A TPDEARR Article
Trans-Pacific Dynamic Equity Allocation Research Report
It is, and always will be, a contest among unequals.
The innumerable elements that constitute a sovereignty will always vary between individual nations, first and foremost because no two countries can occupy the same territory; this ensures that the actual physical, geographical makeup of sovereign states, if nothing more, will be unique at least in the variety and volume of planetary material occupying the space that a given nation calls “Mine”. Materially speaking, everything on Earth is unevenly distributed1, therefore no two countries “have” control over the same composition of resources (including everything from water to air to people to rare earth elements/REOs), requiring governments to craft policies—the “-political” part of geopolitical—to support themselves and their domestic businesses to trade actual material resources (and services, of course) with other countries. No two nations are equal in terms of their resource supply; there are always comparative differences, and exchange is the process through which both sides of a transaction may receive something beneficial from an uneven original allocation of resources. For Heads of State, navigating relationships of exchange (i.e. resources, information, territory, people, etc.) with other nations is the primary process of statecraft, and deftness across such transactions is the primary indicator of international power.
In this Geopolitical Shifts article, rather than regurgitating elements from the headlines, we analyze how some of the key principles that underlie recent international developments influence the perception and behavior of the globalized motion of flows, particularly power and capital flows, and what such analyses indicate about the relative strengths of different investment environments for public equity as states’ allegiances evolve. In an interconnected network of unequals, all participants aiming for progress and prosperity must fight to prioritize their own economic interests, which are backed by unique and asymmetric combinations of human and natural assets, against those of their sovereign allies and competitors—specifically, national administrations must continually strive to provide the most supportive economic conditions possible for domestic businesses relative to international competitors, lest comparative advantage and the laws of supply and demand outstrip the ability of homegrown companies to remain viable, depressing the domestic economy and workforce, further motivating people to look elsewhere for opportunities.
Even among friends and allies, the goal is (at least for any leader actually serious about progress…or reelection ammo) for one’s home economy to be the most successful, the most profitable, and the most desirable, compared to others. In a reality wherein impermanence reigns, new decisions must be constantly made about changes to the domestic environment that have been directly or indirectly induced by evolutions in foreign/international markets, reiterating endlessly in an ever-pressing challenge. As such, there are regularly emerging opportunities to be had if we can calibrate our understandings accurately. Somehow, in a balancing dance of inequivalence, mutually-supported exchange always finds a way, at least, as long humans are the dominant consumers.
Asymmetric Balancing
Remember, all economic “coins” have more than one side; there is no such thing as a single effect of any economic action—all parties are impacted differently, and all parties experience a uniquely-tailored concoction of knock-on and further-order impacts from significant shifts in policy or trade. Economic actions instigate responses/counteractions, which then generate successive stimuli, which activate further responses, which collectively emerge as a novel environment amidst which everyone and everything naturally adapt, ad infinitum in a cascading stream of consequences rippling out into the future through all connected participants. And with that, let’s begin with the circus in the spotlight:
US-imposed tariffs are a …bold2… attempt at rebalancing geopolitical strengths. They will have an effect on the flows of trade, the largest such effect being a broad raising of the overall costs of doing business internationally; the lowest rungs of the cost ladder are no longer accessible—everyone selects from a “menu” of higher prices. While the former, pre-tariff global order represented a commercial environment of economic interests globalizing their supply chains for efficiency and seeking to discover the cheapest prices for all accessible goods and resources for and from all available participants, the current tariff-founded economic order divides participants by wealth-level and ideology and applies extreme favoritism and selectivity in transactional relationships; it is not the pursuit of the best prices to most effectively engage in rapid societal development; it is a costly fealty test.
