On 24/04/2010 10:37, David Looser wrote:
"Ian wrote

War with China seems unlikely, to say the very least, to me.

I entirely agree. WW1 was billed as "the war to end all wars" but wasn't.
OTOH WW2 *was* "the war to end all wars", at least as far as all-out
military conflict between advanced industrial nations is concerned. There
simply is too much to lose and too little to gain by such highly destructive
warfare. The industrial nations now prefer to limit their fighting wars to
asymetric action against weak foes like Afaganistan.

The real problem, behind the smoke screen of money, is the biggest crisis
of overproduction ever by far. China isn't just another Japan or Europe,
it's a socialist state managed by a mature Communist Party and it's
*really* big. Nobody knows how this will play out because it hasn't
happened before. How do we deal with such a huge excess of industrial
capacity, since blowing it up is no longer an option?


Whilst I largely accept your analysis, China is not a "socialist state", and
whilst it's ruling party still calls itself "communist" it long since gave
up any attempt to rule by marxist principles. But then it's not "capitalist"
in the way we in the West understand the term, and it's certainly not
"liberal" so what is it? ISTM that the political and economic structure of
modern China is nearer to that of the fascist states of pre-war Europe than
to any other recognisable political/economic system.

David.


Some manner of liberal dictatorship I'd guess. But anyway, I don't
follow the overproduction notion. I'm not sure what you mean (of
what/where it goes) or consequences you're thinking of.

Rob

On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:53:21 +0100, Rob
wrote:

Some manner of liberal dictatorship I'd guess. But anyway, I don't
follow the overproduction notion. I'm not sure what you mean (of
what/where it goes) or consequences you're thinking of.

Overproduction is where, so that people can have the option of buying
stuff at affordable prices, you have to produce far too much of
everything and persuade people who don't really want or need the
product to buy the surplus. It's been remarkably successful for the
developed, industrial countries for quite a long time. It went a bit
sour when undeveloped countries became developed enough to do the
manufacturing cheaply, they got the work, we just got the consuming.
As expectations and wages level up, it might start working again. Or
maybe not. It doesn't really matter.