Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "VisualEconomik EN"
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@tonycatman I have to disagree with your assessment. Say you steal my sickle. Then I'm not building another one (ignoring the fact, that the sickle can be very easily used as a weapon, eg. an equalizer) I make a scythe and equip it with a mechanism, that would allow me to quickly flip the blade and turn it into a a warscythe (eg. I create dual use item). Or you steal it from me in my sleep? Then I'll wall off my house. You make a ladder to get over the wall, I'll dig a moat and fill it with water around my house to attract predators over night... etc. etc. escalating all the way to forming a state of my own and raising an army to crush you, provided my income permits such a development. What you describe will not prevent generation of capital, it will, however, inform what kind of capital get's created. I don't disupte, that some kind of "law" or equivalent system would eventually develop, but it would develop as result of creation of capital. The only reason, we have law instead of rule of the stronger, is because it creates more predictable environment, but you can only start creating predictible environment, when you have enough food and capital to ensure, that you can free up workforce to specialize for that purpose. Remember, as a species, we had spears, arrows and other weapons long long before we have codified laws and weapons are a type of capital.
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Yeah, that wouldn't help much... There are two main reasons why:
1) Most of the fields, that you need to enter these days, are in their very early phase, meaning even companies them selves, don't really know, what skills they'll need in the future and thus can't communicate that need to universities, to create a study program, which would help with this.
2) A lot of societies needs are only perceived and can be outright disconnected with real needs in our economy, or be set up on poorly evaluated facts. Case and point, electromotive. You need a huge battery for an electric car, which has even greater impact on the planet, than petrol. And you have people, who claim it's not true, point to scientific studies, which don't take in to account consumer behavior and end up undercutting the need for battery size, because that supports their position and policies are built on that, which results in the picture, of what is needed in the economy for skills, being distorted, because under normal circumstances, in scenario like this one, more people would study fields surrounding internal combustion engines and would be looking for ways to make them even more efficient, and fewer people would go in to metallurgy and related fields, because there would not be such a demand for mining and refining more kinds of metals. Meaning, there would be a straight up mismatch between skills taught and skills demanded... Or in a different way, imagine industry standard being Ethernet and universities still teaching coax token ring.
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There's a bigger problem here. Not all goods have the same inflation as others and there are goods, which will always be bought. Take housing (which some nations don't bring in to account when measuring inflation), energy, transportation, Internet access, meat, vegetables, cooking oil, cheese... A lot of the things in your traditional CPI are consumer goods and services, like computers, cars, vacations... Really things, which only a small fraction of society buys on a regular basis. So what I'd do, is I'd create a CPI variant, which would measure the highest costs of basic necessities to ascertain basic costs of living.
As for not taking technological innovation in to account, I think it should not be taken in to account. Why? Two reasons.
One. Because, while there is the argument for including it to make the measure more precise, including it would shift the reported number to higher income bracket in the society, suddenly, you'd not be overestimating for people, who can afford to buy more efficient stuff outright or through help of reasonably interested loans, thus lowering one, sometimes very substantial part of CPI, you'd be underestimating inflation for those, who can't afford these capital expenses. That is the first problem.
The second is unpredictability of technological change. Say a well off family would buy a new, more efficient fridge. That is demonstration of what was shown in the video. Consumption of electricity is lowered and inflation on that particular good/service should be lower. However, that assumes no other change had occurred! Say said family was family of gamers and graphics card in one of the gaming rigs owned by the family had died or gone so obsolete, it is no longer relevant for modern titles, so the family replaces this graphics card with a 3090 TI. Graphics cards are the most power hungry parts of a computer, meaning that due to effectively maintenance, whatever savings in terms of energy could be partially offset due to technological innovation, all be it in a different field. Now some might argue, that you need to measure taking only one change in to consideration, as to measure the effect. However, that argument falls on it's face, because of the time horizon that's measured by inflation, which typically is a year.
What we really need is whole set of statistical information to evaluate the situation and take the right action. For instance, to take a more targeted action to reduce inflation in particular component of CPI, not just utilize the blunt instrument of monetary policy.
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Ordinary citizens don't have more capacity to save and invest. Unless one already owns a home, they are subject to landlords, which can workout or even demand disclosure, how much money a person makes, and set their rent at such a level, that the tenant can't ever save for down payment on their own house. The idea here is, that if someone gets a house of their own, even on a fixed mortgage, they'll stabilize the largest expenditure they have month-on-month basis for a number of years, whereas their income should increase over same period of time. Rent on the other side, will increase every year without question (baring rent controls).
