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aqwxcvbnji [none/use name]
Yes. The biggest advantage the US has right now,is the fact that many commodities (for example: oil) are only for sale in dollars. That creates an artificially large demand for the dollar, which negates the usual effects of printing to much money that any other country would suffer. If the world stopped doing this, the value of the dollar would be much lower and real priecs of consumer goods would skyrocket.
(Libya wanted to start selling oil for gold just before it was invaded, Saddam wanted to start selling oil in euro’s.)
If a commodity like oil is only traded in your currency, all other countries which need that commodity need to have your currency. How do they get it? By selling stuff to your country, which will only buy it if it’s cheap enough. So basically that country needs to produce cars, refrigerators and so on to get dollars, to be able to buy oil. The result is that every central bank wants to trade it’s own currency, to the currency of the US. The US on the other hand just needs to print paper to get a hold on those goods, and to be able to buy oil. In that sense, it has a double advantage compared to every other country in the world. This is what makes the US so dominant in the world. If all oil producing countries would decide they’d start selling their oil in Yuan, US hegemony is over, because all comodities it needs (both raw commodities like oil and consumer commodities) will rise in price so the real income of every American will go down. Almost the entire US population suddenly won’t be able to afford the lifestyle they’ve known before, and the US governement wouldn’t be able to afford it’s military presence in the rest of the world. It would impose an immediate societal and military collapse.
Not sure. what u/Straight_Depth says is one of the explanations, another one that’s being said is that it was a depot with confiscated weapons and explosives. I’ve also read that at first a container containing fireworks caught fire. I guess we’ll know in the next couple of days.
Not an expert on all of them, but Belarus has a very equal distribution of wealth. If you’re intereted: this is a good academic study on the country: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268283872_Political_Economy_of_Modern_Belarus_Going_Against_Mainstream#read