i think the only thing keeping china from taking that top slot is reach and the use of the dollar worldwide. both of those are collapsing. the US might not be the biggest asshole on the planet for much longer
Eh… don’t count on it. China has some significant weaknesses. In the short term, economic growth has slowed significantly. Debt in the private and public sector is having consequences, both in the housing market and elsewhere. In the longer term, China is aging at a faster rate than the US, both due to a low birth rate and immigration rates that are virtually nonexistent compared to the US. China’s GDP is outpacing the US for now, but it’s an open question how long that pace will last.
That America’s actually work tip the scales, along with having a military not made of meat grinder slaves and eighty year old Soviet tanks. Plus, you know, a real navy and air force.
And while modern France and peers could indeed no diff the Romans or Victorian Britain, only America and Russia have enough nukes to kill the world (go us!)
Just ignoring the concept of neocolonialism for a second, most American land was stolen through conquest. That the American Empire is not currently aggressively expanding is irrelevant, did Rome not count as an empire when its borders were stable?
That would be interesting, to compare the land mass of the US with the max size of the Roman empire. My guess is that the romans would win by a hair.
But the Brits would definitely win because they have Australia, which is almost as big as the continental US just in itself, let alone all the other countries they conquered.
Rome wasn’t the most powerful empire, merely the third longest lasting; the Assyrians and Egyptians had a run that puts Rome to shame, and the Khans wielded far more power than any individual emperor.
The US is just the only world power left in modern time that could deploy anywhere within 24 hrs with more than just a strike force (and they can do so far far harder than any previous “empire”). The US “empire” is based on deployment potential, banking, and diplomacy. Nukes are just the key required to gain entry to the table so you don’t get wiped at deployment.
Bricks is literally the alliance trying to match US power and still hasn’t. This is mostly a barrier to entry problem rather than personal power, but it does stand that no previous empire could match the modern US in millitary, finance, or diplomacy.
But hey give it 50 years we are doing our best to shit on two of those.
More importantly, did they have the ability to deploy a Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s anywhere in the world, within 72 hours, just so their troops would have variety of food?
Nope. The Japanese knew they had royally fucked up when they realized that we had ships that were dedicated to ice cream supplies. You have to have everything else needed for war covered, before you start the logistical supply train of ice cream.
You seem to completely misunderstand American diplomacy.
Just because America doesn’t have the same style of conquest, doesn’t mean they aren’t conquerors.
America was the first empire to realize that all empires eventually fall whose agenda is toppling nations and replacing their flags with their own.
The USA invented a unique twist: never replacing the country’s flag.
Instead, as evidenced by countless examples such as Iran and Panama, the American agenda has always been installing a new national leader whose interests align with American ideals of democracy and “freedom” (predominantly of the white Christian variety). But they keep their “flag”, or in some sense maintain a national identity through the new leader, so it feels a lot less like they were conquered.
Exactly. Wilson fucked up with Wilsonian Doctrine, among a ton of other things. Teddy had it right. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Get in, get out, get done.
Lol That’s just a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify why the “mighty” US can’t even win a war against an impoverished SE Asian nation with 50 year old Soviet weapons
I feel like a lot of people wanna short it out of spite and a whale is gonna squeeze them out with a big buy like 2 weeks into trading. If puts are cheap I might grab one just for fun. It’m curious to see how WSB plays it.
Post GME prob have bots shilling it to lurkers wondering the same thing
After the price falls, I see them having a future as a data company. They already have 1 customer paying them $60m annually. Regardless of it’s future, they have over a decades worth of data in many areas. Spez already got his though.
Thats a good point, however I don’t forsee users staying there for long. So as you said they will have to milk their data for however long. That requires them writing good contracts that don’t give everything away all at once, as I’ve seen done in some companies I worked for, as well as maintaining a demand. But I don’t see any way Reddit can grow from here, their cattle users, as well as moderators are being treated extremely poorly. They are the product and Spez is doing his best to destroy his product.
Edit: Reddit reported its 2023 revenue was $804 million. Net loss was $90.8 million in 2023.
If I understand this correctly operating costs are ~890 mil. In order for them to be valued at 10 billion, they would have to at least bring in 100 mil profits. So they will have to increase annual contracts by 200 mil, or cut costs by 200 mil. All while maintaining user base happy. If they decide to cash out completely and live off the data they already own, they could probably cut costs drastically, let the website go to shit and hope they can live off of contracts for access to their already existing data for however long assuming they don’t fuck it up as mentioned. Also in that scenario ad revenue stream would go down.
Companies like Tesla can survive high valuation with no dividends, well, it’s a meme stock, but also the possibility still exists that they will pay out. There is already a lot of bad will against Reddit, and I see no way Reddit can grow and pay decent dividends unless they spin in a drastically different directiong.
Maybe, but I think it’ll take a bit longer. Reddit’ll be given some artificial value, then the initial stock will be flogged at 80% of that to make people think they’re getting a good deal, so loads of people will buy it, then the price’ll shoot up, so loads more people will buy that; meanwhile Spez’ll cash out his billions then when the true value of Reddit is realised there’ll be a “correction” - i.e. a crash, and the last bunch of suckers to buy will be sitting on a huge loss that’ll take years to recover from as it slowly inches back up by a couple of percent a year.
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