Then there is transition from owning to operational leasing of goods, which producers, eg. companies are pushing down our throats, sometimes completely disallowing perpetual ownership of a product, or making it ineffective investment (as rule of thumb, investment in a tool should completely return in 5 years), forcing a normal Joe to "rent", what he otherwise could acquire for good year on year. Take MS Office as an example.
The government also plays a part in this, forcing people into purchasing less effective and in the long run therefore more expensive services and/or goods. Take electric cars, which are more expensive than conventional ones and will always be more expensive (due to higher volume of refining of greater variety of materials, when compared to normal cars), which are currently pushed by governments, in order to battle climate change. In the past, thanks to relative simplicity of a car, one could fix them himself, lowering total cost of ownership of an asset (yes car is an asset, in spite of whatever financial gurus are saying. Car gives you greater range to access either net lower priced housing or higher paying job), when compared to modern cars and especially electric cars, allowing them to retain greater amount of wealth by "working on their own", which incentivized longer period of ownership of said asset. This has gotten less and less possible, due to increased complexity of cars, which culminated in EVs, where owner could prevented from even learning, how to fix their car under pretense of safety. To illustrate, my grandfather owned and drove the same car for twenty years and fixed everything on it himself. That is unthinkable with a modern car and impossible with an EV, because after twenty years, battery of that EV would be completely dead and that is the most expensive component of that car! Even modern cars with internal combustion engines have become so complex, an individual without very specialized and therefore expensive tools, can't touch anything on their own cars, forcing that person to seek out services of a certified mechanic, often times controlled by car manufacturer, who retains a part of mechanics profit through access to knowledge base and tools necessary to fix the car. (I'm looking at you John Deer, I'm looking at you!)
These rent seeking practices lower a persons ability to retain wealth, hence contribute to greater economic inequality.
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You do realize, that eco-friendlyness is chief culprit for this mess, right? Where do you think, those regulations, which hit hydrocarbon sector come from? People fall en mass for a scam, that we don't need hydrocarbons, that we can live without them, that we'd be better off without them. You know, basic ecology talking points oversimplified. Polititians either fall for it too, and/or cinically use it to get reelected. Their electorate begins to demand an actual change, so they begin to move in terms of policy certain way, to appease their electorate, and banks either wait or begin to ditch oil ang gas in anticipation of further sector harming legislation... and we're, where we are.
The whole problem with ecology, is that it has shrunk to one question alone. Global warming and refuses to see other solutions, then production equivalent of austerity, however, people who peddle this don't realize the reality of the situation. Say we'd stop using plastics at all. What would we displace them with? Could you imagine integrated circuits of computers with other carrier material than plastic? What about bottles? Imagine, how much would a your standard 2l bottle of your prefered bevarage weigh! How do you carry that on you at all times? In my travels, I used to carry on foot five leters of water just for my self. How much heavier would my backpack get, if I were to use glass instead of refilled pop bottles? And remember, glass is the only sensible alternative to plastic here! And what about lost merch as result of breakage? Who'd carry the losses from that? Companies would have to calculate that in to costs of final product too.
There is this ted talk, you might want to watch: Why renewables can’t save the planet by Michael Shellenberger. I think, you'll find it illuminating.
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@kieranrollinson8750 Not, if they end up facing a fine, which would make their electricity even more expensive to not produce. At this point, they begin to limit damages and increase or maintain production... Or if they could lower their AVERAGE price relatively quickly, by, for instance retooling one of their closed down powerplants, at which point, they make profit. All that needs to be done, is to allow that powerplant to work economically, for instance, by scrapping emmission allowances/carbon tax.
Electricity, however, is a bad commodity show this on, due to the inner workings of the grid. Long story short, not all electricity can be bought equally, but at all times, there has to be certain amount of electricity in the grid to prevent blackouts. So electricity is bought in tiers first goes base load, then wind and solar, then more easily regulable sources like natural gas or petrol. Facemasks would have been better choice
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I do have a slightly different angle to it. Just look at what and how we consume! In much simpler economy dominated by agriculture products, hotter areas with large navigable rivers have an advantage. They can trade and reliably grow foodstuffs. The latter part is still very relevant but, because of advances in agricultural technology, the competitive advantage from good soil is lost and then you have to deal with other factors. A farm with worse soil, that knows, how to compensate for the problem by using fertilizers and procedures, that limit pests, will have similar outcomes to a farm in perfect conditions. The new factor that enters the room is iron and steel tools. Capital goods, that those in hotter climate would be harder to use, given until invent of a tractor, you had to use animals like cattle or hroses to power things like plows or carts so large, a human wouldn't even budge with them, and gain fertilizer in the form of manure. The advantage that rises from combination of these factors for colder climate then is, that harvests become equal in volume but more predictable as more and more factors enter the production chain, because each factor other than weather, which is tied to climate, is less and less volatile. In a hotter region, where particularly animals can't be used to power the tools used in agriculture, capital goods have lesser impact on farm productivity and therefore are not so widely adopted, because other options would provide better outcomes, including just not expending the effort. To make things worse, as economies become more complicated, because more kinds of stuff gets traded, the more basic goods become less and less valuable to trade, meaning to maintain income, more and more quantities have to be realized on the market.
