Interview, Fireside Chat
Richard Hanania - Foreign Policy, Fertility, and Experts
- Countries lacking a cohesive national strategy are expected to lose out to those with one in the long run, while strong domestic institutions like decentralization and individual freedom may hinder the formation of unified foreign policies due to interest group influence.
- States with dysfunctional foreign policies could sustain strong economic growth and geopolitical strength if open institutions buffer them from the associated costs, though the U.S. may eventually replicate China's foreign policy mistakes if it surpasses China in economic size.
- The U.S. president may retain significant freedom to enact grand strategy on low-salience issues such as sanctions or regime change in Iran and Venezuela, but military intervention in North Korea to remove nuclear weapons is predicted to be extremely costly.
- Global open markets are not guaranteed to continue indefinitely, with predictions that some nations may revert to central planning, while shifting away from U.S. intervention in Latin America's drug war and human rights enforcement could improve local problem-solving.
- Public opinion on foreign relations is viewed as more manipulable than domestic issues due to a lack of independent knowledge, though increasing political polarization may limit this manipulation while still leaving more room for maneuver than in domestic affairs.
- Support exists for limits on lobbying for government officials, including in the Pentagon, though no principled application is defined for all politics, alongside an advocacy for journalists to disclose corporate board memberships of former military officials to reduce their credibility.
- Public trust in expertise is expected to decline as media highlights "hysterical" experts over those with credentials like the Great Barrington Declaration signatories, potentially leading to greater policy influence from prediction markets and economic mechanisms over traditional credential-based expertise.
- The 2016 election shifted political behavior, making liberals ten times more likely than conservatives to participate in protests or sign petitions, a change attributed to the mobilization of the left, while Big Tech's cultural shift from libertarian to "woke" coincides with its maturation into an establishment attracting high-conformist individuals.
- A right-wing government pushing back against liberal elites could vindicate authoritarian populism if liberal engagement remains sufficiently high, and cutting funding to universities while shrinking state institutions is proposed as an effective strategy to stop the propagation of wokeness.
- Efforts to increase fertility rates in the U.S. are predicted to be counterproductive by making non-reproduction a contrarian act, whereas Chinese elites may be more receptive to pro-natalist propaganda due to their direct perception of competition with the U.S.
- Fertility rates in China are predicted to reach 1.9 by the year 2031, with high cash transfers potentially incentivizing the poor to have children and tax break structures potentially incentivizing the wealthy.
- Libertarians are expected to hope for increased political polarization over the next 20 to 30 years to allow them to take over a Republican Party that wins 50% of the time, providing freedom to enact unpopular libertarian measures.
- There is a plan to continue arguing that conservatives have not implemented libertarian policies, countering the narrative that wokeness is the result of failed libertarianism.