Economic Hegemony

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Dan74
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Economic Hegemony

Post by Dan74 »

Huseng wrote:
Roland wrote:The US spends something like $1 trillion per year on military operations, even though apparently world hunger could be taken care of for $160 billion per year. Complete insanity.
The spending pays for the 35% of the world's resources that Americans enjoy. As a citizen of America or a client state you get access to that pie.

In history it has often been the case that militarization when successful brings with it economic perks. It doesn't even have to come to pillaging and enslaving anyone. You just have the threat of violence and you can enforce unfair trade relationships that would otherwise not exist if it wasn't for gunboat diplomacy.
Could you back this up, Huseng?

Specifically could you justify that Americans enjoy prosperity due to the threat of violence?
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Namgyal »

The fact that Saddam Hussein was just about to quote his oil reserves in 'petro-euros' might be a clue. ;)
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Dan74
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Dan74 »

Thanks, Raksha, though the condescension was not required.

It is an interesting trail, but Iraq at the time was supplying 5% of world's oil, hardly significant. Nevertheless, one could argue than oil considerations have had an influence on US foreign policy in the last few decades.

Huseng, however, talked about favourable trade deals. So this is relevant but not really what he seemed to maintain.
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Namgyal »

:emb: Sorry Dan.
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Dan74 »

No probs. I hadn't known the story of the petrodollars and Iran's stance too, so interesting!
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Huseng »

Dan74 wrote: Could you back this up, Huseng?

Specifically could you justify that Americans enjoy prosperity due to the threat of violence?
It isn't so much prosperity but unfair trade arrangements that favour the USA.

For starters the US can print all the money it needs to buy oil in US dollars. Meanwhile other nations buy treasury bonds from the US despite said country being in more debt than could ever be repaid in this century. In a sense it is a kind of tribute. If the US was a small player like Greece the creditors would have called in the debts long ago, but you can't do that with a country like the US. Rule of law doesn't really apply to military superpowers.

The fact that oil is sold in US dollars and US banks can continually hallucinate wealth into existence is another privilege that comes with being a military power nobody is in a position to challenge.

There's also the long history of the US quashing any challenges to its economic hegemony. Iraq and Libya are two recent examples. In the last century the US fought viscously against socialist movements in South America which would have undermined US business interests. The US model has been different from the former British one in that instead of directly ruling colonies with viceroys and so on they just install a local tyrant and some elites to run the show while they extract the wealth. The elites get a share of the pie and a nice standard of living while the US turns a blind eye to whatever inhumane actions occur.

Just look at Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. They're just as awful as Gaddafi's regime was, if not worse, but they're close business and military allies of the US, so they're free to run their countries the way they want to with no concern for "democracy" and "human rights". The US provides military assistance to Saudi Arabia to keep the oil flowing. If the US didn't do so chances are the people would have risen up and killed their leaders long ago. If Iran towed the line and was pro-US in their business and military policies there wouldn't be all this warmongering as of late.

The threat of violence is enough to deter other potential rivals from oil interests in the Middle East. If the US had no significant military power other nations would step in to get their share of the oil wealth. Instead at the moment the US gets unfair access to the oil while paying with dollars they can summon into thin air from nothing.

As a citizen of the US or a client state you get unfair access to the world's resources in obvious and subtle ways. It is only partially because of GDP. The currency game is rigged in favour of select nations. Weak countries have to play the fiat currency game and sell their stuff for chump change to other nations with far more valuable currencies. We don't even have a gold standard anymore, so the value of currency is essentially how much people value your IOU notes. It is determined by forces outside a third world country's power. They just have a dirt cheap currency and need to live with it. If you're a NATO member though you get to enjoy special currencies. The system is rigged in your favour.
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Huseng »

Dan74 wrote: Huseng, however, talked about favourable trade deals. So this is relevant but not really what he seemed to maintain.
Another similar example that comes to mind is the question of whether Indians would have happily sent all their precious metals out of the country in exchange for Manchester textiles under the British Raj if the British didn't have a military hold on the country?
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Konchog1 »

