sfam wrote:dckingsfan wrote:sfam wrote:For clarity, peacebuilding is "not" peacekeeping. Those are two very separate things. UN Missions do peacekeeping, lots of local advocates and international players do peacebuilding. UN Missions are good if there is an agreement in hand and you need to "keep the peace". This is not what has been happening. Instead we've seen failed states like South Sudan with the UN going in to stop the violence. As poor as the UN training may be, they weren't trained for that. I am certainly not at all advocating that.
Got that - what I am saying is that the UN is disfunctional and operationally inept. What I am saying is all the good intentions will fall back on the US again.
I've gotten to spend some time working with the UN. There's a complication that adds to the ineptness - the whole "member states" voting thing in practice makes the folks who work there have to abide by some truly bizarre conditions. Its dysfunctional by design in many ways, but what else would you expect from an organization who needs agreement from the majority, but allows 5 countries to veto anything?dckingsfan wrote:I am not a Trump fan, I didn't vote for him. I think he is incompetent. But I am beginning to understand better why Trump succeeded. And a good part of that is we have had continued overreach from the past 3 administrations.
Just a point on this. We have an age bulge which is quite different from the MENA region, which has a youth bulge. Our baby boomers are retiring, and taking a good percentage of the workforce with them. This may not be Obama's fault.
No President, no political party, is responsible for numbers like these workforce numbers. We are going through substantial macro-level changes in the technologies & industries that make up our economy. The biggest companies in our current economy simply don't employ the numbers of people that the biggest companies of 2 decades ago did. Moreover, those companies that were the biggest 2 decades ago also do not employ the numbers they used to employ. E.g. I believe GM 10 years ago had 4 times the employees it does now.
They simply don't need the numbers of people they once did. Obviously they aren't going to hire people they don't need.
I heard Warren Buffett the other night say "if we get to where one person can push one button and produce all the output the world needs, that will be better for everyone." None of this has the first thing to do with one or another political trend. The current one simply acts out the frustration & fear of change that go along with change this real, radical & quick. Understandable but irrelevant to what the future will bring.