One of the most serious rebalancing consequences of a tariff-founded global economy is the simple fact of an imposition of base cost. Where there was previously no additional charge, now, there is, and dodging the economic pain of this additional cost is a maneuver that is only available to those administrations who manage to successfully placate the Bully-in-Residence atop the US hierarchy by compromising and negotiating with some national asset or another. Considering that the wealthier a nation is, the more flexibility and bargaining chips are available to it in negotiating against tariffs, a tariff-founded order imposes a handicap on all international participants with the brunt of the financial burden falling onto the least-wealthy countries. Structurally, tariffs unbalance geopolitical trade relationships by adding layers of economic cost and complexity (that are “paid for” by the tariffs) that force the total costs of commerce further and further away from their “true” price, in economic-speak, and increase pricing volatility, which destroys forward financial projections3. In other words, tariffs raise the average minimum price for anything they apply to; they functionally eliminate the lowest price points that were previously available, making the world a more-expensive place overall. Again, the handicap imposed by the costs of tariffs becomes more severe the further down the wealth ladder a nation is as they represent an increasingly larger proportion of relative economic activity. However long the tariff-order lasts, everyone involved will suffer from higher costs, but the wealthiest nations will suffer from it the least, almost invariably, which will undeniably exacerbate international wealth disparities—asymmetry at its finest, folks.
Another rebalancing consequence of a tariff-heavy global economic regime is what we might refer to as third-party blowback: when a third party to an economic arrangement suffers from the exchange of blows between two primary parties. For example, US tariffs on Chinese steel imports will have the effect of making some proportion of the import volume of Chinese steel too expensive for the US market, effectively preventing the physical product from entering the US domestic economy—the conventional Premiere Global Buyer of Last Resort. This same physical product (of Chinese steel, that was produced with help from Chinese government subsidies) now needs to flow to a new buyer/end destination, and its price will keep dropping until it finds one, likely in a nearby regional neighbor’s domestic economy (due to lower transportation costs in being nearby). If this tariff-cheapened steel manages to enter another domestic market at a price below that offered by its domestic producers, it will force the domestic producers to drop prices to compete, potentially forcing them out of business by dropping prices below the level needed to sustain economic viability within the domestic economy. This situation is playing out right now in South Korea (and everywhere else in the region) as it wrestles with a potentially devastating surge of cheap Chinese steel that can’t make it into its typical US end-market. Korea, suffering from this third-party blowback, must decide whether to impose their own tariffs on the same steel in question in order to force up the price high enough to allow their domestic steel producers to remain competitive—this is the self-augmenting nature of tariff-wars at play, making everything more expensive for everyone as the Bully-in-Power tries to strong arm everyone else into position.
Yet another impact on power rebalancing from tariff wars comes in the form of ebbing efforts. Administrations that impose tariffs generally take the position that: if you don’t do that, I won’t do this. This attitude typically manifests in many areas, such as can be seen with the current administration in the US backing out of numerous international agreements on trade, aid, the environment, and a host of other issues under the pretense that others aren’t doing enough. Strong arguments can be made that forcing others to find ways to strengthen their own positions while the US simultaneously backs out of leaderships positions in a wide variety of internationally-connected institutions and systems is a perfect recipe if the US’s intention is to cede power-producing opportunities to others. Of course, this isn’t what the US administration claims is its goal, but it is nonetheless an exemplary case study in the erosion of power. And since we are surely all watching with bated breath as to what extent this rebalancing will transpire, we would like to especially note here that this ebbing of US authority in various domains will not occur as quietly and innocuously as the metaphor of an ebbing tide might imply.
In the geopolitical arena, the dynamic of ebbing power does not occur like an ebbing tide—wherein the front of the effort slowly and methodically back-paces in progressive waves, exposing an ever-drier surface beneath that goes unclaimed by wetness until the next tidal rise. Rather, different nations’ extensions of power/authority are like multiple separate-and-flexibly-contained fluids of different viscosities expanding and contracting in constant contact and tension with one another across the shared topology; like water balloons pressed against each other in every direction. As one fluid recedes in one direction, another simultaneously fills the space; thus, as the fluids are in constant interface with one another, there is no regular process by which vacuums emerge for authority to then fill. Where a given fluid (=economy) might lack the (political) ability to assert authority within a given domain, capitalist opportunism typically steps in4 as the co-incident space-filler, further contributing to an exceedingly diminished opportunity for actual vacuums of power to emerge; either through governments or capitalists, power rarely goes unwielded, and definitively not for long. Logically, the “physics” of the situation dictate that the process of ceding power is actually the dual process of simultaneously ceding and granting power over an issue, either directly or indirectly, to another party.
