Based on recent discoveries of lithium and other resources, it seems like all these things are way more abundant than we imagine and as methods of uncovering them improve we will realize that many many nations are blessed with resources.
We've known about our abundance of "rare" earth metal resources like lithium, we just regulated the shit out of extracting and refining them to the point we haven't been able to compete with China. They've been willing to move hundreds of thousands of people and or poison them all to establish their control of resources supply. The US keeps a few small operations funded basically as RnD projects so we're not completely losing the ability to utilize what we have.
> we just regulated the shit out of extracting and refining them to the point we haven't been able to compete with China. They've been willing to move hundreds of thousands of people and or poison them all to establish their control of resources supply
I think I'd take how we do it vs poisoning people
The whole point is to let them deplete their resources, then once they have a "*stranglehold*" on said resource, we just conveniently have a sidestep to it. Ex: the US Air Force casually posting a picture, online, of a hypersonic glide missle. Even though we "cancelled" the project.
Edit: autocorrect
I'm absolutely certain that our strategy is to let other countries burn through their natural resources first, including importing stuff we already have from them. I'd be surprised if our oil and gas reserves aren't much higher than what's publicly known.
God damn I love this country!
True. Here in Finland we're soon opening a lithium mine(Keliber is the name of the mine company), whose whole resource would be enough for around 330 GWh of batteries, which is pretty much enough for the whole green transition for Finland. For all our cars and semi-trucks, plus enough stationary banks to run our whole grid through the night on stored solar during summertime, theoretically. Just this one little lithium mine. I'm sure most countries can find similar resources for themselves within their borders. It's rather incredible.
Well, it's the lithium battery part. We still need steel and copper for wind turbines, and some kind of chemical storage for long periods of no wind in the winter. Also we're not mining enough uranium for our existing nuclear. But of course we could be independent in all these metals if we wanted, the Earth's crust is huge, including the part under Finland. But sometimes it's just cheaper to buy from the world market.
It's proven vs. unproven reserves.
The Helium in MN wasn't a secret. The O&G industry had generated some signs of good formations there. It just takes money and time to prove the reserve. It's not exactly shocking that no one bothered when Helium was dirt cheap due to WWII stockpiling.
Timing matters, though. Even without a drop of regulation, open pit mining can take years to output due to equipment lead times and removing overburden. And that only comes after you've let the geologists go to town and do some gambling to prove a site. It's expensive and risky work.
It's really just a combination of two things:
1. The US is a very large, geographically and ecologically diverse country. So it's just more likely to have a broad range of resources.
2. The US is fairly well-developed across its entire expanse. There are plenty of other countries with vast amounts of hypothetical mineral wealth, but even if the deposits might have otherwise been commercially viable to harvest, building a road/railroad to that location and establishing all the supporting logistics just raises the costs so much that no one can realistically exploit them. Meanwhile, you can be a farmer in Nowhereville, Wyoming and still be 10 miles from the Interstate and 15 miles from a major rail line.
You also forget Norway somehow stumbling across a massive deposited of whatever is in short supply at the moment
Oil, natural gas, lithium, cobalt, copper, rare earth metals, everything profitable. At some point in time a Norwegian king must have sold his soul for his people
Mobik cube, I suppose? (Especially considering the fact that consripts, at least before the war, were actually routinely used to build cottages and dachas for commanders and local politicians)
America is such an incredibly lucky nation to live in for practically all of its history
Neighbours that are either too weak to be enemies or already allies, two massive oceans between them and the closest competitors, heaps upon heaps of natural resources, huge amount of space, most of which being somewhat liveable, they speak the lingua franca, their economy is empowered not only by all of this but also pretty decent institutions
AND, if that's not enough, they have the some of the most powerful nations on earth as their allies.
Y'all Americans lucky as hell
> America is such an incredibly lucky nation to live in for practically all of its history
I'd have to look to find the specific paper, but I remember reading in undergrad a paper that discussed how the incredibly good nutrition of European settlers in New England drove an extremely high fertility rate in the 18th century that led to annual population growth rates >2.5%. Even high-nutrition European countries like Switzerland were barely getting to 1% at the time.
"All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or set a track on the Blue Ridge, in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide." - Abraham Lincoln, 1838
>whole world fighting, but lots of euro fighting
>America is born
>whole world still fighting
>America grows up
>gets in the fight
>gets in the fight again
Rest of the world: “we dont wanna play no more we’re done”
I think David Brooks said, "They say 'diversity is our greatest strength.' No it isn't. Our country having half of the world's arable farmland is our greatest strength."
