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That reminds me of a story.
One that can now be told. And action taken.
Now that Esme and I are safely out of the Middle East for good, there is a story from a while back I have been planning to write. It’s going to be scathing, derogatory, call spades ‘fucking shovels’, and name names.
It is about the time I was arrested on bullshit, trumped-up civil charges and thrown into a Muscat Jail until I could come up with 10,000 Omani Rials (US$26,000) to purchase my freedom.
In the 20 or so years my family and I lived and worked in the Sultanate, most were responsible for good memories.
This one event, late in our tenure in Oman, soured it so thoroughly I can recommend Oman to no one wanting to visit the Middle East; much like disrecommending the Middle East for anything travel related. Sure there’s the Little Switzerland in Musandam to the north and the banana groves and frankincense trees in Shalala to the south; but everywhere in Oman you will have to deal with the sad-sacks, flubadubs and third rate hobbyists known as the ROP and the ones pulling their strings, the Diwan of the High Court.
The ROP is shorthand for Royal Omani Police. Or ‘Royal Ostrich Pluckers’ if you’re feeling chipper or the ‘Royally Officious Pricks’ if you’re feeling normal.
They are the most ignorant, ill-informed, indolent group of idiots with which you’ll be forced to tolerate.
Fully composed of Omani locals, it is a ringing testament to the efficacy of the country’s all-encompassing “Omanization” program.
It’s like the flipside of equal employment here in the states.
Here not only do they ‘legally’ discriminate on race, creed, and color; they don’t discriminate on ability.
Because they wouldn’t know the process of law, civil rights, or jurisprudence if it walked up to them, shook their hand, and pissed all over their shoes.
So, before we begin, let me note that this opus will be a wee bit exposition-heavy. I need to set the scene as I realize most of my readers will either think I’m making all this up out of whole cloth or be convinced it’s some sort of Doc Rocknocker potato-juice and citrus inspired fever dream.
I wish.
This is the story as it happened, in all its inglorious bastardry. Some might think its hyperbole, but I assure you, this is how it went down…
When my youngest daughter graduated from the American School in Muscat, Esme and I decided that since things were at a crossroads, both for my career and the oil industry. It was time to take a furlough, travel back to the states and get a little body work done. I was needing a valve job as I had a congenital heart murmur. It hadn’t been a problem until my later 50’s, but was now kicking up and giving me fits.
As in, it leaked. Therefore my heart was working overtime pushing bodily hemorrhagic hydraulic fluid around my not inconsiderable physique. I was down to around 15% efficiency on the outstroke when I was checked into a local teaching hospital located in FIB-land; that benighted state immediately south of Baja Canada.
It was there instead of the fine medical facilities of Baja Canada as Daughter #1 was studying for her DVM at a main FIB-land campus. Besides, I found out that I’d been having several semi-painless heart attacks, or ‘events’, as my cardiologist termed them, and was in no shape to travel.
This was just after flying some 17,500 Km from the Middle East.
Go figure.
I was slated to undergo a double-bypass and valve job, utilizing a bovine valve as I was too large for a typical human cadaver or porcine valve. However I needed 3 months to get back into fine fighting form before I could handle the open-heart surgery.
This was going to be a very long three months, indeed.
Now, exposition time.
In our stay in Muscat for the 18 previous years, we’ve had our identities stolen a total of three times. Someone, as it was discovered, inside Bank Muscat was taking and selling credit card, bank account, and associated financial information. These were being sold to villains, thieves, knee-walking turkeys, and other forms of marchers in the constant parade of human debris globally.
I’d get notifications of plane tickets being charged to my account in Lagos, mattresses and bedding in Mexico City, and meals and groceries in Buenos Aires.
All with the same timestamp.
Either I was the Flash or my credit info had been, if you’ll pardon the pun, swiped again.
I had to show up in Ruwi, the municipal borough south of Muscat. Then go to the Bank Muscat headquarters with my passport and prove that I wasn’t simultaneously in Nigeria, Mexico, and Argentina.
Thereupon, I’d sit with a yellow marker, a straightedge, and a sour countenance.
I was marking those entries that were not legitimate. I used a lot of yellow marker back in those days. It cost the bank hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Omani Rials in write-downs.
Yet, it happened again about a year later, and again just before we left the Sultanate for our medical sabbatical.
It was this last one that was the catalyst for this entry.
I did the needful, sat with the head of credit fraud, marked out the illegitimate purchases, this time from Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Cape Town, and Bogotá. I produced my passport proving I wasn’t in Portugal, Russia, South Africa and Colombia yesterday; the date of all the false purchases.
True, there were about OR 1,500 in legitimate charges, for which we paid and for which I had receipts.
Well, this is where things went all sideways.
We left the Sultanate and I was getting back in shape for open-heart surgery. Esme and our Daughters were out shopping; but oddly enough they never used the Bank Muscat card as I had closed the account and destroyed the card.
Or so I had thought.
Anyways, ninety days later, my surgery went off without a hitch. I was, in fact, out on the street a scant six days after my new implant; a new hospital record. They also fitted me for a pacemaker and all the associated wiring, as typically people with new valves after some number of years invariably require a ticker-timer.
Science, people. It’s causality and correlation in this case.
So, I have about 50 feet of wire and a case for a pacemaker implanted in my chest. It’s a special case, one that’s intrinsically safe as I mentioned that I work with a lot of high energy Radio Frequency and high energy explosives. Since I don’t have the actual ticker-timer implanted yet, and hopefully never will, they’ve made notes to use a special type of shielded pacemaker unit inside the intrinsically safe case.
It would be, what we in the industry call a ‘bad thing’ to have a pacemaker operating at the same frequency as a remote radio-controlled detonator. They will take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Nice, guys. Thanks.
So, I’m recovering at the hotel when Esme walks in after a lunch and shopping, looking like white death. Her back hurts, like a case of very severe indigestion or esophagitis, but it always responds to my ministrations and Rolfing back rubs.
Rolfing as in massage and not ‘Rolling on the Floor - Laughing’.
Until one fateful Tuesday.
Esme and Daughter #1 come home early as Esme is in obvious distress. Daughter #1 insists we take her to the very same institution from where I just graduated Magna cum laude, new-valve division.
Es demurs, claims it’s ‘just indigestion’, and refuses to go.
She groused all the way there in the backseat of my daughter’s car.
Into the Emergency Room, they get her vitals and the ER doc pulls me aside to tell me my beloved darling wife is currently having a ‘cardiac event’ and needs immediate testing and palliative medication.
“So, Herr Medico”, I say, “I may just be a Rock Doc, but you’re telling me my darling wife is having a heart attack right now?”
“In a word: yes”, he replies.
“Then what the fuck you doing out here? Get in there and fix her immediately!” I shouted.
He shook his head in agreement, called for a ‘crash cart’, and went to work immediately.
In the next eight hours; Esme, my darling wife, experienced at least six more semi-pain-free ‘cardiac events’, and actually ‘coded’ twice during the night.
That’s right. Esme, my darling wife of 39 years, ‘died’ twice during the night while the medical team paused for her test results.
She was scheduled for immediate bypass surgery in the morning. Daughters #1 and #2 were there for literal moral, emotional, and physical support.
Remember, I’m only three weeks clear of open-heart surgery myself; and it’s a good thing my eldest is used to dealing with large animals. She hip-blocked and slammed me into the sideboards when I nearly went unconscious when I heard that Esme had already been wheeled into the surgical theater.
After some O2, I was fine.
Physically.
Mentally and emotionally, I was a fucking train wreck.
Esme ‘coded’ three more times on the surgical table. Each time through, they brought her back with science, pharmaceuticals, and their skills.
Pentothal be praised.
After her surgery, I was taken back to the hotel buoyed by the cardiologist’s note that she was in fine form now after her extensive triple bypass surgery. No more coding, but her blood chemistry was a mess, as well you can expect. They were on it; and the overall prognosis was good to great.
I was greatly relieved. I sauntered back to the hotel, killed a short of Wild Turkey 101 Rye and slept the best I’ve snoozed since this whole tribulation commenced.
I recovered from my double-bypass and valve job in six days. Esme was finally released from the hospital a full twenty-two days since she first had ‘died’. We had some serious downtime coming to convalesce and recover. Our plans for a triumphant recent return to the Sultanate had been scuppered.
So, we lived the life of native FIB-landers for a while.
I created my own consulting business, one I could run from our apartment. I needed both the diversion and income.
Ragin’ Diplodocus Oil and Gas did just fine doing due diligence for small operators in the Illinois Basin. I wrote many, many procedural documents for these small operators to maximize their returns during this latest downturn in oil prices and how to best prepare for when they rise again.
As they always do.
Time wore on. Many trips back to the hospital to visit medicos and have them take blood, gesture hypnotically, and divine our future based on the numbers being returned from the testing facilities.
Things were moving along positively, and we began to think of our previous plans and began to think about heading back to the Middle East to finish up a stellar career. It was a good base to be from.
I received a call from a service company I did an enormous amount of business with when we were there.
They need an Expat Exploration manager.
Was I interested?
Yes, I was.
So a deal was made in Denmark, on that dark and stormy day.
We OK’ed the agreement after a short Scandinavian holiday that was eventually called on count of rain.
We returned to Muscat, in the Sultanate of Oman and spent 2 months in a hotel while we tried to find appropriate digs for us in which to live. Not too far from the mountains, not too close to swarms of people.
We ended up with a gnarly 6 bedroom villa in Bousher Heights near the mountains in southwest Muscat. Had an Omani landlord who was the finest kind. He was the type of laid-back, friendly, gregarious landlord everyone yearns for and rarely finds.
I made the mistake of thinking: “Great googly-moogly. This is certainly working out well.”
Until a month into our sojourn, I went to take out a bit of weekend cash and noted our Bank Dhofar account had been drained.
Emptied.
Cleaned out.
Exhausted of all life support.
Of course, the first thing you do is panic. Then you call the wife.
“Esme? What did you buy now? Our balance at the bank is 0.000!” I asked.
“Nothing.” She said, “Must be a bank error.”
“Great”, I replied, expressed my love for her and announced I’d get to the bottom of this mess.
I tooled over to Bank Dhofar and it took almost an hour to find a person with high enough clearance and adequate English to tell me that yes my account had been siphoned. But he couldn’t tell me by whom or for what.
He did note eventually that it was due to an old warrant against me; created, and passed while Esme and I were in the US recovering from heart surgery.
After a lot of knees-bent-running-about-advancing-behavior, and really bad noise, I discovered that Bank Muscat never cleared my old account as they said they would. They were holding my present bank account hostage until all 55,000 OR (US$156,000.00) was repaid.
They swore out a warrant for my arrest while we were in the US and not physically in Oman.
It was all in Arabic, which I do not read, speak nor give the tiniest shit about. It went through the local Arabic newspapers, again, while Es and I were in the states, and was passed to the local judicial Diwan where it was rubber-stamped as valid.
Now, since it was rubber-stamped as valid by the local Diwan; that meant I had no recourse. No filing for appeal. No rights, as I was just an Expat. And no recourse other than to pay the money. I instantly contacted the US Embassy, and they proved to be, as usual, totally buttfuckingly useless.
I had a bench warrant issued for my immediate arrest and they attached my salary, 100% of it, until I had paid back Bank Muscat what they claimed I owed. No matter how trumped-up, fallacious, and ridiculous the whole scenario was.
So, I immediately opened a new account at a different bank and had my paycheck shipped there monthly. The instant it hit the new bank, I ran to an ATM and drained the account before these bastards could glom onto it.
I also contacted Bank Muscat to go over this now 4-year old banking bullshit and have them provide evidence that I swindled them rather than the other way around.
We met with Bank Muscat meatheaded banking minions several times, and appeared to be making some very slow headway. I provided vouchers, check stubs, electronic receipts, and other forms of evidence that I had paid off my account. We closed the account before we left for the US and our tune-ups. I even provided pictorial evidence that I had sat with the VP of services from Bank Muscat highlighting fraudulent charges.
“Smile, Dickweed.”
It was proceeding, albeit very slowly. They had to find these records of ancient history.
Then they had to go with their ‘forensic bankers’, and since it was the Middle East, it went very slowly because of Ramadan, Eid, and all that related Islamic religious bullshittery.
Weeks dragged into months. I hit our new bank every month the minute my phone doinked that a deposit had been made of my salary. The powers that be were still keeping tabs on my old, now inactive, Bank Dhofar account and never twigged to the fact that I had a new account with a new and different bank.
They’re kind of stupid that way.
Then, one bright Monday night, out of the blue, I receive a phone call.
“Dr. Rocknocker?” the person on the other end of the phone asked.
“Yes?” I replied.
“This is Sgt. Total al-Fuckhead from the ROP. We need for you to drive to the ROP police station in Khuwair immediately. There are a few things that need explaining.”
This had all the earmarks of a set-up. A well-known scam in this part of the world where the local scum and villainy would call claiming to be police and when you arrive, they’d club and rob you blind.
“So sorry, Sgt. Al-Fuckhead”, I replied, “But I don’t know where the Khuwair ROP station is. We’re new here.”
They lie.
I lie.
“OK, then”, he agrees, “Meet us at the Starbucks coffee outlet on the Beach road.”
“So sorry, Sgt. Al-Fuckhead”, I replied, “But my wife has the car and is at a teacher’s meeting. We can’t get a cab out here because we’re too far off the grid.”
“Right”, he replies, “We’ll send a car to your location then.”
After 6 hours, and midnight, I retired wondering what the fuck to expect the next day at work, since no one from the ROP managed to arrive at our villa that evening.
Toddling into work the next day it was business as usual. Since I began my day at 0500 so I could personally talk with clients. Since the rest of the benighted Arab world doesn’t begin to ‘work’ until near 1000 hours, I had several hours of uninterrupted productivity.
Until 1030; when minions of the ROP ‘Special Services’ showed up demanding my extradition.
There were two fatback grossero muppets in faded, stained dishdashas and a couple of plain clothes types demanding to know where I was. Plus ‘just who I thought I was to avoid ‘facing my charges’’.
Having enough of this crap, I walked out of my office and announced, in a loud, steady voice, that: “It was I. Dr. Rocknocker, The Motherfucking Pro from Dover” and if they had some sort of beef, they could damn well take it up with me and quit trying to browbeat the poor, terrified receptionist.
“You will come with us, immediately”, one of the grosseros demanded.
“No, I don’t think so”, I replied, “Until you explain what’s all this then and I have time to call my embassy to inform them of Omani persecution of American Nationals who are legally working in this ignorant fucking country.”
Evidently, most people they deal with are so cowed by this announcement that the ROP is here to take them away, they fold like a soggy house of cards.
In the sand.
During high tide.
I’m not “most people”. I’m a goddamned overqualified ugly American and I know my rights.
I call the American Embassy and inform them that I’m being taken, quite against my will and on deceptive and bogus charges to Khuwair Police Station for “questioning”. I demand to meet a member of the US Embassy there, as is part of my rights, before I acquiesce and make these assholes drag me physically off to the borstal.
This gave the local federales pause. They’ve never dealt before with such a recalcitrant, intractable, large, annoyed, and legally knowledgeable person before.
But, since they came all the way down here and wouldn’t leave without either a prince’s ransom or my hide, I decided I needed a day off and said that I’d get my hat and we’d be off.
It was all laughs and chuckles on the 20 minute ride to the hoosegow/police station.
“Oh, we just need to clear up a few details. We’ll have you back to work in time for lunch”, one of the ROP’s finest lied.
Yeah. Right. Pull the other one…
But first, we’ll need your passport, residence card, Omani ID and other forms of personal identification.
“Oh, bother”, I replied, “Seems I left my passport, ID and Residence card home. What a shame.”
They didn’t ask for my GSM though.
I saw this one coming a mile away. Stripped of all identification, you’re so much easier to lose in the infernal internal machinations of the local constabulary. One has been known to be ‘lost’ this way for weeks.
“Oh”, was the dejected response.
So, we arrive at the police station/jail and I was told to warm a seat out in the waiting area.
It was 135⁰ F, no air conditioning, no water, no coffee, no fan, nothing.
Just a bare bench and a likewise seated group of mother-killers and father-rapers waiting on the Group W bench for their chance to decry their innocence to ignorant, indolent and deaf ROP ears.
I was dressed in business casual: long chinos, 16 EEE Cat work boots (non-steel toe), Polo shirt and invariable Black Stetson.
After a half hour of this, I wasn’t just hot, I was approaching meltdown; both physically and mentally.
Besides, the others on the Group W bench probably hadn’t had their annual baths yet this year.
I get up and pound on the door.
No answer.
I pound harder, wearing my usual black leather gloves which semi-disguises my work-related physical deformity.
A small peek-a-boo window opens and some braindead functionary asks in Arabic “What?”
“Get us some water, cold water in here if you don’t want to explain some heat prostration deaths. And find a fucking fan, it’s blistering in here.” I growl.
“ماذا؟ [madha?] [What?] was the reply.
"رئيسك. الآن!" ["ryiysik alana!"] or “Your boss. NOW!” was my reply.
OK, yes. I do know a little Arabic.
He saw I was sweating profusely and damned intercoursingly angry.
He fetched the Sergeant.
“You. Doofuck. English?” I enquired.
“Yes.” Was his reply.
“I’ll bet”, I mused as he totally missed my little radioactive-tracer-in-the-conversation pejorative.
Continuing.
“OK. Water, bathroom facilities, and a fan or air conditioning for me and my new noisome acquaintances. We don’t want an unfortunate International Incident here now, do we?” I demanded.
“You the American?” he asks.
“Not sure if I’m “The American”, but I am “An American”. The one who’s getting more and more pissed off the longer this charade continues.” I reply.
“Give me your wrists.” He demands.
“Kind of difficult. I’m using them at present and they’re still attached.” I replied.
He produced a zip tie and I get the general idea.
“Arms behind your back.” He commands.
“OK, Doofuck. By your command.”
I comply, and my wrists are now some 15 or 16 inches apart to the rear.
“Sorry, mate. Too much time at the gym. I can’t get them any closer. Considerable pectorali and deltoidae, don’t you know.”
For those late or new to the show, I’m a rather large specimen of the Genus Homo (Hush, you.).
As well as ethanol-fueled, but that’s for a later time.
Seriously, I couldn’t get my wrists much closer without serious effort, inconvenience, or come-along.
“Out front.” He commands as he zip ties my wrists together.
He orders me out the door. I’m to go to the Captain’s office and wait there. The rest of the guys on the Group W bench could all go hang evidently.
By the time we arrived at the empty Captain’s office, I was told to sit here and not move.
“OK”, I replied, “You want thes back then?” as I hand him the easily escapable Zip ties.
He was confounded.
It’s so laughably easy to get out of Zip-tie cuffs, it’s not even worth a google search. He harrumphs, and slaps me in irons: his personal pair of sturdy steel, US-made handcuffs.
“There. Now, sit. I will bring water”, he says brusquely as he exits the room with a slam of the door.
“Oot. Greet.” I reply in fluent gibberish.
Normally, it’s not too easy to get out of steel handcuffs. But when you’re bereft three fingers on your left hand, its child’s play to slip that one off, ratchet it forward and use the exposed tang to pry open the one on your right wrist.
The Sergeant reappears with some tepid water. I thank him and hand him his handcuffs back.
“How?” he gasps.
To be continued…

