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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

#441

Post by snapcaster »

bamboozled wrote: post #322
Nasrudith wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India has issues with traditional farming being uncompetitive, highlighted by infamous farmer suicides. Pesticides were commonly fingerpointed in the past with simplistic "Monsanto responsible for all bad" narratives, but they didn't stop to think. Not using their products would leave the farmers even worse off economically. Better yield is why they pay. Kids aren't valued anymore economically. Parents will spend a l…

Governments wanting people to breed and have kids is so creepy.

It's not just governments, even god said "go forth and multiply"

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

#442

Post by snapcaster »

JPKab wrote: post #325
bwb wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to be insulting here just sharing my perspective as someone interested in this but not in the industry. Me and many people I talk to feel like you and your colleagues have been given trillions of dollars and 20+ years and accomplished nothing. You have no credibility as an industry or group and frankly nobody should listen to you about anything. It's honestly hard to hear someone from your community describing other people's actions as botched

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

#443

Post by antifa »

philwelch wrote: post #312
worik wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be more palatable if it were an objective economic reality we all had to accept, but right now it's marching orders from the wealthy neoliberals holding year after year record profits.

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

#444

Post by jtode »

I've been thinking for the last few years that ships moved tons of goods using just the wind for centuries, and that nowadays, autonomous schooners that cross the ocean are more of a basic engineering challenge that would require no miracles. Further, these schooners could probably be fully or mostly solar-powered - if it's wind that moves them, their operation basically means running some motors and such to adjust the sails.

Which is to say, with some adjustments in our expectations of speed and a concerted effort of building the new system, there is no reason not to think that global trade could continue indefinitely without relying on oil.

No reason, that is, other than pirates, which is the one problem I have not solved in my daydreams about these ships of the future. The one essential ingredient for such a vision, is a world in which humans do not, or at least rarely, steal.

So this is not so much a counter to the article, as a lament. Humans can accomplish a lot with some effort, and they can prevent good things with even less effort, sadly...

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

#445

Post by hackerfromthefu »

trashtester wrote: post #383
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…

> 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…

Doesn't really check out ..

You are saying that people will lend without faith that they will get more back than lent?

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has capital - lending is all bad. why go to effort, to risk of losing your money, and opportunity cost of using the money yourself? There's gotta be some incentive for the individual lender if it's actually going to happen at scale in society.

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

#446

Post by marssaxman »

philwelch wrote: post #312
worik wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your bravado is charming, but since when is it up to you?

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

#447

Post by pphysch »

puranjay wrote: post #419
pphysch wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western economies are based on consumption, not production. Hence their present downfall. > Machines do not pay taxes, making it harder and harder for the state to pay for the welfare of ageing populations. Taxes are a relic of the long-gone physical money era. Vulgar taxation is a legacy technology that provides more waste than utility in the 21st century. > Automation simply doesn't work for service-focused work.…

> Yes it does, increasingly over time. I just ordered my lunch through a virtual cafeteria cashier that was literally a human until a month ago How does it make a difference whether a tortilla was being made by a human or a machine when that automation just opens up another job somewhere else? I've been hearing about automation and how it will eat the world for years, yet here we are in 2022 with "help wanted" ads ev…

> How does it make a difference whether a tortilla was being made by a human or a machine when that automation just opens up another job somewhere else?

Please explain how even a medium large service automation SaaS (say, 100-1000 software developers) is going to restore the 10,000s of jobs it is obsoleting.

> I've been hearing about automation and how it will eat the world for years, yet here we are in 2022 with "help wanted" ads everywhere and businesses literally throwing money to hire people.

Tech has seen some of the biggest salary growth, and America in particular is pretty slow to adapt new tech and automation for business. Think about how it took a pandemic to finally get everyone using cashless payment systems. A ton of restaurants still haven't figured out how to do fully automated online ordering.

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

#448

Post by pphysch »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #403
pphysch wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Western economies are based on consumption, not production. Hence their present downfall. > Machines do not pay taxes, making it harder and harder for the state to pay for the welfare of ageing populations. Taxes are a relic of the long-gone physical money era. Vulgar taxation is a legacy technology that provides more waste than utility in the 21st century. > Automation simply doesn't work for service-focused work.…

> Taxes are a relic of the long-gone physical money era. Vulgar taxation is a legacy technology that provides more waste than utility in the 21st century. It isn't often I see really novel ideas on hacker news, but this is an interesting take. Will need to think about it more but definitely interesting to think about the best means of providing public goods etc and if the system we have does this.

Taxation in the fiat CB/MMT era stops being a means to fill public coffers and becomes primarily a means to artificially suppress demand. You tax someone not to raise your funds, but to decrease their spending power.

If you need to fill the public coffers, just ask the CB! You can then use taxation to mitigate the inflationary pressure of doing that.

But generally taxation becomes a bandaid for poor economics, and institutions like the IRS are obscenely arcane and bloated. They should be eradicated and replaced by a much simpler and more automated digital accounting system.

No, this doesn't have anything to do with the virtual beanie babies known as cryptocurrency.

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

#449

Post by trashtester »

pharmakom wrote: post #421
trashtester wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would I lend at 0% when I can hold cash risk free?

Let me first assume the strictest case, ie that you mean 0% literally, not 0% real rate (adjusted for inflation).

Imagine you are a big institution that holds $10 Billion in "cash", for instance a European bank. The interest offered to them by the ECB at the moment is -0.50%. Most banks prefer to pay that premium for storing "cash" in the ECB account over extracting physical notes. (The notes may not even be available.)

Whether or not private citizens are willing to lend at negative nominal interest rate, doesn't matter so much, as long as companies and institutions are willing.

But in the real world, there is usually some inflation. If the inflation is 5%, cash will lose 5% if its value per year if you store it as paper. Most people will store it in a bank deposit. In today's market, far below 5%, probably closer to 0 than 5. In other words, private persons often lend money to the bank at a negative real interest rate.

Whether your mean nominal or real rates, there are people or organizations out there that are willing to lend below a rate of 0% at this very moment.

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

#450

Post by tacocataco »

hattmall wrote: post #326
hintymad wrote: post #167

This is probably an unpopular opinion: it pains me to see the manufacturing industry decline in the US. I don't really mind paying $300 for a pair of shoes. Yes, it will be expensive, but then I'll just buy fewer pairs. In return, more people get decent jobs, or so I hope. And no, I'm not talking about just the so-called "low-end" manufacturing, but also the high end. Indeed, how can we even grow "high-end" talent if…

Why in the world do you think it would take $300 to buy a pair of shoes??? Like what? You can buy all the raw materials for 10 - 15 dollars (way less in bulk) and a single person can make a pair in under an hour with minimal training. Manufacturing things in the US doesn't have to be vastly more expensive. The greatest revolution right now is the ability to do small scale manufacturing. Now the issue is that most of…

Would 3d printing be considered modest equipment?

If not now, then soon as the technology matures.

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