For me also, as a life long abstainer from mammal and bird products. I wondered on reading this, would I try this meat? Probably, (though in small pieces, I understand vegetarians don't have the gut flora to process meat and it could be uncomfortable). I absolutely am in favour of lab grown meat. I cannot wait for the day when people complain about not being able to afford real pork, fish or chicken because it's too expensive, when we have such strong laws about animal welfare that only the rich or those who farm their own can consume what was a live animal. I'm sure a black market will exist but on the greater scale, it will be a blessing for the earth.
Imagine if, one of the labmeat companies becomes so powerful that they bribe the president of Brazil to make deforestation illegal, and so limiting the amount of land available for cattle and cattle food. I'll happily accept this as a weird side effect.
Agreed. The loss of plant and animal species is primarily driven by animal agriculture, which along with the welfare of the animals themselves is above every other concern for me.
Yesterday I cooked oatmeal burgers (oatmeal, onions and eggs) and my parents told me that they tasted better than meat ones. To manufacture artificial meat is more difficult than artificial milk and eggs, and I think it is a better venue to go.
We've known for a long time how to fight not only poverty, but hunger, homelessness, wealth inequality, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and, a host of other issues -- even pandemics. There is just no political will to do the things necessary to save us from ourselves.
Part of the problem is that among the social issues you listed: poverty, hunger, homelessness, wealth inequality...to a large portion of the population theses are not bugs. These are features of not working hard enough. Incentives to join the workforce and do Bullshit Jobs [0]
Yes of course we do, poverty has been consistently driven down over the last 100 years. It's driven down by increase economic activity, would imagine that's pretty obvious by now.
Economic activity, ie. labor productivity has increased 252.9% since 1950, but pay has only increased 115.6%[1].
The wealthy and especially the very wealthy have prospered[2], and those doing manual labor have been left behind. In a society like the US with very low social mobility[3], colloquially referred to as 'the american dream', it is especially crippling to ones future to be born in blue collar family.
You've been posting this link all over the thread. Reddit posts exist somewhere on the credibility continuum between facebook posts and some random person's blog.
No, poverty is at the same level or worse in most of the world compared to 100 years ago. It is only significantly better in China, and somewhat more generally in south-east Asia.
Not to mention, we have little data on actual poverty in 1920, as many of the un-industrialized nations had large proportions of their populations living off the land in ways that did not contribute to GDP, but where they nevertheless wouldn't have been considered poor. It's also important to remember that scientific racism was a majority position in many European and American countries, and much of the data we have was collected through that lens.
I read your link. Did you watch the videos? The criticisms in the paper you linked accurately state things like GDP != poverty and the best measures start in 1981. There are many ways to measure things. Yes, we are missing good data. But we have others and all the data aligns. People are doing better. In the videos, they are about life expectancy, child mortality, average income, and gdp. Things are looking better all the time.
Yes, bad things are happening. But the trends are in the right direction.
I think that something like UBI is the only humane way to run a society, especially with the increasing automation.
Personally I think that if people study the problem they will realize that there are reasons that UBI is universal and that non-universal UBI probably won't work.
I also believe that if you look at the cost of living in the US and the potential federal revenue increase from radical corporate tax reform, it will still not add up.
So I think that we need extreme cost reductions. But beyond that, I don't think the monetary systems we have now actually can support UBI indefinitely. The math just doesn't add up due to the high cost of living. Eventually the poor countries can't tolerate letting the rich countries increase their debt infinitely anymore. This is going to be a big risk for global war in the next few years.
So I believe we need a totally new type of high tech money. One that integrates more information and has more fine-grained controls. I believe the only way we are going to have global security is if this new money is built on a fair international standard.
> I think that something like UBI is the only humane way to run a society, especially with the increasing automation.
Or maybe don't automate. The assembly line has given us repetitive tasks that perhaps, for humane reasons, we should automate. But where are skilled manual labor jobs? Construction is the only thing that comes to mind and there is not enough of it.
I strongly dislike UBI because it gives the economically-blessed tier a pass. "I gave at the office," they can claim while stepping over the homeless or passing the very-nearly homeless on the way to their Tesla. (Lets be clear, $1000 a month is not going to suddenly give everyone a home and 2.5 children.)
$1000 a month creates an environment where the poor finance each other: if you lend $100 to your buddy, you have some confidence he can repay the amount, because he is getting something, so emergency debts can be spread out. At $0 a month there is no trust to build, no credible source of income. Nobody has anything, so nobody gets anything, so nothing happens, no opportunity to build a richer economic web is created or pursued. The poor are then in a position where staying idle seems best.
What's actually in place today in the US is effectively somewhere in between $0 and $1000, in that you get something if you fill out the right forms regularly and aren't denied one day, and many parts of it are a targeted package with limited liquidity(like EBT). These packages in their current form accomplish exactly the thing you describe of UBI: They create a homeless-industrial complex that allows bleeding hearts to proclaim virtue. Barely keeping people alive doesn't get them to the next rung of the economic ladder, it enmeshes them in a one-way dependency not shared throughout the society. "Universal" is a really important component in effective socialized policies.