So here is my argument. Because of how hotter climates interact with capital (eg. how usable that capital is in these regions), these regions get hit by a double whammy. 1) They don't adopt capital based agriculture model until it becomes sustainable under local conditions, which gives them centuries to millennia worth of developmental delay when compared to colder, temperate regions, more suitable for that kind of agriculture. And 2) because they don't adopt the use of capital goods in agriculture, their agriculture sector cannot support a larger population, that could produce more capital and capital goods than otherwise comparatively weaker temperate regions, compounding the problem.
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Oh, there is potential. Make no mistake. If BRICS turned itself as a regulatory integrator, alligning bureaucracies for international trade and maybe coordination of tariffs between members, there's a lot it could do. Russia is a major energy hub (well, was, until they couldn't export Westwards and because they never built infrastructure to go the other way), plus it has a lot of lumber and lumber products to export. Russia is also the largest exporter of wheat (well, at least was before the war). South Africa is well positioned for copper mining and processing, which China and the rest of the world needs for the energy transition. Brazil has potential for agriproducts and lumber. India is becoming a major manufacturing hub, it's population is significantly younger than China, plus it's close to Arabian peninsula, so easy access to oil from there, which will not be thratened by any terrorist groups, given Iran is part of the pact right now. China is China. There's a lot of demand for some products there, thought his will be diminishing with aging population... There's a lot of potential there, that is being squandred, because the participants haven't properly committed to the idea.
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@lightworker2956 While you describe the situation mostly correctly, there is a problem here. Soviet union did collapse, but it did not happen because of that tax. It was instituted shortly before the collapse, so it did not have effect on the political side of things, but you could see uptick in birthrates for the period it had been effective + 9 months. I happen to be a below average male, so I know the pains all too well. The thing is, so far, everything else we've tried either did not return positive effects, or they were so marginal and with costs so grand, those policies eventually had to be withdrawn. Just look at how little effect positive policies have in Hungary and how costly they are! We can't be without government. Small government is anarchocapitalist wet dream, that had been proven to not work. Not to mention, we need the kids to be properly raised. Just hammering down on single moms causes unintended consequences (such as when a single mom is a widow, not of her own choice). No the problem is, that women can be independent, and that means access to work.
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the problem with services, is that they are way too flexible. Comes economic downturn, everyone's easily ditching their suppliers and you've got a huuuuuge delta in employment, which in turn translates in to gigantic delta in consumption... and everything's flying up and down. What needs to happen, is we as Europeans need to realize, that everything has it's price. Be it overspecialization on one thing (cars, particular service, etc.), environmentalism... these are all things, that make it harder and more expensive to manufacture stuff. It is environmentalism, which is the main enemy of industry. What would happen, if Europe ditched emission allowances for CO2 to energy market? Coal would suddenly become unbeatable energy source on price, only threatened by nuclear! Forget wind parks and photovoltaics. They just don't create enough power reliably enough, to be even considered in an environment, that doesn't care about emissions. Why? Well that is simple. It is in abundant supply in Europe, can be mined locally and Europe has perfectly tuned transportation system for coal (railways). And yet, we are abandoning it in favor of vanity projects, like VRT or electromobility...
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Oh it is even worse. In order to have children, people of child bearing age must have intercourse. However, thanks to pro women laws being passed, how the family court works and more awareness of it, men are beginning to check out of intimate relations. I read somewhere, that over 30% of men under thirty have not had sex at all. Why? Women can chose, whom they'll let inside of them and, because they're hypergamous and have been more successful than men on the job market, thanks to the vast majority of university support programes aimed at them, as well as having better predispositions to actually finish a degree, supply of men successful enough to attract a woman is plummeting. Things have gone so far, that telling a woman the clear fact, that her greatest asset is her fertility, is considered an insult. On factual basis, that statement is correct, however. A man can't give birth. That's just basic biology.
Now, how to address this? There is a number of solutions.
1) Political system could be retuned, demanding exclusiveness between right to vote and drawing on state pnesion. No right to vote means no incentive for the politicians to push through policies, that would benefit the elderly at the cost of the young. Pension should also be strictly calculated not from costs of living or any bonuses to enjoy one's time. Only what had been gathered in previous year may be dispersed among the elderly.