From all this, we can deduce that the US’s Simpleton-in-Chief is clearly overwhelmed by the aspect of holding so many different power strings, so he is consolidating his efforts into a single transactional approach and ceding many of those other (mostly soft) powers to others, whom those others may wind up being, he appears to care not. But WE, as investors, should be able to smell the opportunity fumes emanating from this rebalancing of geopolitical willpowers. In the ebbing efforts domains, where once one (US) entity of power exercised control, new (non-US) powers will now make new choices, and the prevailing perception of ongoings within the institution in question will shift in accordance with the new guidance, even if the new guidance isn’t necessarily in a new direction.
Comparing priorities across these changing power regimes strongly indicates which issues command the most interest, and thus towards which efforts will the capital flow most readily. Though it might contradict some aspects of our human intuition regarding the moral comparative aspects of a given topic, we have to remind ourselves that the actual economic conditions and processes that determine capital flows do not perfectly mirror the immaterial and conscious conditions that precipitate morality flows, as it were. Intrinsically, though “we” might collectively “care” about Issue A more than Issue B (as determined by something like a vote or poll,) fundamental differences in the nature of the two issues might result in more-readily-accessible flows of capital towards Issue B than is as-easily available for Issue A, due to other systemic, structural or functional factors which may precede and/or transcend the circumstances of either Issue A or B. We are not trying to measure how much people “care” about something except insofar as it determines how much capital will actually flow from some given allotment of “care”, indicating the enablement of certain business interests over others.
As it would seem, a large-enough cohort of people “care” about certain things (like environmental sustainability) a lot nowadays, and they certainly can’t be expected to necessarily abandon some idea just because a world leader dismisses it. Though we are investing in companies, not governments, we must consider the geopolitically-motivated shifts in policy and focus that drive large scale government efforts within their economies. As governments forego revenue opportunities when they abandon soundly-constructed initiatives, companies adjust their planning and fiscal outlays in response to these shifts in focus, not because they necessarily agree with them, but because opportunity has presented itself. Additionally, new government policies are generally geared towards the incentivization of certain economic behaviors, and The Public Company has a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for the shareholder, requiring companies to address major policy shifts and present certain newly-emergent opportunities for consideration. The profit motive is at least just as real as a company’s core goals, and the intersection of both steers operational opportunity in an atmosphere of shifting priorities. And though political priorities are shifting, popular conception about the significance of at least responding to climate change is expanding, and there is still very, very real profit to be made in the proliferation of “green” technologies. International responses to the ebbing efforts of US leadership serve as strong indicators of strength in certain “green” markets and sustainability-forward interests, reinforcing our support of [MAR.25 Squad Asset #3].
Tariffs illuminate asymmetries between economies, highlighting who has what and how much they’re willing to pay for it, and install fragilities into transactional networks, so they cannot be considered to have a balancing effect in the long run. No matter what, rebalancing will occur again after the tariff-order winds down5, and you can rest assured that countries which are capable of engaging in long-term planning, such as the PRC, are already strategizing for such an eventuality. In the US, continual presidential turnover makes longer-than-4-year planning virtually impossible. This is incredibly advantageous for the preservation and strengthening of democracy itself, which thrives in a competitive ideological marketplace, but it also represents a serious disadvantage in strategizing for the long-run, especially compared to China. The PRC’s annual lianghui (“two sessions”) conference just wrapped and, while not full of surprises, per se, all should rest assured that key companies in the country’s industries will be seeking to position themselves well through 2025, particularly in focus areas like the green transition and rural revitalization, especially as it pertains to how critical sectors might factor in to the PRC’s 15th Five Year Plan, coming out next year and stretching through 2030. This atmosphere of forward planning is much firmer than amid the chaos of US electoral politics, for example.
In Asia, leadership turnover in democratic nations occurs about every 4-6 years, with some allotments for repeat terms, similar to the US. It’s not easy for leaders in these economies to make decisions extending beyond their terms, as future leaders are usually quite capable of rolling back anything they disagree with when the time comes. Further, Asian democracies are all less than a century old, and the majority of them (as well as Socialist states like Viet Nam) have experienced at least a few coups, impeachments, resignations, incarcerations and assassinations, forcing new elections and new appointments of power at a faster-than-likely rate. This means that broad policies and goals for each of these economies is changing over at least two or three times every ten years. In contrast to all of this, particularly as far as it concerns the trans-Pacific economies, Xi Jinping and the CCP stand alone. China’s ability to unilaterally make economic decisions now about what it intends to do a decade from now is unparalleled, and it’s an enormous strategic advantage geopolitically. Rest assured, China is already planning for the next US presidential term.
