Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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You're seeing the result of something that's been decades in the making. You can see a simple table of dollar reserves here. [1] They've been consistently falling year over year for the past 27 years. And it's not like 1999 was anything particular. Rather the uptake leading up to 1999 as a peak was a result of shenanigans that happened in 1971 [2]. That's when the USD became completely unbacked by anything, enabling the government to start going arbitrarily far into debt. That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times.

People always exaggerate the impact of geopolitical things, because it feels like the biggest thing ever, especially when you're relatively young. But in reality we're always onto nonsense after nonsense. Countries have the wisdom and view to appreciate this, and so respond to geopolitical stuff (in action, not rhetoric) far more gradually than people do. They're certainly not going to just dump all their dollar reserves because of a single misguided war or even misguided president, or they'd have been gone long ago.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency#Global_curren...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system#Nixon_sho...

[2] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

I hear you, the world is always ending. But, I am well past mid-life, I am a huge beneficiary of Pax Americana, and 47 feels like something truly different. Maybe it's just the end of a long pattern, but it is still the end. US-led NATO is dead, and the stability of the USA is dead, therefore the dollar's dominance is weakening.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to Mark Carney at Davos.

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.

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'm not american.)

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.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

How can you reconcile the rest of your comment with:

> That had short to mid-term positive impacts and long-term catastrophic ones, as is the typical strategy in modern times.

Is the catastrophe still coming from the 70s to now? 50 years later? This is the most repeated quip that makes no sense. Same with companies, everyone just repeats "omg they only care about short term" and then years after years the company trots on.

But I guess it's easy to say since the defense is "oh just wait". As if the online commenter is able to see N+1 moves more than whoever they comment about, but that person just simply cannot. Like come on.

The site [1] I already linked has a number of excellent graphs of the endless major inflection points driven by the shift in 1971. Most started in the years prior to 1971 since 1971 was, itself, also a longer term consequence of years of previous mistakes.

Many of those issues started out fairly small and had a rather small impact relative to the initial benefits of 'financial liberty', but those benefits faded fairly rapidly, while the consequences not only remain, but continue to grow. It turns out that free money is rather expensive.

If you look at the achievements and progress that was being made in the 60s in the US in practically every domain, and then you showed them what 60 years in the future awaited for them, the most common response, outside of digital gizmos, would probably be 'what went wrong?'

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

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