2) Worker centric employment contracts. It must become strictly employee purview, from where he would work, if the nature of the work permits it on a physical level. Eg. no more office space. No more commuting. If it can be done from home, it must by law be done from home and it can not be the employer declaring, what can and can not be done from home. This must be either patently clear (eg, can't build a house from home. There needs to be extremely special, hard to transport, not connectable to the Internet equipment involved) or it must be short term (as in a business trip to a foreign country). This would have twofold effect. One, it will allow people to disperse, hence return to the villages, and two, it would equalize housing prices, making the market whole again.
3) Construction of new houses must not be interruptable by anything. No right to object, no environmental protections may stand in the way.
4) The relationship between men and women must be reballanced. For the last fifty years, women have been pushed through hard with no requirements being levied on them, to counterbalance newfound rights. Women should become subject to a "Singles" or "Childless" tax in order to motivate them to lock down a man to raise a child with. Divorce and domestic violence laws must change to shield men from women, be it fake accusations (of both fatherhood or violence), in order to allow men to let their guard down and try again in the dating pool. Some 30% of men under 30 have never had intercourse! This statistic must be turned around, if we are to have more kids.
5) Any and all environmental regulations must be toned down to allow for sufficient economic growth. Europe needs to restart it's coal, nuclear, oil and gas power plants and stop further expansion of intermittent power sources. Polluting to generate power or heat must be free. No emission allowances or carbon tax allowed.
6) Discourse about this matter must be put under review. Currently, there are people out there, claiming it would be benefficial for the planet to have fewer people. These people must be stopped. Spreading of pro-environemtalist standpoints must be made illegal or at very least, costs must be front and center. If we knew, how much this is gonna cost and that we'd pay for it, noone would vote any green party into opposition, much less power.
It would be a harsh wake up, but it may be necessary for our survival.
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Finally a video, which points out the problem with public transport! Yes, every change, every stop that the bus or train makes is a problem for everyday commuters! Take my case. I live in the center of the city of Brno, I used to commute to the outskirts for work. When my dad took me, even in peak traffic, where everyone is whining, about how bad cars are, as they sit in those cars, from my house to the office building I worked at took some 20 minutes, give or take 5 minutes, one way. Some 40 to 50 minutes both ways. Public transport? Had to walk to the tram. Then change to another tram and then to a bus, with final significant stretch of commute on foot again. It took me 45 to 60 minutes one way! That's hour and a half to two, if things got extra bad three hours through a city, that has probably the best public transport system on Earth!
Really the solution for this is not public transport, nor banning cars in cities or even car ownership. No. The solution is, mandating those jobs, which can be made remote, remote. No more accountant going to the office every day of the week to handle invoices. Instead, once a week to deposit processed paper invoices, which he/she handled from home. No more comming to call center, to respond to clients. That can be done from home. It's the inflexibility of employers, who motivate vast majority of trips! It is, because you have to travel and be somewhere at fixed time frame, which doesn't confirm to public transport's schedule, which motivate's us to use the fastest possible private mode of transportation. And before anybody start's talking about bikes, I've got news for you. There will never be guarantee, that you'll live within reasonable commute time (say 30 minutes one way) from your working place by bike. That's simply utopia.
There are two solutions, which help cities. Two solutions, which can go hand in hand to actually solve cities problems. They won't solve climate change, but they will solve smog.
First. By mandating all positions, which don't require physical access (I'm talking manually swapping sheets of steel in a machine levels of physical access) to be strictly remote positions, you'll turn daily drivers into weekly+joy riders. That's cutting driven kilometers by at least half, at no costs to public coffers and potentially cutting cost to employers as well, not having to rent office space. Bigger homes, which will be required for people to work from home will likely increase in price. That is the only drawback
Second. All new cars can be mandated to be plug-in hybrids with internal combustion engine and 20 to 30 kilometer battery. This way, cost of the battery is lowered, which is the most expensive part of an EV. Battery degradation doesn't affect the car that much, as on longer drives, or when hauling something, it would still use normal engine, and the base, from which the battery would degrade is lower and there can be a mandate, to use electric drive only, when in normal use, in particular zones or even entire cities, because those are not such long distances, that need to be taken. Price of batteries and their inherent properties (including their carbon footprint), is what's killing the EV market.