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：Elyssa 转载请注明出处
谁有可能成为下一个全球超级大国？

Kind of amazing that the US was barely considered a regional power in the 1800s, and then you had a devastating civil war, and I bet a lot of people wrote off the US by the late 1800s.
神奇的是19世纪的美国仅仅被称之为区域性大国，随后其爆发了毁灭性的内战，到19世纪末期相信许多人都将美国从区域大国的名单上挪除。
But then within a span of 40-50 years (in between the Spanish American War and WW2, essentially), the US became a major global player economically, militarily and politically. I don't think most people in the late 1800s era could have called it.
但仅仅40-50年时间里（确切说来是在美西战争与二战之间），美国一跃成为全球经济、军事与政治的主要参与者。这是大多数身处19世纪末期的人们所无法给出的定义。
So my question is: who's next?
我的问题是：谁将成为下一个（超级大国）？

I'm going to throw some names out here, and maybe someone can chime in and tell me if these are plausible for the next superpower in say the next 25-75 years: India, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, Norway, Iran, Sudan (I know), Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar (yup), Malaysia, Indonesia. And I don't mean a regional power. I mean Global Superpower. Who's plausible?
我会在此罗列一些国家，或许有人能够回答这些国家之中是否有谁有希望在25-75年间成为下一个超级大国：印度、委内瑞拉、巴西、加拿大、挪威、伊朗、苏丹（好吧，我了解）、尼日利亚、澳大利亚、新西兰、泰国、越南、缅甸（是的，就是它）、马来西亚、印度尼西亚。我指的是全球性的超级大国，并非区域性大国。谁有可能？
I mean, a totally legitimate answer would be the US, since we still command a ton of natural resources, and though our demographics aren't great, we have such a head start that we might be able to sustain our lead for quite a long time...I'm just not sure, that's all.
我认为，美国应该是一个勿需质疑的答案，因为我们仍控制着大量自然资源，虽然人口规模不大，但我们已处于有利的开局，而这种优势可能会让我们持续领先很长一段时间……我只是有些不确定，仅此而已。
I know this is a tough question. Hopefully Quora comes through!
我知道这个问题有些难，希望Quora能够给我答案！
译者：答案开始前，先说一下这个提问，在Quora上关于超级大国的提问有很多，"谁会成为下一个？""XXX是/会成为超级大国吗？""如果XXX将成为超级大国为什么XXX不现在就毁了她？"，等等。上面的这条提问已经很早了，大概是2013年提出的，但是关注量很大，一直到最近一两个月都有人回复，所以可以看到一些情况的变化与趋势。 PS. 我会先翻两个赞成票数最高的，然后按照默认顺序从上往下翻（不确定Quora上的回复是怎么排序的，也许是按最新的评论时间来的？）
评论翻译
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：Elyssa 转载请注明出处 论坛地址：http://www.ltaaa.com/bbs/thread-347988-1-1.html
Alex Song, Hedge Fund Analyst （对冲基金分析师） •If you asked people in the 1600s who would be the dominant global power, most would have said Spain. They would have been proven wrong within 100 years. •If you asked people in the late 1800s who would be the dominant global power, most would have said Great Britain: huge empire, coming out of the industrial revolution, huge navy, etc. And they would have been wrong within 50 years. •If you asked people in the 1960s who would be the dominant global power, 50% would have said US, 50% would have said the Soviet Union. Half of those people would have been proven wrong in a short 30 years. •If you asked Americans in the 1980s who would be the dominant global power, I bet 60-70% might have said Japan. They would have been proven wrong in a mere 10-20 years.
• 如果你询问17世纪的人谁会成为主导性的全球超级大国，大多数人会回答西班牙帝国。但100年时间证明了他们的错误。 • 如果你询问19世纪的人，他们会回答大英帝国：（理由是）庞大的帝国与海军，经过了工业革命洗礼，等等。但50年时间证明了他们的错误。 • 如果你询问20世纪60年代的人，50%认为是美国，50%认为是苏联。但短短30年时间证明了上述一半的人的错误。 • 如果你询问20世纪80年代的美国人，我敢打赌60%-70%认为是日本。结果仅仅10-20年这个答案就被推翻了。
Shit happens. And it happens quickly. And that pace has only picked up as globalization takes hold. Maybe it's just me, but I just think that there's a lot of group-think right now and people by nature assume the US or China is going to dominate / continue dominating. And while that may ultimately prove to be correct, I think we should at least try to challenge that assertion. The US is in a very similar situation as Great Britain at the height of the industrial revolution. And this too shall pass. Maybe in 20 years. Maybe in 200.
倒霉事常有，通常来得挺快，并且随着进一步全球化，发生的速度也会加快。也许只我这么觉得，我认为现在有很多人自然地认定美国或中国会持续主导/将要主导（全球）。这也许会成为事实，但我想我们至少应该尝试挑战下这种论断。美国正处在一个同工业革命巅峰时代的大英帝国非常类似的情况之下，它也终将会衰落，也许20年后，也许200年后。
As an investor, I like to think in terms of odds. So here's a mental exercise:
作为一个投资人，我喜欢用概率思考。下面是一个脑力练习题：