Yeah, the other problem with UBI deployment is housing. It would take some more changes so that all of UBI doesn't basically end up taken by landlords.
Doubt it. Its not like the next covid is going to happen next year. By the time its relavent people would have forgotten all about it just like how right now the spanish flu is a distant chapter in the history books.
We're not even remotely ready for the next pandemic. In 3 years if we had COVID-20 with exactly same level of infectiousness and death I'd expect the USA to still have 300k deaths a year for 1.5 years. That's not "ready". Ready would be if the USA was as effective as Taiwan. That will never happen though because the culture of the west is "me" where as the culture of the east is "us".
We still have a culture of "us", it simply wasn't fully tapped into in 2020.
In September 2001, it felt as if "we" had been attacked. Just as in 2020, people began signing up and volunteering to take on the cause. New Yorkers, in particular, suddenly noticed their neighbors and pulled together as a community. I saw the same from within the mask-donation and mask-manufacturing movement this year. Thousands of people, in an entirely grassroots way, stepped up to find one another and address a grave and essential problem.
What stymied the response to Covid in the United States most seems to have been a lack of engaged, concerned, and coordinated epidemiological response at the federal level. That it failed is ultimately not "the government's" fault, it is ours, as citizens. That public-safety measures designed to protect us, our neighbors, and our most-vulnerable became political footballs is our fault. We need to find ways to grow our national sense of responsibility toward others -- it is a challenge that each of us can take on.
2020 has been a championship opportunity for all of us. 2021 will be, too.
I suspect that it has more to do with the people in power than a general statement of selfishness vs. selflessness. To give you an example of what I mean: I live in a Canadian province where the infection rate is about 1/10th that national average, and nationally Canada has about 1/4th the infection rate of the US. While there are some cultural differences, it seems like a bit of a stretch to attribute the much more positive outcome to the sense of "me" vs. "us".
To be blunt about it: politicians in other jurisdictions were not up to the task. I was shocked to hear that many provinces did not impose self-isolation requirements upon entry. I was shocked to hear how few public health restrictions were imposed upon their businesses, even when things started spiralling out of control. When you have a virus to contain, you need someone who will make tough decisions and deliver clear messaging so things can recover in four weeks instead of dragging on for four months (and counting). While local attitudes may have helped to improve compliance with public health measures, it can only play a role when there is something to comply with.
I don't get why people keep repeating that being an island is a big deal in a modern pandemic. Infected people came into the US by plane, and general incompetence caused it to explode from within. It wasn't caused by some rush of infected Mexicans slipping through the southern border.
Taiwan didn’t weld anyone’s doors shut, though, or even have lockdowns. The “us” culture here is just that people don’t come up with insane, I’m-smarter-than-the-experts conspiracy beliefs. The government says wear masks in public and people do it, because the simplest interpretation is that the government is trying to prevent an epidemic. The guy who recently caused the only local transmission in over 250 days is probably the most hated man in Taiwan right now because he selfishly disregarded the health of others in order to enjoy himself. In the US, he’d just be behaving like the average person.
I also believe that most of the Taiwan model’s success is thanks to smart policies and responsible governance, but there is something to be said for the cultural aspect, and it’s not a totalitarian hellhole sacrificing a few by welding them in their homes to save the many.
Agreed, they certainly have some people in charge with their heads screwed on right. From October's NPR interview [1] with "digital minister" Audrey Tang (of myriad Perl fame):
> There was a case when a worker in an intimate drinking bar was diagnosed with COVID. She did not initially review the contact because of, you know, professional requirements. But, of course, that will hurt the reliable information requirement for contact tracing. And we did not, however, do any top-down, shutdown, takedown, lockdown of those places.
> But rather, the people in the CECC, because they already had extensive prior experience working with HIV-positive communities - so they designed what we call a real contact system. So as long as people can be effective contacted and also social distancing requirements are met, no data is sent to the central government. And so they develop creative approaches such as leaving codenames, single-use email, pre-paid mobile phone numbers, hats with the plastic chuting to maintain physical distancing. And then they reopened."
Sars was 17 years ago, and East Asian countries responded much better to Covid as result of their lessons learned, with Taiwan being the star pupil. My expectation, though, is that the US will never reach such levels of life-saving, due to our cultural differences.
The thing is, much of the approach that worked for Sars shouldn't actually work for Covid - in particular, Covid has characteristics that make it much less amenable to contact tracing than Sars. (The UK, US and I think most other western countries used the same contact tracing early on that kept Sars out of those countries. It didn't work. You also don't see this discussed much, because it doesn't fit the narrative - except to attack the UK government for discontinuing the contact tracing once it failed.)
