NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Taihei Tengoku]

1. Protect your major enterprises and industries from hostile foreign takeover by some method that doesn't render them totally uncompetitive.

What if your people aren't competitive?

you make work with rattan cane ok

[Connori Pilgrims]

1. Protect your major enterprises and industries from hostile foreign takeover by some method that doesn't render them totally uncompetitive.

What if your people aren't competitive?

Mass suicide or acceptance of your country's present status as an insignificant pawn/nobody on the global stage.

The former is the only moral and logical choice. The latter is the cowardly but pragmatic one.

[The Manticoran Empire]

1. Protect your major enterprises and industries from hostile foreign takeover by some method that doesn't render them totally uncompetitive.

What if your people aren't competitive?

Forced labor camps.

[Kanugues Wed]

What you fail to understand is

America is the greatest of all imperial rulers.

Neither of them have a desire to turn my country into Somalia 2.0

Sounds your own fault. Maybe if you lived in a country with a higher IQ you wouldn't have that problem? The PRC is just Romania without the fake elections, though. Or Belarus. Corrupt, broken, and degenerate, but they have a lot of inertia. Your problems and grievances would be exacerbated under the PRC because you would be subject to racial-ethnic sorting (i.e. communist party friendship-bureaucrat says "you're white, aka inferior race, so you drive this rickshaw now") and probably pushed out of your job by a less competent Chinese because he is Chinese and you are not. On top of that, none of your actual local problems would be solved, but rather they would be made worse, because the PRC would reward graft, embezzlement, and corruption because that is how the PRC operates.

Dude. I'm a white male living in china and there is no similarity to what you are describing.

White people do perfectly fine in china. In the more local companies, white people can get hired just to sit around and make the company look like it has connections in the western world. There is very little anti-white discrimination.

The government does not dictate jobs. China is very capitalist with socialist images thrown in on top.

I won't deny that there is a very large amount of corruption though.

[Scandinavian Nations]

No, it doesn't.
The minimum legal rate for labor in the US is $7.25/hour.

Then...drop it. :^)

You could just as well suggest breeding leprechauns.

If you transition the U.S. workforce from a home-based one to a migratory ....
You can also reduce their pay because they don't need to pay for a house or maintenance on one because they live out of a car instead of living in an apartment or whatever.

Correction: magically summoning leprechauns.
Home ownership is a defining element of the Americans' identity, and identity is the last thing people are willing to give up. Long after adopting RMB, they'll still be looking to build a home with it.

A partial forced shift of stationary workforce to migratory has happened in the US before, and it was called the Great Depression. Wildly unpopular.

Apple literally pays Chinese sweatshop workers double this so not really.

Apple makes overpriced electronics, not T-shirts. The former pays better.
The price of labor climbing over that $1 comfort zone is the reason low-tech manufacturing has started preferring places other than China in the 2000's.

As of today, China isn't sweatshop central anymore, it's electronics central. Companies no longer build products in China because it's the cheapest, they do it because it's increasingly becoming the only place to offers the service with the required levels of quality, lead time and availability.

There's still a choice of which China to build in (HK, the one with People, or the one without), but the rest of the world is increasingly restricting itself to only low-volume prototype/boutique manufacturing capabilities. Japan has given up, Korea's on the fence, less-developed nations aren't expanding capacity. You can still order five hundred PCB in the US - at 3.5-5x Shenzhen DDP price and delivered 15 days later - but you'll be laughed out of the room asking for a million.

[Purpelia]

Face it G. The only way to restore power to your country is through state capitalism, forced nationalization of industry, breaking up international corporations and taking their assets and using those to force industrialize your nation.

Also known as "plan make everyone miserable forever, screw living standards and start an actual revolution".

[Rich and Corporations]

Face it G. The only way to restore power to your country is through state capitalism, forced nationalization of industry, breaking up international corporations and taking their assets and using those to force industrialize your nation.

Also known as "plan make everyone miserable forever, screw living standards and start an actual revolution".

For some mysterious reason, Afghanistan just won't industrialize.
What was the Marshall Plan so effective?

https://news.usni.org/2015/10/27/chinas ... ed-weapons

[Austrasien]

White people do perfectly fine in china. In the more local companies, white people can get hired just to sit around and make the company look like it has connections in the western world. There is very little anti-white discrimination.

When white people say "my best friend is black!", you are the black friend.

[Gallia-]

white people can get hired just to sit around and make the company look like it has connections in the western world. There is very little anti-white discrimination.

