Why I disagree with Zeihan…

He thinks America is physically stronger than China.

I think America is digitally stronger, but physically weaker.

Why?

China is the factory of the world and can build infra at literally >100X the speed of California.

But it isn’t as good at global apps.
And it can’t argue in Engl

Hi Balaji, what about his point on demography and reluctance to adopt Western immigration policy? What would be the realistic counterfactual.

Software engineer. CTO @ conductive.ai

http://paulpierre.com

TLDR:
1) Robotics > demographics
2) If it's even *possible* to boost births by state action, China will do it
3) And US demographics are on many dimensions actually far worse than China's — political polarization, family breakdown, internal conflict, etc

See:
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1448803665293185025

It's not as simple as "you have a youth-centric demographic pyramid, you win".

If so, Indonesia would be out-executing Estonia.

Zeihan's model of demographics is just "lots of young people = strong". 

But obviously in the internet age, a few smart people >>> lots of random people, whether young or old.

I agree with you that Zeihan over-indexes on demographics. Is it possible you're over-indexing on technology? Or do you see this as a Bob Solow situation?