Food. Fuel.
Renewables is shifting one of these, but the other will not go backwards, its that or billions will starve.
It’s all quite boring. Nobody is interested in solving the issue. Only a rat race to see who can con the next person(s).
Some days this monologue from Westworld rings true:
“ I think humanity is a thin layer of bacteria on a ball of mud hurtling through the void. I think if there was a God, he would’ve given up on us long ago. He gave us a paradise and we used everything up. We dug up every ounce of energy and burned it. We consume and excrete, use and destroy. Then we sit here on a neat little pile of ashes, having squeezed anything of value out of this planet, and we ask ourselves, “Why are we here?” You want to know what I think your purpose is? It’s obvious. You’re here along with the rest of us to speed the entropic death of this planet. To service the chaos. We’re maggots eating a corpse”
Millions of Americans suffer from "food insecurity" i.e. "reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at some time during the year." [1] This is very bad, but, there are also food stamps, soup kitchens, food banks, school lunches, family members, and random good samaritans that prevent actual famine amongst those populations because there is no shortages of food present. This is very distinct from real mass starvation where millions of people are dying of hunger in a famine where there is insufficient food available which is what I believe the GP is referring to.
1. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
Such a system is doomed to fail eventually, there's no way around it. Not to mention the fact that its just a big shell game with everyone trying to hide the true external costs of industrial agriculture. The larger we build that system the harder it will fall unfortunately, and if there are no local food producers left in business we're all screwed like the Soviets after they realized killing all the people who knew how to farm was a bad idea if you also like to eat.
Is it? I don't know if there's a concrete way of measuring "amount of globalization", but I'd guess that right now we're probably the most globalized we've ever been. "More things that you use are made outside your own country" has only been growing, and with the advent of full remote companies that also includes much more software than before -- it used to be that only huge corporations would offshore software development, now everybody can do it.
Physical goods are much more complicated to move around the globe than code
Would you mind listing all the naval security commitments - from the Bretton Woods era - that the US has withdrawn from (eg over the past decade or so, anything relevant to "continues to")?
I'm not aware of any meaningful reduction in US naval security commitments. If anything the US is as busy as ever with its global naval security efforts. It's hyper busy everywhere: from Latin America, to Australia, to Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia.
The notion that the US has stepped back at all is entirely unsupported by the actual facts. It's just a weak myth being posted endlessly since Trump began spouting isolationism in 2015-2016. Meanwhile, in actuality, the US just spent another hundred billion dollars on a foreign war in two years.
40 years ago the US Navy was equipped and staffed to patrol the global oceans. Now, the US has a relatively few massively powerful forces of naval power projection but is woefully understaffed and under-equipped to maintain the global order against multiplying chaos. This is unlikely to change at all let alone be fast enough to influence outcomes. Growing sentiment after decades of the war on terror is for the US to be hesitant to intervene internationally, and while that isn’t current policy it’s predictive of future policy. It’s not at all clear that it would be popular in the USA to, for instance, go to Moldova’s defense.
> the US just spent another hundred billion dollars on a foreign war in two years.
The vast majority of this was accountancy fictions about the value of stockpiled obsolete materiel we couldn’t sell but had to pay to maintain or pay to scrap. We have demonstrably not gone all in on supporting Ukraine and Congress is currently strangling any attempt to do so. This is another sign of the US inevitably devolving into an unreliable defense partner.
If you look at the US in particular the relative value of imports and exports is down about 30% from the peak 10 years ago. That's a big change for such a short duration
Was the US federal government previously funding fab development in China?
That is to say, it seams like this investment is to meet a very specific need, and wouldn't have happened otherwise. Similarly those paying aren't the same either.
Edit: Nevermind, it did reach a new record of 63% in 2022. Globalization seems to be doing fine. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS
When the Soviet Union broke down 30 years ago the US decided the biggest worries were small countries (Iran in particular), and things like 9/11 proved they were right. However Russia is now attacking Ukraine and many think that countries like Poland or Latvia (both in NATO) are next. China is setting up so that they could take military action to take Taiwan, and other countries in the area. Nobody knows for sure if either of these predictions will come to pass, but there are signs that should worry you.
- The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade.
- The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East.
- The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else.
- The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US companies, meddling in US trade, etc.
- The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate. It won't back out, of course, but would love for Europe to care more about its own security.
There are so many reasons the US is pulling back. Both the Trump and Biden presidencies are completely on board with it. It's fully bipartisan, and it's going to accelerate.
The US is going to near-shore, friend-shore, and to every extent possible, onshore what it needs.
Globalization does not necessitate middle east involvement.
> - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US companies, meddling in US trade, etc.
WTO already has the mechanisms to deal with this, the CHIPS act is hurting out standing with our allies because of its blatantly protectionist provisions.