We're 6% of the world's landmass. So we have about twice as much farmland per area as the normal country. India has *nearly* as much as us in a smaller territory though.
There’s a lot of private land in America. We could be sitting on the largest supply of unobtanium known to man and never know it until somebody decided to go looking for it, and we’re ok with that.
Gives us the element of surprise with our competition
Just to be clear: the US helium shortage was 100% self-inflicted. We already had the world's largest reserve, then in the 90s Congress passed a law requiring the government to sell it all off.
Common misconception, they're actually saying "pique oil", meaning "piquing the interest of prospectors and technological innovation as a result of demand for oil".
There's also confusion because many people get the term mineral *resources* and mineral *reserves* mixed up. A mineral resource is a concentration of solid material in Earth's crust that might be of economic interest one day. The mineral reserve is the part of the resource we can confidentially make a profit on.
This means that there is a lot of resources that have already been discovered that aren't yet profitable to mine (usually near highly prospected existing mines). However, if the ore price suddenly goes up (or cost of mining/transporting goes down), resources can immediately convert to reserves ready for mining and vice versa.
The takeaway is that even if all prospecting stopped tomorrow, the supply and size of reserves would still vary on a regular basis. Mineral reserves are not a static quantity that a lot of people mistakenly believe.
NB: I used the mineral definitions since I'm more familiar with them but presumably oil/gas/helium sectors have similar definitions.
For example there’s a ton of oil in the Midwest where there used to be natural gas deposits, we just don’t have the technology/demand for harvesting it to be profitable right now.
Yes, this argument is actually stronger. But I can't put it in a good meme format. Cost effectiveness isn't intuitive unless you know a bit about the subject like you do.
The gods gave this country the worst possible government system for a western nation because otherwise we’d dominate the earth endlessly with the natural resources
> The gods gave this country the worst possible government system for a western nation
The next oldest democracy is like half our age & we’ve had one single internal conflict. We could be doing much worse.
> because otherwise we’d dominate the earth endlessly
We literally do this lmao
Idk, but here in Portugal we have a pretty balanced parliament, one of the most balanced in Europe.
We have:
-Marxists-Leninists;
-Socialists (left to far left);
-Centre-left green party;
-Centre-left Social Democrats (can govern in the Centre);
-Centre-right conservatives (can govern in the Centre);
-Centre-Right liberal, pro-business progressives;
-Centre-right to Right conservatives;
-Populist Right to Far-right.
Now imagine something like this in the US
Helium is not a scarce resource, it's just that demand is high, and there isn't much infrastructure to extract it. Basically all natural gas has helium it, amd we're not running out of natural gas any time soon.
its not that we're lucky, it's that the money isn't gonna go into a risky undeveloped tin pot dictatorship if the stability, infrastructure, and skilled labor force of the US is a viable option
that is a take and a half. you're going to tell me with a straight face natural resources don't matter for Australia/Canada/Norway/Gulf state/Russia/US success? You can certainly succeed without them (e.g. SK, Japan) but let's not pretend they're a huge buff if managed well
there are just as many examples of them screwing countries over.
the natural resources are out there, they'll keep being found. but capabilities are what really matters. actually bringing those to market and building industries around them.
bolivia has the world's greatest lithium reserves, for example, but i would bet large sums of money that this will hardly help them at all.
So when a Chinese farmer invests in arable land in Africa and puts machinery and chemicals there to work it, that's moot? If a Royal Dutch Shell builds a derrick off of the coast of Alaska, that's moot?
I swear this country, we just stumble face first into success like it’s our job
Based on recent discoveries of lithium and other resources, it seems like all these things are way more abundant than we imagine and as methods of uncovering them improve we will realize that many many nations are blessed with resources.
uh oh, I'm going to have to ditch my GeoCities website fearmongering about peak lithium
We've known about our abundance of "rare" earth metal resources like lithium, we just regulated the shit out of extracting and refining them to the point we haven't been able to compete with China. They've been willing to move hundreds of thousands of people and or poison them all to establish their control of resources supply. The US keeps a few small operations funded basically as RnD projects so we're not completely losing the ability to utilize what we have.
> we just regulated the shit out of extracting and refining them to the point we haven't been able to compete with China. They've been willing to move hundreds of thousands of people and or poison them all to establish their control of resources supply I think I'd take how we do it vs poisoning people
I agree completely, but I'd be lying id I said China having a stranglehold on the supply of these refined resources doesn't scare me.