The one thing that did work well early on is restrictions on travel, which the WHO, China and the press in Western countries campaigned against. The only Western country I know of that applied reasonably sensible travel restrictions early on is the US, and very soon it's going to get a new president who campaigned on the extremely dubious claim that those restrictions made things worse which went basically unchallenged by the press. (In particular, Italy's travel restrictions - which are often pointed to as proof the US ones were stupid and pointless - only blocked people from travelling directly from China, so they could just travel via other countries and Italy had no record of where they came form. I know the UK's government-funded experts concluded that was much less effective than banning people who'd visited China recently.)
Those travel restrictions also wouldn't work for any country geographically or geopolitically close to Italy - they were still reporting basically zero cases at a point when a substantial proportion of the population was infected. This probably put countries which were closer to China than Italy at something of an inherent advantage.
I live in Atlantic Canada and we’ve beaten back several outbreaks with contact tracing, testing and isolation.
We also moved early and controlled travel to and from the region with a quarantine.
The travel restrictions are essential. But....if you only did that you would fail miserably. Contact tracing works very well! SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters.
We were at zero cases for months, and we’re back down to 0-3 local cases a day in most of our provinces and dropping.
You’re completely wrong that this can’t be contained through isolation and tracing. The issue was most of the rest of north america basically only tried tracing (doesn’t work), didn’t scale tracing, and also never seriously tried to eliminate the virus despite the clear evidence that their tracing systems were incapable alone. (I’m including the rest of canada here)
I agree with you that travel restrictions are vital but you’re underestimating the importance of other tools. Also the Us restrictions weren’t very effective: people still got through! In Atlantic Canada everyone arriving from outside the region has to quarantine for 14 days.
Where contact tracing fails, incidentally, is if you have an undetected case cluster. SARS-COV-2 can spread asymptomatically, so if you miss one it can grow quite a bit. But once you find evidence of a cluster you can move backwards and forwards through the transmission chain and quite effectively. The province of new brunswick has beaten about seven small outbreaks back down to zero with this method. But it only works if case numbers are manageable: the rest of north america let them grow out of control and didn’t scale tracing to match.
> The UK, US and I think most other western countries used the same contact tracing early on that kept Sars out of those countries. It didn't work. You also don't see this discussed much, because it doesn't fit the narrative - except to attack the UK government for discontinuing the contact tracing once it failed.
It worked very well in Asian countries with relevant experience (and perhaps more obedient cultures). The UK didn't have comparable relevant experience and may even have used it counterproductively (a relative with very early symptoms contacted the relevant helpline to be advised there were no known cases in their area so they shouldn't worry...)
> The only Western country I know of that applied reasonably sensible travel restrictions early on is the US
New Zealand imposed a travel ban on people from the region at the same time but also required its own returning nationals to self isolate. NZ has certain geographical advantages relative to other Western nations which made it easier for them to subsequently expand that scope to the entire world and eliminate the disease in their country altogether, but even before that the NZ administration wasn't accused of focusing its containment efforts on foreign nonresidents whilst loudly downplaying the risk of community spread from returnees amongst its own population because this isn't what it did.
It's a bit difficult to take arguments seriously, when there's a lot of expressed motive to make a certain side look good or bad.
Travel restrictions work great. Test and quarantine everyone who comes in to the country. But you won't have perfect containment, and maybe you choose to make a tradeoff and say you just need the test, which has X% accuracy. So then there must be follow-up behavior, and that's where contact tracing, quarantines, and masks come in. If you reach the point where you can't get a handle with such techniques, then you lockdown and test until they're sustainable.
There are countries who have done much better, and other countries that have done much worse with Covid. And you see that with East Asian countries who experienced Sars, and African countries who experienced Ebola. So, it might behoove the leaders of countries with much more dead to take a look at what others might be doing different.
As far as we know, Taiwan has had 0 cases since April. All cases in Taiwan are cases that are found in border quarantines. I'd call that a perfect containment.
> 6) We’ve learned more about what works to fight poverty
Claiming 2020 involved lessons in fighting poverty is a lot like walking up to someone, breaking both their legs, giving them crutches and claiming we've made great leaps in walking.
"Fighting poverty" should involve creating large groups of people where it can't really be imagined how they could be impoverished because they are too resourceful and motivated.
2020 was in large part asking farmers, builders and the productive types of the world to support everyone else sitting around at home. That isn't fair and making it a long-term thing ... it might work, but it is going to lead to some pretty severe tensions.
> 4) Our digital infrastructure for remote work was tested — and passed
This is pretty funny because ISPs have been using the excuse of "protecting their infrastructure" to justify data caps for years. Now that we've all seen that it's total BS, they just say they want to be "fair" and just charge people who "use more" and go over the cap.
In my persional experience online gaming is <50mb/hr. Zoom meetings, meanwhile, are basically a bunch of concurrent livestreams. I would rather say that online gaming is a rounding error compared to WFH and streaming.