> - The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate. It won't back out, of course, but would love for Europe to care more about its own security.
Again, not contra globalization.
Do we really need to be stuck on a treadmill of always having to make our lives better? People don't know the word "enough," that's a real problem.
There's obvious issues with how current quality of life is distributed, but I'd propose that we don't need to increase QoL with new inventions simply to make sure that we don't ignore those worst off.
Never mind that the world is not constant - we need innovation on the climate front if we want to stay in a stable environment that doesn’t require more sophisticated adaptation.
Making those worst off better without making everyone else poorer would be much faster with globalized trade.
I am sorry you have become so skeptical of progress, but I and others will continue working so that a rising tide lifts everyone, including you.
Its an unfortunate fact of life that we can't build a utopia with no illness or suffering. We have developed many solutions for different medical conditions over my lifetime and I'm truly happy for those helped. Over the same time, though, we've discovered and named even more. We continue to develop new medications for diseases that didn't exist in text books not long ago, and there's good reason to believe that pharmaceutical companies invent new disease classifications to get fresh funding for a medication they already have on the shelves.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help those in need, only that we can't run down that path forever with a hope that if we can just solve one more condition we'll have it all licked.
> Making those worst off better without making everyone else poorer would be much faster with globalized trade.
I'm not actually sure if this is the worst answer. We frequently hear about the widening wealth gap, fixing that certainly would mean making some poorer.
> Never mind that the world is not constant - we need innovation on the climate front if we want to stay in a stable environment that doesn’t require more sophisticated adaptation.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment behind this, I just start from a different point. I think our best chance of helping reverse the problems we cause to the environment is to first remove the worst offenders of what we do today rather than start from innovating and replacing them. I think a big mistake in the green energy movement had been assuming that it would be untenable to reduce total energy use and that we must instead replace all current use and match the current rate of growth in energy consumption.
> I am sorry you have become so skeptical of progress, but I and others will continue working so that a rising tide lifts everyone, including you.
I'm actually not skeptical of progress, I may need to rephrase things if it comes across that way. I just view progress differently than I think many do today. Progress is often talked about as starting with what we have today and adding to it to make tomorrow better, i.e. always intervening more and never questioning how we got here. Put another way, I view progress worth having as progressing towards specific goals whether that means innovating our way out of it or backtracking to find another path. I don't view progress as an incremental approach that must always push ahead without giving time and consideration to removing when we realize pur current path is fundamentally wrong.
That is not a fact.
Progress is accelerating, and we need to keep pushing. It's the quintessential virtue.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
https://ourworldindata.org/cancer
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7384515/extreme-poverty-decli...
https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1bjaog6/fil...
If you have links or explanation of how we could possibly get to a world with no illness or suffering I'd be very interested. I'm also not expecting anything as that first depends on somehow already knowing what we don't yet know, like what will kill people once we cure cancer.
Who is responsible for that ? The short sighted, profit driven US policies and actions. They thought that by dumping tons of money there and profiting extremely on the way, in some magic fashion the divine powers of capitalism will abolish the local culture of dynasties and China will turn automatically in a "free" state that will have no further ambitions. In a single generation. Which of course did not happen.
> - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East.
It kind of makes sense to be tired after spending decades destabilizing the region in order to loot oil.
> - The US is tired of NATO not stepping up to the plate.
US led NATO expansion lead to the war in Ukraine, and Europeans are paying the price.
The empire is crumbling, this is its death rattle. And this will be a catastrophe for all of us. If things continue like that, we will experience terrible wars, famines, and worst case nuclear shenanigans.
Now not to only talk shit about the US, it has provided us with amazing things and achievements, and beautiful people. But the bread and butter of the US foreign policy is exploitation and disruption.
As an Eastern European, I cannot thank the US enough for pushing NATO. It makes me feel safe. I'm just sad that they could not get Ukraine into NATO before all this madness started.
Multiple political analysts, US ones included, say that this would not have been the case.
Wars are only good for those in power, in both sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations...
Membership in NATO prevents regional wars, because it increases the risk for Russia. Standing alone, a country like Finland or Poland can respond only with conventional weapons, which they don't have too many considering the scale of Russian war against Ukraine. By attacking a NATO member, Russia risks with a nuclear response from other alliance members up to a global nuclear war.
Russians understand and react to power, and NATO represents that. When a Russian fighter jet intruded Turkish airspace while flying sorties in support of Assad's regime in Syria and got shot down by Turkish air defense, Russian officials came to apologize instead of ramping up the usual "we'll nuke everything!" rhetoric. Demonstrate credible force and they'll backtrack.
> Do you think that if Ukraine was not being courted by US that it would've been invaded like that ?