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@abedmarachli7345 Fortunately not, that would make me a smoker too (am the only non smoker in the family) :D I too happen to have a friend, who infront of me drank himself into liver failure (my vote was deciding to take him to the hospital). Furtantely, he's still young and we cought it early, so he managed to recover. I have seen a girl, who wasn't prepartying, to end up with alcohol poisoning after a single drink. I myself have ended up in the hospital after a night of very irresponsible drinking. There is indeed danger in alcohol, but that is why it is so important, to drink responsibly, not to evade it outright. I for one didn't touch hard alcohol for five years after that hospital incident (and still drink hard alcohol very rarely), shifted to wine and made it a rule to never drink alone and more than one bottle in a day (that's about two glasses each). That is how much I know I can handle safely, without endangering myself. The problem is, much like driving or riding a bike, you don't learn, without doing it. We as humans do dangerous things all the time, but we learn, how to do them safely with experience. Yes, there are bad outcomes, but that doesn't mean, we shouldn't do it at all, particularly if there is a reason to do it. Because everything can have a bad outcome.
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Here are some counterarguments.
Bereaucracy: Czechia. Just look at our construction permit lead times. We're some of the worst on Earth. New Brno railway station has been in the plans for over a 120 years, and it's only now beginning to get build... European Union and other democracies are making doing business harder and harder, when it comes to
The Dutch Curse: Sweden. I believe, it was your video, where "it is important, what was in the country before the discovery of oil.". Everybody marvels about local way of life and civil development, but that would have been impossible to achieve without inflow of currency for oil and natural gass exploited there.
Trade as source of wealth: Historically, trade was with closest neighbours. Nowdays, we can do everything over much larger distances. Zetor earned itself such a recognition in arab world, that it became synonymous with the very idea of a tractor. Shoes and clothes we wear are seldom made outside of Southeast Asia. It was the momentary unionisation of the world in terms of trade, that allowed for greater specialization and sea access became paramount. Just look at any world wealth map. You'll find the wealthiest regions near coasts or on rivers navigable by big ships. Think Hamburg, Los Angels, New York City or Tokyo, which had basically eaten Yokohama and several other cities. Meanwhile, lnadlocked countries, or countries bordering seas with no access to the ocean, tend to be on the poorer side. No, it's lack of trade interdiction, brought up by USA's dominance on the seas and formation of the European project, which eventually culminated into European Union, which removed arbitrary trade barriers, which would be more common, if, say Germany were devided into it's historical constituent states. Exporting goods would have been near impossible for, for instance from France to Croatia, because, Italy with it's own interests would stand in the way. What you'll see, if larger countries begin to break apart, trade, thanks to individual national customs, inspections and bearaucracies. Trade would get interdicted.
Democracy: Democracy is NOT the best kind of governance, when it comes to resource deveilopment, which is, what you need to trade. A single party government simply sais and does, no matter the human lives, it destroys. Meanwhile, a democracy, thanks to "not in my backyard" principle, will, majority of the time, refuse to develop the resource. Case and point, Czech Republic and Lithium. There is in Cínovec mountain, as well as waste material from the old mine there (tin was mined there back in a day). Introducing the Communist party, who completely derailed joint venture with Australians, causing the venture to collapse. Another example, Iceland. Minerals needed for energy transition were found in vast quantities. A referrendum was held, and mining had been rejected over local natural beauty... which has 0 intrensic value (no tourism is not viable counterpoint, just watch the video about different types fo tourism). Now, we're waiting on just how will the Nordics (can't remember now, which scored this one) decide about phosphate mining in their country, there has not been news, that would indicate large scale mining planned.
Specialization: You can't overspecialize either. Look at economies, that are severely dependent on single resource, like Russia, for which it's energy resources, all of which had been sanctioned, the Gulf states, also heavily dependent on hydrocarbons, had to create cartel to ensure, that they won't get bankrupt and now are scrambling for all kinds of investments and diversification, because, due to ideological distaste for fossil fuels currently reigning in the West, their primary, in some cases near SOLE, pinacle of specialization, export is going the way of dynasaurs, pun intended. Specialization always needs to be wheighed against domestic price security and ability to produce things to some extent domestically. If not for other reasons, to preserve the technology.
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Well, you could squarely point this on China and Russia. China didn't catch the virus and lied to the rest of the world, to save face. And Russia went Reich and attacked a neighboring country. There are your causes, because, no mishandling of initial infection in Wuhan, you have much lower industry fall off, because it doesn't affect the rest of China and by extension, the rest of the world, which means higher production capacity, which in turn, means even stronger Ukraine in the war (because of stronger economic position of their allies) and closer to peace treaty, because Russia wouldn't be able to survive sustained shelling of their troops until winter (or at very least, it would cut the number of days the conflict took, viewed in retrospect, when over).
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