For the most part, it's not the "state" - it's your locality. Cable agreements in the US are almost universally done town-by-town. It's the exact opposite of "state" involvement. The companies were big enough that they could push for exclusive agreements.

Though we could get very in the weeds and argue that corporations themselves are built upon state charters, and that without this corporate invention and limited liability, companies would not get big enough to leverage a locality. Maybe.

Maybe. I also look at the history of Europe and see even "independent" countries at war continuously for centuries. People are generally just dicks. Some blame it on colonialism or religion or a number of other things, but I think tribalism is inherent and something that we need to actively fight.

Or the Philippines. Cuba. Indians, "Manifest Destiny", Monroe Doctrine, etc. We could go on.

But we collectively like to think that the world has left the 19th century ideas of western colonialism behind.

An inch is defined as exactly 25.4mm, based on the yard being defined as exactly 0.9144 meters.

There's your problem... this occurred in Texas.

I don't worry one wink about the US and China going to war directly - as you say, a nuclear deterrent is a hell of a thing.

But I do see possible scenarios where China asserts itself over large sections of the Asian Pacific region with only token opposition from the US - simply because the US would no longer have the same relative capacity to respond effectively. Why actively defend Taiwan if it means losing much of your Pacific fleet and air force, leaving Japan vulnerable. Why inject yourself into local drama surrounding the South China sea for the same reasons?

Then again, you do mention BRICS, and the Russia and India part of that are not necessarily going to sit idle as their neighbor rises militarily. Russia is already at more or less their peak militarily, but India could yet grow legs.

Unless you are arguing that China will not do this, I don't understand your point.

They certainly won't be unopposed. But is the US going to go all-in against an equal to defend Taiwan? How about the South China sea? China will take what it wants from that region if the current regime remains in power.

That's a big "if". If China's economy grows to rival or exceed the US, that implies a richer, more educated populace that might not be happy with their lack of freedoms. An economic decline of any size could send the government into crisis.

Today, that is true. At around 8-10% per year increases, it won't take long to catch up or eclipse the US - which has flat spending. We're talking 20 years at the outside.

Of course, past results are no guarantee of future blah blah blah.

Eventually China will surpass the US in both economic activity, and probably, military spending. You will one day look back upon US hegemony with nostalgia. As counterproductive and clumsy as US foreign policy is, it rarely includes expansion or annexation.

Are you arguing that there is no commercial market for space? Because that is insane - there are roughly 30 launches per year.

And like most things, as cost comes down demand is likely to go up.

87 comments and not a single mention of University of Pisa in Italy and their large collection of <ahem> photos? For shame...

There's some merit to that as an architecture, even without the legacy problem. Having the mainframe dump transactions and schedules to a web front-end is probably the next-best thing to an air-gap.

This assumes a couple of things:
1. That you will consistently have cycles of "good times" and "bad times".
2. That you will know when you are having a good time or a bad time.

If you master #2 in particular, you will be a very rich man. This is analogous to "timing the market" in investing, and it is a very difficult art.

That's a bold claim. I recognize that a significant portion of the population has fallen out (down) of the middle class, and I fully agree that we need to address that as a major problem. At the same time, you seem to be ignoring the roughly half of the middle class that has moved up into "upper middle". The typical H1B position is not going to someone who has fallen out of the middle class - it's going to someone who has a good technical education with modern skills. Those people are not the ones struggling at the moment.

We are talking about an almost paltry number of people (less than 100,000 per year in a country of 160,000,000 workers. I think I could argue that H1B does not even have a statistical significance, but we are arguing on ideology, so lets have at it.

So here's the problem. You have signed a trade agreement which allows free movement of goods and free movement of capital. Capital that would normally have been spent domestically moves outside, and in exchange we get goods. But what happens to the workers who once made those goods? They certainly can't go to India to pursue those jobs. And Indians in sweatshop jobs can't say "screw this" and move to a nice US factory. We have artificially created an imbalance, and it is screwing with the free market. H1B is certainly not the only way to fix this (in fact, as I point out above it probably is not even having a significant effect) - but it is better than doing nothing. I think free trade is probably better for everyone in the long run, but I strongly feel that these agreements need to take into account things like ecological protections and worker standards. But I digress...

No, that's how you are framing my argument. My goal is to keep the US economy dynamic, competitive, and efficient so that it continues to punch above its weight and raises the standard of living for all.