Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "VisualEconomik EN"
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I think, this is a mistake... Yes, world is reening itself of oil, we have incentives, yada, yada... The world will never get off oil! Even if we stop using it for fuels, there are still plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers... The list is well over 10000 entries long! over 10000 kinds of products have oil in them in one form or another and Saudi Arabia has the lowest costs to extract oil on Earth. What I'd do, would be to:
1) establish a university, that would train and research stuff related to oil extraction and processing.
2) I would double down on oil processing and industrial automation. Really these days, oil is seen primarily as an energy resource. I'd flip that. I'd see it first and foremost as a manufacturing material and only and what can't be processed further would be burned. That way, SA would have abundant and basically forever cheap and secure source of resources for their products. Even if the world abandoned vast majority of products made from oil, there would still be pharmaceuticals and fertilizer, wihtout which the system will not ever work and on which Saudis would have massive advantage, given low raw material costs and cheap electricity, because they wouldn't need to import anything and burn what's now used for fuel and cannot be processed further to have their own power source. I'm not worried about climate discourse derailing this, because particularly in democracies, parents will not tolerate their children dying of smallpox, measels or anything treatable, or famine, because the nation, which produces majority of fertilizer isn't green enough. Noone is going to put tolls or sanctions on a nation producing this basic stuff over something as meager as climate change.
3) bad image cannot be overcome with PR. That is the lesson SA needs to learn and actually implement reforms. That is one thing they can't speed up. Just look at major brands and what is their reputation in spite of in some cases downright excessive PR budgets! I'm talking EA (once mark of quality, now of garbage in gaming), Blizzard (same story and to think that SC2 nearly saved them!), Ubisoft (who once ran three different DRMs on one of their games and now are actively trying to deny us owning purchased games), HP (and their printers from hell). Only genuine change can do that.
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Europe needs to wake up from it's environmental fever dreams and start playing to it's strengths. The capital that is in the EU, fertile farmland and agricultural technologies, and it's location near Africa, where all those resources Europe needs are located and where there is a growing population in need of increased food supply. If Europe were to ditch it's green agenda and focused on consumption based model instead instead of exports model, using exports strictly to feed it's own consumption, we'd be much better off.
But not everything needs to be done, like they do in the US. Take unemployment, for instance. There are people, who want to work, and I do believe them to be vast majority, but companies don't hire them, because they'd need training. Well, make unemployment benefits infinite, but conditional on active job hunting, individualized, to cover job hunting expenses and rent/mortgage + basic expenses to maintain a living, and at the end of the year, bill it all to employers. The deal being, "look, you'll either hire them, or you won't either way, you'll pay for them.". That would finally put pressure on companies to hire people and to train them and down the line utilize them!
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I'm sorry, US universities understood, that teaching job related stuff is necessary? That more engineers are needed, while fewer philosophers and artists are necessary? Dude two words: Women studies.
