Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. 1
  2.  @sunspot42  You're clearly NOT and engineer and have no idea what it actually takes to make a modern technological society FUNCTION. You obviously have no idea how energy is produced or consumed by a modern society because you can't see beyond your own front door. Don't panic most people have NO IDEA of where their electricity or water come from or where their waste water goes. Domestic household consumption of energy and water is nothing compared to industry. Most people cannot even begin to comprehend what's needed just so you can have a bottle of milk in your fridge. This is one of my giant bugs with economists. They know how markets work and what societies consume, but they have no idea how things are produced or delivered. This is why our energy grids are failing, fresh water systems are failing, waste water systems failing and all the rest of our infrastructure is breaking. None of the people making decisions or those holding the microphone have a clue. The idea that we can put solar panels on everyone's rooftops and the worlds problems will magically vanish is a fantasy. You forget we still have to dig the minerals out of the ground, process them into raw stock, process them into solar cells and then install them into solar panels. After that they can be installed on your roof. BUT THEN there's the system to get it into your home. That includes multiple supply and manufacturing systems for the wires to the inverter, the wires from the inverter and all the rest of the energy system in your house. Because people don't see the wires in their walls they don't even realise they exist most of the time. I live in Australia. Do you know how many products I can by here that have no industrial energy or water input? ONE and that's our genuine native arts & crafts. Everything from the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the bike you ride, the computer you use has to be dug from the ground, processed in to raw materials and then made into stuff you buy. Anything in your life that has metal, glass, plastics, paper,...etc involved industrial processes that requires energy. For an engineer its actually infuriating how ignorant the general population is of what it takes to provide all these things the rest of society takes for granted. I don't blame the Morlocks from eating the Eloi.
    1
  3. 1
  4. 1
  5. 1
  6. 1
  7.  @GaryBickford  Sorry but I am calling BULLSHlT to your comment. ESPECIALLY the remark about very few economists in government being Freidmanites. They are almost exclusively Freidmanites BECAUSE they were all taught classical and neo-classical economics which is the polite way of saying they are all Freidmanites. Its most notable when you listen to the people in charge of places like the US Fed or Australian Reserve Bank or European Central Bank. You'll hear them refer to the "market adjusting" in some way and how they need to "show restraint." That's the give away they are a Friedmanite as it shows they believe the market will self adjust to a stable state. You might have gone to one of those odd little colleges most people haven't heard about OR one that is Left leaning like Brown U. (the ugly duckling of the Ivy League) OR one of the ones who had people like Richard Wolff who taught Marxist economics for decades. You should go and look up Prof Wolff's story on HOW & WHY he became a Marxist economist despite going to Harvard. Its actually an interesting story. He also did a series on Marx's contributions to Western Economics a few years ago. I'm no Marxist and actually think like Smith he was WRONG about wealth only being created by labor, but it was an excellent series to give perspective on how we got here. FYI - I think Prof Wolff is right about many things and 1,000% utterly and totally wrong about others. On post-Keynesianism I doubt you would even know what a post-Keynesian looks or sounds like and suggest you go and look up Steve Keen. He genuinely is a post-Keynesian and has NOTHING good to say about the economists in government anywhere on the planet. He hosts a weekly podcast Steve Keen & Friends and if you actually want to understand this stuff I suggest you join in.
    1
  8.  @rejvaik00  If you are going to criticise another country for what ever reason GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT. YES - we have compulsory voting BUT that does NOT MEAN you actually have to vote for anyone. As you said people can simply mismark the voting form. I had a family member who used to draw an extra box and write his football team's name beside it and tick that box. Same thing. The only thing that is compulsory is that you turn up and fill out a voting slip. How you fill it out is your choice. If you don't turn up then you get a please explain letter and so long as you give a reasonable explanation NOTHING ever happens AND I have never heard of anyone being fined. SECONDLY we DO NOT have first past the post like America and Britain. We have what is called preferential voting which I think Alaska has now adopted. It encourages more people to step up as candidates and provide more options. If the main parties get slack and put up crap candidates then it leaves the door wide open for other people. Its a system that keeps our parties a lot more honest. This is how the Teal Independents won so many seats at the last election. The main parties got slack. A lot of swing voters who had voted Right at the previous election did NOT vote LEF but voted Teal. Just as the Democrats have issues accepting that 2020 wasn't that good of a result Australian Labor doesn't accept the last election wasn't that good of a result for them. A lot of of swing voter didn't swing to them but swung sideways. So please in future GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT AND NOT BULLSHlT PEOPLE.