>You're the token diversity white hire.
>Very little anti-white discrimination.

You are literally being discriminated against by your very existence.

The government does not dictate jobs.

You are literally the floor on which the ladder rests is how low you are in Chinese society so of course you wouldn't know what happens at the upper-middle rungs where research physicists and aviation corporation executives live. Naturally these people, who do very important and specialized work, are told what to do or replaced outright by people who listen. It's not like the United States where you can do a bad job, fail utterly, and sue the government for 20+ years in every court in the land. In PRC you simply lose your job and get replaced.

If you speak out against the government, do something unpopular, or make yourself look silly, you lose your job and get replaced. And prison. In the modern day United States, you have a choice to sign onto a state contract, which doesn't exist in the PRC (major suppliers of goods and science are outright told to do x), and you don't get replaced or sidelined if you make a goofy mistake in your private life, at least not one that the government does. Maybe American corporations are as draconian as the PRC government, but the Federal government isn't chasing after beer can pyramid stackers on Facebook, which is the real difference.

In the PRC you really don't have that choice that you have in America. But in America, there are so few suppliers of anything, you don't have a choice either. Not because you're being told what to do, but because no one else does what you do.

Home ownership is a defining element of the Americans' identity,

So is poverty, then.

A partial forced shift of stationary workforce to migratory has happened in the US before, and it was called the Great Depression. Wildly unpopular.

Literally putting the cart before the horse but whatever you say.

The migratory shift was a result of the Great Depression, not a cause. It's happening again, too, because the United States is currently in a state of terminal decline after peaking more or less in the 1970s or so. This time there probably won't be another mass sucking up of ordinaries to abate it either, because the world has moved past the American ordinary and would rather employ the African or the Chinese ordinary instead.

So America turns into cyber favelas and mega barrios, "improvised housing" becomes as American as apple pie and handegg, and the USA turns into something akin to an elderly Venezuela.

If you had jobs that sucked up the majority of American ordinaries into steel foundries and nuclear weapons production, instead of Wal-Mart greeters and petrol station attendants, you would see a real "MAGA" happen. Instead you will see Wisconsin-esque oil booms as entire convoys of Americans show up to interview for an open attendant position or store clerk in small towns, desperately trying to squeeze into the ever shrinking job market, as American governance falls apart from lack of taxes and eventually descends into poverty.

It's not really an ideal outcome nor is it foretold (yet) but it requires rather drastic, fast action to resolve. Big investment in revitalizing American industry and protectionism would help. The key is realizing that either way Americans are going to be poorer in the future. At least in the "real MAGA" future they will have jobs, while possibly being poor, as opposed to simply being poor.

Perhaps the PRC will invest in America in the future though to fuel its unsustainable growth economy instead, though? America becomes the PRC of tomorrow by sucking away all the Chinese jobs? Except they have Africa for that.

As of today, China isn't sweatshop central anymore, it's electronics central.

Yeah $2/hr is wildly higher pay than $1/hr.

You can still order five hundred PCB in the US - at 3.5-5x Shenzhen DDP price and delivered 15 days later - but you'll be laughed out of the room asking for a million.

If you launched a surprise nuclear attack against the Communist Party's industrial-economic centers and deprive them of their most potent weapon, their factories, then you will see people rapidly closing that gap. Free World: 1; Slave World: 0.

state capitalism,

Obviously. The second part is destroying the enemy by nuking their military and launching an amphibious invasion from America's most forward beachhead against the forces of despotism: Grafenwoehr Taiwan.

[Scandinavian Nations]

So is poverty, then.

The US isn't in poverty. It's enjoying a reasonably comfortable lifestyle throughout and everything indicates that it's going to for the foreseeable future.

Yeah $2/hr is wildly higher pay than $1/hr.

It is. A lot of people spend their whole working life to double their pay, and not all succeed.

nuclear weapons production
If you launched a surprise nuclear attack
by nuking

When the only way to victory you can think of is nuclear weapons, it's how you know you've lost.

[Gallia-]

So is poverty, then.

The US isn't in poverty. It's enjoying a reasonably comfortable lifestyle throughout and everything indicates that it's going to for the foreseeable future.

Someone's going to be in for a surprise in 40 years.

Oh wait you're comparing "poverty" relative to "the DRC", not a real metric. Never mind. Venezuela is much better to live in than the Congo. Poverty is relative, not absolute. If you make $1,200,000 a year and I make $120,000 a year, I am in poverty. I make barely a tenth what you make, despite us both being much richer than someone who makes $12,000 a year. The latter is immaterial because it is not what is being compared.