The problem is NOT the universities, the problem is the students and the pressure these students are under! When deciding our majors, very few people actually care, what they're going to study. They chose based on course's perceived difficulty and, thanks to basolutely attrocious approach to teaching math in middleschools, very few people voluntarily chose math heavy fields, which are all STEM fields. Science? Think of a field, that doesn't need advacned math. Technology? Again, math squared. Engineering? Can you design and build an aircraft carrier without math? Mathematics? Have you ever tried mathematics without math (in which case, I want the stuff you're on)? Thanks to antiquated and, frankly, forceful approach in middleschool, mathematics heavy fields are viewed as hard ones and not chosen by the students, hence there are fewer and fewer actually net contributing workers in Europe, which in turn is the first factor, why there are so few high end businesses around here. Basically everyone with good brains in their heads goes to the US to get STEM education and stays there, or move to other countries, that have lower costs of living thanks to idiocy of enrgiewende and the rest of green BS (make no mistake, this was not the war. If the war didn't come, it would have been other reason, like a Central Europe wide blackout caused by too much or too little Wind in North Germany. The war merely accelerated the problem), that is sweeping through Europe. Because of this our energy costs have skyrocketed to the point, you can't have energy intense activities in Europe, be it steel mills, IT parks or FABs, or even start a family, because you can't afford basic necessities of housing, utilities and Internet opn one income! This is the second factor, that's killing legacy industries like steel, which have their equipment written off already and are therefore financially competitive with new stuff (which is why historically we've never replaced old energy sources in their entirety, rather, we added more modern ones into the mix), and preventing new high yeild fields from taking off, like server farms. instead, we're focusing on how to lower our footprint on the planet, ignoring the fact, that the necessary reduction of said footprint requires Europe to be driven into absolute poverty. Third factor is the fact, that if your business venture dies around here, you're on the hook for the debts taht you've picked up to get the business going, making European population far less entrepreneureal (well, that and the fact, you effectively can't have a side husstle because of how contracts are done around here), which reduces the number of businesses, that could have a part of them on cutting edge of their respective fields, hence have no real motivation to cooperate with universities on high yeild projects.
As to the graph that you've shown, that is not sufficient granularity. Law falls under humanities and you could argue, that lawyers are the actual engine of US ecnonomy, given how it is them who craft license agreements and find ways, how to brick what you bought without breaking said agreement, thus creating recurring revenue streams for companies. Copyright is the same tale.
Make no mistake, Europe has it's problems with beraucracy, but it is not in the academic field. We have picked up policies, that don't encourage studying more challanging fields like engineering and science, because one, these fields have certain impacts and needs, that are either shunned or can't be provided for anymore in Europe, making student far less likely to chose them, even in the rare cases when the student actually choses based on field perspective. It makes no sense for a student to chose a field, when its major employers will not maintain their operations in Europe. High costs of living and too high risks and devastating effects of running a business in Europe force people, who could create businesses, that would benefit from and to business-university cooperation, out to the US and Asia, which in turn limits universities ability to partake in cutting edge research, which in turn drops them in the rankings. We need to start from the students, change how mathemathics are taught in middle school and abandon implementation of the green transition in favour of returning of energy demanding, but actually productive industries and lowering of costs of living, maximizing real take home pay in the economy without touching taxes (to ensure predictability of tax law).
The one thing I kind of agree with in the video, is rigidity of our majors. There is certainly something to be said about not being able to chose subjects that interest you and have them applied to your credit requirements to graduate, on the other hand, giving the students too much choice could also result in a problem. We can't permit an economist to evade all math in his field, tendency to which is precisely what I observed in my colleagues in my study days. What I'd like to see, would be a change in the structure of credits needed to attain. Currently, most places have class A credits, which are mandatory, class B, which are mandatorily chosen (basically subjects from a shortlist), class C credits, which tend to be chosen general studies subjects and class D, which don't earn you credit to current field, but should you chose to study at that uni another field for which the subject is relevant, can be applied there. The further into the alphabet you go in credit classes, the further you can substitute them (A can substitute both B and C, B can substitute class C). What I'd like to see, would be intoduction for four class applicable credit system, where substitutions would only be possible for the last class of credit and specifically have one of the higher credit classes be interdisciplinary thing or specific effect of studied field on other fields and I'd reduce the mandatory credits to absolutely essential knowledge necessary for the more specialised courses. (as economics major, I only learned the mathematical application of micro and macro economics on business in master's degree course, while the subject matter was taught in bachelor's course. The connection or where that subject knowledge was actively applied was never mentioned in that course, which I belive, to be a massive mistake). To illustrate, what I'd like to see, would be a business major student having to study specific field of business, like agri business or horti business. A agronomist would have to study some specific aspect of forestry (for instance, presence of forest has effect on soil, certain methods of raising cattle require knowledge from both fields). Multidisciplinarity is the dealbreaker for the future in my opinion.
