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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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It's not that the US can't afford it, they can't not afford it, the entire western economic system is built on exploitation. It's subduing people and taking their shit, including their labor for cheap. It knows no other way. So it may not be able to afford war, but even more so, it can't afford not to do war.
It's stuck unless it changes its economic system.
That's all true, but the immediate issue for the west is that it's now largely deindustrialized and isn't able to keep up industrially even with Russia, let alone China. This is not a problem that has any clear solution either. Building out an industrial base requires huge up front investment, it requires an education system that can produce the workers, and engineers who would build it, it needs a huge long term commitment from the government, and so on. None of these things are possible under the current political and economic system that the west champions.
It also would require giving labor a lot more power which is a major contradiction with neoliberalism
Exactly, depriving labour of power was the major drive behind the neoliberal globalism push.