Depends highly on the game. From what I've read, most multiplayer games use around 80-100 megabytes/hour, but I've read numbers as low as 50 and as high as 300. A Netflix 4k video stream has a bitrate of around 6.75 gigabytes/hour, and a Zoom call will use somewhere between 500 to 1500 megabytes/hour for a one-on-one (and somewhat more for group calls). So work-from-home is an order of magnitude more bandwidth hungry than online gaming, but still reasonable for a country with good Internet infrastructure. High quality video streaming is the real killer indeed.
So how come we don’t see hyper inflation with this excessive government spending?
For decades politicians had one stable message: Turning the highly “balanced” and austere fiscal machinery system towards spending yields only hyperinflation. They said look at Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia, Germany etc. And the worlds supposedly best economists produced models that legitimize this view, making it dominant in education and discourse.
We now gave people basically a UBI, got many people out of poverty with, but all the issues they have been saying would appear and all the false excuses they put on the table have not materialized.
Isn’t one very big scandal of 2020 that all of these people have been lying to the population? That we had the tools to fight poverty and create better living conditions all along but deliberately didn’t chose to do so?
It appears they just want to bully and abuse people by artificially creating a bad situation and then bully and shame them that the people are in a bad situation.
> That we had the tools to fight poverty and create better living conditions all along but deliberately didn’t chose to do so?
Yes, that's it in a nutshell. Even the standard 1940s mainstream Keynes doctrine is quite clear on the no hyper-inflation scenario - additional money supply will not result in excess inflation unless the economy is at full employment. And by full employment, it doesn't mean the headline unemployment rate of ~5% quoted in media. It means high labor force participation rates (currently at historical lows), low underemployment (currently at historical highs) and low unemployment rate. The fact we see persistently low inflation rates throughout the developed world for decades is intimately tied to these stats.
By finally having time to read Keynes directly from his own works, it's amazing how prescient the man was. Sans the dandy early 20th century English, these quotes are just as applicable today as they were in 1930s:
> ...the richer the community, the wider will tend to be the gap between its actual and its potential production; and therefore the more obvious and outrageous the defects of the economic system.
> [on classical economics] That it reached conclusions quite different from what the ordinary uninstructed person would expect, added to its intellectual prestige. That its teaching, translated into practice, was austere and often unpalatable, lent it virtue. [...] That it could explain much social injustice and apparent cruelty as an inevitable incident in the scheme of progress [...] commended it to authority.
> professional economists, after Malthus, were apparently unmoved by the lack of correspondence between the results of their theory and the facts of observation;— a discrepancy which the ordinary man has not failed to observe
Also, whilst Keynes had a number of policy preferences which are unfashionable now ('euthanasia of the rentier' through sustained low interest rates being one), the General Theory explicitly was about how governments could soften economic contractions like the one we're experiencing now, and explicitly wasn't about governments running structural deficits. At various times he argued that higher taxes were necessary and desirable if the government wanted to use more resources, and that government funded services were more desirable than widespread redistribution payments.
We are in a period of sustained low interest rates. It would be interesting to see if the percentage of people who own their home is going up as a result. I can anecdotally tell you that the interest rates being so low are motivating me to try to get a home loan ASAP despite the prospect of mortgage insurance because I personally do not believe that the interest rates will stay low forever...
Stagflation happened because of the oil crisis. This wasn't something that undermined keynesianism at all, it was simply a disaster exploited to push what eventually became trickle down.
> Keynes worked until stagflation happened. That's the issue that made other models come forward
Keynes worked after stagflation as well:
> I just do not think that is right. Stagflation is very easily explained: you just need an ‘accelerationist’ Phillips curve (i.e. where the coefficient on expected inflation is one), plus a period in which monetary policymakers systematically underestimate the natural rate of unemployment. You do not need rational expectations, or any of the other innovations introduced by New Classical economists.
[…]
> Stagflation did not kill IS-LM. In fact, because empirical validity was so central to the methodology of macroeconomics at the time, it adapted to stagflation very quickly. This gave a boost to the policy of monetarism, but this used the same IS-LM framework. If you want to find the decisive event that led to New Classical economists winning their counterrevolution, it was the theoretical realisation that if expectations were rational, but inflation was described by an accelerationist Phillips curve with expectations about current inflation on the right hand side, then deviations from the natural rate had to be random. The fatal flaw in the Keynesian/Monetarist theory of the 1970s was theoretical rather than empirical.
> But my small quarrel with Simon involves how we got into this state. He dismisses the stagflation of the 1970s, on the grounds that IS-LM macroeconomics quickly adapted to the new information. Indeed, this happened very fast: by 1978 both the leading undergraduate macro textbooks, Dornbusch-Fischer and Gordon, had accelerationist Phillips curves and extensive discussions of stagflation. (Compare this with new classical macro, which failed decisively in the 1980s, but never adjusted at all.)
> Nonetheless, I remember the 70s quite well, and stagflation did indeed play a role in the rise of new classical macro, albeit in a subtler way than the caricature that it proved Keynes wrong, or something like that.