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The field of study is the key. Sure, it's nice to learn just to learn (there are some universities, which will allow you to enroll in classes not related to your field), but if you can't apply it, it's worthless. Also, as someone who sent over 3000 resumes out while job hunting, I can tell, companies don't give a damn. Really, i feel, that these days, the best way is to go both. Learn a trade, come to an agreement with your employer and do school part time. Will also help you determine, whether the guy is worth working for.
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There are problems in societies, that we have created. Take falling birth rates. Where do we live? In small flats, sometimes even in single rooms, that simply don't provide sufficient space to raise a family. Add to this laws, that favor women, who are the controlling parties to "bedroom fun" and the pill and you have perfect cocktail for low fertility, because men will evade risk stemming from knocking up a woman, because what they could earn is limited and further threatened by divorce/alimony and whatever pregnancies get would have gotten started are prevented. Add to this fairly good access to abortions and we are, where we are. The way I see it, at least two of these have to go, if this trend is to be reversed.
Another case can be made for patents slowing down innovation, because you these days have to work around patents of others, meaning, that even if you'll find a revolutionary combination of preexisting technologies, you can't implement it, because everything you'd get out of it, would get sucked up by patent holders, who are behaving literally like the mythical trolls. Same holds true to copyright. Economically speaking, we have a problem with rent seeking behavior, which materialized in "You'll own nothing and love it!" mantra, which is preventing especially the younger people from increasing their wealth through ownership and ability to fix their broken things. (I'm looking at you Apple, Samsing and other technological companies, I'm looking).
Then you have scammers, who manage to get outright cult like following and bring "revolutionary new idea", who suck in tremendous amounts of cash, sometimes even for idea, that outright doesn't even promise to solve a problem, which siphons money from solving actual problems like "stopping the climate change while maintaining our economic prosperity and industrial output", which would have actually provided some kind of outputs.
Another problem lies in environmentalism it self, which has taken on mantra of "Saving the environment at all costs", and which has gone the path of economic output and raising the bar to entry for all kinds of activities, commercial or otherwise. Resources exploitation, one of two actual engines of economy (the other being population growth), because everything else is dependent on original resources, is being demonized as unenvironmental, polluting and unethical, and abandoned, which has caused us massive shortages connected to primarily oil and, thanks to war in Ukraine, also steel, aluminum, fertilizer and some components necessary for high tech innovation (mostly neon).
All of this would need to be reversed, if economic growth were to return to the West.
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Maybe recalculate values for individual states by purchasing power parity. Hawai has one problem (well, two that interact, sadly). Hawai is an archipelago far away from US mainland and there is this law, don't recall the number and year, that states, that for domestic transportation of cargo, only US based companies may be used, ships must be built in US shipyards and must be crewed by US citizens... Well, US has all but stopped building ships outside of US Navy, Freighter production got gobbled up by Korea and Japan, Americans don't by in large engage in maritime life, let alone shipping, so vast majority of ships are not even crewed by Americans and there are fairly few shipping companies around as most of these typically prefer to use flag of convenience and both register their ships and their companies in these countries. That is why you see so many Panamanian flags on ships out there. All of this means, that the vastly cheaper shipping, that is actually used in international shipping, can't be used to transport goods between mainland and Hawai, making everything significantly more expensive. This, however would not show up in direct GDP comparison between states!
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@rizkyadiyanto7922 It really comes to what's needed to make stuff. First, I'd fix the macro, by removing environmental protections, ditching emission allowances and refocused energy grid towards reliable sources of energy like nuclear and coal (cause there's a lot of it around here). Then, I'd create incentive schemes, which would motivate companies to develop new ventures and to enter new fields by helping them finance these new ventures. Key being, that "zombie" companies would either refocus them selves over time entirely, or found new synergies with their "dead" business (for instance a dying farm would be able to receive financial aide to build a sales team focused on international trade, specifically north Africa to export cattle, or an electrician company would be able to get money to retrain their staff to also handle computer network design and implementation, bringing two types of wiring under one roof)
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Yeah, this doesn't hold water. Few observations:
1. Which of the countries, was the poorest, when we saw the map? Bulgaria, which is not your typical tourist destination. Sure, it has two major ones plus its capitol, but other than that? Bulgaria is not best known for it's beaches, but for it's rose oil, economically speaking. If there is strong correlation between how poor a country is and prevalence of tourism, why is not Bulgaria as well known for tourism as Italy or Spain? Why, also fairly poor country, is not Romania listed? They too have a touristy area between ports of Constanta and Mangalia, as well as Danube delta. A prime candidate for tourist heavy economy, if this correlation were so strong, yet they are probably best known for Dacia car company and gypsies.
