I'm not sure Mexico will benefit. Aside from all its other problems it's running out of water, like much of the US south west. The Colorado River is drying up which provides water and power to both countries. Ground water is heavily depleted. Much of Mexico is in drought with water being rationed.
Mexico will benefit via mutual trade with the US and US trading partners since the US will continue to protect access to those trade routes. America currently is the only country that can project and maintain that kind of military policing of trade routes. Europe, because of its dependence of US participation in NATO, hasn't developed the kind of military force that can sustain the policing power required to protect the multiple required trade routes. And if Europeans start to redirect money toward that type of military that can sustain the projection of power abroad, that means redirecting spending from social programs to military assets.
The groundwater issue in the US and Mexico is a solvable problem. Lack of new infrastructure to compensate for the increase in population is one of the major problems per some hydrologists/engineers. And there are better urban/suburban designs that can help capture the water runoff from the rare deluge. And reversing desertification is happening in Africa and Australia - there are solutions.
Last edited by Campitor on Sat Jul 30, 2022 9:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
It is unfortunate that there is a wall between the US and Mexico. Imagine a North American Union similar to the European Union. That would boost the economies of all countries involved.
It's a soft wall. NAFTA opened the floodgates of trade between the US and Mexico and the rest of the Americas. The only bottleneck are the inspections which would be relaxed in an emergency situation. And US inspectors are doing inspections at the source to reduce the bottlenecks in shipping.
The groundwater issue in the US and Mexico is a solvable problem.
Up to a point it may be but there are limits, especially if global temperatures keep rising ever higher. I'm not sure I'd describe it as a soft border given all the violence and deaths which occur. Maybe there will be open immigration in the future, that could certainly benefit Mexico. But it seems the global trend is for walls going up not down (the Indian - Bangladeshi is another highly fortified frontier to stop immigration)
It depends what you are considering. Just economics. Climate change. Safety. etc.
I would have thought Germany is and will be economically very powerful for many years to come.
New Zealand is not great from an economic perspective. The income is average, the opportunities for income growth are limited and the cost of living is very high, especially housing.
NZ has flailing infrastructure and a number of structural economic issues. It also has a problem with being far too generous to welfare recipients and far too generous to the rich. So people in the middle fund it all and struggle.
From a safety perspective I dont think NZ is as safe as it has been touted to be. Im concerned at a growing risk of global conflict. And I think it would likely encompass all of Asia, Europe, USA, and the south pacific, including NZ. I dont think any country in any of these areas is particularly safe, including NZ. Having next to nothing in military and nowhere to run doesnt seem an ideal place to be. I am hoping none of these possibilities ever come to fruition but just thinking worse case scenarios here.
Australia is much better economically than NZ. Incomes are far higher than NZ and the cost of living is also lower, as well as housing costs. It has top notch infrastructure, a young population and a much bigger more diverse economy than NZ. I just cant stand the heat there so its not for me. But lots of people do love the climate there. I could maybe only handle Tasmania for a similar climate to NZ. But then, you still have the security issues with the risk of being embroiled in global conflict.
My pick would be Canada or Costa Rica. Canada is more likely to also become embroiled in global conflict but at least it has a large military and I would imagine unlikely to be affected on soil. A large and diverse economy with much better cost of living vs income than NZ. I would also pick a place farther north of the border with USA.
Costa Rica would not be good from an economic perspective but I think unlikely to be involved in any global conflict. And its cheap. SO maybe a good place to early retire or do remote work.
@thrifty++ Interesting to hear your thoughts, I have heard similar things from other Kiwis. Isolation is a double edged sword. Beautiful country though. When I was there in the 1990s it felt very English, to the point I didn't feel like I was abroad. Its probably changed a lot since then.
Australia's economy is so shackled to China's rise, exporting coal and iron ore which has given it a 30 year boom. As one economist famously put it, its a first world country with a third world economy. It has no manufacturing to speak of, or much else. China attempted to drag Australia into its orbit recently but rather overplayed its hand and it backfired. For now. But with a small population defending a huge area of very flat land its vulnerable, and is the most climate change sensitive country in the developed world.
@chenda - Yes young kiwis are very disgruntled about the situation and keep leaving. I dont think it can all be blamed on the isolation though. My parents generation had a great time. It used to be the land of milk and honey. But a succession of bad policies has caused the issues we face today as well as the impacts of growing globalisation. Its going to take time and lots of better policy decisions to change things. The 1990s were awesome here. Paradise. I wish it was the 90s now. High incomes, low living costs, everything was great,
It is a beautiful country indeed. And the climate is totally my cup of tea, the nature is nice, and I like the people and culture. I am here in large part due to career connections, familial connections, long term friendships as well as just inertia and being a change averse creature of comfort. But I would never recommend anyone moving here as they wont have the benefits I have and will suffer all the economic detriments, unless they are a millionaire. Its really hard to immigrate here now anyway.
Yes Australia has managed to pivot well with the China tensions, so I do think they will manage to keep doing that and finding new business markets as required. For sure Australia's economy is not overly diverse, but its definitely better than NZs. Australia is definitely well exposed to climate change. I think NZ is quite well positioned to withstand climate change compared to most of the world.
@thrifty++ So many of my parents generation ended up in Australia or New Zealand, post-war emigration in the 1950s and 60s. Sounds like it was a land of opportunity in those days.