Just my two cents. A lot can happen in 25 years.
只是一家之言。25年的时间可能会发生很多变化。
Balaji Viswanathan, History buff. （历史迷） There is no other superpower in the vicinity.
美国之外没有超级大国。
While US influence over the rest of the world is likely to decrease, there is no one else to take up its seat for the foreseeable future. US became a superpower not just because of its economic power. The economy was a part of the puzzle. But, beyond the size of the economy US has 5 key things:
美国对世界其他地区的影响力将会下降，但在可预见的未来将不会有其他国家接过美国的位置。美国成为超级大国并不仅仅是因为它的经济实力。经济实力只是这个谜底的一部分，除此之外，有5大关键因素：
1.Finance. US markets are much more open and transparent than most markets in the world. 2.Entertainment & Information. US brands (from Hollywood studios to Apple, CNN, Google, Microsoft, Youtube,Nike) shape your entertainment/information needs. 3.Defense. Spends more than the rest of the world put together. 4.Education. 70 of world's top 100 universities are in the US. Googles and Apples don't come out of a vacuum. Whether it is a moon landing or Internet or advanced defense warfare, you need education superiority. US is best positioned for an Information-era warfare (hosting most of the major information companies). 5.Energy. The shale has given it an energy security that no other major economy has. China has to rely on oil passing through two most dangerous pirate zones - Horn of Africa and Straits of Malacca.

1. 金融。美国市场的开放性与透明性远超世界其他国家。 2. 娱乐与信息产业。美国品牌（从好莱坞到苹果、CNN、谷歌、微软、Youtube、耐克）塑造了你的娱乐与信息需求。
2. 国防。国防支出比全世界其他国家加起来还多。 4. 教育。世界排名前100的顶级大学中有70所在美国。谷歌和苹果并非凭空出现。而无论是登月、网络还是先进的国防战争，都需要教育优势。在信息化战争时代，美国已经有了完美的定位（拥有最多的全球主要信息公司）。 5. 能源。页岩给了美国其他主要经济体所没有的能源安全性。中国所依赖的石油通道则需要穿过两个最危险的海盗区域——非洲之角与马六甲海峡。

