John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SENATOR MARCO RUBIO IN BREITBART
“Exclusive — Sen. Marco Rubio: ‘The Chinese Effort to Supplant America Has No Precedent’
“China’s intense international push for global dominance is the biggest threat that America has ever faced, even more substantial than the one that the Soviet Union posed in the 20th century during the Cold War”
Rubio is an idiot. Certifiable.
China is not a danger to the United States in any way.
Unless you view healthy competition from another state as something dangerous.
Unless you view dynamic growth and wonderful new ideas as dangerous.
And economics is not a zero-sum game. Me or you, winner take all. It doesn’t work that way, and Marco Rubio only shines a light on his own economic illiteracy in effectively claiming that it does.
And “supplant” is not a criminal conspiracy charge. It is what naturally occurs when one country or company works very hard at its business while its competitor country or company does not, or, indeed, works hard at doing the wrong things.
Efforts like China's New Silk Road only enrich the world. They will help hundreds of millions to prosper more.
The Silk Road will be infrastructure serving the whole world. Sadly, America cannot even maintain its own national infrastructure. It is too busy spending on its immensely wasteful, totally non-productive gigantic military and security apparatus.
Efforts like American bombing in half a dozen countries only impoverish the world. Maintaining supplies and communications and services for somewhere between eight hundred and one thousand military bases scattered around the planet is about as fruitless and monstrous a task as you could conceive.
Nothing is a greater generator of waste and economic deadweight than a huge military.
It is kept only to dominate others. There is no economic or useful social rationale for it.
The last time I read about the history of empires, and especially their economic dimensions, they were shown to be extremely burdensome and negative institutions. Just as is the case for so many ego-satisfying activities carried on by leaders who think only of themselves.
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/john-chuckman-comment-empire-corrupts-all-the-principles-of-economics-as-well-as-principles-of-ethics-and-good-government-there-is-nothing-good-to-say-about-empire-and-the-american-one-is-no-excep/