“[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is the will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, s.259

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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by viniketa »

The relatively unscathed infrastructure of the U.S. after WWII, in comparison to European countries, and the deliberative decision led by Dwight D. Eisenhower to establish the Military Industrial Complex that took advantage of that infrastructure led to U.S. economic hegemony. Since WWII, the U.S. has used its military to provide "protections" for corporations making large investments worldwide, not the least of which have been petroleum based industries. This is a type of indirect corporate welfare that supplements the more direct types of corporate welfare the U.S. maintains.

For ongoing developments since, see the work of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Immanuel Wallerstein in World Systems Theory.

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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Konchog1 »

viniketa wrote:The relatively unscathed infrastructure of the U.S. after WWII, in comparison to European countries, and the deliberative decision led by Dwight D. Eisenhower to establish the Military Industrial Complex that took advantage of that infrastructure led to U.S. economic hegemony. Since WWII, the U.S. has used its military to provide "protections" for corporations making large investments worldwide, not the least of which have been petroleum based industries. This is a type of indirect corporate welfare that supplements the more direct types of corporate welfare the U.S. maintains.

For ongoing developments since, see the work of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Immanuel Wallerstein in World Systems Theory.

:namaste:
It's more than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Preparing to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. The delegates deliberated during 1–22 July 1944, and signed the Agreement on its final day.

The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate by tying its currency to the U.S. dollar and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments.
Basically, the backer of the war effort (US) demanded that the world base their economies on the US's. Who would say no?
Equanimity is the ground. Love is the moisture. Compassion is the seed. Bodhicitta is the result.

-Paraphrase of Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tsephel citing the Guhyasamaja Tantra

"All memories and thoughts are the union of emptiness and knowing, the Mind.
Without attachment, self-liberating, like a snake in a knot.
Through the qualities of meditating in that way,
Mental obscurations are purified and the dharmakaya is attained."

-Ra Lotsawa, All-pervading Melodious Drumbeats
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viniketa
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by viniketa »

Good addition, Konchog1. Cardoso goes there, too, in his discussion of financial dominance as one of the factors of hegemony.

:namaste:
If they can sever like and dislike, along with greed, anger, and delusion, regardless of their difference in nature, they will all accomplish the Buddha Path.. ~ Sutra of Complete Enlightenment
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by gyougan »

Dan74 wrote:Thanks, Raksha, though the condescension was not required.
Iraq at the time was supplying 5% of world's oil, hardly significant.
:good:
5% of world oil supply is very significant.
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Namgyal »

Huseng wrote:If Iran towed the line and was pro-US in their business and military policies there wouldn't be all this warmongering as of late.
Persia is one of the ancient empires of Asia, along with India and China. By rights, it should also be a superpower in the present day. Unfortunately for the Persians, they are very subtle people, perhaps one of the most subtle in the world, so America and the West's secret agendas are blindingly obvious to them, like a scam designed by moron. As a result they have refused to toe the line and so they are called 'Axis of Evil' and they are continuously suppressed by the West. If the truth be told, almost all the oil belongs to them, because all the Gulf States from Southern Iraq down to Oman are actually a Persian province called Arabistan. Today these artificial states have unhappy oppressed populations of Shia muslims controlled by a handful of tyrannical foreign Sunnis who are only able to maintain their dictatorships with Western support. Iran is the only country which can effectively and equitably govern Western Central Asia, including troublesome Afghanistan, the Caucasus, including troublesome Chechnya, the oil-rich Caspian region and the entire Persian Gulf, because culturally and historically all these lands belong to them.
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Last edited by Raksha on Sun Oct 14, 2012 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Climate Change: We're Doomed

Post by Huseng »