Yes the 90s really were an awesome decade in many different places. I remember things in NZ been very affordable, property was ludicrously cheap. I think NZ still has good potential for the future though.
High incomes, low living costs, everything was great,
That's never going to last is it.
My parents took our family to NZ in the seventies. They followed my aunts who had been there a while and painted a rather too rosey picture. I think we lasted about a year before we returned to the UK. There did seem to be some resentment towards immigrants from the UK at the time although I was only nine years old so all that would have flown over my head.
I do wonder how iceland would fare. Beautiful, lots of empty space - would it turn warmer due to overall warming, or colder due to potential gulfstream disruption? Geothermal energy. I guess a lot of the same applies to Norway: similar location, beautiful, north sea oil and lng as opposed to geothermal, comparatively large sovereign fund. did well in the last cold war, idk about this one - I was told the adjacent parts up north have a bit of a, "god is high and the king is far away" mentality. It's interesting. Greenland would probably benefit when the glaciers melt and reveal new territory.
I do wonder how iceland would fare. Beautiful, lots of empty space - would it turn warmer due to overall warming, or colder due to potential gulfstream disruption?
That's a good question, I think there's still some uncertainty about how the future of the Gulf stream will pan out.
Best avoid islands that are entirely reliant on continuously flying or sailing in mainland supplies lest forcing a major culture shift: Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii, New Zealand, ... It's just about the least resilient place to be. Not because isolation isn't useful for a self-sufficient household but because you'll be surrounded by people who aren't with nowhere else to go.
It depends on the timescale. For example, it will take many hundreds of years for the Greenland ice cap to melt away. What does "years to come" really mean? Next 5 years? Next 50? Next 500? Denmark will likely be fine in the next 50 in terms of ocean rise, but not in the next 500 for example. On the other hand, political instability can easily "crush" people's lives if not their dreams in less than 5.
Be careful about not moving so far north that a winter without heating would be a terminal problem.
One of the superpowers of humans is adaptability.
I would bet it would take less time for spoiled westerners to get used to hardship than for Mexico to build a good economy and/or a credible military.
Well, there is a Goldilocks amount of government and military that is just enough but not too much. There are situations where a somewhat dysfunctional, underwhelming government is preferable to a hyper functional, overreaching one. Those who flooded across the border to Mexico in the last few years did so for just this reason.
Franklin's saying that, "when the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic", makes me wonder what happens when we spoiled westerners find that we can vote ourselves exemption from the need to adapt.... at any cost.... what does it herald?
This depends on what one defines as "resilient". Do you want growth or maximize the probability of survival? For resilience due to growth, the US is almost impossible to beat as friendly neighbors, energy/food independent and large scale are unmatched in the world to develop resilience through improvement. But the large size and increasingly centralized government set up the US for a more likely self-induced failure in some kind of post-shock environment.
A perfect design would be a string of 10-20 large islands forming an X somewhere near enough to a large land mass for travel in an emergency but far enough away for any usual interactions (Hawaii but more islands and closer to North America). Each island would have a diverse set of crops and domesticated animals, reducing the risk of disease or failed crops (why single islands will fail), each could trade with 1-2 other islands but close enough for support from all islands in case of emergencies.
It would probably be preferred to develop useful skills that are of value to all areas of the world and be mobile than ex-ante try to determine the best location. A random event such as a crop failure or storm can destroy any location that on paper is perfect for resilience. Highly skilled hard scientists and statisticians always seem to land in a great spot when their current locations collapse. A shocking number of German scientists landed in America with great jobs after WWII, preppers in Germany didn't fare as well for example.
Good governance might be the most important factor which is very hard to predict. Countries whose geography sucks have thrived with good governance e.g. Japan, Singapore.
Conversley countries with great geographical advantages have stagnanted under abysmal leadership e.g. South Africa, Argentina.
North vs South Korea, or Haiti vs Dominican Republic are perfect twin examples. Although outside meddling might be as much to blame here.
Affluent westerners have a lot more slack to absorb shocks like food prices, which are an inconvenience rather than hunger inducing. On other hand, they may be more political sensitised to modest privation. If they suddenly can't have a long hot shower every day or afford a fortnight in Majorca then they are going to get very angry. Whereas much of the worlds poor are used to making do on a few litres of water every day.
Good governance might be the most important factor which is very hard to predict.
Au contraire. It's easy because good governance is contingent on the trust of the governed and that is slow to change. Since it's a collaborative effort destroying mutual trust requires both the government behaving unreliably AND the governed getting disinformed and this is harder to arrange.
Good governance might be the most important factor which is very hard to predict. Countries whose geography sucks have thrived with good governance e.g. Japan, Singapore.
Dunno about SIngapore, but Japan probably exists as an indendependent country only because it's protected by the US. Would be long ago conquered by China if not for the US. Good governance or no, it's the geopolitics that are often crucial factors for nations' outcomes, both for the good and for the bad.
Dunno about SIngapore, but Japan probably exists as an indendependent country only because it's protected by the US.
Well currently it enjoys some US protection although it has of course existed for centuries by itself. Its definitely big enough to defend itself alone. I doubt China could had invaded even if it wanted to, especially under Mao's chaotic regime. Indeed it was Japan who brutally invaded and occupied China, although admittedly that may have left unfinished scors to settle.
But yes, the geopolitics are crucial. The Russian - Chinese border is a more likely flashpoint I think.