> What mattered instead was the fact that stagflation had in effect been predicted by Friedman and Phelps; and the way they made that prediction was by taking a step in the direction of microfoundations. Specifically, they asked what a more or less rational price-setter would do in the face of persistent inflation; their answer was, raise prices preemptively, and if everyone did this it would shift the Phillips curve up by the amount of expected inflation. Sure enough, the Phillips curve did seem to shift as predicted.
Your quotations are actually in violent agreement with the poster you're responding to.
The accelerationist Phillips curve and various types of rational expectations based microfounded models you reference are, for better and for worse, the newer 'other models'.
Arguments advanced upthread that Keynes (and recent events) implies that the government could eliminate all poverty and unemployment through continuous money printing without consequence, or 1960s Keynesian arguments the government could at any point trade slightly higher inflation for lower unemployment (which were influenced by but not made by Keynes) were the casualty.
One thing both the original Keynes and modern mainstream interpretations have in common is they viewed large deficits as a tool for fixing the imbalances of a recession rather than the natural way of paying for things.
The reason that stimulus spending doesn’t result in hyper-inflation is that the increase in the money supply from the debt creation is almost completely offset by a drop in monetary velocity.
This is because most of the money injected due to a stimulus is quickly locked up due to structural issues where excess savings is quickly funneled to corporate profits, landlords and the ultra wealthy. These funds do not recirculate do the velocity of money drops and inflation doesn’t materialize. In fact the structural issues are so strong in places like Japan that deflation has will naturally result if the money supply isn’t increased with constant stimulus measures.
This creates a company store economy where the underclass or government has to perpetually roll an increasing amount of debt.
Kind of thinking aloud here, but could the Japanese situation be a consequence of their culture? That they have a higher psychological need for feeling safe, which means sitting on more cash for a rainy day.
Maybe the solution could be to run an unbalanced book. Money and debt are often created together, but if all actors of the economy really want to be cash positive, then maybe it calls for having more money than debt.
That's a pretty good indication that spending should increase.
Demographics is often said to be a major component. The older a population is, the less spending there tends to be, which tends to impact economic growth, and has a pretty good correlation with (low) interest rates:
After WWII Japan’s exchange rate was fixed in a way that penalized consumption and subsidized production (for export). The result was the rapid rise of Japan as an industrial power in the 60s to the 80s. This is the same strategy that South Korea followed and China is following today.
While this strategy in the short term dramatically increases capital investment in a country in the long term it seems to come with a demographic drag. Workers simply stop having children as they are the largest consumption driver. Long term this creates profound demographic changes that ultimately are culturally fatal.
When additional government spending doesn't lead to inflation, one obvious reason is that it is utilising what would otherwise be excess unused/idle capacity in the real economy.
It's only when the spending exceeds the amount of otherwise idle capacity that inflation occurs, as too much money chases too little real production.
It's evident that the economic shocks this year have idled a great deal of economic capacity.
It's mysterious to me how the public's opinion is formed of what economists say. The view inside the field is very different, and doesn't resemble what you say at all. Nobody in the field worries about hyperinflation for developed economies. The consensus is that governments can combat recessions. There was some challenge to this view in the late 70s and early 80s, when inflation was high, but by the end of the 90s the question was mostly settled. In the US, even the economic advisors to George W. Bush called for stimulus spending to combat the recession in 2000.
> Nobody in the field worries about hyperinflation for developed economies.
They might not, but could you ELI5 why they shouldn't be? Because as the interest payment on national debt grows, what happens eventually if not hyperinflation? You can't keep borrowing money to pay interest on existing debt, so you'll have to start printing money, right? How do you avoid eventual hyperinflation when you keep borrowing more and more money to increase your debt even more?
> How do you avoid eventual hyperinflation when you keep borrowing more and more money to increase your debt even more?
if i understand correctly, from reading bits here and there, its basically as long as you have something to offset the printing with (taxing out of circulation, ensuring the excess money is spent, taking out of circulation with bond offerings etc) then the "negative" value of the taxing/spending/bonds prevents the in-circulation (positive) cash to cause inflation.
its basically the debts vs liabilities balancing each other out on a national scale: as long as you balance the assets with some kind of liability, you are 'ok' afaiu
ELI5: When there is a lot of demand for something, the value of that thing goes up. When you increase the supply of that thing, the value goes back down. In other words, the value of a thing changes based on both supply and demand.
Inflation is where the value of dollars goes down. As long as you don't print more dollars than people are demanding, you won't get hyperinflation.
The U.S. dollar, for one reason or another, is in high demand all over the world. Other national currencies are not, so when they printed too much of their currency they got hyperinflation.
If the U.S. printed too many dollars too quickly, or demand for dollars dropped quickly, the dollar could see hyperinflation too.
Debt is the demand. People (governments) are loaning the U.S. money in exchange for the U.S. paying them back in dollars. That's how bad they want dollars.
