Yeah USA said they wouldn’t expand to the East after Russia agreed to let East and west Germany unite, but nato kept expanding East and threatening Russia. Lesser buffer zone. Stop thinking Russia is the aggressor when it’s America

Your posts expose your one dimensional thinking. A lot of what America has done in the Middle East was not good. But there is a millennia if bad blood between the Christian West and the Islamic world.

I have no interest in asking the Middle East anything.

The state of nature, pseudo anarchist position is not optimal. Have you read Nozick’s Anarchy State & Utopia?

The US, like any person or country can and should improve. But without it you would be speaking German and will be speaking Chinese.

The US military has bases around the world as a result of WWII. In case you don’t remember z Germans were straight killing fools and rolling Poland and France like they were bowling balls.

US military bases are huge economic anchors wherever they are and prevent Putin from “annexing” all of Eastern Europe.

Don’t forget after (hm, and before...) the Germans had the biggest brain fart in history, the Russians decided on socialism and Mao and co killed what, millions?

The US isn’t perfect, but if u like your internet, cars, man going to the moon, innovation, music, Marvel movies, freedom of the seas, and much more...maybe you should recalibrate your thinking.

Or by all means, I would like to be the first to invite you to go live in Russia or China as a gay Muslim. Have fun with that.

Disclaimer: I actually think the troops should come home, or as Trump has suggested, should be paid by the counties that they protect.

Rather than deploying abroad we should spend that money on tech and by more defensive.

The ignorance some of you are displaying is amazing.

This is really simple:

- Russia is a dictatorship who wants to (and have) invaded sovereign countries in Eastern Europe who are not ethnically Russian, who want nothing to do with Russia and who the Russians have deliberately genocided (Ukrainian famine for example).

- These countries, as protection from legitimate fears (see:Crimea) of another Russian invasion, want to join NATO, which they voluntarily can do

- In your twisted mind, this makes the US the aggressor.

If you're not Russian or Chinese, I can't even begin to fathom how demented or ignorant you'd have to be to call the US the aggressor. Russia has ZERO risk to itself as long it stays within its borders and remains happy with its 17,000,000 square kilometers/17% of the world's habitable land that it controls.

NATO is not the US. And no one is entitled to a buffer zone. Russia feeling threatened and contained is their problem...

I am pretty sure that no one has invaded Russia since Hitler demonstrated epic levels of hubris...

lol@ Russia being some Thanos esque threat. The Russian economy is a complete joke with avg salary being like 6k a year. California has double the GDP of Russia ffs.

UK and France have their own military/nukes and the reason Russia are involved with the disputes you listed are because as a country they're fairly land locked and many of the wannabe separatist states pose a threat to key locations not because of some ideological goals of conquering.

Putin is pathetic and has done nothing to improve the lives of Russians outside his Oligarch pals.

Lol at thinking nato is not US, US is the reason why nato is still here. Nato lied and said they were not gonna expand to the east but obvious they did and lied

America has no democracy, you guys have a false freedom. Lol at russian having 0 risk. The west has been encroaching every year, watch within the next 10 years or so i believe we will have another war. Right now we are having proxy wars but soon it will be direct great power wars

grunch.........

certainly interesting that the USA can seemingly print money non-stop and USD still be bastion of safety.. of course it helps that the EU, japan and every other significant country is doing the same. i think japan has been printing money for a long time now. and interest rates are still zero (could be wrong, have to check)

if USD no longer reserve currency, what would it be? not that many credible options.

could you have the reserve asset be a basket of currencies? i'm sure china and russia would love to be in for 5% and 2% each, or something like that.... no idea if this idea is practical.... and i'd assume that the USA, EU and japan would have to own the other's currencies as their reserves. basically it wouldn't matter much to some small country as their currency would be tiny % of basket

There is nothing wrong with my thinking, and I am not playing games here. NATO is not the US. You can say it (more or less) does what the US wants, or it would be nothing without the US, or w.e.

But it is quite clearly not the US and quite clearly includes many other sovereign nations, perhaps most notably Great Britain and Germany, which are definitely not the US...

https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factshe...wing-Right-SDR

The answer is: of course you can. But it shouldn't be currencies. It should be hard assets for which BTC qualifies in my book.

The USD won't be replaced as the reserve currency overnight. It's just that more and more deals will be done without it.

There is no currency that can replace it (as said earlier in this thread). EUR would closest, and it is a joke. IDK maybe we could trust the Swiss...

Honestly i don't know who is ahead and who is behind but I do know that usa underestimated China with 5g networks so who knows where tech stands right now. usa never thought they were gonna lose out on the 5g battle so i am not convince americans lead in tech is that big or if there is an edge.

well of course on paper its not just "america" but we know who runs the show.

90% of countries probably wouldn't be able to trade globally if the US navy went home and didn't guarantee freedom of the seas.

Remind yourself how the world acted before world war 2 and what led up to that war. It was a world of empires/colonies/fighting for raw materials/trading routes.

Huawei lost access to using US technology in its chips in its cell phones /5g network equipment.

It stocked up before the ban on 9m units, but it needed around 120M more.

TSMC stopped producing for huawei
Mediatek this week also stopped
They seemed to close a bunch of the loopholes on components too, so Samsung /Sony also will prob stop
Huawei might be the first causality of the Tech war

And what does back BTC beside « confidence » like fiat currency ?
How can you you have currency that moves so much ?
Imo BTC is everything but hard asset.

Nh to everyone who let this gem slide.

United nations and Nato where formed for this reason and the reality of Nukes meant an end to wars between the most powerful nations.

lol @ USA being the reason for global trade.

I am telling you who is ahead. Further, in your example, American companies lost bids to the Chinese government. The CCP is subsidizing the projects so that they can get the intel...

1. You can either say nothing backs BTC or it is backed by energy (and tech).

2. This is not the right way to think about it. You have been habituated to thinking in dollars (or another fiat currency). In markets, both assets move. For example, the stock market has down days when there is USD strength. The volatility is driven by the uncertainty and the crazy things happening in USD & other fiat currencies.

Basically there is been a flood of dollars which requires a new state and repricing of assets. If we had sound money state would change less and pricing would respond more to normal dynamics.

3. BTC is a hard asset. I understand your position and why you may feel this way. But if you think a level deeper you may change your mind.

What I mean is silver / gold / platinum are hard assets cause it is something physical , like lands , real estate .

I just can’t see how a bit coin is consider the same .
Currency are just a mean of transaction and I just feel Bitcoin is basically the same .
What I am missing ?

BTC is a hard asset like real estate/gold because it's supply is (relatively) fixed. Supply cannot inflate to deal with an influx in demand.

BTC is currently inflating. But ultimately, supply will be fixed.

In order to override this directive the person who desires to inflate it would have to control 51% of the network. This is a tall order and basically impossible.

It is in the stakeholders' best interest not to inflate the currency because scarcity is part of what gives it value. Inflating supply would depreciate existing capital. So current participants probably wont do it.

Let's assume we have addressed the supply side (it is a safe assumption). The next aspects are the energy and compute that it consumes. These are basically commodities...

And thus, hard asset.

As an aside, objectively the energy consumption is bad. But it is worth it if it provides an efficient financial system. This is value added in my opinion.

think problem areas where regional players can cause problems

south china sea

strait of hormuz

other choke points in major trading routes

EU might be able to escort some of its trading ships, but even Britain had one of it's tankers taken over by Iran

Who is going to rescue 90% of the countries ships who have no navy that can operate past their shore lines