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I frankly don't think a reactionary turn to neomercantilism is plausible. The world is too dependent on non-zero-sum trade, which is dependent on technological progress, which is now owned by corporate forces, not national.
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Corporations are still nominally governed by nations. The US started a trade-war. The Chinese state interferes in IPOs. But in general, the ability to own corporations is weak because corporations are globally mobile. So if not tech or mercantilism, what then?
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Healthcare is actually a big candidate. Covid revealed public health governance and care delivery as a huge differentiator among nations, regardless of governance systems. With aging populations reliant on a service sector of relatively poor people, this is a big deal.
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There is a popular social darwinist view that pandemics are culls. This was kinda true in 1919 with the Spanish Flu, with the weak and aged succumbing at the margins leaving behind a healthier pool. Even if you buy this ideologically, it is descriptively a poor model for 2020.
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Off the top of my head, around WW2, around 16 young/working people supported 1 aged person in the US. Now it's down to 4:1 or 3:1 or so, and heading that way globally. And most of the 3 workers today are low-skill service workers with hard-to-automate jobs. "Cull" is bad model.
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The population structure of 2020 cannot handle "culls" from pandemics. We are at 7.5B headed to about a 9B peak in a couple of decades, with a very slow service automation trend in a barbell population of poor young people serving weak old people.
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Countries will compete on how well they solve this problem. So we now see a world marked by: a) relative American decline b) tech progress driven by corps still staffed by educated globalized elite c) nation-states competing on healthcare with barbell service+aged populations
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This boils down to how individuals see their lives: work for the most innovative companies remotely while living in the countries that manage healthcare best. This is a FAR cry from the world of even 1980 when nationality was identity rather than a healthcare provider.
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I'm not even exaggerating. Healthcare is increasingly the reason people choose to live in specific places, and constrains where they move to, both within and between countries.
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Replying to
this is a surprisingly big factor in my wife and my discussions. we are feeling lucky we have Taiwan to fall back on given how good their healthcare system is.
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Replying to and
My wife and I got married in July 2003. But my healthcare coverage from my job ended in January 2003. She was a city employee and had coverage. So in January we went to City Hall and became joined in a civil union so I could get on her health plan.
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