<Marx's quote about the palace and hut> is hugely relevant here.

The US stagnant growth rate and wages speak volumes about its ability to retain its lifestyle in the future. What will probably happen is the bulk of Americans will, as they have, continue to get poorer, while the richest Americans fortify themselves into ever shrinking islands of economic prosperity until they flee to the PRC or India or some other place that has money in the future. Or they reach a point where their islands of prosperity more or less stop shrinking because the barrios have become sufficiently big to absorb all slum dwellers.

Meanwhile 8/10 Americans of 205X can't afford to put food on their table, pay their bills, or live in improvised housing; while the PRC lives the American Dream IRL and 8/10 Chinese live under constant surveillance from the CPC, has a roof over his head that isn't made out of automobile parts or 3D printed shingles from Tesloogle, JV, and has a steady 9-5 job working in an office building.

That future is far more reasonable and far more boring than saying "because Americans are living with the 205X equivalent of $15,000 GDPPC they are not in poverty".

When the only way to victory you can think of is nuclear weapons, it's how you know

Yeah because America lost WW2.

Nuclear weapons are the only weapons which can existentially threaten modern nations. Ergo they should be acquired by everyone and used against their foes whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Destroying your enemy is the easiest victory. Sorry if I can't help but think in terms of efficiency and least effort solutions to problems but atomizing the 2nd Artillery Corps is easier than beating a country with a bigger population, higher and growing IQ, and faster economic growth than with any other method. Dancing around the bush about it at best is stupid and at worst is suicidal.

The losses that the PRC could inflict on America with its small nuclear force are acceptable compared to what America could inflict on the PRC in a surprise attack.

Of course the better option is to leave the cities standing while merely destroying the armed forces' largest bases. This would allow the USA and ROC to retake the mainland and finally putting an end to the Chinese Civil War.

Probably the best outcome. Having a China which is a stable ally of democracy and America is better than having a China which is non-existent, which is better than having a China which is an enemy, which is the worst.

[Scandinavian Nations]

Yeah because America lost WW2.

Wrong. Japan was going down, nukes or not.

The nukes made sure it didn't become Japanese Soviet Socialist Republic, without suffering the disproportionate casualties that rushing to amphibiously assault it before the Soviets would've cost. They weren't in any way necessary, just expedient, and the political situation then allowed for their use.

This isn't WWII and China isn't even hostile to the US. China has simply filled the role that the Americans consider themselves too good for. Should China somehow disappear - with or without turning the US into an international pariah, which your childish idea would involve - it won't fix anything about the US. The Americans still won't want to do lowly mass market manufacturing jobs. China will simply have to be replaced by someone else, be it India or multiple nations, and this time they'll focus on supplying the Eurabian market, since that will be the one with the money.

[Gallia-]

The nukes made sure it didn't become Japanese Soviet Socialist Republic,

Good revisionism. Soviet Barge Navy could barely invade Iturup Island and you think it would be able to invade Japan that's hilarious. Nuking of Japan was simple: 1 million Allied WIA/KIA. That's all.

What's next? The Soviet Union was never our enemy but merely a fraternal brother nation in the pursuit of freedom?

This isn't WWII and China isn't even hostile to the US.

Wow we're really digging the "re-use of 1960s far-left revisionism" aren't we?

Nothing you say is ever credible again, but OK. OTOH you still have NSD in your sig so you aren't exactly up-to-date on the hottest memes of the world.

The PRC has always been an enemy of America and always been hostile to the U.S. I guess you've been living under a rock since 193X or you think the Republic won the civil war, though? Or maybe you are applying the same logic that far-left/pro-Soviet academics did in the 1960s, but to the PRC, but unknowingly rather than earnestly? So it's like unintentional fifth columnism? Even Reagan and Nixon staffers, the least pro-America of American presidential staffs, recognized this, and Reagan's own State Department bureaucrats put their collective neurons together to produce a memo that literally said the U.S. and PRC were enemies and that their interests merely aligned with defeating the USSR.

Western leaders being taken in by your Silicon Valley/Californian libertarian memes (libertarians, of course, are the 21st century equivalent of the 1960s far left academics, or 1930s America First isolationists) is probably the worst thing that has happened to the Western world besides 1980s neoliberalism. China is not America's friend, it is America's enemy on par with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. It should be contained and strangled to the total extent possible, until it collapses into a bunch of little countries that can be influenced by America towards democracy. Rinse and repeat.

