Aceticon

Quantity has a quality of its own

This is a lesson America knew back in the WWII days when they countered the superior Tiger and Leopard Panzers with Sherman tanks, but seems to have forgotten in recent times with its multitude of white elephant projects for "superior systems" which are much more expensive whilst yielding tiny improvements over existing systems.

Meanwhile the era of the drone is upon us, and that's all about using said "quality of its own" of masses of cheap and easy to make drones.

Russia had prepared itself for the usual American strategy of a Carrier Group sitting out far way from the coast and throwing long range cruise missiles and fighter jets at it whilst too far away to be hit by return fire - as used for decades now, for example in the Gulf War - by developing hypersonic missiles and advanced AA capable of shooting down those fighter jets and cruise missiles.

Then they went and started a land war with their next door neighbor - which is almost the opposite military scenario of that which they prepare themselves for - plus on top of it it turned out EVERYBODY was on the take in their Military so it was a hollowed out shell far lesser than it seemed on paper and finally, to add insult to injury, the era of the drone was upon us changing the nature of land warfare as well as on the long range side making mass attacks with cheap quasi-cruise missiles possible.

Given the geography of it if they attack Taiwan, China is - unlike Russia - almost certainly going to be facing the decades old way of American sea-based force projection in the form of the Carrier Group, which is the one they've prepared themselves to counter.

America has long wasted tons of its military budget in things with tiny or even no Return On Investment in terms of additional effectiveness for every extra dollar spent.

In a sense the greatest enemy of the US is itself, in the form of the MIL and Corruption from the lowest levels to the highest.

I mean, notice the recent change in the budget for the military which this year removed the Right To Repair for the Military, something which does nothing other than hinder Military effectiveness whilst further enriching military hardware suppliers.

The way the money is misused and redirected to feather the nests of large military companies' shareholders and CxOs, as well retired Procurement Generals who move to cushy jobs in the very companies they bought overpriced items from and MIL-friendly politicians in subcommittees approving white elephant military projects, is sort of a twisted mirror version of what happened in Russia were everybody in positions of power was on the take and their military when finally faced with a proper adversary at the same technological level - in the form of Ukraine - turned out to be a lot less than it seemed on paper.

Also America went down a route similar to Germany in WWII when they went for tanks like the Tiger Panzer which were peak-tech and very costly to manufacture, which the Allies countered by just throwing lots and lots of not-quite-as-perfect yet much cheaper and faster to manufacture tanks like the Sherman at it.

America has the biggest military budget in the World by a large margin, but also outright wastes a huge fraction of it and pays top premium for small incremental improvements, so the results aren't as impressive as one would expect from just looking at money spent.

If you want to see efficient use of a military budget, look at Ukraine.

Well, it does make some sense that China's plan's to counter the US during an invasion of Taiwan would focus on nullifying America's main far-from-home force projection method, which has for decades been fighter planes and cruise missiles launched from naval assets 1000km plus off the coast of the target nation.

Since the US has been using the same overall strategy again and again for decades now, China would have had lots of time to develop counters for it, and it's not as if Chinese Engineering is any less than Western Engineering.

I mean, Russia too developed hypersonic missiles exactly to counter that very same American strategy. Now, Russia is well in range of lots of land-based assets of America's allies in Europe so it could be targeted by those, but that's not at all the case for China which America has to approach by sea, and that will be done with the usual Aircraft Carrier Group and hence that's exactly what China would have set itself up to counter.

In my experience most countries in Europe have long had country-specific payment systems like that, with a few notable exceptions (like the UK) were everything operates on top of VISA or Mastercard.

The problem with those is usually to do payments without the physical card and cross-country payments.

The first problem has been address in the last decade or so with things mobile phone apps that read QR codes and are linked to a card or bank account (such as MBWay in Portugal and iDEAL in The Netherlands).

The second is still a big problem - some cross-country systems have appeared and some national systems interoperate, but that's only a handful of countries each and it's far from a pan-European system (Wero is maybe the one with the broadest geographical coverage and it still only covers 5 countries), much less something that is accepted anywhere in the World.

Good old Winston Churchill was quite the Genocider back in his day in India...

Well, since I don't know enough in that front, I didn't mention it either way and hoped for somebody more familiar with it to comment!