At its height, Japan matched the US when it came to economic prowess, but it was never a superpower. US has plenty of softpower that no other major economy has now.
日本在其鼎盛时期，也曾拥有媲美美国的经济实力，但它从来不是一个超级大国。美国现在拥有远超其他主要经济体的软实力。
译者：以下是该楼主的更新部分，应该是在这楼的评论中掐了半天，所以楼主直接上更新了。
1.Cultural reach. Nations exert power over others through culture. From Hollywood to sitcoms, McDonalds to Coca Cola, Apple to Gap, P&G to Google, US exerts an enormous amount of softpower over the world through its brands & broadcasting. These cultural artifacts would make a kid in Kuala Lampur or Kingshasa relate more with US cities than say Chengdu. Tell me how many Chinese brands you crave or how many Chinese TV shows you watch.
1. 文化输出。国家运用文化对他国施加影响。从好莱坞到情景剧，麦当劳到可口可乐，苹果到Gap，宝洁到谷歌，美国通过这些品牌与节目播送对全世界输出了巨大的软实力。这些文化产品能够让远在吉隆坡或者金沙萨（译者：Kinshasa，刚果首都）的孩子轻易联想到美国城市，而非成都。告诉我有多少中国品牌是你想要的，又有多少中国电视节目是你在看的。
2.Cultural infusion. US is far more open to immigration and is a thriving melting pot of multiple cultures. Japan never had that. USSR never had that. China will never have that. The cultural infusion is necessary to keep the wheels of innovation churning. In the 30s and 40s, Jewish immigrants kept the lights in its laboratories. Now, the Russian, Chinese and Indian kids play a big role in the valley. A monocultural Japan & Germany faltered at the start of the information era, while US breezed through - part of it helped by immigrants such as Sergey Brin and Vinod Khosla. China is unlikely to have that advantage.
2. 文化输入。美国对移民更加的开放，是一个繁荣的多文化大熔炉。日本从来不是。苏联从来不是。中国也从来不是。文化输入对保持创新之轮持续转动是必要的。上世纪三四十年代，犹太移民在实验室中彻夜奋战，如今俄罗斯、中国和印度孩子在硅谷中占有一席之地。单一文化的日本和德国在信息时代伊始只能蹒跚前行，而美国早已轻松通过——其中部分得益于如谢尔盖•布林和维诺德•科斯拉这样的移民。中国则不太可能有此种优势。
3.Financial center. US has the democracy and transparency that is essential for the markets. On a given day, you are more likely to trust the NYSE than say SSE (Shanghai). Its bond and stock markets evolved through a century of experiments (in regulation, research and customer education).
3. 金融中心。美国拥有市场所必需的民主性与透明性。你将更倾向于相信纽交所而非上交所。因为它的债券与股票市场已经过一个世纪的实践的演化（规章制度、研究分析与客户教育方面）。
4.Speaking the lingua franca. US speaks the language of the world's educated. Through a combination of reasons (from the extent of the British Empire to Hollywood) English has firmly become the center of the educated world. Mandarin is unlikely to be adopted (given how dissimilar it is to most other languages) in huge numbers by people outside China.
4. 通用语的运用。美国使用的语言全球都在教授。通过一系列的原因（从大英帝国地域范畴到好莱坞的延伸），英语已经稳定地演变成文明世界的中心。普通话则不大可能被大多数中国之外的人所采用（因其与大多数语言的差异性）。
5.Defense spending. It would take a really long time for China to ramp up its defense spending or ally relationships anywhere close to what US has now.
5. 国防支出。中国想要赶上美国现有的国防支出与同盟关系还需要很长一段时间。
6.Historical baggage. Through its long history, China carries a huge historical baggage. Its aggressive posturing is feared more than we fear the US. A kid in Korea, Vietnam, Japan or India is more likely to accept an American military presence in their area than a Chinese one.
6. 历史的包袱。尽管中国有悠久的历史，但它同时背负了一个巨大的历史包袱，其展现出的激进姿态比之美国更让人担心。韩国、越南、日本或印度的孩子更倾向于接受美国驻军国内而非中国。
I will not cover the bigger issue (ageing China) that has been covered already. US will have a much younger population than China in the next 3 decades.
我就不接着论述上面已经提及的一个重要问题（老龄化中国）。在未来30年中，美国将拥有更年轻的人口结构。
In short, China doesn't have most of the advantages that US had in becoming a superpower. China will be a great power, but will never be able to match the US at its heights. More likely, there will not be a superpower in the foreseeable future.
总而言之，中国没有美国曾拥有过的能够发展成为超级大国的巨大优势。中国会成为一个大国，但它永远无法与美国的巅峰时期抗衡。更加可能的结果是，在可预知的未来将不会出现任何超级大国。
US Risks: 1.The fiscal health of local governments (such as Detroit and California) is in a bad state. 2.There is no visible solution being done for the exploding healthcare costs. 3.Education costs are pricing out a sizable chunk of students and putting a big debt burden on the rest.
美国的危机： 1. 地方政府的财务健康问题十分糟糕（例如底特律与加州）。 2. 对于爆发的医疗费用问题，目前还没有任何明显的解决办法。 3. 教育成本则是选出相当一部分学生进行定价，然后把高昂的负债加诸在剩下的人身上。
These 3 are huge problems and I don't see easy solutions. That said, in its 230+ year history, US has gone through many crisis situations and have solved its problems through innovation and entrepreneurship.
上述3个大问题并没有轻松的解决方案。即便如此，在它230多年的历史中，美国曾渡过许多的危机，并通过革新与创业解决了自身的问题。
Let us consider other potential targets:
再来看看其他的潜在目标：
1.Russia. Except for energy & engineering, it doesn't have a lot of strengths (in economy, finance, education, technology, entertainment or political structure) to take it to great heights. 2.India. Too poor. It will take India decades to get firmly into middle income, leave alone high income. Historically, India had little interest in becoming a superpower. Even at its heights, its empires usually kept away from invasions of the kind we know now. 3.Japan, Europe. Rapidly ageing. 4.Southeast Asia. In population, defense, economy, they are all too small. 5.Australia. Small, isolated, limited defense spending.
1. 俄罗斯。除了能源与工程学，它并没有太多优势（经济、金融、教育、科技、娱乐与政治结构）能使其登顶。 2. 印度。太穷。印度还需要几十年才能达到中等收入，至于高等收入还很远。回顾历史，印度几乎没有兴趣想要成为超级大国。在其巅峰时期，其帝国也通常远离我们现在所谓的入侵。 3. 日本，欧洲。人口快速老龄化。 4. 东南亚。在人口、国防、经济方面，规模太小。 5. 澳大利亚。国家小、孤立（于其他大陆）、国防开支有限。
People try to write off US prematurely. The next war will be fought over information/communication superiority. US has the base for it as it controls a big chunk of world's information. NSA's PRISM is just a frightening reminder of the advantage US has. Companies that control world's information such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft are still domiciled in the US and plenty more are coming every day (backed by the world's most advanced Universities). So, don't go about predicting the end of the American superpower status anytime soon.
人们过早的唱衰美国。未来战争将是争夺信息/通讯优势的战争。美国在此有坚实的基础，它控制了全球大部分信息。国安局的棱镜计划则是一个关于美国此种优势的骇人提示。掌控信息世界的谷歌、Twitter、脸书、苹果、雅虎与微软等公司均是注册于美国，并且每天还有大量（由世界顶级名校支持的）新公司诞生。所以，现在预测美国超级大国地位的终结还为时过早。
Samuel Byers, Student, History & PoliSci 历史与政治学专业学生 100 upvotes by I'm going to challenge your assumption that people in the late 1800's had written off the United States as a Great Power:
首先，关于你提出的"19世纪人们将美国自大国名单中挪除"的假设，我表示质疑。
As far back as the 1820's, the ever-prescient Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his landmark work Democracy in America that Russia and the United States were destined by virtue of geography and constitution to each "hold in their hands the fate of half the world."
早自1820年，极富有先知性的亚历克西斯•德•托克维尔就曾在他的代表作《论美国的民主》中提及，俄罗斯与美国基于地理与制度因素将注定"掌控半个世界的命运"。
The growing power of the United States was certainly on the minds of Europe throughout the 19th century. The United States possessed a large (and growing) population, vast tracts of land, and immense natural resources as well as being one of the first countries in which industrialization really "took off" after Great Britain. To pretend that the world was oblivious to or ignored these facts and their implications (that the United States would eventually become one of the foremost powers of the world) is naïve.
对于美国的崛起，欧洲是心中有数的。美国彼时拥有巨大的（增长的）人口，广袤的土地与丰富的自然资源，同时它也是继大英帝国之后第一个工业化并成功"腾飞"的国家。在此假设全世界会忽略掉上述事实与它所带来的影响（美国终将成为全世界最重要的大国之一），也太天真了。
Many people in Europe and her capitals recognized this coming trend. The British indeed recognized their own relative decline at the turn of the 20th century and began to reconfigure their position in the world based on alliances, rather than their own sheer power. Part of this program was a reduction in Royal Navy presence around the globe in order to offset the rise of the German Imperial Navy. To keep order in the sea lanes and protect colonies across the world, the British government aligned itself with Imperial Japan and the United States (two up-and-coming Great Powers who had not played the game of international politics before that) so that at least within its alliance structure it could maintain something of a presence across the globe. (The above paragraph is all a vast simplification of what actually happened, but it serves the purpose of illustrating that the British understood the Americans' potential.)
许多欧洲人都看到了这个即将到来的发展趋势。英国意识到了20世纪初期自身的衰落，它开始在联盟基础上重新调整他们的位置，不再专注自身的绝对权力。计划的一部分是减少英国皇家海军在全球的存在，以此消除德意志帝国海军崛起带来的影响。为维持海上通道的秩序与保护全球殖民地，英国政府与日本帝国与美国（对国际政治完全陌生的2位崭露头角的新生大国）结盟，确保其能至少在联盟基础上维持全球存在地位。（上述是关于这段历史的简要说明，目的在于阐明当时英国是认可美国的发展潜力的。）
To more directly answer your question:
接下来进入正题：
There will not be another superpower, at least not in the foreseeable future. Superpowers — those Great Powers that possess truly peerless global reach and influence — are an anomaly on the international scene, not the norm. The rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as global superpowers was directly predicated upon the Second World War, which transformed them into the great military and industrial powerhouses of the world, and to a lesser extent on the First World War, which felled the great and ancient empires of Europe, making room for the ascent of the new Superpowers.
未来，至少在可预见的未来，将不会有另一个超级大国出现。在国际舞台上拥有无与伦比的全球影响力的超级大国，是一种异态而非常态。超级大国美国与苏联的出现，是建立在二战后他们成为全球性的军事与工业强国，同时一战后欧洲古老帝国的衰落为新的超级大国的出现挪出空间。
After the Second World War, the United States controlled fully half of the world's productive capacity; half of all of the industrial goods in the world were made in the USA. America had been vaulted into the lead over the states of Europe by virtue of being the only major country on Earth that had not been bombed, shelled, and sacked by the opposing armies of the war. By the same token, the US and the USSR both inherited vast, earth-spanning security responsibilities: partly due to their opposition to one another, partly due to the fact that they were the only states remaining with the resources and the state capacity to do so.
二战后，美国控制了全球一半的产能，一半的工业产品出自美国。美国一跃领先各欧洲国家，原因在于它是彼时全球主要经济体中唯一未被轰炸炮击、被敌军洗劫的国家。出于同样原因，美国与苏联同时承担了庞大的全球安全责任：部分源于彼此的敌对，部分源于或许他们是全球仅剩的有资源与实力承担此责任的国家。
This is the root of the superpower system that dominated the Cold War and has continued to dominate the world since the fall of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the world existed in a state of bipolarity: two Great Powers stood head and shoulders above the rest of the states of the world, who aligned themselves with one or the other in competing blocs. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a state of unipolarity — domination by a single peerless Great Power — prevailed across the earth.
曾经主导过冷战时期并在苏联解体后持续主导全世界的超级大国系统的根源，便在于此。冷战期间，世界存在两极性：两大强权站立于处于竞争集团中的其他国家的头与肩膀之上。苏联解体之后，世界呈现出由一个不可匹敌的大国统治的单级状态。
Rather than another superpower rising to match the United States as the Soviet Union did or filling the void left when the United States declines (as all states eventually do), I would argue that we are poised to reenter a system of multipolarity much like the one that existed in Europe prior to the First World War. I doubt very much that any of the states you mention on your list (or any not mentioned) will have the wherewithal to become globally dominant. Rather, I posit that each will become more or less powerful in its own region and the machinations of international diplomacy will once again return to a state of competition between numerous locally-powerful peers. Certainly there will still be some states who are stronger and some who are not; some states who can project power to other regions and some confined to their own neighborhood, but no longer will we have a system in which one or two powers stands head and shoulders above all the others.
我不赞同会有另一个超级大国崛起如苏联般抗衡美国，或填补美国衰落后的留白（如历史上的其他国家），我认为世界将会趋于重返一战之前的存在于欧洲的多极化体系。我非常怀疑你们名单上提及的（或未提及的）国家有实力成为全球主导者。不如说是，它们会成为或强或弱的区域大国，国际外交策略将重回众多区域力量之间的竞争。确切说来，这些国家之中有强有弱；有些能将力量投射于其他区域，有些只能局限在邻国之间，但我们不会再有能催生出一个或两个立于世界之巅的强权的体系。
William Petroff 94 upvotes So this is a somewhat complex question made more-so by the assumptions and sub-questions in the details section. I've broken my response into two parts; the first addresses the details raised by the OP, the second looks at various countries' prospects. This is a long answer and one that I'm reluctant to try and distill down into a "tl;dr" version, mostly because I'm reluctant to actually spend more time looking at it.
这个问题有点复杂，里面有假设，也有细节方面的子问题。我的回答会分为2部分：首先处理OP给出的细节部分；随后讨论各个国家的前景。这是一个很长的回复，我试着把它提取成"摘要"版本，其实主要是因为我不想再花更多时间来研究它了。
The contextual issues raised in the question:
引述自提问：（译者：引号内容摘自原文）
"Kind of amazing that the US was barely considered a regional power in the 1800s, and then you had a devastating civil war, and I bet a lot of people wrote off the US by the late 1800s. But then within a span of 40-50 years (in between the Spanish American War and WW2, essentially), the US became a major global player economically, militarily and politically. I don't think most people in the late 1800s era could have called it."
This is almost entirely incorrect. By the mid-1800s the United States was almost certainly a regional power, having effectively defeated Mexico with relative ease in the Mexican-American War.[1] And while the Civil War certainly put a damper on the idea first espoused (or, at least, first noticeably espoused) by de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (again, note the early-to-mid-1800s presence of this idea) that the course of the 20th century would be charted, at least in part, by the United States, his was an idea that would see a revival by the 1870s when the United States accounted for nearly a quarter of the world's industrial output.[2] None of this is to say that everyone saw an "American century" coming (in fact, foreign nations didn't tend to actually send ambassadors to the United States until the early 1890s, instead sending lower-ranking ministers), but rather that it wasn't an idea that was altogether uncommon or unimaginable until the the early 1900s.
这个说法完全是错误的。19世纪中期美国毫无疑问是一个区域性大国，它在美墨战争中轻松击败了墨西哥。[1] 德•托克维尔在其《论美国的民主》一书中首先（或者说，第一个广为人知的该观点支持者）提出了观点"20世纪的世界版图将由美国绘制，至少部分由美国绘制"，内战期间这种观点受到了打压；1870年，当美国工业总产出占世界1/4，他提出的观点开始重新流行（再次注意，19世纪初期与中期这种观点已经存在）。[2] 这并不是说，所有人都预见了一个"美国世纪"的到来（事实上，直到1890年其他国家才倾向于向美国派驻大使，而非其他低级别官员），直到20世纪初这种观点才在难以置信的现实中变为事实。
"Cyclical nature of history: does it necessitate a decline of US technical and military dominance...." This part largely becomes a question of semantics. In one sense, the rise of another power necessitates a reduction in an existing power's military dominance, but that might only hold true vis-a-vis that particular country (or a particular region) as it does not necessitate an actual decline in raw power. It's an age old question of relative gains versus absolute gains; yes, the United States my lose power on the relative side, but such a loss doesn't require an actual decline in power.[3]
这个问题更像是一个语义学（译者：逻辑学）的问题。某种意义上来说，一个新势力的崛起必然会削弱现有势力的军事支配地位，但这种情况仅适用于特定的国家（或区域），因为它并不会直接导致原有势力的衰退。这是一个关于相对收益与绝对收益的老问题；当然，美国的相对势力可能会减弱，但这种削弱并不意味着实际力量的减少。[3]
"does it necessitate...an economic decline (following the example of Rome, Spain, Great Britain, Qing China, etc.)?" Again, I'm not sure that it does, especially given the growing interconnectedness of larger economies. And, historically speaking, it once again can become an issue of relative versus absolute gains. For instance, Britain's economy didn't decline when the United States began its rise to prominence as much as it just couldn't realistically make up for the large population difference; there was a relative decline, but no decline in an absolute sense. The nature of the two preceding points is muddied further by the question of America's position in the world in the immediate post-Cold War age; reasonable arguments can (and probably should) be made that the United States was had attained something more than "superpower" status, and that any country's rise need not come at the expense of America's maintenance of a lesser status than it previously enjoyed; in this case, the American "decline" could simply be moving from being a hyperpower to returning to a regular old superpower.