When it’s all said and done, in this Era of Nationalism, balance will forever remain an illusion of temporary stability among irreconcilably asymmetric parties. So long as people are drawing (national border) lines on the ground to divvy up “Mine” and “Yours”, and competing in a zero-sum commercial fashion for much that can surely be shared amicably, human civilization will remain heated and contentious in the best of times, and far more devastating and genocidal in others. Smaller economies must ever seek to leverage their unique strengths and maximize their opportunities while they last as the large economies jostle against each other, collateral damage be damned.
The ALLure of Post-Nationalism
If the global motion of flows is irremediably predicated in exchange (i.e. I will buy/trade my this for your that), The Economy is no more than an international collection of nations and businesses trading their stocks of reserves across borders. We still live in a pre-matter-replicator world, so resource scarcity remains the primary concern for all administrations, and nobody can get anything just by willing it into being. Preserving and growing what a nation has (such as capital stocks, mineral resources, labor force strength, land, water, microchips or anything else “the people” might demand) is a messy process determined by nuances in the constant re-positioning of geopolitical agreements, allegiances and posturing; the current power regime of nationalistic interest, through the urges to preserve, produce and project domestic entity strength, is the framework we global economic participants are all currently working within, and yet, it must also be understood, through strict logical application, that nationalism, as the current state-of-affairs, can not be what comes next—it already is, and the only thing the future is guaranteed to be is unlike exactly how it is now.
So what state of affairs could actually come about after a world dominated by nationalism? World thinkers have produced a handful of books and scholarly articles considering post-nationalism themes over the past 25 years, so it’s important to consider that intellectual strides have already been made, though success from sovereignties actually realizing such a transition remains elusive. For example, in 2016, outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proclaimed Canada as the “first postnational state”, though this was clearly premature. Nine years later, it’s still not true, nobody really understands what post-nationalism actually is, and nobody views Canada that way internationally. All of Canada’s international trade agreements still operate the same way as everyone else’s—through geopolitical and diplomatic negotiations lead by state officials, in coordination with other state officials from other nations—nothing is post-national about this. But the recognition that Canada is a multicultural place whose peoples hold different and overlapping histories, values and ethic systems, is a significant first step in identifying that groups of people might need more-globally-relevant leadership and institutions than can be provided by domestic legislatures and elected representatives. Post-nationalism, whatever it emerges as, will be a means of reconciling disparate collections of cultural interests in a common framework with a level of inter-penetration that nation-states could never achieve.
Representing a recent proto-generation of the concept of post-nationalism, some supranational organizations already exist, such as the EU, the International Criminal Court and the World Bank, to name a few. These institutions operate only with whatever authority has been delegated or ceded to them by sovereign nation-states, and only over specific issues or conditions; but as we can see, matters like regulatory compliance and effective punishment are difficult to enforce within someone else’s borders—imagine Interpol officers attempting to apprehend an American citizen, on American soil, and which the United States was aware of and specifically determined to protect from such an apprehension, and it should be clear how powerful nation-states, with their militaries, might still be able to withstand the “foreign” influence of a supranational organization.
In contrast to the previous example, though, consider the recent arrest of the former President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, at the Manilla Airport by ICC officials. Even though the Philippines pulled out of its formal relationship with the ICC in 2019, the arrangement was still in effect during the prior years in which then-incumbent ex-President Duterte is charged with having committed human rights violations in his violent crackdown on drug users, and current-President Marcos has publicly acknowledged the ICC’s jurisdiction over the matter. Clearly, supranational organizations are not without any teeth—apprehending a former world leader is very much doing something, and we are all waiting to see what will come of it all.