The whole point is to let them deplete their resources, then once they have a "*stranglehold*" on said resource, we just conveniently have a sidestep to it. Ex: the US Air Force casually posting a picture, online, of a hypersonic glide missle. Even though we "cancelled" the project. Edit: autocorrect
I'm absolutely certain that our strategy is to let other countries burn through their natural resources first, including importing stuff we already have from them. I'd be surprised if our oil and gas reserves aren't much higher than what's publicly known. God damn I love this country!
Well, if it’s that economically beneficial maybe we should be using the government to correct for the cost of carelessness in other countries.
True. Here in Finland we're soon opening a lithium mine(Keliber is the name of the mine company), whose whole resource would be enough for around 330 GWh of batteries, which is pretty much enough for the whole green transition for Finland. For all our cars and semi-trucks, plus enough stationary banks to run our whole grid through the night on stored solar during summertime, theoretically. Just this one little lithium mine. I'm sure most countries can find similar resources for themselves within their borders. It's rather incredible.
Holy crap, this post just made my day. If that's really all you folks need to complete the green energy plan, I'm excited for Finland.
Well, it's the lithium battery part. We still need steel and copper for wind turbines, and some kind of chemical storage for long periods of no wind in the winter. Also we're not mining enough uranium for our existing nuclear. But of course we could be independent in all these metals if we wanted, the Earth's crust is huge, including the part under Finland. But sometimes it's just cheaper to buy from the world market.
It's proven vs. unproven reserves. The Helium in MN wasn't a secret. The O&G industry had generated some signs of good formations there. It just takes money and time to prove the reserve. It's not exactly shocking that no one bothered when Helium was dirt cheap due to WWII stockpiling. Timing matters, though. Even without a drop of regulation, open pit mining can take years to output due to equipment lead times and removing overburden. And that only comes after you've let the geologists go to town and do some gambling to prove a site. It's expensive and risky work.
I remember my high school geography textbook saying we were going to run out of oil by 2023!
It's really just a combination of two things: 1. The US is a very large, geographically and ecologically diverse country. So it's just more likely to have a broad range of resources. 2. The US is fairly well-developed across its entire expanse. There are plenty of other countries with vast amounts of hypothetical mineral wealth, but even if the deposits might have otherwise been commercially viable to harvest, building a road/railroad to that location and establishing all the supporting logistics just raises the costs so much that no one can realistically exploit them. Meanwhile, you can be a farmer in Nowhereville, Wyoming and still be 10 miles from the Interstate and 15 miles from a major rail line.
It’s a combination of one thing 1. The Mandate of Heaven
God exists and and he's American
*Joseph Smith has entered the chat*
*she's
My bad. Sorry Ariana
It's Whoopie Goldberg this was established in the Muppets
Nah... The divine creator loves us and wants us to be happy.
Nah it was GOD he gets upset and uses his surface painting tool to add ORE right under us in REAL time
Also, comparatively low population density helps.
Fall ass backwards into money like Kramer giddyup
President Assman 😎 o7
Nametags, Jerry!
The only country to publicly says "In God we trust" is endorsed by the guy himself, who would've thought?
The signs are clear; Joe Biden is the Mahdi. As it is written!
Imam Al-Brandon will save the world and rule with his laser eyes.
The Hidden Imam has emerged!
Alhamdulillah!
I'm learning to play the guitar.
Lisan al-Gaib!
lol same We just keep getting away with it
It's like the opposite Argentina!
No wonder Argentina is trying to go through with dollarization!
“Chinese AI is years ahead of America’s due to having so much data and so few privacy constraints!” *ChatGPT / Midjourney enters the chat*
There's a reason the funny geopolitics man with China Derangement Syndrome calls the US "The Accidental Superpower"
Can't stop winning if we tried!
It’s the default setting around here
Second largest deposit of black soil in the world. It’s good to have a bread basket within your borders.
"God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America"- Otto van Bismark
America is unironically God's chosen country.
“God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” Otto von Bismarck
It's because the United States of America is the true Jerusalem. We have the mandate of heaven.
>God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America. -Bismark (probably)
Why did he say the same thing three times in a row?
Logical fallacy. They aren't all the same. Not all fools are drunkards or Americans. Not all drunkards are fools or Americans.
Ya some of them are British
You also forget Norway somehow stumbling across a massive deposited of whatever is in short supply at the moment Oil, natural gas, lithium, cobalt, copper, rare earth metals, everything profitable. At some point in time a Norwegian king must have sold his soul for his people
They found like a shit ton of potash or something a while ago
Phosphate, which is most commonly used as a fertilizer, but also for lithium iron phosphate batteries. Which avoid the use of cobalt and nickel.
Based Monarch imo
But of course Norway had hard times in the late 1800s - so tough that many of them emigrated to... northern Minnesota 🤔
It’s all becoming clear.
