291–300 of 311 posts
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> Global peak oil is around now. Source?
Production peaked a few years ago[1]. Additionally, the energy required to recover a barrel of oil from shale, etc. is far more than from traditional sources.[2] [1] https://data.oecd.org/energy/crude-oil-production.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
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> Global peak oil is around now. Source?
Production peaked a few years ago[1]. Additionally, the energy required to recover a barrel of oil from shale, etc. is far more than from traditional sources.[2] [1] https://data.oecd.org/energy/crude-oil-production.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment
I used to work in the shale industry so I know how it works. Yes it’s more intensive but breakevens for fracked wells are down to what breakevens for conventional wells were 20-30 years ago. They have superior technology and processes now that are only getting better, more efficient, and cheaper. There is a lot of money at stake and a ton of very smart people working on this stuff.
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The end result is that a class of people live and die to provide for others. That's against nature, unless we reduce ourselves to the existence of ants. Down-right evil is what the consequences would be, but I retract that comment regarding the idea itself, because I don't think any malice is intended. Economic incentivizing by the government often have awful side effects. Let me make a comparison: Business is good f…
Houses are against nature. That doesn't mean they're bad.
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> providing financial support so families can buy homes You mean building more homes. If there's X homes, and Y families get 10% subsidy, they're all still buying the same X homes for 10% more. (roughly)
Not mutually exclusive. More homes + making it easier for families specifically to get a home.
We have an aging population and many places have a flat birthrate. We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. Who will care for these people? How will we deal with the consequences of flat population growth? How will we deal with the stock market's expectations of perpetual growth when the underlying population itself is not growing (and especially since productivity has also been relatively flat)?
> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the…
Women who choose to have a child put their careers back several years at the age when they are making the most important advancements in their careers. They choose not to have children because doing so doesn't just mean they have to pay a bunch of money in childcare costs, it means they will likely never achieve the dreams and goals they set for themselves. It will become much harder for them to travel, climb the corporate ladder, create things, and be someone. Many women want to achieve all these things and then have children later in life, but it becomes biologically infeasible for them to do so.
This is harder to solve. We can force maternity policies with hiring mandates, but that would be VERY expensive for smaller businesses (having to pay 2 salaries to get the work of 1 for a year or more).
I'm just not sure what other policies exist to solve the opportunity cost issue. You can give people as much cash as you want but government can't give away free self-actualization
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> We need to solve how to deal with this consequences. I'm hoping that we start to see an increase in pro-family policies. A couple rough ideas to look into would be decreasing taxation (or giving refunds/payments) based on how many children a productive family has, providing financial support so families can buy homes, and promoting wage increases so a single income can support a family to allow one to work and the…
I see people always talking about the economics of starting a family, but they're missing the real reason for low birth rates: opportunity cost borne by women. Women who choose to have a child put their careers back several years at the age when they are making the most important advancements in their careers. They choose not to have children because doing so doesn't just mean they have to pay a bunch of money in chi…
The world population is collapsing at a rapid pace. Our economic growth is based on a growing productive population. Our economic prosperity is based on a growing productive population. Different parts of the world are dealing with population collapse. Look at Japan, a xenophobic country facing population collapse. The total GDP has remain stagnant over the past 20 years. Look at UAE, a country facing population coll…
A huge problem… for capitalism. I think the refusal to marry and have kids (regardless of it being necessary or by choice) is basically the ultimate worker’s strike. So far capitalists have relied upon the fact that there will always be workers to exploit, since they consider any care work necessary to raise families (for the next batch of exploited workers) as simply just given. Now that this is going away (people c…
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Amazon's "value" comes from the insane profits they generate each year. Profits they earn by taking advantage of labor (not paying them enough, not giving them breaks, not hiring enough people to staff warehouses), and by taking advantage of not paying taxes on those profits with creative schemes. It's not about making Jeff Bezos pay individual taxes, it's about making corporations incentivized to not suck the soul o…
>It's not about making Jeff Bezos pay individual taxes, You are commenting in a thread that started with a statement that the very existence of billionaires is a problem, and a followup claimed that billionaires exist because they don't pay taxes. My point is that the mechanism that creates billionaires in western societies is beneficial since the same mechanism generates a higher standard of living for everyone, not…
You are implicitly claiming that if you write the tax laws in such a way that every dollar of income past $999,999,999 will be taxed 100%, then that kills the mechanism. And you say it as if it's self-evident that it's true. From here, it seems to be self-evidently untrue. So what gives—why do we disagree on this? Why am I wrong?
Unpopular opinion: One of the biggest challenges facing humanity in the next 2 decades is avoiding a catastrophic "Great Simplification" as we run out of oil. If this were allowed to happen, we'd suddenly be unable to practice industrial scale agriculture, and I'd estimate 90% of humanity would starve to death. The US produces large amounts of oil via fracking, which requires more resources to drill and produce than…
Your comment also hints at the repostes by Engels (technological progress) or Ricardo (pricing out, or alternative).
To a united communist-capitalist solution! And a worthy path for OP.