But obviously the question isn't "would they still want dollars?", right? But rather "at what price (i.e. interest) will they want dollars?"... and my point is that price will need to keep increasing as the US borrows more and prints more money to pay interest on its existing debt, right? I don't understand how you just neglect this feedback loop... it screams exponential growth to me.
You are absolutely correct. If demand for dollars drops someday the U.S. is in for a world of hurt. It would have to find some way to decrease the supply of dollars to match. Right now I believe that would have to be through increased taxation.
I'm saying that on the current path the US is on, it's not "if" to me, but "when". Or to be more precise, "at what rate". And I see that rate as monotonically getting worse.
And either way, then doesn't "nobody in the field worries about hyperinflation for developed economies" seem utterly misguided? It seems quite worrying given what I just described.
Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is 266%. Japan's inflation rate is below 1%. After the Napoleonic wars, Britain had a debt-to-GDP ratio over 200%, and didn't have serious inflation. There is no mechanical relationship between high debt and inflation. Countries generally only have hyperinflation when things have gone terribly wrong.
There have been many gyrations, but the trend is pretty clear. It's easier to pay past (more expensive) debt with new current (cheaper) debt. The UK is still rolling forward debt from the South Sea Bubble (1700s), Napoleonic Wars (early 1800s), Crimean War (late 1800s), and World War 1 (1910s):
As a person, your accounts come 'due' in your lifetime, so when you die your estate holdings will be sold off, and remaining debts will be paid off. If there's not enough to pay it off, then the creditors are S.O.L.; if there's extra left over your heirs can get something.
A country/nation on the other hand just 'keeps going' (short of revolutions or being conquered), and so there's no cut-off date when accounts have to be settled.
Strictly speaking, in the modern era, it is not "a government" that decides to print money, but rather the central bank, which are considered independent on government and do (should) not follow the orders of politicians.
The central bankers are hired for a fixed-term (though renewable) and are given a mandate:
> The Federal Reserve works to promote a strong U.S. economy. Specifically, the Congress has assigned the Fed to conduct the nation’s monetary policy to support the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. When prices are stable, long-term interest rates remain at moderate levels, so the goals of price stability and moderate long-term interest rates go together. As a result, the goals of maximum employment and stable prices are often referred to as the Fed’s “dual mandate.”
If 'printing money' helps to accomplish that mandate they will do so, but they will (theoretically/ideally) not print money just because it would be convenient for political purposes.
It should also be noted that in most/may modern economies, private banks actually create the money the supply through issuing loans:
Right, and this is specifically to avoid things like hyperinflation.
Do you trust Congress to manage the money supply? I don't. I think they'd use it to buy votes rather than to do what's good for the country, and the result would be disaster.
There is inflation. The dollar is incredibly weak right now on currency markets, relative to other currencies. Businesses that are not already sitting on large piles of cash are bearing the brunt of inflation right now, as they get screwed between the rising costs paid to foreign suppliers and the stubbornly low prices that American domestic consumers can afford. The performance of the average American business has drastically decreased this past year, contributing to layoffs and making the problem worse. You don't see it in the stock market because the prices of stocks are being propped up by the Federal Reserve, but it's been an open discussion over the incredibly fast gains in the stock market over the last several months whether stock prices are coupled to corporate fundamentals or not.
There are many factors that go into stock market prices besides the strength of the dollar. With interest rates this low, there's hardly anywhere else to invest one's money.
Correlation does not imply causation. True economic strength would result in both higher stock prices (reflecting stronger companies) and a stronger dollar (reflecting increased demand for those companies' goods and services). One needs to take the stock market prices in the context of the actions of the Federal Reserve and despite the weakness of the economy.
This makes a lot of sense if you consider that increasing the supply of money is not enough to cause inflation on its own- there also has to be scarcity.
Healthcare is scarce because it is tied to the availability of highly skilled labor and has seen significant cost increases in recent years as a result.
Housing has been scarce because the amount of land near job opportunities has decreased as our economy has become more service-oriented.
And this brings me to the one big item that was missing from the list in the OP: the pandemic has eased the housing crisis by encouraging everyone to spread out. The exodus of upper and middle class people moving into smaller cities and towns will bring more opportunities for service jobs to places with lower construction costs and a higher availability of land. The only question is whether the drawbacks of telecommuting are big enough to push everyone back into offices in a few years, reversing the trend.
> the pandemic has eased the housing crisis by encouraging everyone to spread out
AFAIK there were a few weeks in the first wave of the pandemic where people fled the city and landlords would face sudden issues to fill their apartments but this time is over. Speaking from anecdotes by friends trying to get apartments in the big cities thoughout Europe it has not gotten easier at all.
It is simple supply and demand. At the start of the pandemic people all over the world were selling stock, commodities, bonds, all demanding dollars. When demand goes up for something you can produce more of it without it losing value.
When the supply of dollars outpaces demand, then you get inflation. The only remedy there is to somehow decrease the supply of dollars, usually through increased taxes.