Raksha wrote: Persia is one of the ancient empires of Asia, along with India and China. By rights, it should also be a superpower in the present day.
Iran is actually one of the few real nation states left. Their leadership doesn't seem to answer to banks, corporations and private interests. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected by popular vote, is pretty honest about what he thinks about Israel and US hegemony. There's also Hugo Chavez who has wrestled power and wealth away from elites and, as I understand it, put a lot of it back into the hands of the people. Most countries now are run by leadership which answers to private commercial interests. Just look at how powerful "credit rating agencies" are in directing national policy.
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Namgyal »

Perhaps an American can explain this to me... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Police" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
To a European this seems like a private army that protects a handful of American bankers who secretly have influence over a mystifying organisation that appears to actually own the key currency of the world?

Huseng wrote-Iran is actually one of the few real nation states left.
I pray America isn't stupid enough to actually attack Iran.
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Huseng »

Raksha wrote: Huseng wrote-Iran is actually one of the few real nation states left.
I pray America isn't stupid enough to actually attack Iran.
:namaste: R.
If it does happen it'll be a NATO operation.

My home country, Canada, will be involved probably. They already booted out the Iranian embassy for no good reason.
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Dan74
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Dan74 »

Oy vey, have you guys actually been to Iran? Or spoken to some Iranian people?
Iran is actually one of the few real nation states left. Their leadership doesn't seem to answer to banks, corporations and private interests. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected by popular vote, is pretty honest about what he thinks about Israel and US hegemony.
I guess there must be good sides to the man and his government (hell, even Hitler wasn't all bad), but, I am sorry, gents, it stinks too much of ideology here. And I am too old for this shite.

Never mind me and please continue. I will check in to see if there are some informative posts shared on topic and try to ignore the rest.
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Huseng »

Dan74 wrote:Oy vey, have you guys actually been to Iran? Or spoken to some Iranian people?
Iran is actually one of the few real nation states left. Their leadership doesn't seem to answer to banks, corporations and private interests. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected by popular vote, is pretty honest about what he thinks about Israel and US hegemony.
I guess there must be good sides to the man and his government (hell, even Hitler wasn't all bad), but, I am sorry, gents, it stinks too much of ideology here. And I am too old for this shite.
I have plenty of Iranian friends and I gather they dislike the government at home. They're rather secular minded, like to drink and don't care for the strict government back home.

Still, all things considered, Iran's government seems run by Iranians rather than private commercial interests. For all their faults, they didn't launch an aggressive war based on false intelligence resulting in immeasurable civilian deaths. They're not into spreading democracy by the bomb. When it comes to unjustifiable civilian death counts, the US beats Iran.
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by Namgyal »

Dan74 wrote- have you guys actually been to Iran? Or spoken to some Iranian people
I remember standing in the crowd outside the American embassy while the hostages were inside, and I will never forget the intense power of that crowd chanting and shaking their fists in the air. For historical reasons Shia Islam is empowered by martyrdom and victimisation. So oppression and attack just makes them stronger. When the embassy was taken over the diplomats shredded all their documents but the Iranians simply laid out the millions of threads in a warehouse and using thousands of volunteers they eventually selotaped every single document back together. Saddam Hussein was given unlimited cash and armaments by the West for the Iran-Iraq war yet in eight years he failed to capture even a single centimetre of Iranian territory, despite the fact that the Iranians had precious few hi-technology weapons of their own. So if America or even NATO attack Iran it will be a disaster.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... state.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(Seems like a joke, but it really isn't!!!)
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Re: Economic Hegemony

Post by greentara »

Sure there's alot wrong with the U.S.A! Think about Sharia law: set forth in the Quran. I wouldn't want to live under the iron fist of the judges and Imams!
Furthermore whatever happened to Sufism? All but stamped out!
The Iranians (Shi ite) are fixated on martyrdom, I don't find that a calling that appeals! They have also suppressed, often brutally all forms that don't conform to strict Shi ite practice.
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