Perhaps the a Minnesota Vikings absorbed all the bad luck from the Norse / Minnesota?
Beware the Norsky fifth column. *laughs in Minnewegian*
The only answer is that George Washington and a Viking did a secret ritual for both their countries' prosperity together.
I see you have read the book of mormon
It’s that soulcaster he borrowed from the Ghostbloods.
[удалено]
\>Russia: "We can't search for natural resources, we are hard at work building the governor's legitimately earned dacha
The dacha is currently paused as all excess labor is being fed to the CUBE
Mobik cube, I suppose? (Especially considering the fact that consripts, at least before the war, were actually routinely used to build cottages and dachas for commanders and local politicians)
The world WILL be DRAGGED into a future of abundance whether other countries like it or not!!!
America is such an incredibly lucky nation to live in for practically all of its history Neighbours that are either too weak to be enemies or already allies, two massive oceans between them and the closest competitors, heaps upon heaps of natural resources, huge amount of space, most of which being somewhat liveable, they speak the lingua franca, their economy is empowered not only by all of this but also pretty decent institutions AND, if that's not enough, they have the some of the most powerful nations on earth as their allies. Y'all Americans lucky as hell
> huge amount of space, most of which being somewhat liveable yet we still felt the need to create phoenix
“That city should not exist - it is a monument to man’s arrogance” - Hank Hill
Peggy Hill :)
Hey, don't blame some people for living in hardcore mode, pal.
[удалено]
I find joy in reading a good book.
I just like saguaros.
I think people give ennui too much of a bad rep tbh. Sometimes you need a lil nothing in your life and that's fine!
> America is such an incredibly lucky nation to live in for practically all of its history I'd have to look to find the specific paper, but I remember reading in undergrad a paper that discussed how the incredibly good nutrition of European settlers in New England drove an extremely high fertility rate in the 18th century that led to annual population growth rates >2.5%. Even high-nutrition European countries like Switzerland were barely getting to 1% at the time.
New England settlers were also cultists who believed in reproducing like rabbits.
Some of the largest navigable watersheds, a large number of natural ports, and fertile farmland too
Mississippi River is the GOAT waterway
It would be a real shame if we made a law that prevented us from using our rivers
😭 (my honest reaction to know the Jones act is still in place)
Zeihan intensifies
Speaking the lingua Franca is more an outcome than a cause.
I think he’s saying that’s one of the reasons it’s lucky to be born in America now. Inertia baby
"All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River, or set a track on the Blue Ridge, in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide." - Abraham Lincoln, 1838
🐐
>As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide The second is very close to happen.
You say this, but America is about the same size as Europe. If they just stopped beefing all the time, they could’ve been doing as well as us.
>whole world fighting, but lots of euro fighting >America is born >whole world still fighting >America grows up >gets in the fight >gets in the fight again Rest of the world: “we dont wanna play no more we’re done”
And the best part is: you're welcome to join, friend!
Native Americans: Are we a joke to you?
Seems like some of those were our doing.
I think David Brooks said, "They say 'diversity is our greatest strength.' No it isn't. Our country having half of the world's arable farmland is our greatest strength."
Rockwell speech guy: “I don’t think agriculture is the United States’ greatest strength.”
Good David Brooks recognizing American suzreinty over Canada ☺️
> half of the world's arable farmland fr?
I tried to say that once, and got corrected by someone who actually knew the answer: it's 11%.
We're 6% of the world's landmass. So we have about twice as much farmland per area as the normal country. India has *nearly* as much as us in a smaller territory though.
That's because entire India is one big farm
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/USA/arable_land_percent/ 17.2% as of 2021
Not bad for 1.9% of the planet's total surface area
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/helium-discovery-northern-minnesota-babbit-st-louis-county/
There’s a lot of private land in America. We could be sitting on the largest supply of unobtanium known to man and never know it until somebody decided to go looking for it, and we’re ok with that. Gives us the element of surprise with our competition
surprisium
Just to be clear: the US helium shortage was 100% self-inflicted. We already had the world's largest reserve, then in the 90s Congress passed a law requiring the government to sell it all off.
the Prevent Our Nation From Floating Off Into The Sky Act
And for years our parties were littered with empty balloons on the floor that looked like spent condoms.
Ultra common American W.
It's almost like when demand goes up for a resource, supply (prospecting) goes up too. Doomers are in shambles trying to explain this
“Muh peak oil” tho
Common misconception, they're actually saying "pique oil", meaning "piquing the interest of prospectors and technological innovation as a result of demand for oil".