    1
  9. 1
  10. 1
  11. 1
  12.  @InformedKiwi  It never ceases to amaze that Kiwis think arrogant stupidity is a virtue. Listen and you might learn something. History is littered with better technologies that were never adopted. Example 1: VHS tapes. Sorry but BetaMax was better in every way but 1. Better picture, better re-record, better in almost everything except they were more expensive to make and Hollywood wanted cheaper. Example 2: Molten Salt Reactors were better and more efficient and produced less waste than Water cooled reactors but were developed second and NOBODY held the patents that they could control. If Chernobyl or Fukushima had been MSRs then there would have been NO ACCIDENTS. Do you know the coal industry developed a new generation of boilers for power stations that would have reduced world CO2 emissions by several billion tons a year? Rio Tinto was one of the main players in that. They even had advertisements on TV at one stage telling everyone about their new technology. They even built a power station in Japan that used it. It was a technology that wasn't adopted, because Rio Tinto and others would have lost billions because the amount of coal they sell would have dropped significantly. The issues with producing and using Hydrogen from wind were solved years ago. The issues with using it in gas turbines were mostly solved in the 1990s BUT nobody wanted it at the time especially the jet fuel industry and the natural gas industry. The jet fuel guys didn't need to worry because they might have worked out the engine issues but not the fuel tank issues. Try coming down of your self imposed arrogance high chair WTFU. Being good at rugby means JACK SHlT about everything else. Just be grateful there's something you clowns are good at. And just because Scott Dixon, Scott McLaughlin and Shane Van Hamburger can drive doesn't mean the rest of you farking can.
    1
  13. ​ @Battleneter  Yeah don't remind us about how much money our politicians have in their pockets. What I will say as an engineer is we need to be clear about what type of coal are those mines producing because there's 2 distinct types. As an engineer I hate the fact that none of this is rarely explained so here's the basics. ONE is THERMAL COAL and its only good for burning to generate heat, hence the name "thermal coal." Its what's burned in power stations and other heating applications. Thermal coal is a zombie industry. Its dead but refuses to stay dead and who knows how many times we have to shoot it to finally be rid of it. As I like to put it to the pro-coal clowns "If burning coal is so fantastic then why don't we go back to steam powered trains and have coal powered trucks?" THER OTHER is METALLURGICAL COAL and that's what is used to process iron ore into steel hence the name. What makes it different is the lack of impurities. Its almost pure carbon so when its used in making steel you get good quality steel with few impurities. That's really important when you want to make things like stainless steel and you want bridges not to fall down. Because its got few impurities its also good for other applications like water filtering and for manufacturing carbon fibre to make lighter cars, boats and air planes. The metallurgical coal industry which Australia is a leader in is NOT GOING ANYWHERE because we need steel. If you want wind turbines they need steel towers. If you want public transport then trains, train lines, buses and boats all need steel. Then there's the millions of other products that are made from steel. Yes there's lower emission systems but to replace the worlds entire steel production industry will take years and cost $$ Trillions. These just aren't things we can simply buy from K-Mart or Amazon.
    1
  14. 1
  15. 1
  16. 1
  17. 1
  18. 1
  19. 1
  20. 1
  21. 1
  22. 1
  23. 1
  24. 1
  25. 1
  26. 1
  27. 1
  28. 1
  29. 1
  30. 1
  31. 1
  32. 1
  33. 1
  34. 1
  35. 1
  36. 1
  37. 1
  38. 1
  39. 1
  40. 1
  41. 1
  42. 1
  43. 1
  44. 1
  45. 1
  46. 1
  47. 1
  48. 1
  49. 1
  50. 1