24/ You might not like this dichotomous framing of neomercantilism versus Option X (the 'other side of neoliberal transition era' thing)
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25/ Perhaps you have your own fond visions of say a global social-welfare coalition or a Buddhist 'gross world happiness' optimizing order
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26/ Unfortunately those options aren't on table. Nobody credible is working on anything meaningful in any direction besides the 2 big ones
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27/ How do you "play" for Option X? The key is to recognize that neomercantilism has *no* economic legs. It is an oil-economy endgame.
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28/ Option X super-lever: "in the short run, the market is like a voting machine But in the long run, the market is like a weighing machine"
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29/ Here "market" broadly includes all forms of "voting/weighing" dynamics. The thing that is structurally immune to bullshit over long term
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30/ So long as there is economic *continuity*, time is a friend for Option X and an enemy for neomercanitilism
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31/ To bring it back around to starting point of the riff, points 1/ and 2/, this is not a contest of *national* exceptionalist narratives
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32/ It isn't Trumpian American exceptionalism to 1950s MAGA state versus Putin-Surkov exceptionalism rewinding to Eastern Roman Empire.
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33/ It is about global exceptionalism. Those who believe there was something exceptionally good about Westphalian nation-state order...
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So the choice is between (a) the false memories of world we can never regain, and (b) the utopian dreams of a world we can never reach?
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'slouching towards utopia' ...a pragmatic directional commitment to an improving pattern of improvement, not an end-state
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Jean-Marie Guenhenno wrote about these trends in the 90's and claimed empire will come after nation-states amazon.com/End-Nation-Sta
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