That said, the "it will give Hungarians a jolt" theory still applies, tough in this case is for more "assertive" actions than merelly voting differently (which in a situation were elections aren't "free and fair" would be their only option to stop autocracy, even inside the EU) which does have a greater risk of things just getting worse (or maybe not: theoretically the end of money from the EU and of easy access to the EU should push the Hungarian Elites which are "fine with a little autocracy as long as we keep making money" to turn against Orban).

Again, "strangely" specific.

Britain's Total World trade balance is much worse than in 2016

(Also and on your mentioning of falling EU trade, it's hilarious that you think that "losing more of those clients we've already been losing" is somehow a good thing. Yeah, sure, that makes total business sense mate ... wanna buy this river crossing property I have for sale in a major US city?)

You see, Non-EU Trade was also affected by Brexit due to the loss of all those Trade Treaties that Britain had via the EU and which the country had to try to replace because it left the trade block. Back in the Referedum days we were all told how "sovereign Britain" would be able to negotiate even better trade terms than the EU and here we are, almost a decade later, and Britain failed to negotiate replacement for all those trade treaties, much less get better trade terms in those it did (as expected: the other countries will concede much better trade terms for access to a trade block of 540 million people than for access to a country of 40 million), hence its trade balance with the World has never been this bad.

(Surely, "The Brexit Dividend Is Just Around The Corner And Will Begin At Any Moment Now" just like Brexiters have claimed since 2016)

The CAP stuff is also a hilarious obcession, given that British agricultural products are part of those "goods" where trade balance has worsen steeply, so clearly leaving the EU and the CAP didn't turn out so great for British farmers.

Also, it's been hilarious to watch Britain weaken it's own food safety legislation rules - "overregulation" being the main argument from Brexiters for the CAP being a horrible thing - further shafting the entire Food Production For Export sector in the UK AND weakening the quality and safety of the food that Britons consume thus also shafting everybody living in Britain (all of which, on a personal note, periodically reminds me that leaving Britain after Leave won was one of the best decisions in my life).

Trully an amazing Leave achievement!

Congratulations for shafting British food safety and the trade prospects of the British Food Sector including British Farmers so as to get rid of pesky EU Agricultural Regulations. Brits finally will get to enjoy the pleasure of eating Hormone Beef and Chlorinated Chicken (with its many times higher rates of Salmonella)!

Only way to make sure they have a good mayor though, more precisely, it's a good boy mayor.

More seriously, it's another data point for the theory around politicians that "even a rock would do a better job".

That "strangely" specific metric you quote conveniently forgets the trade balance in goods which more than offsets services so now with a currency which is 24% weaker - which makes everything Britain worth less and supposedly is better for trade - the UK's total trade balance is actually worse than in 2016 (source)

I see that the Brexiter tendency to blindly believe in self-congratulating nationalistic Sun newspaper headlines and not actually googling for easilly available economic figures has remained unchanged in the last decade.

Good old Brexiter cherry-picking is alive and well.

Also it's hilarious that you pretty much parroted my "The Fall Of The British Pound Just Makes Britain More Competitive" charicatural Brexiter line based on actual Leave Campaign bollocks. Our exchange reminds me of the old days!

Sure mate, the Brexit Dividend Is Just Around The Corner And Will Begin At Any Moment Now and The Fall Of The British Pound Just Makes Britain More Competitive.

Meanwhile in the real World back in 2016 you could get 1 EUR for 0.7 GBP and now it costs 0.87 GBP so the World thinks everything Britain is worth 24% - British inflation hasnt been higher than Euro Zone inflation so the fall in the GBP hasn't been offset by an increase in GBP valuations - and my old savings when I lived and worked in Britain (which were transfered out of the GBP just before the Leave Referendum results) are worth 24% more in EUR than they would if they stayed in GBP (purely from betting against the British Pound, not counting actual investment returns since).

Mind you, Europe is fucked. It's just that Britain is even more fucked. It's like most countries in the EU doing some stupid post 2008 Crash shit that fucks them up and Britain going "Hold my beer!"

My theory is that the Remain campaign was so weak because, after decades of both the traditional Tories and New Labour blaming the EU for anything bad that happened in Britain and for unpopular measures (most notably measures which they themselves introduced and pushed for at the EU level), actually admitting the good things of the EU would make obvious they previous lies and deceit, so instead they just restricted themselves in that campaign to only these things which wouldn't contradict their previous words, at that was pretty much just "staying in the EU is good for Britain, trust us", a weak message at a time when (not least due to the 2008 Crash and the subsequent choice for "Money for Bankers, Austerity for the rest") the trust in mainstream British politicians was already pretty low.