BRICS org doesn’t actually mean or do anything, and as should always be mentioned:
- India and China fucking hate each other and engage in frequent deadly border skirmishes
- Same with Iran and Saudi but without the border
- Egypt and Ethiopia are dick inches from a war, and not backing down
Maybe BRICS org can help fix some of that but unlikely. More likely this will go the way of the African Union, CARICOM, and ECOWAS - aka a lot of noise but no material change
> - India and China fucking hate each other and engage in frequent deadly border skirmishes
One insane fact I recently learned is that they do not use modern weapons, like guns, for fear of things getting out of hand. Only medieval clubs, bats with barbed wire, and martial arts/fists are allowed. [1]
Improvised clubs with embedded nails, rebar and wooden bats ala Mad Max style.
Both are nuclear armed nations, so it is sort of de-escalation mechanism for saving face whenever they clash without somebody taking it up a notch.
China is more dependent on Middle Eastern oil more than any other single country in the world. And in a potential breakdown of relations with the US (... and Japan.. and the Philippines...and everyone else in SE Asia) they going to have to get that oil all the way home around the Indian Ocean. So they kind of need it to work.
JP/PH energy mix is much more reliant on imports. Same with SKR/TW. Most of ASEAN as well especially if they develop and increase demand/consumption. TLDR most other parties along MENA SLOC would have much worse time weathering energy disruption than PRC because they're mostly islands/small countries with limited domestic energy resources and hence wouldn't be retarded enough to disrupt and self sabatoge. PRC is a large land country with abundant resources, just not enough oil yet still large producer - large enough to ration while 80%+ energy production is from domestic inputs. Only spoiler is US, who has no energy security if they attempt to mess with MENA slocs to cripple PRC because that's a world where CONUS refineries go boom. Reality is PRC has more deterence against energy disruption than ever by virtue of now being able to disrupt everyone else's energy infra, most of whom would starve, literally sooner. Including US who has never been more vunerable because shale autarky means nothing when they've lost actual energy security because PRC can now degrade CONUS infra directly via global strikes.
Going to say the unsaid here: Why tf are Ethiopians trying to enter Saudi from Yemen (an active war zone) for economic reasons? Ethiopia has it's shit together! It's becoming one of Africa's success stories!
It feels like there's a growing sentiment of "you can just move anywhere you want, there's no reason to try to fix where you are, if you can make a bit more money somewhere just move there, you have a right to." That might fly in Sweden but it absolutely is not true about 90% of the world, and the people that enforce those norms aren't always going to be friendly.
Saudi doesn't give a shit about HRW, and they don't give a shit about Twitter outrage. Neither does Myanmar, or China, etc. You cannot just force your way into these places because you don't want to make it work in your homeland (which, again, is booming economically: https://www.afdb.org/en/countries/east-africa/ethiopia/ethio...)
Obviously, no one should be murdered for trying to cross a border. That doesn't mean you won't be - and the growing amount of migration means this will keep happening. Particularly when it's "choice migration" - these aren't people going to Kenya or Djibouti.
Or maybe there's a whole conjunction of factors, including the destruction of most of Europe during WW2, the fact the USA is pretty geographically isolated while bolstering a large high income population, which helped the USA to leverage its industrial prowess in the aftermath to catapult itself as the world's economical/financial leader, from then on the rest of the world has been playing catch up.
These stupid policies have helped a lot to build wealth in the USA, it's an amazing place for business, not so much for citizenry. If the only metric one cares about is how much money there's to be made, the USA is definitely 1st in the world, if you care about more than just money then you really have to look deeper. At some point these policies can bite the USA in the ass, then it's pretty much good luck on changing a whole society's view in what's valuable outside of pure wealth-generation.
The USA is a rich place but that doesn't make it necessarily the best place for one to live in as a common person, even more if one doesn't care so much about buying ever more expensive cars, homes and clothes.
What drives all this Euro cope though? The entirety of the internet shits on the USA, at all times, and the few times that people point out it's unwarranted the Euros completely break down.
What you call "cope", adults call nuance, and context. Your issue is that you are probably very young and cocky, hard to have any kind of proper conversations when you are at that point of maturity.
Sure, it has been better since the economy switched away from serfs and slaves to wage labor.
It does, though. Same shit can be seen everywhere. Food for profit? Addictive poison. Health for profit? Ineffective care with prolonged suffering and excluded populace. Cars for profit? Emission cheating, subscriptions. Farm equipment for profit? War on independent repair.
Profit motive worked when the market was regulated, there were not many monopolies, excessive profits were progressively taxed, research has been sufficiently well funded, worst jobs were outsourced to colonies and most importantly markets were not saturated and there was an organic demand for new and better products.
I think there are markets where competition creates wealth and markets where supply and demand is inherently dysfunctional. I recommend reading about "market failures" where a free market does not leave participants better off. (There are four broad categories of market failures). So the free market works where it does and doesn't in other cases.
Replying to my own comment. If you are wondering why healthcare is specifically a market failure related to
1) Information asymmetry. Patients do not generally know how to select and shop for their treatment without medical expertise.
2) Adverse selection. Unhealthy people want good healthcare, which drives up the risk pool of "good plans". While insurance companies in general want healthier patients, which often leads to insurance firms to compete to offer plans that only appeal to the healthiest people. (I.e who can offer the most restrictive, and cheapest plans) see insurance death spiral. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)
3) Perverse incentives. Profitable treatment does not always align with best treatment decisions. This both comes from providers and insurers. See information asymmetry.
4) Monopolistic characteristics: A Monopoly is generally defined by a firms ability to restrict output to reach the profit maximizing production (absent of meaningful competition). Try seeing a specialist on an HMO and you can figure the relation to healthcare. Significant regulatory and market capture makes avoiding with health insurance impossible (including your providers insurance), leading to spiraling costs.
Healthcare isn't the only market where under-regulated capitalism has essentially corrupted it. Politics and finance are two others.
The issue at stake isn't healthy profit-seeking that happens in a regulated market - but the rent-seeking that occurs when markets break down (logical endgame of capitalism).
They filed in Manhattan in particular for very good reason - the venue is extremely good at huge, complex bankruptcies like this. It's non-trivial to unwind these financial obligations, and is really only done in NYC.
This is actually a great question! The United States bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York is the best equipped place to manage a massive bankruptcy, likely on Earth. Every complex case you've heard of is managed there. It's a huge reason for NYC's success, and they know what they're doing.
If you need to wind down your car dealership, do it in Guangzhou or Monterry or wherever you happen to be. If you need to unwind GM or Enron, you'll do it in the Southern District Court.
