Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
The End of the World is Just the Beginning
The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization | Peter Zeihan
14 posts | 5 read | 3 to read
A New York Times Bestseller! 2019 was the last great year for the world economy. For generations, everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to your home within days - even hours - of when you decided you wanted it. America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping it going. Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe. All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending. In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging. The list of countries that make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about our interconnected world - from how we manufacture products, to how we grow food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how we pay for it all - is about to change. A world ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating (and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his trademark irreverence.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
quote
keithmalek

The history of the next fifty years will be the story of how we deal with--or fail to deal with-- the coming food shortages.

blurb
keithmalek

Bananas (continued):
Organics also tend to be grown at higher, drier elevations to somewhat limit pests, which means the bananas need massive irrigation to grow. The result is the food product with the highest chemical and carbon footprint, as well as the highest staff turnovers from death in any industry. Happy eating.

quote
keithmalek

For those of you organic buffs who refuse to eat anything that's been touched with anything artificial, know that a roughly half-mile radius around organic banana plantations is practically nuked with non-organic pesticides and herbicides and fungicides to protect your proclivities.

review
keithmalek
Pickpick

This was a very interesting book, but I wish that Zeihan would've taken more time to explain exactly WHY the world will be become deglobalized, rather than just treat it as an inevitability.

Readers who enjoyed this will also enjoy the books of George Friedman, as well as $20 Per Gallon by Christopher Steiner. #2025Book20

quote
keithmalek

The entire concept of the order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That is what globalization is. The past several decades haven't been an American Century. They've been an American sacrifice. Which is over.

quote
keithmalek

Even better, the North American continent faces few security threats between its own shores and those of potential suppliers. On average, North American products face less than one-third the supply chain disruptions the Germans are likely to feel, and one-tenth that of the Asians.

quote
keithmalek

Most studies in the past half decade have indicated that by 2021, most manufacturing processes were already cheaper to operate in North America than in either Asia or Europe.

quote
keithmalek

Finally, there's the location where workers sew on the “made in“ tag. Typically, nothing is actually made there. It's more an assembly thing. The average pair of jeans is touched by hands in at least ten countries. And God forbid you use a bedazzler to put sparkly bits on your ass--the input system for that little gadget practically involves space travel.

quote
keithmalek

Finished platinum is so very pretty and as such is often used in high-end jewelry (like my you-are-mine-for-life-so-don't-try-anything-stupid commitment band).

quote
keithmalek

In the United States we began purging lead from our systems in the 1970s, systematically banning its use in product after product. Over the next half century, the ambient level of lead in our air dropped by more than 90 percent. At the same time, instances of violent crimes subsided from record highs to record lows. Correlation? Definitely. Causation? Let's go with a strong maybe.

Suet624 Wow. That‘s interesting. 2w
3 likes1 comment
quote
keithmalek

On obtaining cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo:

So take your pick: go old-school imperial on multiple countries in order to strip-mine a specific material while alternatively exploiting or shooting desperate locals who try to get a bite of the action for themselves, or go without and stick to coal and natural gas. The future is full of such fun choices.

quote
keithmalek

The world of the past few decades has been the best it will ever be in our lifetime. Instead of cheap and better and faster, we're rapidly transitioning into a world that's pricier and worse and slower. Because the world--our world-- is breaking apart.

quote
keithmalek

The laptop I'm tapping this down on has more memory than the combined total of all computers globally in the late 1960s.

review
Floresj
post image
Pickpick

Part history, part economics, this book isn‘t exactly a “pick me up”, but it does have a lot of interesting, international information. It spans geography, finances, transportation, energy, population, manufacturing and agriculture to give some background knowledge, current status and future projections. The basic theme is that everything is basically collapsing- which was quite interesting to read.

emz711 This seems interesting, up my alley right now for nonfiction. Any other recommendations? 3y
16 likes2 stack adds1 comment