You’ll hear answers about the USD being the world’s reserve currency, and maybe that does help, but I think the real answer is that we will see hyperinflation eventually. The math eventually must catch up with us.
I think it is flawed math if you completely ignore substantial parts of the equation. AFAIK leading analyses in leading economic scientific journals have discussed the excessive spending of inflationary countries as the and only root cause for the inflation.
But, these leading papers often don’t even mention that the worlds biggest economies at these times (e.g. US) have cut ties and imposed economic sanctions on these countries just before the excessive spending and hyperinflation started.
How are these countries then able to buy goods on the international market denominated in USD, if they are basically cut off from the US Dollar monetary system? It’s almost as if an excessive shock of raised import prices propagates to a general increase in prices. This would mean economic sanctions imposed by the US on to Chile put them into a crisis, not their socialist government from back then with its spending programs.
But wait, that would not fit into the narrative so let’s just claim that these countries short term reaction to these shocks (print enough money in hopes to stabilize the economy) is the cause of the shock and hide it behind a wall of math that nobody wants to look at anyways.
Excuse me, I don’t have the classics at hand now so I can’t point sources.
Well I agree that the initial cause may not be the printing of the money itself, but it is hard to deny that “print enough money in hopes to stabilize the economy” is not a problem. It takes a bad situation and makes it worse. Because even if the US and Chile are having issues and Chile then prints 1 million for all its citizens and then comes to my county and they all say we have a million now we want to spend in your country it doesn’t really work. I think my point is it is two separate matter yes there was something crippling their economy ie sanctions but printing money still was the cause of inflation. Another option would be look at what is causing sanctions and work to resolve that.
If there are more of something, its worth is less? If I gave a trillion dollars to every person in the nation, you think bread would still cost a dollar?
Clearly you would agree that some amount of money printing would cause inflation. At what number of dollars would we cross the threshold? $600 per person? $2000 per person? $10,000 per person? $100,000 per person? etc etc.
When I say “the math must catch up with us”, all I’m saying is that if we kept doing stimulus forever, at some point it will start to matter.
Velocity is low/zero, and so the product will be small/zero.
People have been going on about inflation for literally a decade, since QE1 started under Bernanke:
> We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment.
So we have a testable hypothesis: the inflationistas have been yelling about this for over a decade, and the (e.g.) Keynesians have been saying 'we'll be fine given the conditions'.
Given the (empirical) results, I'll continue to follow the Keynesians. If at some point they end up being wrong, then I'll re-consider (assuming they don't self-correct and figure out why their models got it wrong).
Just be a creditor (let me mark that statement with a heavy /s sarcasm tag).
Most people might be losing their fair share of the pie in the current economic strategy but the creditor class has made out like bandits over the past 30+ years with no end in sight.
Talk about free market ideals but socialise all losses with corporate bailouts. It’s just win win win.
The only game in town today is “maximise shareholder value”. The pre-70s concepts of keep wages growing in lock step with capital’s gains (since the theory goes that boosts consumption and that keeps the world turning) has gone out the window.
Capital takes 100% of the growth. Labour is easy to keep distracted - divide and conquer: “Hey, gay people/single mothers/people from other countries/people with brown eyes are taking free stuff at your expense...”
Would it be fair to summarise that post as “they’ve cherry picked the graph to make it look worse than reality, but their point still stands - productivity growth hasn’t trickled down to most workers” ?
The assumption being that the rise in productivity was a diffuse one instead of the much more plausible concentrated one between international competition routing uncompetitive sectors and over regulation stymieing the continuance of tradional high paying jobs like construction, general failure to maintain public infrastructure.
Why does this all-or-nothing objection come up all the time? You see it with the minimum wage debate too, as in "why don't we pay everyone $100/hr" or whatever. It's just lazy thinking. The economy is a nonlinear system that affords many options beyond these ridiculous binaries.
tbf the 'many options beyond these ridiculous binaries' appear to be what the OP in this thread aggressively dismissed with their argument that because gold bugs are wrong about immediate hyperinflation from deficit spending in a massive economic downturn, all other economists who argue government ability to eliminate poverty through deficit spending in other circumstances might face constraints or tradeoffs 'just want to bully and shame the people that are in a bad situation'
Very few, if any, people are suggesting that UBI is a substitute for a healthy labour force. It is typically viewed as an acknowledgement that there are serious social issues which have economic ramifications that may be addressable through a basic income.
Whether a basic income will address those problems is an open question. It may have a net positive, neutral, or negative effect depending upon the collective psychological response. In addition, how one views the outcome will depend upon their perspective. Suggesting that an UBI will result in people not working is a misleading ideological statement that has no basis in evidence. We simply don't know what the outcome will be. Even studies that indicate positive outcomes are limited by the scale of the implementation.
Besides, it's probably best to look at UBI through the lens of political stability, rather than social well being or economic outcomes.
> So how come we don’t see hyper inflation with this excessive government spending?
Because the $ is the worlds reserve currency... The US moves the burden to ROW (rest of world).