Failing that, we should nuke its military flat and invade it outright to liberate the oppressed peoples of the Communist Party by bringing the ROC back to the mainland.

The only China that is remotely friendly to America is the ROC. It might even be an ally of convenience from its perspective. America is, to its credit and detriment, an ally of all democracies. Forever. Even Russia, somehow, after the "reset".

China has simply filled the role that the Americans consider themselves too good for.

Good fiction. Dozens of millions of Americans would be happy to work on assembly lines. They just can't because these assembly lines have moved elsewhere.

China will simply have to be replaced by someone else,

No. China will replace America with someone else when America becomes too poor to buy their things. The industrial cycle will repeat, maybe in Africa, after China collapses. Then it has nowhere else to go.

tl;dr Read less Silicon Valley blogs, more U.S. Government press releases. Elon Musk is the greatest fifth columnist since Charles Lindbergh.

e621: Also you're right it's not WW2. It's actually WW4 and we're still fighting the old foes from WW3 but as a war of words/ideology rather than economic principles. America won WW1. Democracy won WW2. Capitalism won WW3. What wins WW4? Islamism? Secularism? Despotism? Will America even be around to fight WW5? Perhaps if Mr. Trump had the balls to start pro-Free World protectionist campaigns, take all of Silicon Valley's dope memes/patents under Federal protection, and massively invest in America's economy to rebuild industries that have been lost to the PRC I guess.

[Scandinavian Nations]

Soviet Barge Navy could barely invade Iturup Island and you think it would be able to invade Japan that's hilarious.

Ironic, considering you want to turn the US into a new iteration of the Soviet Union.

PRC has always been an enemy of America and always been hostile to the U.S.
The only China that is remotely friendly to America is the ROC.

Don't invent strawmen - no one called the PRC friendly, it simply isn't hostile to the US. It's looking out for its own interests, dealing with the US to the extent that it finds useful, ignoring it when it doesn't. This isn't the treatment the US is used to getting from other nations, but it's how nations used to deal with one another before the USSR and the US started their stints as superpowers.

Even in the nuke-western fantasy world of your political thought, any nation that takes China's place is going to deal with the US the same way.

[Gallia-]

Soviet Barge Navy could barely invade Iturup Island and you think it would be able to invade Japan that's hilarious.

Ironic, considering you want to turn the US into a new iteration of the Soviet Union.

Yeah the best country. The USSR had all five parts of the Food Pyramid: nuclear energy, basic science, heavy industry, bigge mines, and tankus. Sadly he didn't think he needed friends so he died alone but at least he was happy.

OTOH if he'd had friends he would be able to beg them for a few more decades of mortality while he continues to make the smolest tanku-chans. OTOOH his friends said his making tanku-chans was unhealthy and "a problem" and he said "I do not have a problem perhaps it is you who has the problem tovarisch" and he went back to his room, never to be seen again, until someone opened the door two weeks later and found him dead with a airbrush in his hand and surrounded/covered by a mountain of increasingly miniature tankus, IFVs, and production runs, and increasingly big particle accelerators, atomic reactors, space lasers, and rocket engines.

Coroner said it was a "heart attack" but everyone knows he really just "starved to death making tankus" but he died doing what he loved. A true heroji for the Modern age. ;~;

Don't invent strawmen - no one called the PRC friendly, it simply isn't hostile to the US.

There is no difference. A country is friendly...or it isn't. In the PRC's case, it's quite blatantly an enemy with a large fifth column looking out for it, though.

Even if the spectrum weren't pretty much binary, the PRC would be more of an enemy than Lesotho. It's up there with Russia and Iran as American enemies. Between them. A longer term enemy than Russia but a bigger enemy than Iran. Iran is a long term, small fry while Russia is a short term small fry. PRC is a long term big fry and easily America's greatest foe since Nazi Germany, which was America's greatest foe since the Soviet Union, which was America's greatest foe since the German Empire, which was America's greatest foe since Britain, etc.

Anyone who thinks the PRC isn't an enemy is either so delusional they think America can be friends with everyone (the "redeemable" or "good" fifth column) or so anti-American they support the PRC (the "incorrigible" or "bad" fifth column). The PRC does not want to trade with America. It does not "do its own thing". The UK "does its own thing". So does "Japan" or "Germany". The PRC is a loose cannon that threatens democracy, America's sole purpose for existing, and wants to become America. It wants to be big and powerful like America was 50 years ago. It is, for better or worse, the new American enemy.