2. Why would tourism take away people from jobs? People always go for those jobs, that earn them more money and financial security. How was tourism described in this video? Basically as a low paying seasonal job! The very antithesis of in demand job, like the ones in stem fields. You don't need a computer science degree to become a network admin or even a coder. It takes grit, willingness and experiment, but it doesn't need formal education. I spot a different problem. Among the regions mentioned were mostly islands. Meaning, there are very few mine-able resources in these areas (at least economically viable in comparison to other places) as well as lower population in comparison to a larger mainland, which in turn permits only for lower level of specialization an consumption. Why would you build a factory on Mallorca, if vast majority of your potential customers were on the mainland (even assuming strictly domestic trade)? Why would you build a material processing facility or even final goods assembly on Mallorca, unless source of said material was also on Mallorca and there were few other sources of said material? Everything would have to go by plane or ship. To transport something by plane, it needs to be of high enough value (say microchips), to justify the price for transporting a tun of cargo by air. You might be thinking, that building a processing plant could be a good idea, because you have a port, but wrong again. In order to get to the really efficient and therefore per tun cheap ships, you need aggregate production and consumption on the island to be on particular scale, which comparatively small island will never reach due to lack of population. You would also need storage facilities, because ships don't come as often as trucks, which also increase your expenses, further making you less competitive, than someone, who has their operation strictly on mainland and only export finished product to the island in necessary quantities. It seems to me, that geographic factors preclude creation of more innovative industries in places like these, because everything is more expensive to source from or procure for the island, than for equivalent operation on mainland. Even service jobs, which could be done over the Internet, would be more expensive due to relatively higher cost of living caused by these higher expenses. Meaning tourism is the only industry, which can be developed in areas like these, given the capital requirements to bridge this gap for other industries (I'm talking logistics hubs, better Internet connection, self sustaining agriculture using high tech solutions, harbor enlargement...) It is too big of an investment for a return, that will always be lower than equivalent operation on the mainland, due to better economies of scale, thanks to better access to customers as well as production factors (material, labor...)
To sum up, higher cost of operating a business, which in part are caused by higher costs of living due to higher costs of logistics support for these places, are precluding other industries from operating in these areas, even though they may scale better than tourism (say accounting or IT services). Leaving tourism for these places as the only industry, which will develop part of its value chain, because there is some kind of attraction in the area, which draws people in, such as beaches or mountains (I'm looking at you ski resorts, I'm looking at you). The only way to turn this around, would be to find a mine-able resource, which would be refined on the island to the point, where value of the product would permit competitive edge over other producers.
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And four, the underlying causes are overzealous green agendas of western powers, mostly US and the EU, which don't take in to account the reality of energy storage, transport and production and who have reduced massively complex issue of climate to a single digit, that being of new emissions of greenhouse gasses, completely ignoring two facts.
1) Climate change is NOT caused by new emissions, but rather the old ones, which are, and will be for a number of centuries, already there! Meaning reducing current emissions even to a 0 is too little too late at too steep of a cost to society.
2) Energy storage is already hitting the limits set by laws of physics. There are no energy storage systems out there even in prototype phase, which could come even close to effective deployment in the grid, nor are there batteries safe and powerful enough, to allow green energy sources like wind and solar, to replace oil.
