Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans • Hacker News Board

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#101

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #96

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem. Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

> Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth. The Netherlands has the highest wealth inequality in the world.[0] No one considers that some backwater country, or its people starving or somehow impoverished. There's more that's going in Russia than "a massively unequal distribution of wealth." [0] https://uweb.berkeley.edu/2021/04/11/the-duality-of-the-dutc... It's also the oldest country to implement capit…

Russia has inequality, poverty and widespread sanctions. Getting rid of just one of those three factors would allow them to afford food.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#102

Post by cmurf » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

There's a model for applying sanctions to Russia, the 2012 sanctions on Iran. As long as buyers were reducing their oil imports over the prior 6 months, they could buy. The money is put into an escrow account owned by the sanctioned country. If the conditions for lifting sanctions are met, there's a pay day. The regime doesn't get money to fund war, the market avoids a price spike. Iran went along with it, I'm not sure how much choice they had. Whereas Russia could just say no, especially if China and/or India buys the overage (if they can get it there in volume). That's why there would need to be secondary sanctions.

https://twitter.com/edwardfishman/status/1500496727526281220

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#103

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

T-A wrote: post #98

sandworm101 wrote: post #30

The Iron Curtain cut through the heart of Europe, dividing east from west. Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia, walling it off from all of Europe. Things will be so much worse for people on the inside this time. It will be like Soviet Russia without the Warsaw Pact to support it. It is one thing to be without Twitter and Hollywood movies, but can Russia feed itself? Can any country? Modern industrial a…

> Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia And Belarus.

Different countries today, but the etymology of the name remains telling. Belarus = Byelorussia = Belaya Rus = White Russia.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#104

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:24 PM UTC

T-A wrote: post #98

sandworm101 wrote: post #30

The Iron Curtain cut through the heart of Europe, dividing east from west. Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia, walling it off from all of Europe. Things will be so much worse for people on the inside this time. It will be like Soviet Russia without the Warsaw Pact to support it. It is one thing to be without Twitter and Hollywood movies, but can Russia feed itself? Can any country? Modern industrial a…

> Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia And Belarus.

And a bunch of pro-Russian puppet states Putin is building by conquest of all (if he succeeds completely in Ukraine) or part (South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and, with only partial success in Ukraine, Donbas and Luhansk) of some former-Soviet European states. But, still, limited to a subset of ex-Soviet territory, not the broad expand of Eastern Europe right up through part of Germany that the old Iron Curtain contained.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#105

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #100

philipkglass wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium iron phosphate batteries are a type of lithium ion battery that does not require nickel or cobalt. They're already used in many electric vehicles including standard-range Tesla vehicles. They're also a preferred choice for grid scale storage because the modestly lower energy density of LFP chemistry doesn't matter for a battery that sits in one place for years.

How are they tying up the cells together? That's usually done with Nickel bars.

Nickel plated copper. Doesn't help much, since copper is one of the few things more expensive than nickel...

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#106

Post by gowld » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #96

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem. Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

> Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth. The Netherlands has the highest wealth inequality in the world.[0] No one considers that some backwater country, or its people starving or somehow impoverished. There's more that's going in Russia than "a massively unequal distribution of wealth." [0] https://uweb.berkeley.edu/2021/04/11/the-duality-of-the-dutc... It's also the oldest country to implement capit…

> the top 20% in the Netherlands earns only 4 times the income the bottom 20% do. As a comparison, the U.S’s top 20% earns 16.65 times the amount the bottom 20% do.

> However, this article isn’t meant to push the false narrative that the Netherlands’ citizens are all miserable as a result of this wealth gap because they aren’t. In many metrics of standards of living, the Netherlands is ranked among the highest in the world. In fact, the Netherlands placed 10th on the social progress index and 8th on the Human Development Index.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#107

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #94

dalbasal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can probably feed themselves. Growing calories is something we're good at, especially Russia. The hard part is dealing with a scenario where there is plenty of wheat, but people have no money to buy it. Ireland, in the 1840s suffered a horrific famine. Grain was being exported the while time. Food existed. People couldn't afford it. During the US' great depression, people were hungry while agricultural products…

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem. Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

Keynes was not a farmer. Nobody can afford to not plant during planting season, not harvest during harvest. There are all sorts of things that a country is capable of doing at time A that will spell their doom come time B.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#108

Post by KennyBlanken » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

denis1 wrote: post #17

KennyBlanken wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia and Ukraine generate a quarter of the world's grain, and nearly as much so of corn. Ukraine was pretty much written off for this season, but Russia shutting off grain exports is going to make things worse. However, it's yet another loss of income for them when they've already lost most of their oil/gas export income. My guess is that the grain and corn will go to China. The US pays a lot of farmers to sit on t…

> Russia and Ukraine generate a quarter of the world's grain, and nearly as much so of corn. They generate a quarter of the grain export . That's a very important difference. Russia stopping wheat exports would be a very bad thing, but it's not nearly as catastrophic as some present it to be.

"A quarter of the grain that other countries need just went poof" is pretty catastrophic for all the poorer countries that need to buy that grain.

They're going to be highly receptive to Russia's suggestions politically.

Look at the countries that have abstained in the UN votes...

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#109

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

vnchr wrote: post #91

sandworm101 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For now. But we are already seeing a few chinks in that armor. China prizes stability. Countries that start wars over imagined slights do not promote stability. China's largesse is not unlimited nor does it ever come without a price.

They waited to go to war until after the Beijing Olympics, in coordination with China [0]. And China has been cheering them on [1]. Looks like someone made a friend. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukrain... [1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/03/10/china/china-russia-disinf...

> They waited to go to war until after the Beijing Olympics, in coordination with China. And China has been cheering them on. Looks like someone made a friend.

Friends don't make friends delay invasions so that they will get bogged down in mud, or egg them on in disastrous courses of action that happen to serve the geopolitical interest of the cheerleader by consuming attention of geopolitical rivals.

That's callous exploitation, not friendship.

Re: Moscow retaliates against Western sanctions with export bans

#110

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #38

zdragnar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brazil, China and other trading partners have not signed onto any or all of the sanctions. The sanctions are still hurting the Russian people, but there haven't been signs yet that it has hurt the government.

I am pretty sure that the government loudly objecting to them, going so far as to call them an act of war, is a sign that they are hurting the government. We're yet too see how much. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/05/defiant-putin-...

Putin fits into the "strong man" stereotype. The mere intent behind the sanctions is sufficient to warrant such a response from him and those under him.

That said, it is certainly possible- time will tell either way.