The British have a lesson to teach.

Zeihan ignores the reason the British hung on as long as they did. Deep water navigation was backed up by the electric telegraph in the 19th Century. The British monopolized the undersea cable part of that one, so that weather reporting and fat overseas news they could monopolize, too. It gave them a business advantage as to prediction of crop futures and insurance risks. Not until the Americans took it away from them in the Pacific, developed their own global weather service, distributed radio, and broke the British information monopoly and hence predictive advantage, could a rival power destroy their so-called empire.

The British, psychologically, seemed to have not recovered from that event. There is a lesson for the Americans in that history.

BTW; the lesson is that if you are stupid, you will be punished. It does not matter which nation you are.

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