other country will treat them like they did

I'm pretty sure mcguire was quoting from that link to show how absurd it is, not to agree with it.

I know what he was doing

But we all know that "behind a joke there's always the truth"

I still hope USA will understand what kind of criminal state they have been and still are.

No hard feelings, just hope for them to learn and be better in the future

> US Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II

Even if that article was remotely accurate (it isn't, see mcguire's comment), the kinds of wars that we fought before the US's new world order could produce that number of casualties in a single year (1942, 1945), so U.S. hegemony would still be a massive improvement. It's a massive improvement even over the two-pole world, as a quick glance at the battle deaths over time graph [1] shows.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-yea...

Wow, you are arguing against a study by citing Vox

Just WOW

OK, let's make it easy for you

---

VIETNAMESE AND INDOCHINA WAR: A TOTAL OF 5.5 MILLION DEAD

THE VIETNAM WAR - 3.8 MILLION DEAD

1.7 MILLION MORE DEAD IN THE CAMBODIAN, KHMER ROUGE GENOCIDE

Source for death toll: Necrometrics and British Medical Journal, 2008

---

TOTAL IRAQI'S KILLED IN AMERIAN WARS (1990-PRESENT) - 3 MILLION IRAQI SANCTIONS: 1.7 MILLION TOTAL DEAD [1]

500,000 CHILDREN DEAD [2][3]

Source:

[1] Behind the War on Terror. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. 2003.

[2] Food and Agricultural Organization Study (1995)

[3] Iraq Sanctions Kill Children, U.N Reports (New York Times, 1995

---

Just these major events account to more than 10 million deaths

And they stop at the first gulf war

There are many more years to cover

Good luck denying that

> 1942, 1945

The massive improvement from 80 years ago happened even in third World countries run by warlord (financed by the US)

So what?

Can we not have another 80 years of US hegemony and compare the results?

Is it asking too much?

It's how science works: the US hegemony experiment is done and the results are meh, we ended up with Trump, now let's try something else and let's try not to bet on the wrong horse this time, ok guys?

> you're off by a factor of a million in deaths.

Well, it that's true it means that wars started by US have only caused less than fifty deaths...

Given that the war in Afghanistan alone caused between 500.0000 and 800.000 deaths (depending on the source), the factor is more probably around 2 to 1

> Over 111,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are estimated to have been killed in the conflict. The Cost of War project estimated that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts. These numbers do not include those who have died in Pakistan

You’re questioning if it’s better to kill other families at scale than kill our own family members (thus far) in edge cases?

Nietzsche said, “in times of peace a warlike nation turns on itself”.

The US does not have military hegemony as it shares it with the Russia (both have enough nukes to wipe out each other and the rest of the world). China would probably come to this stage soon as well.

Being economic hegemon (again likely to be challenged by China) is obviously good for the US but the rest of the world might not share this view for the large part.

> Also, why is US hegemony a good thing?

> Globalization has lifted billions from poverty.

There, I reordered things for you to answer your own question. :)

Globalization transfer middle class jobs/wealth out of America allowing the upper class to gain a larger share of the profit, relying on the state to support the growing lower class but without a large middle class tax base.

Don’t you see the problem here?

Well said

Historically the amount of people in "middle class" was very low.

Globalisation allowed it to grow, but i don't think isolation fixes any problem if every country starts doing that.

The important question is when does it end, the economists that promoted globalization have come forward and admitted that it hurt the US more than planned.

Does it only end when the US population is in the state that the poor Chinese, et al. farmers were in before we accepted this globalism?

At some point we have to stop and say, "OK, we gave you a leg up now let's spend a few decades and rebuild our own country". This is not what is proposed by Democrat politicians, they propose we continue to transfer wealth (in many forms) to other countries and fill the income gap that is produced with social welfare programs.

I second that US policy in American continent has been very infective that still hundreds of thousands migrate to US because their countries hasnt been developed. Let's take aside Civil war in Guatemala, Salvador and Nicaragua. Migrants flood because their local governments can't produce jobs not guarantee basic safety. US trains armies and send equipment through the PPP plan which got not results. Trump idea was to stop migration and the delegation of responsability back which results in basic jobs available for americans, force those countries to develop and at the end you can help them with investment in infrastructure with private money no government tax payer money.

That's what bothers me with the world at the moment, we have powerful states fighting for their hegemony (sometimes with nuclear weapons), not thinking at all about the earth as a unified place full with people and not citizen of whatever country.

Is there a reason you ommitted the working class from your comment? I find it odd you're addressing everything the parent said except for how globalization affects the working class.

US hegemony is also called Pax Americana. A global peace that has lasted for an average lifetime now.

Would you prefer China or Russia instead?

>Also, why is US hegemony a good thing?

Maybe if you live in US you can afford to not care, but I live in a weak, poor, corrupted country. For us it's either US, Russia (now) or China (in the long run) and I prefer US after all.

> Also, why is US hegemony a good thing?

You yourself just wrote a the answer: it prevents wars.

The US does not prevent wars. It is a cause of most of the wars in modern times. It has done something like 100 military invasions. Toppled countless democratically elected leaders and undermined democracies.

US hegemony is to set be the US, not to serve the world.

Yes, that's the argument, in a hegemony (usa or otherwise), wars basically only happen when the hegemon wants them to, and the hegemon has so much soft power its rare that they want them to, and when it does happen its small scale.

The end result is ordinary people get caught up in less wars because politically war is much more rarely the right answer (either you're too politically weak to start one, or if you are the hegemon you just give people the evil eye and they usually shutup)

That doesn't make it a utopia, just a world with less war dead.

Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq might disagree. It did prevent, possibly, wars in Europe.

Vietnam was the US standing to a foreign power trying to take over. It is not a war on the nation, but a war on an aggressive faction. Same for Korea really.

The Vietnamese fought for freedom from colonialism. The got that from the French, almost, until the US intervened. The only aggressive factions were the French and the US.

Korea was different, and also backed by the UN. But even there things aren't as clear cut as you imply. North Korea had yet to turn into the Kim-led hard core Stalinist regime.

Saying the Vietnamese fought for "freedom from colonialism" implies that this was a war waged by the US on the entire country.

It was, wasn't it? Even every neighboring country if memory serves well. With a total disregard for civilians.

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