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…
> 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…
The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
421–430 of 483 posts
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#422Earlier 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…
People like to point at Japan and its lack of growth pointing out to various degrees how awful that is, but if you’re actually Japanese, you’re pretty much fine for these decades of zeroish growth. Not to say Japan is an idyllic place free from problems, but the economics of a zero growth society has at least that example of a distinct lack of doom. If the rest of us experience it like that, it’s not really anything…
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it was so clear, then tell me, why did putin wait for so long.
Because Trump threatened to strike back. Putin was afraid of Trump, but he knows that Biden has no spine. https://nypost.com/2022/02/22/trump-talks-threatening-putin-... > “If you move against Ukraine while I’m president,” Trump is said to have told the Russian leader, “I will hit Moscow.” > Putin reportedly scoffed, “No way,” leading Trump to say, “All those beautiful golden turrets will be blown up.”
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can’t argue with demographics, so you wouldn’t have argued with Malthus? He was completely wrong, at the very least in timescale.
You can't argue against demographics from a economic and geopolitical viewpoint. To create a young person, you need a fixed number of years. If you want an 18 year old to hit college and take on a $100k loan (or join your army and shoot your enemies), you will have to have started in 2004. There is no way to accelerate this. Even if you poured all your energy and resources into getting people to reproduce more starti…
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
>tend to argue from policy and politics backwards and then the facts become inconvenient There's the famous UN population projections where they show Europe and Asia declining for a while, then leveling out around 2050. Why? Well, they published their reasoning: https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Hig... >Evidence from surveys of childbearing preferences indicate that even in populations with low…
I agree this hasn't yet seem to bear itself out, though I think statistically we have until 2029 or so before you can "call it" as absolutely 100% incorrect (that, using very armchair back of the math sort of logic here, admittedly, would allot for a first wave of sorts meeting the timeline, anything later and perhaps it should really cause some panic) With that said, and this is really the point, I think we failed a…
Ironically, if you go on to any tabloid rag website like the Daily Mail, and find an article about house prices, you won't have to scroll far until you find Joe Public blaming the lack of supply on overpopulation from immigration
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blaming billionaires is like like any sport: fun, but nothing to do with real life.
Politicians are there to provide cover so you don't blame the billionaires directly. But you would be surprised how much Politicians bend over backwards to protect them when it matters. Putin went after some US connected oligarchs to clean up corruption in his country. US policy towards Russian literally changed overnight and US imposed sanctions, and we have everything that followed. In Michigan a billionaire starte…
- Bernie Madoff was worth $20bn and is in jail for 150 years
- Eike Batista was worth $30bn but was jailed for bribery
- Alfred Taubman was fined $7m and jailed for a year
- The Kwok brothers were worth $16bn but were jailed and fined for bribery
Etc etc. There's no point forming a worldview based on cherry picking. Nothing is simple. Politicians, billionares, or any other line you care to draw around people to define a group, are not homogenous. Some will be individually moral and upright, or guilt-ridden but greedy, or pyschopathic and power-hungry.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just going to chime in with a non political fact: the withdrawal treaty was done by the previous administration, the planning by the military. It was always going to be a shit show. Presidents are not all powerful gods who control things like the stock market, inflation, or pulling everyone out of a foreign country.
I voted for Biden in 2020. It feels better to say this wasn't his fault for those of us who voted for him. It was his fault, and primarily a failure of his administration, especially Jake Sullivan, who is the least qualified National Security Advisor I've ever seen, including those who advised GW Bush, which is saying something. His qualifications are primarily political and partisan, and he's incredibly thin on actu…
Also:
1. We have zero way of knowing how any previous executive team would have handled this, but I find that mildly weird given this was a military operation.
2. Does the President have the ultimate responsibility for everything in the USA going on during his term? Yes, as any good leader is ultimately responsible for everything under him.
3. Does that mean the president has any control over it? Not really, the pullout was planned by the military and initiated by the previous administration.
You are very wrong here on every point. Mistakes were made, at what levels and by who is going to take a 200 page report from the Pentagon. And, a healthy amount are due to the fog of war.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that a verifiable fact though, that Trump set the deadline to be fully out of Afghanistan and that it was going to be super messy with the aggressive timeline? Article from March 2021: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/03/17/u...
Obama never would have withdrawn under the conditions. At the time of withdrawal, the Taliban was already long in violation of that treaty. Additionally, the US could have easily done as the Pentagon originally asked, and surged in troops to "cover the withdrawal" which is a standard tactic (and term) for withdrawing from war zones. By refusing to add boots on the ground to "cover the withdrawal" the US military was…
Any president might have or might not, the point is you 100% do not know that.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#429Haven't read the book, but for those who don't know who Zeihan is, his work follows two threads of post-WWII history: 1. Deglobalization; and 2. Depopulation The article focuses mostly on deglobalization, but depopulation is in the horse pulling the cart. Many are familiar with the deglobalization idea from the last US presidential administration. The current administration kept those tariffs, and abided by the previ…
Its alarming how fast all earlier projections are being proven wrong. Like in India, our latest survey revealed that our fertility rate is now already below replacement level - a landmark we were supposed to hit in 2050. We hit that three decades ahead of schedule.
Re: The end of the world is just beginning for shipping
#430Haven't read the book, but for those who don't know who Zeihan is, his work follows two threads of post-WWII history: 1. Deglobalization; and 2. Depopulation The article focuses mostly on deglobalization, but depopulation is in the horse pulling the cart. Many are familiar with the deglobalization idea from the last US presidential administration. The current administration kept those tariffs, and abided by the previ…
I just want to take some issue with your characterization of "with mathematical certainty". You're completely right that given fertility rates are under replacement rate—from memory: 2.1 children per woman—populations will decrease with mathematical certainty. But there is no universal law that developed countries must remain below replacement fertility levels; that's just what has always happened so far —given the c…