221–226 of 226 posts
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The modern agriculture just means automating depleting natural aquifers and using up topsoil and abusing chemicals at massive scale. Its the agricultural equivalent of optimizing for next quarter, but losing out on next decade.
Ancient equivalent is slash-and-burn agriculture, and famines from crop diseases and droughts. I dont think modern vs oldschool juxtaposition is helpfull
Quick google-fu is failing me with actual numbers, but I would not be surprised if we are using 3/4/5 orders of magnitude of water every year compared to 3000 years ago.
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You get an imbalance with free incoming trade but taxed/impaired outgoing trade. Perhaps a massively importing country can live with it if importers get better deals as a consequence. But otherwise bilateral arguments would be the long term viable approach.
What imbalance? The benefits of free imports accrue whether you’re a big country or a small one. Hong Kong did very well out of unilateral free trade.
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> Is there still a point to 2D maps? Hiking away from cell towers and wifi Historical maps Maps that aren't owned by Google
> Hiking away from cell towers and wifi Just download the map in advance. > Historical maps Agreed on this. > Maps that aren't owned by Google I agree with this in principle, but there are alternatives to Google Maps and some of them are even gaining popularity because developers in general are terrified of ever relying on Google for anything besides ads.
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What imbalance? The benefits of free imports accrue whether you’re a big country or a small one. Hong Kong did very well out of unilateral free trade.
The demerits also accrue, you lose a bargaining chip for your export fees, and it makes it more attractive to rely on imported goods than build a local alternative that could lead to an export business.
In the long run, imports and exports have to be balanced.
(Some countries export capital goods, like the US: when Chinese investors buy American startups or real estate that doesn't show up on your usual export statistics, but essentially it's still an American export.)
So if you are importing, you can't help but develop exporting industries.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by bargaining chip? What's there to bargain? You just declare unilateral free trade, and let other people decide on their own policy.
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> Just download the map in advance Okay, hiking away from cell towers and wifi and power supplies
My phone gets about 4 days of use currently before recharging, and I could pretty easily find ways to recharge it even using solar power if I wanted to. If you don't want to use your phone as a map that's fine, but it's incredibly convenient for (I'd wager) 99% of use cases.