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So, my phone doesn't have NFC. Czech banks came up with a service, that allows you to look up an account using a phone number, if the other party has it set up. If not, they can simply give me their bank details and I can set up a wire from my phone, if needed, or if it's a bigger amount, from my PC. You can already pay fines by card. All regular governmental money interactions I have are doable by wire (It's actually the prefferred method around here). Furthermore, there's the problem of getting debanked, as happened to Farage a while back. What will you do, if no bank touches you? There is clause about banks being able to do that for whatever reason they deem fit in every contract I have ever seen! The fact, that you can't change your bank account number, when you're with a bank, is redheairing. You can always have 50 bank accounts (I already am on 10) and simply wire money between them as needed. In most of Europe, SEPA payments are free for normal people and they can be accross borders, no problems whatsoever. Hell, when I was working as accountant, I was regularly returning money from Czechia to the Nordics, Baltics, France, Germany, Greece... there are publically available tools like ibanvalidator, which allows you to validate any IBAN or calculate IBAN from a domestic account number of that account. And it works for the whole world! Meaning so long, you actually know the account number, you can send the money over! Meaning, we'd rather need legislation otlawing the practice of IBAN discrimination and make it mandatory to accept cards!
You can open up extra accounts to pool money for common purchases. I run such an account for our entire family! Conditional cash scares me to hell! Imagine this. You build yourself a PC and install Windows, because everything is still made for Windows... and Microsoft, heading for their service based business model, decided to charge you per minute in use?!
There are payment providers with domestic technologies. It is also not entirely true, that payment providers are not based in the EU. SWIFT is in Belgium... In the Netherlands, they used to have (not sure whether still have) cards, that were not international standard, but carried the number of the account itself on it instead! There's nothing easier than mandating IBAN to also be printed on a card, perhaps even with a QR code for a machine to read it and request a payment over the Internet, simply, by asking the bank running the account, to transfer the money, which could be approved by the account holder from his phone or even (better) dedicated token. We already use multibanking (managing accounts from different banks through other banks), so communication between the banks is not an issue.
The very fact, that somebody holds a record is a problem, particularly if part of that record was, what was bought. As for offline payments... we already have prepaid cards around here. They are very rare, true, but they exist. So offline Euro would be useless thing, that could cause more trouble than worth.
All in all, as staunchly pro European guy am I, I see no use for this and costs associated with the system. :(
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As someone, who's looking at no retirement due to unsustainability of demographic development and stunted wages, I say this. We will soon have to face a very, very ugly choice. The young, or the elderly. One of them is going to have to be removed from the ability to influence government, because resources for redistribution are not generated quickly enough, be it metals and oil due to green idiocy, or suspiciously hostile rules for new construction of housing. One has to be sacrificed, if the other is to live and unfortunately, it's the elderly, who have currently the upper hand.
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Doesn't work. For one, if you were to lower the spending budgets, you'd have to cut retirement benefits eventually. The government, which would do that, is the government no longer in power. We have simply way too many old people to make this feasible on the necessary scale. With entrepreneurship being made too easy, you gut out employment, because suddenly everyone is contractor, because companies refuse to hire normally and you've got gutted social security, because it's cheaper for the companies. Can't lower taxes, as reinvestment of revenues back into companies is ridiculously low already and, unfortunately, this would not motivate companies to reinvest or at very least increase wages. There is nothing that would make them do it. Really the only thing that I could agree with would be new energy regulation to remove subsidies and incentives from intermittent sources and ban even mere advocating against nuclear power. But what you write of as a whole would destroy Europe.
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@ArawnOfAnnwn I don't think so. We have already shed our dependency on Russia and Russians them selves have stopped a lot of imports from the EU. And yet, we're still kicking as much as we are. Russia has been overcome.