The premise of your question is upside down. Ukraine was courting the US to get security guarantees such as NATO membership, not vice versa. The notion that Eastern Europe had to be somehow tricked into EU and NATO is deeply misguided. Instead, these have been the main foreign policy goals for most countries in the region, the holy grail.
The alternative for Ukraine was to become an oppressive dictatorship like Belarus has become under Russian influence. That would've meant that Russia would've moved in their armed forces, installed nuclear weapons and prepared to use Ukraine as a staging ground for further invasions westwards - everything they've done in Belarus so far.
Instead of seeing Kyiv under missile attacks, we'd be seeing the same happening 1000 km westwards in Warsaw. How far towards Paris and London do you prefer to let this thing creep before tackling the problem? Until Picadilly Circus?
Invaded? Probably not. Becoming a second Belarus? Yes. Overall it would have meant a Russia - NATO border closer to me. I prefer an Ukrainian - Russian NATO border far, far more.
NATO only does things when it benefits the US.
What are you talking about? Turkey's 'occupation' is not of a member state.
Why 'occupation' and not occupation ?
I also think that Western international institutions are systemically biased in favor of Greece and other more western nations, which is pretty obvious by the disparate response to Greek invasion of Cyprus vs Turkish.
This is the Russian propaganda of 2 years ago, and we know it is a lie because Putin went on camera and told us so himself. When asked by Tucker Carlson why he invaded Ukraine he gave a half hour history lecture telling us about its history of Russian occupation. Putin justifies his murderous invasion by pointing to former borders of historical Russian entities -- which by the way would not just include Ukraine but Latvia, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Germany, Finland, Japan, Mongolia, Romania, and Poland.
Every child in Eastern Europe knows this to be the real case, and only Americans who have no serious understanding of Russian and have generally never even visited believe this hogwash about NATO.
Putin even said in 2002 that Ukrainian NATO membership was a matter between Ukraine and NATO only: "At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners."
I am not an American with no serious understanding, I live in an area that used to be Soviet Union.
Everybody knows you should not corner a wild beast.
Yet this contradicts his statements in 2002 that it was not a big deal and not his business. He only changed positions when he viewed the Russian economy as big enough to wage war and take territory.
There was also no such promise, this is a complete myth.
Russia is doing what it has always done: try to steal more clay. They have been doing this for a thousand years, far before NATO. Russia was neither cornered nor threatened.
However, blame is never black or white. It cannot be all Russia's fault.
Most crimes are a single party's fault. One is the criminal, and one is the victim. Saying it is impossible for it to be all Russia's fault is logically fallacious. Russia chose to invade and commit mass murder. Russia needs to be held to account for that.
I wish you the best.
This is pure ad hominem. My statements are not emotional at all. Ukraine committed no offense against Russia. Georgia committed no crime against Russia before they aided Abkhazian and South Ossetian rebels. Putin committed these offenses unilaterally against these. Russia chose to steal territory and murder hundreds of thousands of people. These are not emotional statements, they are factual ones.
It is in fact your claims which are clouded by emotionality -- obvious sympathies for Russian propaganda.
If provided without evidence? Yes, you can. What's presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
> Everybody knows you should not corner a wild beast.
Nobody cornered Russia, Russia decided that it wants its old colonies back. Most of them were wise enough to long before ask NATO to protect them this time, Ukraine unfortunately had trusted Russia when it said it will honor Ukraines independence and now pays a heavy price for it.
Gorbachev called that a myth in 2014 when Putin used it as an excuse to invade Crimea. USSR's minister of foreign affairs Shevardnadze and minister of defence Yazov have said the same thing. Source, excerpt from an interview to ZDF: https://twitter.com/Jesuitchild/status/1749887239226617873
This talking point is a shining example of propaganda. Gorbachev and Shevardnadze have gone as far as explaining why even in theory, such promise couldn't have been made. It's a complete fabrication.
Personally I am embarrassed that we were ever involved in the middle east, am willing to see our resources spent protecting natural resources if we can afford it, want a stronger NATO and only see that happening by us leaning further in, and think the only thing bipartisan about our two presidential candidates is that there is no way they are our two best candidates for the job.
The past decade of American media has been promoting this new cold war narrative as if there is inevitably going to be a major war with China.
If there is war in East Asia then the whole international economic system will collapse, people will be starving in the streets. That's if it's not a nuclear Armageddon and we're left to rubbing two sticks together. Nobody will care about chips if there is a war. That will be really far down the list of actual concerns
The world is so interconnected and everyone depends on everyone so much that there is basically no point in planning for this scenario
There's always a point in planning for a scenario if you think the risk is high enough and there is something you can do to better prepare for it.
In this scenario, the ones most impacted immediately will be the ones most dependent of the global economy. If you can't get the basics like food, water, and shelter if war with China breaks out then sure you'll be in a bad spot. But is it really an impossible task to prepare at all?