America can stop still that by not giving them what they want: American technology, trade, and real estate. Extend this to the entire Western world, though. Include India. If the PRC is forced to subsist on East Africa and Central Asia it will eventually collapse. It will collapse before the West does. The West wins. Sure, people will go without their iPhones or their cheap T-shirts but who cares? Only Millennials. And if Millennials are anything like their parents they will learn to not care after a brief period of caring.

It's not like the typical Millennial is smarter or better than their parents anyway, so giving them jobs like their parents had (assembly line work/sweatshops/whatever) is perfectly practical for an ordinary.

but it's how nations used to deal with one another before the USSR and the US started their stints as superpowers.

Your memory is very short or your knowledge of history is very lacking. Maybe both.

The PRC is behaving exactly like the Soviet Union did in the 1920s and '30s. It's a sort of state of undeclared warfare between the two power blocs, but instead of the USSR v. Capitalist World it's PRC v. USA. The fifth columnists, led by Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, are protesting any American action overseas. The Communists are being invested in by a massive fifth column, one that is either too delusional to see how their actions uphold evil or too evil to care, the USA is still reeling from a massive economic shock, and Americans still haven't gotten around to seeing the Communists' plot is more than just "give money to you".

The only difference is that I'm calling the Sino-American "rivalry" what it actually is: a war. It is a war comparable to the war fought against the Soviet Union. Or the war fought between fascism and democracy before democracy bombed fascism. The weapons of the war are total, even more than they were in WW2, since at least in WW2 you were bombing the people you disagreed with. Here it's just impoverishing and depriving the people you disagree with, or positioning yourself economically so it becomes feasible to do this. A true "total war" in every sense because it involves military, economic, and political posturing. Something that America forgot to do? Or maybe it just doesn't think it can do it? Or maybe it's just trying to mow a lawn with a pair of scissors.

Somehow Marxism is able to see a "level above" capitalism in this regard and view all aspects of society as contributing to a war effort, and view interactions as contributing to a war in general. I'm not sure why capitalists have such immense difficulty in seeing that not all wars involve "bombing" or "killing" but rather a handshake can be as deadly and dangerous to national survival as an atomic bomb in the most extreme cases. Especially when capitalism's last great gunnin' n' shootin' war started with an oil embargo. You'd think capitalism would have realized that its economic actions have more knock-on effects than mere trade, but rather can collapse entire systems, for better or worse.

They even called the "cold war" a "war" in the name, and you're not acknowledging that despite the PRC being much more aggressive than the post-WW2 Soviet Union ever was, because...reasons? It is incredible to behold.

Perhaps it's because Marxist academics named the "cold war" while capitalist economists, democratic policymakers, and Western military leaders fought it.

So:

Yes, the PRC and USA are at war.
Yes, the PRC is America's enemy.
Yes, the PRC needs to be destroyed.
Ideally, peaceful replacement.
In-between, forcible disarmament.
Worst case, total destruction.
Yes, the USA needs to recapitalize its industry.
No, "additive manufacturing" won't save it.
No, "automation and disruption" won't save it.
Yes, "large monetary investments in modern assembly lines" will save it.
Yes, the USA needs to pursue some level of energy independence.
Ideally, total.
In-between, inter-Western trade.
Worst case, status quo.
Yes, the USA needs to isolate the PRC economically to defeat it.
Yes, the USA can leverage its political capital to do this.

The longest/most difficult but most humanitarian option is to simply strangle the PRC. There are places that hate the PRC as much as America does, or more, who would gladly help it bring the PRC down. Get a bunch of good old boys together and embargo it, isolate it, and lock it down. Japan/Korea/ROC/NATO/India could all be tapped to push a pro-America/anti-PRC embargo campaign. This would be the same strategy as Containment but oriented towards the PRC instead of the USSR.

It would require building up some Western industry again, while India/West Africa could be coaxed with offers of investment, but you'd need to pull America's dick out of the PRC and there's no guarantee that anyone else would be willing to put out. So America might have to masturbate for a while but that's fine. No one actually died from a date with Rosie Palms (the USSR actually had chronic major depression, severe social anxiety, and preferred "make tankus" over "make eat") and we have such advanced manufacturing masturbation technologies today that America just needs to use its limitless coffers to go out and buy a handful of them for itself.