China has been becomming hostile state for Europe for about a decade now. They have been threatening tariffs all the time, or stealing our tech (Americans are not alone in this)... Not to mention, that China is some 10% to 11% of EU total exports. That's just half of what the US would have been, if there were a tariff war. Furthermore, they are not the only manufacturing hub. India could easily replace them as destination for any semiproducts still made in the EU. As for products and more importantly luxury stuff, China it self is schrinking for these markets, because the young proffessionals, who buy this stuff, are rarer and rarer find in China. they either flee to neighbouring countries and Singapore, or age out of the cohort. On top of that, China needs food so much, they are destroying ecosystems the world over, while Europe has multiple agricultural powerhouses. They can't tariff that, without causing serious domestic issues and given how stuff is going on in China right now... 1) nah, I don't really see them putting tariffs in before half of Trump's term is up and 2) even if they did, would Europe actually feel the effect in like six months?
On top of that, there is a huge continent to the South of Europe, that needs capital goods, has the resources for the energy transition and young population, that want's luxury. And Europe is a lot closer to it than Russia, the US or China all are. That is, where growth is gonna be, and with whom Europe can rise with.
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@networkgeekstuff9090 Doesn't matter. The risks from possibility of bailing out a state are greatly outwighed by the possibility of just printing USD, if the FED ends up in tatters thanks to Elon's cost reduction measures and Trump's need to finance all kinds of projects without increasing debt, taxes and with no real assistance from tariffs. Cause that never ends. We have seen this in action, I believe in the Ottoman Empire back in a day. Didn't end well. And I'm not referring to what Erdogan had been doing, this is much older.
My point, however, was, that even as diverse states as the US states across multiple different relevant scales can be, they are each a part of a single nation and it works, all be it with hiccups such as political polarization. If it can be made to work in the US, it can be done in Europe. Sure, Hungary will likely become European Alabama and Slovakia Mississippi, but we'll come to terms with that too.
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Yeah, I do recall, that when Konkan railway had been built, I don't remember the name of that head honcho, didn't want it to have any government involvement. Result? Multiple engineering marvels, that experts said would take years to finish took significantly shorter, particularly one of the largest bridges on the rote took just over half the projected time to build. Meanwhile, where are the major governmental projects? I'd say, that you Indians have three problems. Gandhi wanted to tackle the first, but sadly, had been assassinated before he could properly begin. Second is really civilizational blight irrespective of the nation, so that is not really your fault and the third one one has to adapt to. I'm talking about the cast system, bureaucracy and geography. It seems to me, that particularly the cast system is a huge problem, given it affects access to education and that economic development... you guys need someone to step into Gandhi's shoes and walk the path he started to the finish.
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Really, I think, that the main problem back then was how ideologically it was refused by house Republicans... Obamacare should have covered a few more things, a ban on lobbying in healthcare, total compensation guidelines for insurance companies and banning insurance companies from dispersing profit to any other causes than future healthcare costs. Make no mistake, I'm getting redder by the day and no, not in the communist way, but Republicans like to go on and on about moral hazard argument and commandments and how christian they are... not realizing, what they're doing, by letting insurance to be for profit business, is straight bankruptcy of morals. And where are the stories of great saints not forgiving debts and putting people into effective slavery? I skimmed the Bible in my studies, but something as abhorrent as this would immediately catch my eye!
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Not the pandemic. At best, it was a catalyst and then Putin poured oil in to the fire. Pun intended. This really started with governments in the west going green for the political agenda, creating toxic environment for refineries to exist. This started years ago, when for instance banks were forced to drop oil from investment portfolios to get compliant with new regulations for banking (well, and to virtue signal to their customers). Add a number of years with little to no profit and business environment, which doesn't give good outlook for retooling an old plant, so competition dries up and those, who are left, rise prices. And since it takes years to change course in terms of policy and additional years to bring plants in to production status... Yeah We're screwed, because some of us wanted to "save the environment", while not realizing the costs.