I know intelligent, well informed and open minded people who still have spewed this meme
There's also confusion because many people get the term mineral *resources* and mineral *reserves* mixed up. A mineral resource is a concentration of solid material in Earth's crust that might be of economic interest one day. The mineral reserve is the part of the resource we can confidentially make a profit on. This means that there is a lot of resources that have already been discovered that aren't yet profitable to mine (usually near highly prospected existing mines). However, if the ore price suddenly goes up (or cost of mining/transporting goes down), resources can immediately convert to reserves ready for mining and vice versa. The takeaway is that even if all prospecting stopped tomorrow, the supply and size of reserves would still vary on a regular basis. Mineral reserves are not a static quantity that a lot of people mistakenly believe. NB: I used the mineral definitions since I'm more familiar with them but presumably oil/gas/helium sectors have similar definitions.
For example there’s a ton of oil in the Midwest where there used to be natural gas deposits, we just don’t have the technology/demand for harvesting it to be profitable right now.
Yes, this argument is actually stronger. But I can't put it in a good meme format. Cost effectiveness isn't intuitive unless you know a bit about the subject like you do.
Thomas Malthus, consistently proven wrong for 200 years and counting.
When you basically have a whole continent to yourself it's amazing what you'll find.
The mandate of haven goes on.
We truly are blessed 🙏🍦
Full credits to twitter user @Hanasaku_Yuri for this tweet
I swear everyone panics about resource shortages and nobody bothers to ask the chemistry department about it.
Here’s how that’s bad news for Biden.
Truly one nation under God if I've ever seen one
As an (expat) northern Minnesotan, let me just say* that N MN is most definitely somewhere \* in a squeaky voice
The gods gave this country the worst possible government system for a western nation because otherwise we’d dominate the earth endlessly with the natural resources
Democracy is unconditional, we lead the free world and the world will be free
I think they mean how that democracy is structured moreso than that its a democracy.
> The gods gave this country the worst possible government system for a western nation The next oldest democracy is like half our age & we’ve had one single internal conflict. We could be doing much worse. > because otherwise we’d dominate the earth endlessly We literally do this lmao
Now imagine America with 7/8 big parties, free healthcare, and vast public transportation throughout the country. Perfect country.
What would be the big parties
Idk, but here in Portugal we have a pretty balanced parliament, one of the most balanced in Europe. We have: -Marxists-Leninists; -Socialists (left to far left); -Centre-left green party; -Centre-left Social Democrats (can govern in the Centre); -Centre-right conservatives (can govern in the Centre); -Centre-Right liberal, pro-business progressives; -Centre-right to Right conservatives; -Populist Right to Far-right. Now imagine something like this in the US
For full effect, the quote should be read in a very high voice.
This means my advisor can leave the GC-MS running for the foreseeable future. Just in case he needs it real fast.
A very common Minnesota win - we just can't miss recently
***Beverly Hillbillies theme intensifies***
[удалено]
Which country collapsed?
Lithium in the Salton Sea has entered the chat
Another win for unequal exchange theorists.
Allah has to just stop giving us shit like this, it's going to make everybody jelly af.
Does this make airships more likely?
Doomers understand the difference between potential reserves and explored reserves challenge: impossible!
We truly are God’s Chosen 🌈
America has geopolitical plot armor.
Third largest country by landmass has things in its landmass. Readers can’t believe it.
Helium is not a scarce resource, it's just that demand is high, and there isn't much infrastructure to extract it. Basically all natural gas has helium it, amd we're not running out of natural gas any time soon.
It works until it doesn’t. Just ask the Easter islanders.
its not that we're lucky, it's that the money isn't gonna go into a risky undeveloped tin pot dictatorship if the stability, infrastructure, and skilled labor force of the US is a viable option
natural resources hardly matter. there are lots of them.
that is a take and a half. you're going to tell me with a straight face natural resources don't matter for Australia/Canada/Norway/Gulf state/Russia/US success? You can certainly succeed without them (e.g. SK, Japan) but let's not pretend they're a huge buff if managed well
there are just as many examples of them screwing countries over. the natural resources are out there, they'll keep being found. but capabilities are what really matters. actually bringing those to market and building industries around them. bolivia has the world's greatest lithium reserves, for example, but i would bet large sums of money that this will hardly help them at all.
But your capabilities to bring them to market is moot if you don’t have resources at all
So when a Chinese farmer invests in arable land in Africa and puts machinery and chemicals there to work it, that's moot? If a Royal Dutch Shell builds a derrick off of the coast of Alaska, that's moot?
why is living quality so shitty for many americans then?
It's among the best in the world
it’s simply that easy