Even in the most benign case, if China is for whatever reason peacefully cut off from the global economy and we haven't been nukes into the stone age - having to move back to 22nm chips is going to be the least of our problems. To put it in perspective.. this is going to be a world where we no longer have cellphones and toiletpaper (b/c those are all made in China) and most equipment/machinery/refrigerators/washing-machines/cars/trains will overnight become at least in part unrepairable. Basically ever sector of the economy depends at least in some small part on the Chinese supply chain.
We put chips in almost everything today. If we can live without chips them so be it, but assuming we'd rather not feel the full impact of have zero chips for whatever reason we'd be smart to start building some level of manufacturing capability at home.
We already saw toilet paper supply chains crumble and all it took was a (potentially over-) reaction to a potential global pandemic. It wasn't a war with China that made it clear we really could do some good with a simplified toilet paper supply chain, it was scientific concern amplified but scared/concerned politicians and herd mentality when the public realized they weren't prepared for such a possible future.
But even in this horror parallel reality of yours, cutting edge chips would still be very far down the list of things that are important. Can you provide basic sanitation without anything made in China? Transport? Medical care? Can you feed your nation? Can you maintain your nations basic infrastructure?
Having to go back a few generations in chips is just irrelevant at the scale of disaster you're envisioning
If you are going government intervention, they could reach for tariffs and import taxes rather than subsidies. Forcing prices high enough for domestic production is painful at first but would eventually work all the same.
I fully agree with you that too much of our current infrastructure is dependent on China and other countries. It isn't really a problem if we aren't concerned with major shocks though. It sounds like the difference is that I see the risks high enough to invest in domestic production if possible, you see that solution as unrealistic and that we're better off avoiding/preventing all shocks.
Imagine how much more expensive everything would be, and now imagine the cumulative amount of money that represents. Money that could be used to fund education or improve people's lives, or even build armaments if you really are worried about the commies. You're in effect paying an huge "tax"/premium indefinitely for a threat that's very theoretical. In so doing youre seriously slowing down the rate of progress and prosperity
But that goes a bit away from the original point. That even if you want to have a self reliant north Korean model for the economy, chips are not a sensible place to start. You'd probably want your local hospital to be able to run without anything made in China. Going back to 22nm (circa 2014 tech) would be a minor annoyance.
Its overly simplistic to assume that a subsidy will increase prices and harm the economy. We have been subsidizing corn for decades and it has kept prices artificially low. Prices for corn and downstream products like beef are artificially low specifically because of federal subsidies.
If a subsidy creates domestic jobs it could have a net benefit. The ultimate question is what metrics are impacted and at what rate. If domestic jobs are created fast enough to increase demand for employees, wages could rise faster than prices.
I have no idea what the end result would be, but that's ultimately my point. Economic models are just that, models. Models are based on analysis of past events and assumptions if the future. We don't know what we don't know, and we often don't recognize how inaccurate models are when we simplify them down to a handful of measurements.
To your original point, hospitals do seem reasonable to focus on with regards to stability through simplified supply chains. Chips may help there, our hospitals are dependent on a huge amount of tech today. Paper, silicon, and metal products would also likely be high on the list as they are often treated as consumables - the consumable nature of those products may make them more important than chips.
But I'm glad you see that chips are not really the top priority if this was really an issue of national safety. So one then has to wonder what are the real drivers of these jingoistic policies
To wind it back a bit, are you disagreeing that with the idea that subsidies are meant to reduce consumer prices and tariffs are meant to increase prices on imported goods?
Or are you disagreeing with my argument that economics isn't that simply and pulling one lever can have multiple impacts that together may move prices in an unexpected way?
To the second point... it's so vague to be meaningless. What you're advocating is basically mercantilism - which is widely seen as ineffective and counterproductive since.. the 19th century. "unexpected ways“ .. is it like the law of gravity and always going to hold? Probably not. But when you are talking about blocking international trade across whole sectors of the economy then it seems like a valid simplification. If you want to argue mercantilism is going to be a net benefit to the domestic economy then the onus is on the advocate of the outdated theory. All past historic experience points to the opposite and to the development of a stagnant backwards economy
With regards to subsidies and tariffs I disagree the distinction is semantic and unimportant, though it likely is irrelevant here since I started with the concept of a change in demand at the consumer level.
This sentiment was very prevalent right before WWI.
Globalization is breaking down quickly. Chips are crucial to national security and our economy. The supply chain for advanced chips is heavily dependent on East Asia which is a geopolitical powder keg and a demographic time bomb. The only thing more expensive than whatever we end up with is chips unavailable at any price because East Asia devolves into a war stricken basket case. We needed to have been starting this panic training/building 10 years ago but better late than never!