这个问题我还是不太确定，尤其考虑到各大经济体间日益增长的关联度。历史的角度来讲，它又演变成了一个相对与绝对的问题。例如，美国兴起之时英国的经济并没有走下坡，后者只是不能弥补二者间巨大的人口差异（带来的差距）；这是一个相对意义上的衰退，而非绝对意义上的。但在后冷战时代美国的全球地位这个问题上，上面两个问题的实质变得有些模糊；合理的推论可以（也许应该）解释为，美国获得了比"超级大国"地位更多的东西，所以其他国家的崛起并不会以美国现有势力减弱为代价；在这种情况下，美国的"衰退"只会是从超级强国退回到原有的普通超级大国地位。（译者：这段的观点有点绕，不确定是否正确理解了楼主的意思。）
"Demographics (my hunch is that if you consider demographics, you have to write off Russia, China, Japan, and a lot of Western Europe: they just can't win. But countries like Thailand / others in SE Asia might win)" Demographics are certainly important, but becoming less and less so to the point that one should not simply exclude countries from the conversation simply because they have a poor demographic outlook. In highly-developed countries (Western Europe, Japan), technological advancement allows fewer and fewer people to do more and more, whether it's making more products at home or doing more damage on the battlefield.[4] Resource-laden countries can also have a particular advantage depending on what their resource is; Russia's energy reserves and China's massive workforce each come with their own benefits that can offset unfavorable demographics. The point is that favorable demographics don't make up for poor underlying fundamentals in the way that good fundamentals can make up for unfavorable demographics.
人口当然重要，但它的重要性在持续降低，所以我们不能简单地因为这些国家的人口前景不理想就将之从名单中排除。在高度发达的国家如西欧与日本，科技的进步允许更少的人承担更多的事，无论是在国内的产品生产还是战场上的减损方面。[4] 资源富有的国家也会因他们所拥有的资源种类获得特定的优势；俄罗斯的能源储备与中国的巨大人口基数，都可以抵消这些不利的人口统计数据。关键在于，好的基本面能弥补不利的人口数据的不足，但有利的人口数据并不能如前者般有效弥补不理想的基本面所带来的不足。
"Natural resources (A nation in Africa / Australia / South America?)" This is a highly contextual assertion. If you're a nation gifted with tremendous energy reserves, it can be helpful because it can give you a carrot that you can use to incentivize certain behaviors and a stick that you can use to coerce intransigent opponents. If you're gifted with basic minerals, it's certainly not a bad thing, but it's not likely to facilitate a rise to great prominence in any significant way. The bigger question is how much does an abundance of natural resources help, as many states with that have a large quantity of natural resources have historically suffered from some form of the "resources curse," inhibiting larger economic growth.[5]
这是一个高语境（译者：背景复杂）的论断。如果一个国家拥有巨量的能源储备，那么是有益的，因为这相当于赋予了你胡萝卜来激励某些行动，大棒来对付强硬的对手。如果是基本的矿产，也不坏，但是不能带给你显著的增长。更重要的问题是，丰富的自然资源能够给予你多少益处？因为前例已表明，许多拥有大量自然资源的国家在历史上一直遭受着"资源诅咒"（译者：一个经济学的理论，多指与矿业资源相关的经济社会问题），阻止了经济的更快增长。
"Is the world different now? Must the rise of the next superpower require military domination and technological domination in the military sense? Or is economic hegemony / soft power enough in today's world?" The world is certainly different, but we're still nowhere near the point where military power is irreverent.[6] At the very least, a superpower needs the ability protect foreign interests and the ability to intervene in conflicts and effectively send belligerents back to their corners. Most countries have foreign interests in today's globalized world and, be they direct interests (think British interests in the Falklands) or indirect interests (think along the lines of the American preference to keep Iraq away from Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm), some sort of armed conflict is almost guaranteed along the way; no matter how far we've come or, perhaps more accurately, how far we think we've come, at some point a superpower is going to have to blow something up. It's not pretty, it's not civilized, but it's the price you pay for prolonging decline and going against the natural ebb and flow of power dynamics. Economic power alone isn't enough because there are often competing economic and philosophical interests involved and economic instruments often don't carry the same sense of finality to a situation that armed aggression does. As for soft power, it's something that takes a very long time to build up. It took the United States nearly a century of innovation and economic expansion, and two world wars to build up enough soft power "capital" to the point where it became a useful tool; nobody else is there yet (and nobody is all that close).
世界当然变得不同了，但军事无用论的观点依然没什么市场。[6] 至少，一个超级大国需要有保护海外利益、介入冲突和有效驱逐敌军的能力。全球化的今天，大多数国家都有海外利益，不管是直接利益（如英国在福克兰群岛）还是间接利益（想想美国在沙漠风暴行动中，优先考量是让伊拉克远离沙特），某种程度上的武装冲突是一种保障；无论我们走了多远，准确说来，是无论我们认为自己走了多远，某种意义上超级大国必然会带来某些冲突。谈不上美好与文明，这是你需要为延缓衰落、对抗权利的自然衰退与转移所支付的代价。只有经济实力是远远不够的，因为经济与哲学的竞争带来的利益互有交融，而经济手段无法取得军事手段所能达到的效果。而软实力，这需要很长时间来建立。就美国而言，花费了近一个世纪进行创新和经济扩张与经历两次世界大战，才最终建立了足够的软实力"资本"，并使之成为一个有效的工具；无人得此桂冠（无人能及）。
So what does all that mean?
而这意味着什么？
"...are plausible for the next superpower in say the next 25-75 years: India, Venezuela, Brazil, Canada, Norway, Iran, Sudan (I know), Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar (yup), Malaysia, Indonesia. And I don't mean a regional power. I mean Global Superpower. Who's plausible? " Taking a look at those countries (and a few others) shows that, like most of the other answers, I'm not particularly high on any of them. That's not to say that I think the era of superpowers is over, or that they are all incapable of achieving superpower status, rather that I don't know that any of them look all that likely to do so, especially within the short time-frame put forth by the question.
看过你给出的（和其他的）名单，同其他回复一样，大多数的国家我并不认可。这并不是说，我认为超级大国时代已经终结，或者他们无法取得超级大国的地位，而是我并不确定，他们其中的某些是否能成功，尤其在提问给出的如此短暂的时间里。
•China: As long as you don't try and project things too far into the future, China has everything going for it; it has the second largest economy, the second most powerful military that has been undertaking a serious effort to modernize, an absolutely massive labor force, and one of the best governments when it comes to policy continuity. Even taking a brief glance down the road shows that China will, by every indication, surpass the United States and have the world's largest economy within a decade. But after that, it starts to get murky, as there are a handful of really big issues. China's aging population is also incredibly male, meaning that there's going to be a major demographic shift over the next few generations that will have major repercussions over a wide range of areas. The educational system is widely perceived to be lacking. The political system has more or less been predicated on the success of the economy; if that goes south, what happens next is anyone's guess (also problematic is the ever-present possibility of a refugee situation in North Korea). It's geopolitical situation isn't exceptional either; none of its neighbors are exceptionally excited about the rise of China, and none of them are incapable of frustrating China.[7]
• 中国：仅从近期来看，中国具备所有要素：第二大经济体，正在全力现代化的第二大军事力量，异常庞大的劳动力，具有政策连贯性的全球最优政府之一。只粗略一瞥也能发现，很多指示表明，在未来10年中国将会超过美国成为世界第一大经济体。随后，源于一系列重大问题，其前景将变得模糊。中国的老龄人口大多为男性，这意味着在接下来几代人中会有一个重大的人口转变，对大部分地区造成深远影响。教育系统也被广泛认为是不足的。对政治体系的预期大多基于经济上的成功；如果经济下跌，那么谁也说不准接下来会发生什么（还有可能演变成难民的朝鲜也是一个悬而未决的问题）。它的地缘政治状况同样不太理想，没有一个邻国对中国的崛起持欢迎态度，但也没有一个有能力抗衡中国。[7]
•India: India has generally been, along with China, one of trendiest countries to bandy about. And on its face, it doesn't look exceptionally ridiculous; it's got the sexy fundamentals of China's economic growth (long-term and relatively stable positive growth, diversity, a burgeoning technology sector, etc) without the worst of China's demographics (an aging population and massive gender gap). It's got a relatively powerful military, nuclear weapons, and it's got the added bonuses of being the world's largest democracy with a massive English-speaking population. On the flip side, economic inequality is on the rise, India ranks 132nd out of 185 on the World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business" report, lacks much immigration (meaning that there isn't any sort of "pull" to make the world's best and brightest come and live there), has historically suffered from an emigration problem and the flight of human capital (the much talked about "brain drain"), has little to no ability to project power, and has historically pursued a somewhat laid-back foreign policy. India also suffers from being in an absolutely horrible geopolitical location, sharing boarders with China and Pakistan, both of which have a preference to see India weaker rather than stronger.
• 印度：同中国一样，印度被普遍认为是最有可能的国家之一。泛泛而论，它并不是一个无稽的选项；它具有中国经济增长所拥有的引人注目的一面（长期的相对稳定的增长，多样性，新兴的科技行业，等等），却没有中国那么糟糕的人口统计数据（人口老龄化与巨大的性别差异比例）。相对强大的军事力量，核武器，此外还有一项红利它是全球最大的民主国家，拥有大量讲英语的人口。然而另一方面，经济不平等在加剧，在世界银行的"全球经商便利度"排名中印度名列185个国家中的第132位，缺少移民（这意味着，缺少吸引世界上最优秀与最聪明的人们到来与定居的牵引力），始终被外迁移民与人力资源的流出（普遍称为"人才流失"）问题所困扰，没什么能力施展军事力量，历来追求懒散的外交政策。同样，印度也位于一个可怕的地缘政治位置，临近中国与巴基斯坦，后两者倾向于一个软弱而非强大的印度。
•Brazil: Much like India, there exists within Brazil serious cultural and socio-economic issues that inhibit the prospects of some sort of ascending geopolitical status; income inequality is a rampant problem, structural issues make it a hard place to do business (ranked 130th out of 185 in the World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business"), and the desire to invest is low. And while it certainly isn't nearly as bad as it used to be, education inequality is still higher than it ought to be. Combine all of that with having to share the hemisphere with the United States seriously diminishes any hope that Brazil could become a superpower.
• 巴西：与印度类似，其国内存在的严重文化与社会经济问题减弱了地缘政治地位提升的前景；收入不平等的问题十分严重，结构性问题使其成为一个经商困难（"全球经商便利度"排名第130位）和投资意愿很低的国家。尽管它已不像过去那么糟糕，但教育不平等的问题依然高于合理范畴。上述原因加上与美国同处西半球，大大地降低了巴西可能成为一个超级大国的希望。
•Russia: The last of the BRICs, Russia has some serious energy reserves and an advanced military-industrial complex. But they also have a population that's been in decline, massive corruption, and are almost entirely at the mercy of the price of their energy products for economic growth.
• 俄罗斯：金砖国家的最后一位，俄罗斯有巨额能源储备和先进的军工复合体。但是他们同样拥有一个下降的人口规模，大规模的腐败，和几乎完全依赖能源产品价格的经济增长。
•Canada, Norway, and Australia: Like Venezuela, these countries all have substantial natural resources. All three are also home to much more diverse economies. That being said, all three are also home to a relatively small population (Canada with about 35 million, Australia with about 23 million, and Norway with about 5 million), putting a rather significant cap on economic growth. All three also fall under of America's security umbrella, meaning that domestic military capabilities are somewhat diminished due to a decreased need.
• 加拿大，挪威和澳大利亚：同委内瑞拉一样，这些国家享有丰富的自然资源。三者都是更加多样化的经济体，换言之，也同时拥有较小的人口规模（加拿大有约3500万人口，澳大利亚2300万，挪威500万），经济增长受到极大限制。三者同时处于美国的安全保护伞之下，这也意味着其国内的军事能力由于需求的减少而有所减弱。
•Western Europe: If the European nations could manage to turn the European Union into a truly supranational unit, it would be likely that we'd see a return to a Euro-centric world. But I'm not holding my breath for that.
• 西欧：如果欧洲国家能够将欧盟转变成一个真正的超国家单位，那么极可能我们会看到一个重返以欧洲中心的世界。但我不认为这有可能会发生。
•Venezuela: Venezuela is, more or less, a one-trick pony. Yeah, the oil reserves are certainly a nice thing to have, but that's about all Venezuela has going for it. It's probably no better than 8th or 9th in terms of military power in the western hemisphere, it's home to a government of questionable stability, and it's way behind Brazil in terms of even becoming a regional power. •Iran: A potentially unstable country that has been caught in a five-way struggle between Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and itself for regional preeminence in an exceptionally unstable region. It's got oil, a lot of oil, but that's not even close to being enough. •Sudan: No, just no. •Nigeria: As bad of a region as Iran may be saddled with, Nigeria might have it worse; with countries like the Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Chad, and the Central African Republic. I could go on, but that would just be beating a dead horse. Superpowers don't tend to emerge out of tremendously unstable areas.[8] •New Zealand: Everyone should enjoy a good laugh every now and then. This one was mine. •The Southeast Asian countries: It's geopolitics 101, they're all too close to each other, all too relatively similar, and all to close to other larger powers (China, Japan, India) to effectively have any hope.
• 委内瑞拉：某种意义上，委内瑞拉仅靠一招走天下。当然，拥有石油储备是件好事，但这也是其所仅有的。在西半球的军事排名中，委内瑞拉最多不过第8位或第9位，它有一个令人疑惑的稳定的政府，远低于巴西有机会成为一个区域性大国。 • 伊朗：一个被卷入以色列、土耳其、沙特和伊拉克五方争端的潜在不稳定国家，其自身所有高度不稳定区域也居于该地区之首。它产石油，大量的石油，但是远不够让其成为超级大国。 • 苏丹：不会，毫无可能性。 • 尼日利亚：与伊朗处于同样糟糕的区域，不过可能更糟：（毗邻）象牙海岸、塞拉利昂、利比里亚、马里、乍得和中非共和国。我可以继续分析，但感觉就跟鞭尸样。超级大国不会产生自有大量不稳定地区的国家。[8] • 新西兰：你是认真地来搞笑的么？ • 东南亚国家：地缘政治因素，它们位置太接近了，其他方面也很相似，和诸如中国、日本、印度等大国太近，很难有希望。
（译者：接下来还有8条注释，略过，因为篇幅太长了……）
Alex Jouravlev, know some History... （对历史有些了解） 49 upvotes I would say US 3.0 (I believe we are dealing with US 2.0 now), and China 3.0 (we are observing China 2.5 at this stage)
我认为是美国3.0时代（我相信我们现在面对的是美国2.0时代），与中国3.0时代（现阶段我们看到的是中国2.5时代）
Various US politicians came up with the famous meme "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.", and then attributed it to Churchill. For the last two decades US were busy getting deeper into debt, disenfranchising large sections of the population and ruining own foreign standing. Expect that to change rather abruptly at some stage - I don't know what will happen, but something will - Americans will re-invent themselves like they did after Pearl Harbor when they created US 2.0. Those who write US off couldn't be more wrong.
许多美国政治家都深具一种著名的文化基因，可以把它归结为丘吉尔所说的"相信美国会做正确的事。当然，是在他们尝尽其它一切可能之后。"过去20年，美国一直热衷于深陷债务，剥夺大多数人民的公*河蟹*，毁掉自己的外交地位。预期这种情况能在某一阶段得到迅速改变——我不清楚情况会如何变化，但变化是一定的——美国人会像珍珠港事件之后建立美国2.0时代一样重新改头换面。这些唱衰美国的人将大错特错。
China is in the process of building what Hitler and Khomeini failed at - a successful Corporatist state. They will succeed, because unlike the other two they are now leading with results rather than ideology, and because their global plans will affect population that is a fraction of their own.
中国目前正在建设一个希特勒与霍梅尼（译者：伊朗什叶派学者，伊朗革命的政治精神领袖，经全民公投成为国家最高领袖，伊朗政治和宗教上的最高职位。）未能成功建设的——成功的社团主义国家。他们会取得成功，因为不同于前两者中国是结果导向主义而非理论导向，同时他们的全球计划影响的也仅为自身人口的一小部分。
It is economic power will also be asymmetric - instead of challenging US free market hegemony, they will use the numbers and the skills in centralized management to try to build a directly managed empire.
中国的经济实力也是非对称的——他们不会挑战美国的自由市场霸权地位，取而代之的是利用处于集权管理的人口基数与技能来建立一个直线管理的帝国。
China will try to establish off-market relationships: say they will pump you oil for 25 years, in exchange you'll receive 20%, they will build so many miles of roads (map attached), a refinery (specs), school buildings (list of locations) etc. Not a single dollar sign.
中国会建立市场以外的关系：例如他们会为你泵油25年，作为交换你会拿到20%产出，他们会修许多英里的公路（附地图），建精炼厂（附说明书），修学校（附场地列表），等等。不用签订任何美元协议。
China 3.0 can offer dictators around the globe what US cannot - wholesale purchase of their countries. China can build a military base, build mines and factories, supply workers and engineers, bring service personnel, and transfer rent to a Swiss bank account. And veto in UN all attempts to address said dictators.
中国3.0时代能够为全球独裁者带来美国所无法提供的——批量购买他们整个国家。中国能够修建军事基地、矿厂、供应工人与工程师、服务人员、并向他们的瑞士银行户头转租金。此外，一票否决所有试图解决所谓独裁者的联合国提案。
In 5 years expect them to have a couple of carriers operational, one child policy softened, and the policy of taking physical possession over resources, first of all in Africa, become obvious to everyone. Expect different types of Chinatowns to appear around the globe: de-facto ex-territorial enclaves that incorporate military bases but also produce most of the GDP of the host countries, as well as supply the security forces with training, ammunition and occasional air strike. I doubt China 3.0 will face-off with US Cold War-style - expect something more subtle and asymmetric.
预计5年时间，他们会拥有几艘运行中的航母，计划生育政策会松绑，资源的实质占有政策出台，最重要的是，在非洲将家喻户晓。全球会有不同类型的唐人街出现：能为东道国贡献大量GDP的结合军事基地的实际域外领地，为安全部队提供训练，投弹以及偶尔的空袭。我怀疑中国3.0时代会与美国保持冷战对峙——用一种更微妙与非对称的方式。

