Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

noahpinion.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 386 posts

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#331

Post by cm2187 »

_7ezv wrote: post #313
cm2187 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and have a taste for tunnels stinking piss, overcrowded trains, very long and sordid corridors (Chatelet).

Don't know about Chatelet but the last time I was to London (which is not more than a year ago), the tunnels and trains seemed fine. Yes, it gets crowded during the morning peak hours in some of the busy routes but apart from that, they seem to be really good. Makes me sad that most other cities do not provide that kind of easily accessible public transport.

Sorry I was talking about Paris. London is a much more pleasant experience, despite the tube being so much older, the tunnels narrower and the temperature very hot in the summer. I avoid taking the metro in Paris, I have no problem taking the tube in London. Not the least because the brits have preserved a form of courtesy without which there would be deads every day in the tube (if people were pushing on overcrowded platforms like they do in Paris).

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#332

Post by culopatin »

At times it seems like I’m reading about Argentina. The problem is that people just sit around complaining until the crisis hits lvl 9000 to go out and throw a brick. It’s like boiling a frog. Argentina is the same way. And by then, it’s too late. In a weird way, sometimes I think these moments of touching bottom are needed for change to happen.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#333

Post by oblio »

strix_varius wrote: post #110
belltaco wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big reason why is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings...

This was also discussed in the article.

How dare you!

We don't read articles over here!

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#334

Post by trashtester »

asciiresort wrote: post #8

> Without imports, many Sri Lankans will quickly find themselves hungry, stranded How did these island nations sustain themselves before ? In other words, what has changed that they can’t live off the land anymore? And by that, I mean the sea. Has Sri Lanka’s fish been pillaged? Is it being exported to wealthier nations that command higher prices, even as there is a domestic food crisis? How much of this is because o…

> How did these islandnations sustain themselves before ?

They didn't. At least by today's standards. The poorest parts of the world have become immensely richer over the past 50 years. In the 80s it was still common to have famines that could wipe out millions in a small area.

Despite a massive population growth in the world's poorest areas, such famines basically don't exist anymore.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#335

Post by dtech »

denton-scratch wrote: post #310
londons_explore wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mostly-bread diet See the section on meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, etc... It would be a decent diet. And obviously within a year or so, land use could be adjusted to make it an even better diet.

The UK produces a surplus of animal shit; I don't understand why it isn't all being used to fertilize the ground. For that matter, I don't understand why human poo is treated as pollution, rather than being composted.

Because synthetic fertilizer is better in %effect/$cost, if you exclude externalities at least.

If you would include nitrogen pollution and use of fossil fuels/CO2 production into the cost, using natural fertilizer would be a no-brainer.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#336

Post by nibbleshifter »

cm2187 wrote: post #258
nibbleshifter wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is virtually no need to drive a private automobile in Paris if you are able bodied. The same applies to Berlin, London, and many other places.

...and have a taste for tunnels stinking piss, overcrowded trains, very long and sordid corridors (Chatelet).

Tbf, I didn't mind that too much. The metro could use some improvements, for sure.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#337

Post by londons_explore »

denton-scratch wrote: post #310
londons_explore wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mostly-bread diet See the section on meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, etc... It would be a decent diet. And obviously within a year or so, land use could be adjusted to make it an even better diet.

The UK produces a surplus of animal shit; I don't understand why it isn't all being used to fertilize the ground. For that matter, I don't understand why human poo is treated as pollution, rather than being composted.

Water treatment plants let quite a lot of biological contamination through... If you use that to water crops that people eat, you get quite a nice disease spreading loop...

Specifically, no water treatment process today tests for viruses in treated water, and there are plenty of viruses that can survive sitting in a bubble tank for a few hours..

Boiling the water for 10 minutes first would satisfy me that very little biological contamination can make it out, but it is a huge amount of energy required to boil all the wastewater.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#338

Post by nibbleshifter »

_7ezv wrote: post #313
cm2187 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and have a taste for tunnels stinking piss, overcrowded trains, very long and sordid corridors (Chatelet).

Don't know about Chatelet but the last time I was to London (which is not more than a year ago), the tunnels and trains seemed fine. Yes, it gets crowded during the morning peak hours in some of the busy routes but apart from that, they seem to be really good. Makes me sad that most other cities do not provide that kind of easily accessible public transport.

London's transport system is extremely well run, despite the national governments political hostility towards it.

TfL (Transport for London) do a lot of interesting things to manage traffic (rerouting people on foot through stations in interesting ways) to manage traffic/congestion.

Its also rather heavily surveilled and policed by the British Transport Police (a fully fledged police force specifically for the UK public transport networks).

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#339

Post by kamaal »

denton-scratch wrote: post #292
kumarvvr wrote: post #15

The drastic move to organic farming is puzzling. Any level headed person , forget a politician , would want to experiment first, see the results, gauge and then expand selectively. That is common sense . I guess when you are a dictator ish government and you rule the country with an iron first, the institutions of the state stop being anything and simply become rubber stamps. This also underlines the importance of se…

> A country ought to feed its people, provide basic services like power and medical facilities on its own, without depending on imports. Ah, wouldn't that be nice! I live in the UK, a country that hasn't been able to feed itself using only its own produce for centuries; Napoleon called us a "nation of shopkeepers" because we couldn't survive without trade. Our staple is wheat; but our wheat isn't as good as North Ame…

>>I live in the UK, a country that hasn't been able to feed itself using only its own produce for centuries

From the past few centuries, Britain has been doing just fine colonising bulk of the world and taking their resources.

I guess the past before that wasn't all that glorious.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#340

Post by an9n »

kumarvvr wrote: post #15

The drastic move to organic farming is puzzling. Any level headed person , forget a politician , would want to experiment first, see the results, gauge and then expand selectively. That is common sense . I guess when you are a dictator ish government and you rule the country with an iron first, the institutions of the state stop being anything and simply become rubber stamps. This also underlines the importance of se…

> Any level headed person, forget a politician, would want to experiment first, see the results, gauge and then expand selectively. That is common sense.

> I guess when you are a dictator ish government and you rule the country with an iron first, the institutions of the state stop being anything and simply become rubber stamps.

The precautionary principle. I've noticed this is ever-more fiercely applied to anything involving protection of the environment, but never, ever applied to protection of national ethnicities and culture in Western countries - where the mere mention of latter invites being cancelled.

Post reply on HN