Earlier quoted context omitted.
“We should content ourselves with being poorer than our parents were”. Fuck no.
"We should ignore reality" Fuck no.
If you really think that’s what reality is, I feel sorry for you.
The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
381–390 of 483 posts
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think the US is easy to emigrate to for extended periods of time. I am put off by being tied to one employer in an at-will employment culture and needing that job to stay resident. Wikipedia says 188,100 new and initial H-1B visas were issued in 2019. So not a lot.
USA also has the Green Card Lottery which provides 50k visas per year.
Each 100k is 0.03% of the US population. So it is not much.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#383Earlier 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…
> Lenders only lend because there’s faith that $1 loaned today becomes more than $1 paid back tomorrow.
This is false, especially for low risk lending. An at least equally important reason for lending, is to delay consumption. Lending teleoports wealth forward in time. Supply and demand of credit will depend if the wealth gets bigger or smaller as a consequence.
Keep in mind that even a bank depost it "lending", and if the deposit is big, you don't have a government guarantee. Also, even with low inflation, the interest rate may very well still be lower than inflation.
If you're a fan of gold, you may want to buy gold. That brings two problems:
1) Where do you store it? If you store it at home, you are inviting burglars. If you store it in a vault, the owner is likely to charge you from 0.5% to 1.0% per year as a storage fee.
2) If you buy the gold when credit is cheap, and interest rates are lower than inflation, the price is high. But if, by the time you want to sell it, the economic downturn is over, and everyone want to borrow money to invest in a business or a new house, the gold price has probably come down already.
So, unless you buy the gold BEFORE the downturn, you may very well lose quite a bit from gold, compared to other assets.
> Growth is not a bad word. It’s absolutely required for positive outcomes.
Growth is good and it makes many things easier. But it IS possible for societies to function well with minimal or even negative growth, at least for a time. In fact, throughout most of history, the average growth per year was pretty low, and might very well be below zero over the lifetime of a given person.
Part of the problem we have no, is that we come to EXPECT such growth, instead of being grateful when we have it.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Innovation has been able to outrun resource depletion for the last 300 years of industrialism.
It did over hundreds of years of EXTREMELY high growth (both in terms of number of people and wealth per person). If growth falls to a positive-but-very-low level, it will make it a lot easier for innovation to keep up.
Also, keep in mind that apart from Uranium, all the atoms on Earth remain here. We don't "use up" atoms at any significant rate. Apart from the atoms themselves, the main challenge is how they're put together. To rearrange how atoms are put together (to create fertilizer, recycle waste, etc), we primarily need energy. And before energy resoures run out, we should be able to produce suffient amounts of energy using either renewables or fusion.
Now fusion could cause us to face a situation where we run out of hydrogen atoms, but at the rate we currently consume energy, that would take practically forever.
In any event, in about a billion years, the sun will become a red giant.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#385Anyone else excited for de-globalization and slower economies/development? I can't think of any negative consequences of these. On the other hand, these seems to be positives for me: - less diversity - less multiculturalism - less polarization (due to 2 above) - hopefully more inward progress looking/more defensive nations and less invasive nations - slower tech/innovation, people can catch up with life, lawmakers ca…
As someone who grew up in an environment of multiculturalism, I’ve really appreciated the richness, friendship, and intellectual stimulation it’s brought into my life. I’d be quite hesitant to take that treasure away from the children of tomorrow.
People sometimes talk about this deep-seated immutable tribalism people supposedly have, but I find a lot of it comes from leadership that espouses that thinking.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#386China's Navy is now bigger than the US Navy. Few have noticed. China's third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, was launched last week. This is the lead ship of a new carrier class. Carrier #4 is said to be under construction at Dalian. (There's so much shipbuilding in China that it's hard to tell if a new hull is a warship or just another giant container ship.) These are not nuclear powered. That's expected with the next…
I'm sorry but it's not accurate to call the PLAN larger than the US Navy unless you're just counting the number of ships. The USN has twice the displacement of the PLAN.
The USN is by far and away the strongest blue water navy with the capability to operate multiple independent strike missions in any region of the world simultaneously, including contested waters like the South China Sea. The PLAN is barely able to support missions outside of its EEZ, and has outfitted their newest carrier with EMALS despite having a oil-powered turbine engine, which basically means they're not able to launch more than 2-3 aircraft an hour without shutting down their entire onboard systems to recharge the supercapacitors. In contrast, a US supercarrier can launch it's entire flight wing of ~90 aircraft in 30-40 minutes.
The PLAN has 3 carriers. The US has 11 supercarriers and 9 assault carriers.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
One major differentiator between the US and China is that China traditionally / currently is not considered a good destination for foreigners / immigrants. (even Chinese people inside China from lower tier cities / countryside struggle to gain residency in top tier cities or get good jobs / benefits). Whereas the US, for all of its flailing around politically, is perceived by many people in many countries as a good p…
I don’t think the US is easy to emigrate to for extended periods of time. I am put off by being tied to one employer in an at-will employment culture and needing that job to stay resident. Wikipedia says 188,100 new and initial H-1B visas were issued in 2019. So not a lot.
That's also bad for US salaries as those visa holders have less mobility and thus drive the equilibrium price down. It's a lose/lose in the name of "ma jobs"...
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
> … emigrate if they can. Where are you recommending they go?
Any sovereign nation would be better. Mexico, China, India, Hungary, Croatia, Singapore, Switzerland… USA is a zombie nation state that is more like a colony than a functional nation state.
Ok, I'll bite: A colony of what? Who's the imperial power, here?
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#389Earlier 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…
Japan hasn’t seen any economic growth since the early 2000s? Please give me a source … I find that hard to believe.