Author's note: this is a very delayed response to a prompt on writingprompts: I think it was something like "The first expedition to Jupiter reveals that instead of being barren it is lush and green." I quickly wrote up a story that is sort of like this but never got around to posting it, and since that prompt must be a year old I guess its kinda too late now...
 
Entry zero
I suppose it all began sometime in the first half of the 21st Century, which decade it was I don't know, maybe the 2020s, 2030s, or even the 2040s... I'm not a bloody historian you know! The point is, sometime in that era, a space probe was launched. I can't for the life of me remember its name, or when exactly it was launched, but it was probably the fault of either the Old Americans or the Europeans, seeing as back then those were the people who were in the business of launching space probes. This probe was sent to the outer solar system to study some trivial and asinine aspect of the planet Jupiter, or maybe it was Jupiter's moons – but I'm pretty sure it was Jupiter, and it proceeded to do so for some number of years until it plunged into the gas giant at the end of its mission. All of this was entirely typical of the bland, uninspiring insipid nonsense of that the old space programs were up to back then. However, by complete coincidence this probe ended up finding something that caught the attention of people who lived outside of the Astronomy department.
 
The probe's data revealed that, there are things inside Jupiter. Great big solid things hundreds of kilometers across were being tossed about in the gas giant's upper atmosphere. Of course, everyone thought they weren't real at first, but no matter how hard people tried they couldn't find any data glitches, broken instruments, misread results, bugs in the system, or anything else of that nature. Heedless of what we puny humans believed about how reality worked, every possible test showed that, yes there are indeed gigantic objects inside of Jupiter, and no, there is no rational, logical explanation for them.
 
However, there never was a follow up mission, no attempt to figure out the mystery of the Jovian Things. The people who lived back then were beginning to understand and accept what the ancients knew all along, that the universe was mysterious and fundamentally unknowable, and the folly and hubris of believing these things can be known only leads to ruin. In any case, there were matters closer to home that needed attending to, many had come to the conclusion that we shouldn't waste money f**king about in space when all that perfectly good money can be wasted down here on Earth. There wouldn't any further space exploration of any kind for quite a while because humanity needed to resolve great crises of Nuclear War and Climate Change, and in time they were indeed resolved, in the only way that we know how to resolve things.
 
So, at this point you may be asking 'how did I get involved in this?', and 'what is this, exactly?'. I suppose a good place to begin that story is back when I was but a stupid and naïve child, one who spent too little time playing outside in the sun, and a little too much time watching popular science shows on the family TV. For quite some time I accepted what the people on those shows said at face value, I'd developed the mistaken conviction that the universe was a beautiful thing and that the advance of scientific knowledge could only make it even more beautiful. Because I was just a child, I never stopped to think about it, and I couldn't grasp the horrific implications of what these shows were really saying. It took a long time to finally realize that the universe is horrifying, and that for the sake of sanity it is best to ignore it.
 
The desire to understand the cosmos is, I think, a uniquely human folly. You never see any of the other animals grappling with the 'mysteries of life', they are content to live, and eventually die, in complete ignorance. This, I believe, is because the other animals are much wiser than us. Or perhaps it is just we who are more foolish, and If humans in general are merely foolish, imagine what a naïve little girl must be. There must have been something deeply wrong with my past self's undersized brain, how else could one possibly explain my single-minded obsession with becoming an astrobiologist. Somehow those bloody space documentaries had brainwashed me into believing that the search for extraterrestrial life would be some grand adventure, and I wanted to have a part in it.
 
In hindsight, maybe I should have listened to my folks on this matter. They were quite skeptical of my chosen career path right from the start, but since their objections seemed to amount to nothing but shallow and materialistic middle-class concerns about the family's financial success, I chose to ignore them. If I had chosen to go along with them about not spending my time attempting to get into a field of science that was just 'hollow speculation and fantasy' and instead chose to pursue some more typical bourgeois degree in business or law or something like that. Life would have been much more boring if I accepted their advice, but now I can't help but think that it would have been much better for my mental and physical well-being.
 
There was, however, a very short time when life was good, and oddly enough that time began when 21 Indian settlers were suddenly devoured by the Martian slime mold. Everyone remembers where they were when the news first broke that the Valles settlement was destroyed by alien goo, and almost everyone remembers the feeling of shock and horror when the security footage was first released to the public by the Indian state media. For me, it was like Christmas. Alien life was finally a reality rather than mere speculation, the value for my skillset would soon go through the roof, my folks had finally been proven wrong once and for all.
 
An important thing to understand here is that Nigeria, the country of my birth, was one of the few nations to emerge victorious from the fires of Armageddon. In the post Armageddon era, many people have been getting used to having rat burgers and sometimes human flesh for 1 out of 1 meals per day. Meanwhile, we Nigerians, at least those of us from the prosperous heartland, are among the lucky few living like the Old Americans, enjoying the benefits of our newly acquired continent spanning Empire, or 'alliance of free nations' as it's called by the kind of people who make up for in patriotism what they lack in intelligence.
 
Of course, seeing as they thought themselves to be among the great powers, what with the continent spanning 'alliance' and everything, the Nigerian government was quite keen on acquiring a Martian colony, as that's what all the cool nations are doing these days. Many of my countrymen and women consider it somewhat of a national disgrace that we let the Brazilians, the Indians, the new Japanese Empire, and even the Soviet Reunion (I know it's not the official name but that's what everyone calls it) get there first. Quite a few were also of the opinion that it would be an even greater embarrassment if our first colony ended up getting devoured by slime mold. To prevent that from happening, these people were quite willing to grant basically infinite money to anyone who had knowledge of the previously hypothetical field of astrobiology.
 