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@kate8160 Yes, but not quickly enough. It takes hours for a nuclear or coal power plants to change their output. That is why they are used for base load and are the LAST power plants asked to alter their output, when something big happens. To illustrate, a while back Dukovany nuclear powerplant in Czechia had to intervene in the grid, because Austria didn't have wind, Hungary had their powerplants under maintenance and there was an accident in Slovenia, which destroyed their interconnect to Austria. It took inability of two NATIONS to have a nuclear powerplant ramp up production and stave off nation wide blackout! A gas powerplant can ramp up it's production or wind it down in as little as fifteen minutes, which is much better for grid regulation, given you need to maintain certain amount of power in the grid in every second! It is much easier to anticipate within acceptable margain of error, what consumption will be in an ever changing consumption model fifteen minutes ahead of time than eight hours ahead of time!
That is why we need to get rid wind, where winds are not consistent, and solar completely and replace it with gas and nuclear. Because when placing in wind and solar, you're displacing coal and nuclear and increasing the need for natural or oil gas, because wind and solar are intermittent and worse, in case of solar selectively intermittent, because it only produces during the day, but most consumption comes in the evening as families come home and consumption spikes! (businesses that are high energy consumers usually work around the clock, so they don't produce a corresponding dip). And you need to cover that spike irrespective of other factors. When there is not enough wind, you need to provide power from gas. Hell, during the day, when there is not enough sun, you need to provide power from gas, because you can't have blackouts!
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If you ask me, you'd have to make universities go more specialized and maybe, just maybe, completely eliminate prep schools. I earned a Bachelors in accounting. Why do I need to study micro and macro economics (all be it truly fascinating subjects I actually like). That's two semesters worth of time, which could be spent on IFRS or specifics of some big taxes, like VAT (which can have so many of these specifics, that they alone could cover a a whole degree), or handling of customs and their effect on accounting. Or why teach marketing to statisticians? These are also questions, which the education system needs to finally ask itself. And then, there are the employers, who demand absolutely impossible skills from fresh graduates, which uni can't teach!
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Yeah, let me give you a different perspective. Landlords have the ability (in some countries outright right) to work out your salary, meaning they can calculate rent so high, the effectively lock tenant in. Housing providers actually don't compeet, because it is against their individual and collective interest and utilize extra income to limit the ability of tenants to obtain housing of their own through lobbying, creating zoning laws and more importantly, technical requirements for new houses to be built and old houses to be renovated. This increases upfront investment needed to purchase a home. Down the line, these decrese running costs of the buildings, but if you can't get approved for a loan, you can't get on the ladder and the landlord just squeezes more. As for house shrinking, that has been happening actually, especially in Europe, but there is another problem. We actually don't need smaller housing, because of work from home. The kids room in a typical household has now become the office. This idea was apt in the 90s, when the Internet was not quite as widespread, but now it is so ubquitous, that cars are expected to report to a central server their trouble wherever on the road they are. This translates as far as housing is concerned, that as long as employers are willing to accept remote work, dedicated space for work related activities needs to be present in a dwelling. Meaning building or renovating into smaller dwelling units doesn't solve the problem. because there is not as much space to save, hence a new unit doesn't necessarily get created from the space made available. Furthermore, if I were to shoehorn Zeihan in to this mix, this would further amplify our natality crisis, because people have been shown to not want to establish families in cage sized flats, rather they need a suitably large house counting no less than 2+number of kids+bathroom sized house. With advent of work from home, make that 4+number of kids+bathroom, because both parents need to work to maintain a family these days and employers might not be willing to tollerate husband and wife working for different companies or even different departments to share an office.
No the only thing, which can solve housing crysis, is encourage telecommuting, individual transportation and to remove new construction blockers like climate impact limitations and zoning beyond strictly safety concerns (flood plains, sea line etc.), while at the same time implementing and under penalty of seizure of property enforce rent controls and demand construction companies to build housing, whenever they build anything. For instance, you have eighteen story building, then you can mandate that at least six floors of the building will be flats, ohterwise, the building will not get a permit for the office space and shops it was initially envisioned as.
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