this is why, you know the "We can't let China set the rules" idea? That is coming from this sort of geopolitical calculus.

Which has been current British and American policy since the 18th century. Geopolitics is a zero-sum game by this assessment.

It's not a position completely without merit. In the absence of infinite growth, which is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, doesn't it follow that a gain for one group must be accompanied by a loss for another?

-- Mal

It is not without merit, but being zero-sum, it assumes the worst and then makes it so. In fact generally what you get that way is a negative sum game, and that is when it gets really ugly.

But very useful to understand why people do things, people who think like that. A lot of times jealousy and envy lie behind it too, we resent other peoples good fortune, we fear the success of those we have oppressed.

If you want to rise above all that, you have to have the nerve to trust somebody once in a while. And yet all of human culture is built on that, so I'd say it's a very questionable assumption, zero-sum.

And everything we see came from nothing, near as we can tell, how zero-sum is that?

I have always found the premises of the "Great Game" airy bullshit in terms of compelling the real world to do much of anything, but very useful in terms of understanding people and governments, which can tell you a lot, and likely lluminating about the geographic realities that shape human activity.

It is interesting in that context to consider Jared Diamond's treatment of the World Island and the consequences of the size of a landmass for the people who live there in "Guns, Germs and Steel", where he argues that it was the size of the Eurasian landmass that allowed the rise of our advanced Western technological cultures, so he comes at the same issue from a different ecological slant, but arrives at the same conclusion of the importance of Eurasia as a resource base.

The problem of trust is a thorny one, too. As we know from the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's the best way to get good results. But it is difficult for anyone who has been around since there were 48 states to trust anyone in government. (Well, or so I find it) That may not be a position wholly without merit, either, but so far as government is based on consent, a little trust (or at least indifference?) needs to be displayed. One problem I have, though, is the question of mendacity vs ignorance. The cited article, for instance, would probably agree that most of our rulers are not reading the tea leaves aright, and are taking us in the wrong direction (although what the right direction would be is problematical). OTOH, the PTB may be largely ruled by personal greed, and so are guided by mendacity and not ignorance. Either way, it all comes out in the wash. I'm not sanguine that the old Euro/American hegemony is going to be happy with the result, but I suspect that so long as he's allowed to have his solid-gold toilet, Jamie Dimon won't care.

-- Mal

Most of the time all I get is a few incoherent yelps of agreement or outrage.

Trust is the problem. It comes up in other contexts too, computer security for example, the problem is particularly clear there, and "there is no closed form solution", in the end you have to know who you are dealing with, in the end you have to be smart and pay attention. I think that is what bothers me most about Great Game zero-sum sort of thinking, it dumbs problems down to where mediocrities like our political leaders can deal with them, assuming perfect understanding is like assuming perfect information.

I usually start out on the trust problem with small things or things I don't care too much about and see how it goes.

I'm fairly interested in geopolitics, but since I have a world-view composed of both cosmopolitanism and class suspicion, I abominate the TPP because I believe it is more about getting more profits for corporations than anything. This is not a surprise, since the corporation is a mechanism for maximizing profits, and unlike many who decry the corporation as "evil," I see it in terms of a natural force, not unlike a landslide or tsunami. Ergo, insofar as government is supposed to protect the people from danger, they need to keep a close eye on the damned things and not deregulate them even further.

But since I have a cosmopolitan view, I don't see the question in terms of China vs the US, or indeed consider that the State is even really relevant in the discussion. Although it is quite possible that some of the rulers in China and the other States may see it differently.

And I love a good discussion.

-- Mal

Erdogan in Turkey was just fending off a gold toilet claim recently too:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2015/jun/04/bog-off-turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan-golden-toilet

And then there is Yanukovich in Ukraine, recently departed, and al Sisi in Egypt looks like a gold toilet kind of guy to me too.

---

They always load these things (TPP) up with goodies for the campaign contributors, that's what they pay for. The fact that that weakens us and corrupts us as a nation never seems to bother them.

But it's not going to work geopolitically, TPP, and it is the worst sort of folly for our leaders to think the Chinese have forgotten recent history. I am sure they remember gunboat diplomacy and the opium wars quite well still. They know who not to trust. If we want any trust there we are going to have to earn it the old fashioned way, by deeds.

I'd hope our rulers are not so simple as to think our old whipping boys are going to love us and wish us well. Although come to think, they can be amazingly naive that way, almost as if they don't realize how we've been exploiting the world for, like, ever.

Incidentally, speaking of gunboat diplomacy, the book Yangtzee Patrol by RADM Kemp Tolley is a great memoir of those halcyon days when men were men, Euro-Americans ruled, and China was divided between competing units for hegemony. Especially interesting when Tolley talks about his own years as a gunboat officer, although naturally he leaves a lot of the good stories out. Tolley also wrote another book about his experiences just after, when in the tense period before the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor he commanded a picket sailing sloop keeping tabs on the Japanese fleets and possibly hoping to create an international incident to justify US entry into the war. Interesting times.

-- Mal

I can agree with all of that.

Got to go, later.