In those days I, along with the few other Nigerian astrobiologists, had almost complete freedom to pursue whatever course of research we wanted, no matter how strange it seemed, how much it cost, or how many mice had to be sacrificed. As an aside, have you ever seen a mouse get consumed by the Martian slime mold? It is, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating and marvelous sights one can see. Although I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority on this matter, most people would probably find it so horrific and disturbing that they'd lose their lunch at the sight, I've seen it happen before, but what those people don't understand is that mice are objectively shitty and boring creatures, and Martian Slime Mold is awesome, in the most literal sense of the word.
 
Times were good for the most part, but it goes without saying that nothing is perfect, and I did have to deal with a lot of protestors. As I recall, they were usually quite annoying, they'd show up on campus with their signs and their slogans saying things like 'don't bring dangerous alien pathogens' this, or 'stop killing all those mice' that, and 'man was not meant to meddle with Blah blah blah', and so on in that fashion. Sometimes it would get so bad that I'd be receiving some 20 or 30 death threats per day.
 
Back then I felt nothing but contempt towards those people, small minded idiots, the whole lot of them! Now, I can't help but think that maybe they had a point. Maybe it would have been better for my soul if I didn't waste my time contemplating the horrific reality of the cosmos, or playing god with thousands of unfortunate mice, even if it is objectively entertaining to watch the light leaving their beady little eyes. I'm still not keen on the people who were sending the death threats though. Personally, I believe that if you're going to kill somebody you should just go ahead and do it without making a big fuss beforehand... and you have no intention of following through on your threats, why waste everyone's time making them in the first place?
 
I Thought I had life figured out back then. Times were good, I had a well-paying job, a place of my own, my family all seemed to be united in their pressuring me to marry and have children but that's just what they're expected to do...And then I just had to fuck it all up by accepting the offer to join on the Erendiz mission and become an astronaut.
 
That's where the Jovian Things I mentioned earlier come in. Now that people have mostly got used to living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, everyone wants to go back to space. The major powers have established colonies on the moon, Venus and mars, and space probes are exploring the solar system once again. Seemingly all at once, the very clever idiots in the universities and the national space programs collectively realized that there were many mysteries that had left unsolved because everyone was 'distracted' by trivial things like exploding cities and burning rain forests. Like so many dead cats before them, these dumb, smart people just couldn't resist the temptation to investigate these mysteries, chief among them being the Jovian Things.
 
Of course, back then I was one of those dumb smart people. Becoming an astronaut, exploring the unknown, and being one of the first people to visit a new planet was the realization of my life's ambitions and my childhood dreams, so naturally I accepted the government's offer without hesitation. It was only later that I'd realize that pithy phrases like 'follow your dreams' do not make good life advice.
 
Entry One:
At first, I was surprised that mission training was going to take a year and half to complete. I was vaguely aware that space travel used to be a big deal back in the day, and that the few who went up there had to go through similarly rigorous training, but today going to space is mundane. I went to the moon last Christmas just to see the sights, tour a few museums and look at the amusing crap in the various giftshops (though I'd never stoop so low as to buy anything). It was no different from any other vacation, and I certainly don't remember having to go through any lengthy period of training to laugh at some lunar gift shops.
 
Learning how long training would take was when the true scale of what I'd signed up for first started to sink in. I was going to Jupiter. That is much further than any crewed spacecraft had gone before. Going to the moon was routine, going to mars or Venus was costly, but ultimately little different from travelling to a distant country back in the days before commercial flight. What I signed up for was something unprecedented, and the various countries funding this all seemed to think that a year and a half of training was going to be necessary. When I first saw the seemingly endless pillar of the Atlantic Space elevator cable stretching into space, I was overcome with a strange mixture of excitement and trepidation, this was going to be my last moment on Earth for a long time.
 
The Atlantic Station always felt to me like some combination of a bustling city and an airport. I suppose that might have been because technically, it is. It's huge and spacious, and a few thousand people lived there permanently, but even more pass through every day, as that station is the main connection between Earth and the rest of the universe. I must have seemed like just another face in the crowd, an ant following its trail to some unknown destination, there could have only been at most a couple dozen other people here in the business of space exploration, and most of them must have been in the International Air and Space Association module, one of the few parts of the station not under the influence of spin gravity. The station was huge and complex, the module was obscure and far removed from the normal flow of traffic, getting there from the elevator car was like navigating the labyrinth.
 
Including myself, the Erendiz was going to have a crew of 4. Since we were going to have to live together in close confinement for the 8 month long round trip, it was decided that we should share the same living space from the first day of training onward. A smart move on paper, but we were 4 strangers coming from 4 different countries, things were bound to be complicated from the start. Our common living space, a small, sterile, spartan single room apartment with white walls, a white floor and 4 small bunks. When I arrived, I noticed that there was only one other person in the room. He was a tall, effete, lightly tanned stick of a man, with greasy black hair that was probably a fire safety hazard. He was so immersed in whatever he was doing with his tablet that he didn't even notice my arrival. I quietly deposited the few possessions I was permitted to take with me and claimed the bunk in the top right corner, and then I decided to try and introduce myself to my new roommate.
 
In the end I had to lightly tap him on the shoulder to snap him out of his digital reverie. He made a startled squawk and leaped up from his bunk, hitting the one above, before his brain could catch up with external reality. "Ah... you must be one of them other crew members I heard about, yeah? Name's Victor." He said.
 
At least he speaks English, that'll make this much easier. "Yes. I'm Nnedi, the ship's astrobiologist. In other words, I'm the most useless member of the crew. I honestly have no Idea why they picked me for this mission." I responded.
 
"You think your useless I'm the fucking security specialist...But I'm also piloting the shuttle, so I guess I'm gonna be a glorified cabbie for all you egghead types."
 
A Security specialist? And an astrobiologist? Do they think we were going to find some Lunar Rebels living on the fucking Jovian Things, perhaps equipped with some sort of weaponized slime mold!? And that's the least absurd explanation I can think of for this... Maybe They must just be preparing for absolutely everything, no matter how unreasonable. As it turns out, they were not adequately prepared at all, but I did not yet know this, and ignorance, I've come to realize, is so much more than mere bliss.
 
"So, you Nigerian then?" He asked.
 
"...Yes. And where would you be from?"
 
"New York, Greatest country in the world...or, at least to us it is."
 
I'm pretty sure that the 'Serene' Republic of New York controls a good chunk of the American East Coast, though I barely passed geography so take that with a grain of salt. The point I'm making here is that although I guessed he must come from New York proper, basically everything about the man screamed city slicker, he could have been from Boston for all I knew.
 
"New York, eh? But aren't you Americans all too busy killing each other to be mucking about in space?" I, somewhat, jokingly asked.
 
"No, no, no. We're not Americans, you see, we're New Yorkers! we'd never fight in that stupid, pointless war, we've just been selling weapons to both sides... and getting filthy stinkin' rich! And what do the city fathers spend it on you ask? Housing for the homeless refugees? Fixin' the crumbling walls keeping the oceans out? Funding Our overstretched police and defense forces? No, they want to send a New Yorker into space just to prove they can... Not that I'm complainin'."
 
I suppose in hindsight that may have been a bit insensitive, but I was never a very worldly person, nor a very sensitive one for that matter, at least he took it in good stride, it could have gone a lot worse. In any case, his answer was certainly cynical enough to convince me that Victor might be worth just a tiny bit of respect after all. I've always been very cynical in my views on almost everything, the only exceptions being the scientific method and the pursuit of knowledge. I've changed quite a bit since then, now I've lost my faith in science as well.
 
Our little conversation was cut short when the door was nearly ripped out of its hinges by the entry of the most terrifying woman I've ever seen. She had to be somewhere over 2 meters tall, her blonde head almost touched hit the ceiling on the way in. I don't think she could have been any more Russian if she'd entered the room riding on a bear and drinking vodka with the new Soviet anthem blaring in the background; she was even wearing a red air force uniform for Christ's sake.
 
She stood by the door frame for what felt like a long time, staring at both Victor and myself with undisguised contempt. "I was told there would be a crew, but all I see are a couple of toothpicks. I do not like toothpicks. Someone must think this is very funny joke. It must be Dmitri from Space Bureau, he would be one to do something like this. We'll see who has last laugh, Dmitri..." She muttered as she unpacked her things and claimed her bunk in the noisiest, most obnoxious way possible. I still don't know if that was meant for us to hear, or if she just say's everything she thinks, although I'd guess the former since she wasn't saying this in Russian. Victor went back to his tablet, and I did my best to look busy.
 
The last member of the crew didn't even say a word for the entire first day, although that may have at least partially been because he barely spoke any English at all, and he was almost certainly even less fluent in Russian and Igbo. He was a stocky man with Asian features, and though he may have been a head shorter than me, he was probably thrice my weight. It was difficult for me to decide which of the last two crew members was more frightening. He made up for in breadth what he lacked in height, and something about his uncanny silence and expressionless, calculating stare gave him a dangerous presence beyond mere size.
 
Training began right away, and rarely ever stopped for the whole one and a half years that we were in the Atlantic Station. We rarely ever left the training facilities, and we never left the Space Agency module. The training itself was as intense as you'd expect. Although they mostly taught me to deal with the life support system, presumably believing that my expertise in astrobiology would help (it didn't), I think they intended to make each of us physically and intellectually capable of running the whole ship and completing the mission on our own if we have too. Getting someone like me to that point in just a year and a half meant nearly constant studying, lab work, and exercise.
 
Each day would begin with us wolfing down a prepared breakfast, and end with all us stumbling back to the apartment completely exhausted and ready to collapse onto the always slightly uncomfortable mattresses they provided for us. There was never much time during for socializing, but it was inevitable that after spending a year and a half living with 3 other people, I'd learn a few things about them. The giantess went by the name of Katya, her background was in geology and she was training to be the ship's engineer. Unfortunately, her drink of choice was not vodka but fucking wine coolers. I lost a lot of respect for her after that, though I never said so to her face, for obvious reasons. The shorter man was named, Ishii Jutaro. To this day that's about all I know about him, it wasn't just that he didn't speak English, he was just didn't talk much.
 
Entry 2
 
Leaving that apartment for the last time felt like freedom. I knew that I was going to be spending over 8 months in an even smaller space with all the same people, but training was finally over! I was going to go to space, the real space, the final frontier, not some fucking gift shops on the moon. The Erendiz was almost 100 feet long, had the sleek, sharp, polished white and gold typical of the new Japanese Empire's engineering and it had such an unmistakably phallic shape that it would've made Freud's ghost blush. I'm not exaggerating at all here, when I first saw it I was struggling to keep a straight face, Katya and Victor on the other hand, didn't even bother, they were still make jokes about it several days into our voyage.
 
I am told that long distance space travel can be claustrophobic at the best of times, this most certainly was not the best of times. The Erendiz may have been large, but most of the space was taken up by thrusters, storage, shuttles, and other necessities. There was no room for the usual amenities found on civilian ships, there wasn't to distract from the fact that we were in a tiny metal box, surrounded by ravenous nothingness and 10s of millions of miles from the nearest possible help.
 