So what authority does such an organization actually have? Clearly, in a nation-state regime, authority is granted to them by nation-states, and so can also be withdrawn or negated. The United States, the current reigning Re-Negging Champion of the Year—ever willing to walk back a commitment—is a prominent illustration of how easy it is to break a previous administration’s promises, whatever they were, and whomever they were made to. Strongarm geopolitics is effective in many ways, but making true friends is not one of them. Unfortunately, the current US administration is proving that being accountable to one’s word is not yet a requirement for leadership, making the task of inter-relating humanity ever-more challenging.
With optimism, we, as a people, must be able to construct more-functional and more-ethical entities that are more effective at collectively integrating people across cultures than those we’ve attempted so far. If all we ever use are systems that implement or mimic the same structures and functions as nation-states, that’s as far as we can go with that set of rules. To be sure, Artificial Intelligence does not/will not “care” about the imaginary borders drawn up by nation-states. The more we cede decision-making to “artificial” decision-makers, the less we will see implemented the fundamental mentalities of nationalism as the nuances of such a subjective thing cannot be computed quantitatively across people groups. This is an un-discountable aspect of our species’ technological maturation moving forward—many things we’ve cared about in the past will not automatically translate to a more-electronically-governed future.
So, if we can avoid getting bogged down in abstractions, we can start to make sense of a human civilization beyond where nationalist ideology can effectively manage—where nationalism breaks down in the absence of the significance of nation-states—where greater-than-national concerns dominate the pursuits of individuals and collectives. To picture this, imagine bridging the ideological divide separating factionalism (identity via differences) on the one side, and integralism (all parts finding identity-integration within a universal whole) on the other. It’s the difference between identifying with a smaller group or tribe versus enjoining with “everyone”, and science fiction authors have been tackling the idea for decades6. Empire, Starfleet and S.H.I.E.L.D. are a few examples of post-national entities that have emerged from popular scifi over the past century; each of them is an organization that sprawls far beyond any sovereign borders in their differing universes; each of them is an institution borne of a human history that progressed through a global regime of nation-states from which post-national entities could emerge; and each of them is capable of operating beyond the authority and reach of any given nation-state (in Empire’s case, all nation-states have been eradicated; other imaginings often let the nationalist ideal limp along with the tatters of old countries unable to adapt to changing tides, all battered and frail while nimbler and more future-forward powers take the reins of human destiny.)
People, the constituent elements of a civilization, find themselves faced with the challenge of establishing themselves in their lifetimes. To “succeed” in contemporary civilization, they are challenged everywhere to establish a legal identity and residence, to establish a personal system of behaviors from which they might thrive within a money-powered economy, to establish a sense of self and reasons for being amid the chaos of a rapidly evolving world. These challenges all transcend the specifications of a nation-state regime. Success within this system (measured economically in the early 21st century) is governed by rules crafted by nation-states, but that will change one day when new structures emerge to supersede them, implementing and enforcing new rules for success. It’s hard to say, as we watch the idea of a nation-state face so much strain today7, that we are not already in this transition to a new post-national world, and that we are just experiencing its early growing pains.
What can we make of this? If it were the case, and we actually are transitioning to a new world order, a transition that will certainly take decades or centuries, how can we prepare for this as investors? How are we to care in a way that’s advantageous and antifragile? Or, at what likelihood of occurrence does it become worthwhile for us to start moving capital in preparation? And perhaps most importantly, does adapting to this transition require doing anything different than investing in basically the same collection of companies (the only ones that are publicly available at any given time) through basically the same allocation procedures as they iterate with new technologies?
After all, in a world full of people who believe in the idea of money, it is money, and only money, which can move economic wheels, which is to say: money is the only thing that can assuredly get people to do anything these days, and businesses are just a collection of people using machines. So if, in the post-nationalist future, things still need to be produced by “businesses”, and the idea that money “pays for” contemporary life still exists, money will still rule the day, and the investment wheels will still turn (for you) much like they do today. Countries will still require a shared financial apparatus that can manage the idea of money through its various currencies and capital flow dynamics to the benefit of its users and constituents. Governments will still use money to pay for fundamental basics like their militaries and providing civil salaries. Central banks will continue to manage interest rates and banking reserves to try and keep prices stable and banks solvent. Companies will still use money to produce goods, pay employees and provide services, and people will still use money to pay for them. As you can see, we haven’t gone anywhere here; nothing has changed from the current world order in economic terms, and it doesn’t appear that we can easily divorce the idea of money from the fundamental nation-state regime.