A pan-Western + friends wank club would be even better but America is the third most populous country in the world so it can rather easily wrap itself around the idea of legislating itself into different economic levels. The PRC can wrap itself around the idea of legislating itself into superpower status through trade and theft, so why can't America do the same, but in reverse? It's already going to be split into wildly divergent economic development "levels" anyway, so making these "levels" official instead of merely a result of terminal decline is better. It means you can plan around them instead of doing nothing because your plans are constantly being thrown off kilter by "surprising" or "sudden" changes that are actually obvious in extrapolating trends.

any nation that takes China's place is going to deal with the US the same way.

The US will deal with the US in the same way?

[Weimarer Reich]

Sadly a strategy of containment doesn't fly as much these days since most people in position to do it in the US are likely getting money from China anyway.

[Gallia-]

Modern Americans also have no loyalty to their country either. PRC is like the evil twin of 1950s America I guess. Civically minded, check. Industrious, check. Prosperous, check, OTOH...Despotism, check. Corrupt, check. Imperialist, check.

[Rich and Corporations]

Civically minded, check.

What.

These people riot over hospital bills.

It is Mad Max but with too much gasoline for everyone.

[Gallia-]

They also riot over paragraphs in Japanese schoolbooks. True patriots.

e: Another comparison point is that American and Chinese schoolbooks are similarly nationalistic in tone, although Chinese textbooks are less allowing of invented revisionism like the "atomic bomb 'debate'".

[Rich and Corporations]

They also riot over paragraphs in Japanese schoolbooks. True patriots.

Rioting over hockey and football wars, patriotism?

[Gallia-]

They also riot over paragraphs in Japanese schoolbooks. True patriots.

Rioting over hockey and football wars, patriotism?

Americans are too friendly and polite to riot for nationalist reasons, I think, but it's a good starting comparison. Americans may just prefer more passive aggressive measures. The real problem is that American patriotism and nationalism are being replaced by nebulous, ill-defined, and unsustainable "globalism". Either American nationalism reasserts itself at some point in the future or Americans become more identified with their states or something. The former is more likely if "MAGA" is anything close to sincere, although that itself is sort of ironic, and even I find it hard to feel any sense of identity for my state besides "highest proof rectified spirits" and "protected public drunkenness".

Of course, since "American nationalism" is literally just "democratic imperialism" anyone who opposes that is more or less opposed to America, but that doesn't really need much elaboration given America has never made any apologies for it.

Since war is a "total" thing, not just "bomb people" (except for really small wars), but also "annihilate competing ideological narratives", this is obviously dangerous if America wants to be anything more than a pushover in the future. cf. Europe.

[Kazarogkai]

America has plenty of cheap labor. It just chooses to live in houses instead of live out of a car.

No, it doesn't.
The minimum legal rate for labor in the US is $7.25/hour.
The competitive rate for sweatshop labor is around $1/hour.

With a negative income tax we wouldn't really need a minimum wage, mix this in with an education system which more strongly emphasized and valued technical/vocational training from the age of 12 years onward for kids who clearly aren't meant for nor interested in college and you will have yourself a rather competitive workforce by world standards.

[Rich and Corporations]

No, it doesn't.
The minimum legal rate for labor in the US is $7.25/hour.
The competitive rate for sweatshop labor is around $1/hour.

With a negative income tax we wouldn't really need a minimum wage, mix this in with an education system which more strongly emphasized and valued technical/vocational training from the age of 12 years onward for kids who clearly aren't meant for nor interested in college and you will have yourself a rather competitive workforce by world standards.

How does this work for the infirm and senile?

[Gallia-]

Destructive brain scanning to put their minds into younger cloned bodies. Recovery of intact head/brain becomes primary concern for U.S. Army 92Ms in the 2XXX Giga Wars of tomorrow. Repeat process indefinitely.

Quintuple amputees and "Cleared Hot" SNCOs given new life by the power of giga-modern biological sciences. Gigatroopers have the bodies of a hormonally overactive teenager but the memories of a +20 year veteran.

Mozambique Drill with 6.9x6.9mm Chodegats standard for PLA Hypertroopers.

[NeuPolska]

With a negative income tax we wouldn't really need a minimum wage, mix this in with an education system which more strongly emphasized and valued technical/vocational training from the age of 12 years onward for kids who clearly aren't meant for nor interested in college and you will have yourself a rather competitive workforce by world standards.

How does this work for the infirm and senile?

Leave them out to die, no point in wasting resources to keep them alive if they can’t do anything and will die soon anyway. I know I wouldn’t want to continue living if it meant laying in bed next to machines for the rest of my life, and I’ll be damned if I end up going to a retirement home when the time comes.