To keep our minds and bodies busy we all devoted ourselves to maintaining the ship with a sort of desperate fanaticism. I checked and rechecked the life support systems, Victor inspected every minute detail of the shuttles and the armory, Katya was always doing something with the ship's mechanical guts, and Ishii almost never left the computer consoles. When it was no longer possible to justify passing the time by cleaning or maintaining the ship, we passed the time by speculating about and placing bets on what the things might be. The theories ranged from boring and plausible, such as some sort unknown weather phenomenon, to downright impossible flights of fancy, everything from moons that somehow existed inside the planet's atmosphere to hidden fleets of flying saucers. There was also a fair share of shenanigans and practical jokes, mostly at my expense.
 
It was around 2 months into the 4-month journey to the Jovian system that I first started writing a journal of my experiences, not out of any form of vanity, or at least I don't think it was, but because for some reason it felt like the sort of thing someone in my situation ought to do. That first journal was packed full of optimistic rubbish about the march of progress and the light of science and so on. In hindsight, I'm extremely grateful that both the first journal and the tablet it was written on are both gone now.
 
Entry 3
 
After 4 long months in transit, the deceleration burn began, and 18 hours later the Erendiz finally stabilized in low orbit above Jupiter. The next few hours were perhaps some of the busiest and most stressful I've ever experienced, but the few glimpses I got of Jupiter made it all seem worthwhile. Even in an age when, at least for the relatively well off, short distance space travel was common place, seeing Earth from orbit for the first time is still often described as a profound, almost religious, experience. It's nothing compared seeing Jupiter up close.
 
Where the curvature of Earth is obvious even from a relatively low orbit, Jupiter is an expansive flat plane, stretching so far into the distance that the human eye can't take it all in. colorful storms, hundreds, or even thousands of kilometers across swirled, boiled and frothed in an endless gaseous sea. Yet still those storms pale in comparison to the vastness of Jupiter itself, the depth and breadth of the king of the planets was simply beyond anything our little primate brains can grasp. To truly behold Jupiter to be humbled, awed, and existentially terrified all at once. As the shuttle departed Erendiz' hangar bay and took us down into the howling maw of this world of storms, I couldn't help but smile like a mad woman. Even as I beheld the terrible glory of this physical manifestation of our own cosmic insignificance, I couldn't contain my manic glee over being the first to go down and touch it.
 
As the shuttle continued its descent, the view got increasingly narrow and detailed until, without warning the windows turned dark, keeping the cabin safe from the blinding light of atmospheric entry. After a few blessed hours of absence, gravity returned with a vengeance. During the voyage to Jupiter, the Erendiz was always under heavy thrust, allegedly to help acclimatize us to high gravity, it failed. I'll admit that 2.5g doesn't sound like much, but it really is. Not only do you have to carry 2.5 times your own weight all the time, but your breath is laboured, your bones creak, your heart is working much harder, but your blood still pools in your feet, and eventually you start to feel lightheaded after the slightest bit of motion. None of us would have passed training if we couldn't power through high gravity, but it was still horrible. It felt like I'd aged 30 years in as many seconds.
 
The one saving grace was the miraculous technology of the Environment Suit. It was a combination G-suit, space suit, and powered exoskeleton all in one, and somehow it didn't look or feel bulky at all, in fact it had the sleek look and impossibly light feel of something from a pre-Armageddon sci-fi franchise. Say what you will about the new Japanese Empire, no-one beats them in making technology that's both awesome and practical.
 
It took almost two hours for the light of atmospheric entry to fade and for the windows to turn transparent again, giving us the first ever glimpse of Jupiter from the inside. Imagine flying through a hurricane at dusk, except the thunderheads are 100 times bigger, the lightning outshines the sun at mid-day, and instead of the ground, all you see when you look down in one the incredibly rare clear patches is the faint red glow of infernal depths, then you might begin to have an idea of what the inside of Jupiter is like.
 
In hindsight, I should have been a bit more worried about the lightning, any one of those bolts could have vaporized us in an instant, and it was just sheer dumb luck that they didn't, but at the time I was far more concerned that the combination of high gravity and turbulence would turn me into chunky human soup. I normally prided myself on my iron stomach, it was one of the few things about me that could possibly be considered tough but suffice to say that by the end of our little flight through hell, all the contents of my gut had long since been relocated to the suit's fluid storage. Now you may scoff at me for having such a reaction to some 'harmless' turbulence, but unless you've also flown through a world made of storms in a tiny four-person shuttlecraft piloted by a New Yorker, I'd suggest you withhold your judgment.
 
When the sky cleared, and the turbulence went away, at first, I almost wept with relief. A few seconds later, the realization, and the terror, both set in. The violent skies were a constant, their sudden absence had to mean that something had drastically changed, and already I was beginning to understand that a drastic change in a place like this is seldom good news. I was just about to resign myself to whatever painful death would soon await when I looked out the window, and for the first time beheld one of the Jovian Things.
 
Somehow, all our guesses managed to be completely and utterly wrong. Before my very eyes, stretching into distances beyond the resolution of the human eye, and yet still dwarfed by the endless cloudscape, was the most enormous living thing to ever exist. It looked like a cross between a mushroom and a jellyfish, it's cap sprouted tentacles of varying, but still enormous, size, its central tentacle (stem?) even seemed to extend into the infernal depths, and according to the shuttle's instruments the bloody thing must have been the size of France! It was so immense that Victor had to account for its gravitational pull as he flew towards it, and the surprises didn't end there.
 
As our shuttle crested over the immense walls of the Thing's cap, an entire miniature landscape spread out before us. Vast untamed dark green forests, rolling meadows, sprawling deserts, twisting rivers and scattered grey-blue lakes. We'd stumbled across an entire world, somehow growing on the back of a creature bigger than some celestial bodies. In all my naivete I thought it was the most magnificent thing I'd ever seen.

Hi everyone. I posted an earlier thread asking for feedback on the above value prop. As expected it was negative or suspicious. I've made a longer, in depth post of the hows and whats, addressing the questions at the bottom of the post. I appreciate any feedback, but please try to keep an open mind. In particular, most American users seem to find gambling especially evil due to the amount of slots and poker spam they encounter. This is very far from that. If you're unfamiliar with sports betting or it is illegal where you are, this post may not make much sense. Without further ado..
So what is the product? No this isn't a multi level marketing scheme to sell knock off Viagra from Nigeria using Western Union escrow... printed on t-shirts.
It's online gambling, specifically sports betting. Instead of betting on one outcome, you bet on all the outcomes. It's important to note that I'm talking about sports betting, not horse racing or casino games - both of which attract a different demographic and advertising strategy.
This already sounds incredible fishy right?
Let me explain.
Sports Betting is an exercise in marketing. Each company largely has the exact same product (offering odds on different markets). A few wholesalers provide all their odds, very few are priced in house. They rely on effective advertising and sponsorship to maintain a sustainable CPA. Fans of sport outside the US will be familiar with their teams wearing a bookies logo somewhere on their kit.
A great way to differentiate yourselves from your competitors is to offer promotions that increase the value of a bet. This can be done by enhancing the odds, or relaxing the conditions of the event. For example, instead of $2 for a winger to score, I'll give you $4 Or I'll give you $2 odds for ANY winger to score.
This is where I come in.
Odds are balanced in such a way that you can't bet on all the outcomes and still make money. However these promotions can completely unbalance the odds. It can allow you to bet on every outcome and still make money.
Here's an example using Rugby posted on 8/8/2014. It's a low profit example, but easy to understand and short. Note: Tom Waterhouse & Bet Ezy are sports betting companies in Australia. (See what I mean about companies being very similiar?)
Staking Strategy
Place $25 on Fremantle through Tom Waterhouse's Take on Tom Special odds of $4 (Max bet $25) (Normal odds would have been much lower, and made the strategy impossible) Place $75 on Geelong with BetEzy at odds of 1.48 (Promo gave a bonus bet if your team won and scored 100 pts) Total Outlay: $100
Profit Outcomes:
Geelong Win & Score 100+ Points = $11 + $50 Bonus Bet (Betezy) Geelong Win & Score less than 100 Points = $11 Fremantle Win = Break Even Draw = $5.50 (based on dead heat rules)
The profit isn't guaranteed but it certainly is risk free. For big matches, or if there are good fixtures, there are more opportunities and higher payoffs. It certainly isn't going to make you rich, but it can generate close to $100 a week. I'm not going to post the site URL until I get permission from Mods. I don't want them to think this is an undercover ad.
My returns from 11 of these staking strategies: Total Turnover: $1,583 Profit: $338 Profit as % of Outlay: 21% Keep in mind this doesn't mean you had to withdraw $1.5k to make $338. You likely withdrew $200 and re-bet it each week. I focus on Risk Free strategies, but sometimes when the promotions are good enough the strategies can Guarantee Profit.
Questions from previous thread:

I think it sounds too good to be true, plus BS if you need "fees" to start.

Requires no fees, though links to the sports betting companies are affiliate links. I get a percentage of your losses, which works out well since to place bets that cover all outcomes, some must lose. But in the end you will be profitable or break even, no water off your back.

you've done your math wrong.

The example I gave was real. The maths is simple, anyone with a primary school graduation certificate can work it out. But you need to be across the promotions and market odds.

your method is somehow else not as good as you claim (riskier, lower revenue, higher cost, etc) Why would you tell us, when you could do it all and be making thousands per week?

Some weeks you may only make $20 from following my strategies. However, the highest profits from a single strategy was over $170. My product relies on the presence of attractive promotions, which means I am limited in supply. Of course to some people $50 extra per week is nothing, and this won't appeal to them. But for people who want $50 a week extra, I can't think of an easier way to get it.

you're an idiot who hasn't figured out the simple mechanics of hiring people

Both statements may be true, but hiring people in a country with expensive labour means it isn't feasible. I'm also sure it would be against the T&C's. As I mentioned above, an affiliate agreement is advantageous for both parties.

your method requires too many hours of work per dollar to be profitable

I am careful to not post anything which would take more than 15 minutes to execute, including signing up and depositing money. It helps that every sports betting company makes it a priority to make those two activities as fast as possible. I also write the instructions in my strategy as if they were for my mum, ie you dont need to know the rules of the sport to know which bets to place. It's akin to following a recipe.

Full refund if it doesn't work. No risk trial etc...

The refund is essentially built into the product. Making it a no risk trial, not that you even pay me in the first place!

An explanation of what you're offering without sales fluff so I can do my own research

Available on every post, it really is pretty easy to understand. I also have an explanation page to explain
I hope this covers all the questions.
My question still stands, what would it take to convince you that this is legit? Even communicating this concept by being as transparent as possible still sounds a little bit dodgy. There is a lot of stigma attached to gambling and affiliate links, even though I think this is more legit and much faster than traditional online moneymaking systems like mturk, surveys, click trading etc. I've tried to post this to /beermoney but they said gambling was not encouraged - again, I think this is largely the stigma. 90% of gambling related content is probably spam.
The ideal demographic I want to target is people who are happy to have any extra $30+ a week in their pocket. This could pay for their lunch, their public transport, their beers etc. I honestly believe this allows people to turn the tables on gambling companies, and has real financial value. The fact that it is so difficult to market is a real downer.
Thanks for reading my Great Wall of Text.
edit: Got the OK from the mods to post the link. Website is here: www.puntingdeals.com