No matter which nations are the most powerful at any given time, whether by democratic or autocratic means, and whatever the “territories” happen to be called (i.e. countries, nations, states, nation-states, provinces, oblasts, cantons, prefectures or babadoobie-doos,) any system wherein businesses negotiate commercial opportunities within an overarching framework of nation-states with mapped borders is equivalent to the current Nationalist Era. A “new type” of country is still just a controlled territory in practice, and subject to the same international systems in practical integration. Post-nationalism moves beyond the act of drawing lines on the ground and claiming “Mine!”; it erases the lines and division and acknowledges “Ours”. The whole idea of Ownership, especially over land, must evolve. To be post-national, nothing like a nation can exist consequentially; humanity must represent itself as a global collective, and the challenges and strife of nation-state existence and inter-national conflict must be a product of history, not the Now. Nation-supported currencies would then be rendered obsolete relative to whatever new regime of economic subsistence emerges, at least functionally, as the nations that backed them would no longer exist.
Those of you who, like us, have lived and worked in different countries around the world, can surely agree that it feels like humanity/”we” are nowhere near realizing a post-nationalist reality. The vast majority of people in the vast majority of places are deeply submerged in nationalistic ideology, are keen on seeing their own national standings rise, and are eager to display their national pride on the global stage whenever possible; whether it’s the World Cup, the UN or the entertainment spotlight, pro-nation-state behavior proliferates the world over. Further, most countries on Earth have only declared their national independence within the past hundred years, so they are still within the first century of their constitutional statehood, and still, undoubtedly, grappling and experimenting and fluxing to figure out how to do it properly. We must then contrast this with other countries like China and Japan who face similar “constitutional” foundations in the contemporary time, but whose histories are, quite literally, ancient, and yet both are still clearly contending for world standing in nationalistic terms. The drive to individuate and highlight individual nation-state prominence is alive and well around the world.
Conceptually speaking, it must also be noted that, despite a wide variety of included circumstances, there is always one constituent part of something that breaches a new threshold first (even when it may not seem like evolution is transpiring at any other given point of observation,) then leads on as “the rest” follow through. Progress will be concentrated locally, at first, but then expand more rapidly once initial steps are observed and replicated by other parties, and as realizations and adaptations proliferate and adjust mindsets. We can see, as the most-developed economies advance at a much faster rate than the less-wealthy ones, the smear of developmental progress makes comparing many elements about them difficult, but also suggests that globally-affecting phenomena coming out of the richer nations are liable to impact the entire world, despite whatever level of developmental progress poorer nations might be occupying, and perhaps irrespective of their own input on the matter. Consider how smart phones have trickled into virtually every economy (disrupting developmental models that incorporate other infrastructural factors) despite the fact that advanced smart phones are only made in a select handful of highly-advanced nation-states. This is also to say, for many global participants, it’s likely that post-nationalism, when it does come, will be forcibly imposed by others who are relatively early adopters—both carrots and sticks will probably be used.
So, if you made it this far, what has it all been for? Okay, sure, post-nationalism, whatever that is, will be a dramatically different state of affairs than what we’ve got now, but as long as people are still the core elements determining resource and environmental use for civilization, “businesses” will still operate to acquire resources and process them for human use within the coming post-nationalist framework. Despite whatever material conditions of the forth-coming global regime, power will still be concentrated, not widespread, as is the nature of power. “Freedom” will still be a matter of perception. And the Human Condition will still exist. No matter what governance structure might arch above us, we believe it prudent to direct capital towards those operations whose products and services improve quality of life, a grounded focus which will remain a going concern across the intermediate investment term. The fact that a messy future transition to post-nationalism does not nullify this truth, nor the need for Electron Flow, further bolsters our support for [MAR.25 Squad Asset #1] and [MAR.25 Squad Asset #2].
