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The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

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Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#311

Post by andi999 »

more_corn wrote: post #175
Aunche wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you have to agree that in the face of declining populations and ageing demographics, we will have to shift to a new economic model where growth isn’t the only goal Who exactly is setting growth as the "only goal"? It's really only developing countries and the tech sector. Japan and basically are of Europe is more or less fine with their stagnant GDP.

An economy without growth will fall apart. Yuval Noah Harari said it very well. Lenders only lend because there’s faith that $1 loaned today becomes more than $1 paid back tomorrow. Without growth there’s no incentive to lend. Without lending we’re looking at medieval level economies. It’s not the only thing we care about, but it’s a necessity. That being said growth can come in all shapes and sizes. Elevating everyo…

While this sounds convincing, what about if there is just a little inflation and no real growth, only nominal growth due to that inflation. Wouldnt the motive of lending 1$ today for a year not be to have an amount which has the same purchase value in a year?

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#312

Post by philwelch »

worik wrote: post #308
puranjay wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His core arguments focus on geography and demographics, both of which are “hard” problems. Declining populations simply cannot maintain the “grow at all costs” current economic order. Even an advanced country like Japan with plenty of automation and high productivity rates hasn’t see any growth in two decades since its population itself doesn’t grow anymore. Even if you don’t go by his more alarmist arguments, you ha…

It is a tautology that "grow at all costs" is not a sustainable economic order. It has been apparent since at least the 1970s that the limits to the growth phase of industrialisation is looming. It has been blindingly obvious for twenty years that we urgently need to change our economies to not require growth to maintain development. This is not new. It has been shouted from the roof tops for decades. Not shifting ec…

“We should content ourselves with being poorer than our parents were”.

Fuck no.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#313

Post by Longlius »

causality0 wrote: post #294
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #75

I’ve been following Zeihan since his first book. I’m yet to find a credible counter argument to his theses. And he’s being proven right at an alarming pace this year. So far this year we’ve had: - A land war in Europe - Food insecurity in the developing world - Breakdown of supply chains and shipping routes - Nation states resorting to seizing each other’s ships (see Greece-Iran issue recently). Everything that he ha…

What bothers me is the sheer mass of factually incorrect statements Zeihan makes that would be trivial to check if he bothered. Things like "China only makes the low-end computer chips, anything that's going into a cellphone or laptop is made in the USA"

He's not incorrect on that point. Huawei sources its SoCs from Taiwanese and American fabs, which is why the trade war has absolutely gutted their bottom line. HiSilicon licenses chip designs, adds their specific stuff on top of them, and has the chips fabbed by TSMC.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#314

Post by andi999 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #244
MR4D wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s one for you: He predicted the invasion of Ukraine back in this video from 2017 (actually earlier, but this was the easiest source for me to cite): https://youtu.be/rkuhWA9GdCo The whole video is pretty short, but he mentions Ukraine about 2 1/2 minutes in.

I predicted the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 after no one gave a shit about the Crimean invasion. Plenty of other people did too, it wasn't even a difficult prediction to make, Putin has been very clear about his Ukrainian ambition for a long time. Remember Trump's first impeachment? It was literally about withholding military aid to Ukraine, all of the state department officials were bewildered because they knew abou…

If it was so clear, then tell me, why did putin wait for so long.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#315

Post by Longlius »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #173
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #75

I’ve been following Zeihan since his first book. I’m yet to find a credible counter argument to his theses. And he’s being proven right at an alarming pace this year. So far this year we’ve had: - A land war in Europe - Food insecurity in the developing world - Breakdown of supply chains and shipping routes - Nation states resorting to seizing each other’s ships (see Greece-Iran issue recently). Everything that he ha…

I've never heard of Zeihan. The article touts his prowess of predicting a Russian invasion of Ukraine in his book published in late 2014. Well, Russia had just seized Crimea and eastern Donbass in February of 2014, so this doesn't strike me as a particularly prescient call.