Final Thoughts
Geopolitics is the exercise of inter-national negotiating among political bodies on Earth; it is the practice and application of statecraft in competition with others doing the same in a real-time contest for the world’s resources. It is amid this maelstrom of Nationalist Interests from a wholly diverse selection of economies that we seek to deploy our capital towards profitability, towards advantageous use and growth in the profit motive/fiduciary interests of the capitalism-forward decision-makers helming the public companies that engage in the extraction, processing and sale of Earth’s resources. The intertwining of money, capitalism and statecraft is intractable.
Randomness and variety of outcomes ensure that, among other things, there will be a spectrum of results on the economic scale, and factors such as coordinating with state interests can be hugely influential in business success, so we seek to use these Geopolitical Shifts articles of the TPDEARR to help elucidate and navigate these fluxing waters. It is fair to say, though, that the limits of this category of analysis ends at the end of statecraft itself. Geopolitical workings and the intricacies of the relationship between political bodies and the body politic have invariably been representative subsets of Greater Humanity; a wholly integrated “body” of political representation (i.e. a post-nationalist body politic) covering all existing humans (on a planet, say) represents a fundamentally different superorganism than history has ever yet witnessed, so far as we can tell. Therefore, it must have a different expression, existentially, as well as functionally, than any other variety of any other type we’ve seen or studied thus far—it must be defined by a study other than geopolitics, which refers to the field of interrelations among nation-states. And yet!, nonetheless, human life will still require resource-use, and collections of people and machines (whatever a “business” is, however far into the future) will provide those existential fruits. The rising demands of The People today, however they are represented against the priorities of their elected political leaders in their geopolitical dealings, reflect the priorities that businesses will focus on over the intermediate term (our TPDEARR Squad timeframe) as they make choices about beyond-near-term capital allocations. You don’t have to pay attention, but then you’re less informed, you’re more reliant on the analysis and thinking of others, and you’re less agile in adapting to shifts in circumstances under your own control.
Remember, it’s not about being able to recite dates, stats and histories, it’s about understanding human and exchange dynamics, and how representative bodies of people interrelate and interact economically and strategically. When the case becomes that “the people” are not the ones in the geopolitical decision-making chairs anymore, these dynamics will change, and we look forward to new branches of analysis that come from such evolutions.
Make sure you have the longer view in mind while you watch geopolitical shifts around the world; there are some things people will always need.
Good luck out there, everyone!
- Plate tectonics, volcanism, and erosion, in interrelation with the Earth’s hydrosphere and biosphere, and over the course of hundreds of millions of years, have continually shuffled and dispersed the various elements and resources that humans covet on the planetary crust. The point of this article. though, is not to dive into a scientific discussion of terrestrial diversity, but rather take the uneven distribution of elements, and thus the uneven distribution of element-supported power, as a given for the current geopolitical climate…which it is.
↩︎ - We use this word “bold” here understanding that the recently-reelected US president is, quite likely, functionally illiterate and completely surrounded by ideological lackeys. As such, there are very substantial limits on the actual amount of intelligence that could possibly be incorporated into large-scale geopolitical actions in the absence of a legitimate discourse of competing arguments in the determination of forward action. It is not that broadly imposing tariffs is intellectually bold, it’s not, but it is disruptively bold in that the tariffs are forcing other countries to make real changes to their previously-held practices and procedures.
↩︎ - This inability to predict consistently what costs will be in the future is the instability that pundits discuss across media platforms, though surely you, dear reader, would never defer to a television journalist’s attempt to put together complex financial topics for an ignorant audience…surely…
↩︎ - If the capitalists can’t turn a situation into positive cash flow somehow, the opportunity usually goes the way of Old Yeller.
↩︎ - Hopefully, much, much sooner than the end of the current US presidential term in 2029.
↩︎ - FWIW, the collection of scifi produced by scifi authors usually correctly guesses a great many future technologies and issues, and their prescience, as a group, is truly remarkable overall. The only troubles are that the timelines are never accurate, and all the “good” ideas are mixed up with a much larger share of ideas with much more… creative liberty… than might be found IRL, making it impossible to parse out one type or another. And most of the time, the “noise” is far more entertaining than any real “sound” that could be found in there.
↩︎ - In many contemporary democracies, bipartisanship flirts intensely with violent civil division. Localized inter-cultural circumstances frequently represent conflicts that cannot easily be resolved using extant constitutional levers. ↩︎
tkscm, limited 