His prediction of the Russia-Ukraine war had a specific timetable back in 2014, namely the period between 2018 and 2022.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#316

Post by philwelch »

data_maan wrote: post #210
more_corn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economy without growth will fall apart. Yuval Noah Harari said it very well. Lenders only lend because there’s faith that $1 loaned today becomes more than $1 paid back tomorrow. Without growth there’s no incentive to lend. Without lending we’re looking at medieval level economies. It’s not the only thing we care about, but it’s a necessity. That being said growth can come in all shapes and sizes. Elevating everyo…

But, sadly, we live on earth and have to make to with the very finite resources we have here.

Says who!?

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#317

Post by idlehand »

JPKab wrote: post #293
data_maan wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, sadly, we live on earth and have to make to with the very finite resources we have here.

Economic growth can occur while simultaneously becoming more efficient with existing resources. See the massive gains in agriculture, for example. An acre of land today can produce vastly more food than an acre could 500 years ago, for example.

Adding more inputs to a production process generally increases output. But many parts of the world are already suffering from soil depletion because of intensive farming, and the fertilizers and fossil fuels which we use to raise yields will run out eventually.

Innovation has been able to outrun resource depletion for the last 300 years of industrialism, but that is no guarantee that it will last forever. Even a lot of that growth has come at the cost of increased emissions and resource depletion rather than efficiency gains.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#318

Post by Longlius »

floxy wrote: post #190
DennisP wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read all Zeihan's books. The only counterargument I can think of is that maybe with our interdependent world, sanctions have gotten effective enough to substitute for US military power to some extent. Zeihan himself has said China has to be reevaluating the idea of an attack on Taiwan, after seeing the sanctions and boycotts against Russia. Sanctions haven't stopped Russia but Russia is a food and fuel exporte…

What are some good examples of when sanctions "worked"? Apartheid-era South Africa? Maybe in delaying Iran developing nuclear weapons? Are any of the following considered success stories for sanctions? - Saddam era Iraq - North Korea - Cuba - Venezuela Apparently the U.S. has quite a list of sanctions: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

If benchmark the success of sanctions as being able to direct countries towards more liberal-democratic policies, then they're a failure. If you benchmark the success of sanctions by the ability of the US to completely torpedo a geopolitical enemy's economy, then I'd say all four of those are resounding success stories.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#319

Post by ajuc »

codefreeordie wrote: post #168
ajuc wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's before WW2 maybe. I'm talking about 80s vs now.

Oh, for sure, having children stopped being net-economically-positive long ago -- though the degree to which it is net-economically-negative seems like it has kept increasing, as our expectations of an acceptable childhood keep growing.

I don't think going from 2.x kids per family to 1.x or even lower was mostly about money. It's about opportunity costs (and the resource that you must allocate between the alternatives is mostly time).

To put it differently: in 80s your standard of living was X no matter if you had kids.

Now if you have kids it's 2X and if you don't it's 5X (assuming the same effort).

That's why giving people with kids enough money to survive don't help much. It changes it from 2X vs 5X to 2.1X vs 5X. Maybe 3X vs 5X if you're very generous.

Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

#320

Post by nicodjimenez »

ROTMetro wrote: post #215
nicodjimenez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the opinion you share is unpopular, it's because it's correct, and the truth is the enemy of the oligarchs that are scamming citizens in the US and the West in general. US is now a scam that exports inflation and crap 2nd rate weaponry. Scam economy, scam military industrial complex, scam military, scam president, scam everything. If you have a feeling the US is in decline, it's because it is. The situation is muc…

And who is ascendant? China, who, oops, was overcounting their population by 100 million and now realize they have reached/passed the peak working population? Europe, who is completely dependant on the USA to maintain a unipolar world that they then take advantage of? Are you an 80s kid like me, and Japan and Russia are going to eat our lunch any day now? Maybe Dubai with their wanna be Vegas financial center in the…

Wealth is something that is given by God, not something that is taken from another person or state. Many nations will prosper but the colonies will never prosper. The people that are actually eating our lunch are our oligarchs right here in USA. When you have a bunch of uneducated brainwashed people with zero morals or integrity, you’re not going to have a good outcome.
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