However there is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma “The Triffin dilemma or Triffin paradox is the conflict of economic interests that arises between short-term domestic and long-term international objectives for countries whose currencies serve as global reserve currencies. “
EU Countries have similar excessive spending programs and the Euro is not the worlds reserve currency, yet we don’t see Venezualian Hyperinflation. How is that reconcilable with this theory?
The money is not going into productive use in the hands of most recipients. Its being used to pay down debts owed to the creditors in large scale. Debt loads have decreased significantly with the money distribution. Those who end up with the money struggle to find assets to invest it in, which is why the stock market, private equity markets, and all other asset markets are heavily inflated now. The money had to go somewhere.
Doesn't the money has to go back into the "real" economy at some point, i.e. fill a need besides having a bigger number in the bank account/Forbes list?
Or are the recipients of all this wealth already so rich they don't even need another sport car, yacht, villa by the sea or even another forward looking company?
I have to admit I don't understand being so rich I don't know what to do with my money. It feels like even if I had billions, I'd try to be an Elon Musk and use my money to create something. Or maybe even buy and bankroll a NGO, a sport team, artists, whatever. Is this already saturated, are all the opportunities that don't look like a sure scam already taken?
I feel so out of touch with this world, I struggle to even comprehend it.
I’m sure the wealthy are spending some, but on the whole people spend significantly less of their money as a percentage of income the more wealthy they are. All their needs are met. They can splash out cash for some things but not that much trickles down.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for good analysis.
The key is for your country to not have a significantly higher debt to GDP than competitors of similar economic development. The USA has further advantages in that much of its debt is owned by other Americans (who have strong vested interest in the ability for the USA to pay its debts).
That being said, we could have spent FAR MORE and increased debt FAR MORE in the USA without serious downsizes - even if COVID hadn't happened!
It turns out that "fiscal responsibility" literally does not matter and is in fact DETERMINTAL to the economy. The velocity of money is all that matters. This is why VCs who are never profitable are still a net positive for the economy, because they facilitate velocity. The US govt pumping money into the economy PREVENTED A FAR WORSE LIQUDITY CRISIS which we were at serious risk of earlier given that it looked like we'd be seeing DEFLATION rather than inflation earlier on...
It continues to astonish me the degree to which a literal concentration camp operating totalitarian state can get away with barely a mention after unleashing a pandemic which has killed 1.5M people. Historians will look back on this with horror.
However the virus broke out, China knew full well after SARS 1 that wet markets and e.g. traditional Chinese medicine were huge pandemic risks and did nothing. After SARS 2 broke out there was a very well evidenced cover up and misinformation campaign which apparently without which could have saved 95% of cases.
But instead of the media keeping that in collective consciousness we get pieces like this.
As they rightly say the next pandemic could be considerably worse. The absolute lack of any political or economic pressure on the country most likely to cause it directly informed by a media who appear to no longer care about that fact will be a big factor.
If you think I am being unreasonable, just do the thought experiment and imagine the US or UK had done what china did. You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.
> You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.
If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.
And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.
China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.
If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.
Edit: China tried to downplay -> China tried to cover up
>If you really imagine that any country in the world has either the means or the will to impose sanctions on the US or the UK, you definitely live in a different international community than I do.
I don't think you've been following much of the recent news about brexit or the trade wars with China. Of course countries can condemn and criticise others for their actions. Nearly the entire western press corps have been non-stop criticising your sitting president for the past 4 years. So I think we live in the same world. Why can't the press at the very least be honest and consistent about China?
>And blaming China, which was giving correct information about the virus by January, for so many states refusing to take serious measures EVEN TODAY would be a total farce.
Jan 14th - as reported by China. They repeatedly lied (demonstrably) about their death figures and the nature of the disease. Evidence emerged that actually China NEVER reported the pandemic nature of the disease but rather it was (still rather complicit) WHO staff on the ground who reported it.
They also permitted international flights but not domestic ones once that virus was known about, hoarded PPE and spread a conspiracy theory about the US having originated the virus.
I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.
>China did try to cover up the virus in December of last year, and should be condemned for it. But they then showed the world how to deal with it and shared all of the relevant information as early as February. The failed responses by all European states and the US, most/all Latin American states, most Middle Eastern states etc. can in no way be blamed on China.
The contention that delayed lockdowns (delayed due to China lying up until January and continuously lying about their death figures) would have saved all these lives is honestly laughable. The trade off between lockdowns and the economy is very difficult as is contact tracing in a non-totalitarian state.
>If you want to see what a non-story this virus could have been if there were political will to do the right thing, you need only look at Vietnam. They are a 100M-people state taht have 4 times fewer cases in total by today than 10M people Sweden gets each and every day.
Apples and oranges. Centres of European trade who have considerably wider travel arriving at them and no culture of e.g. mask-wearing and governments ill-adopted to authoritarian measures vs. a communist country with considerably less is not the same at all. And we mustn't forget the impact of climate (hotter climate = considerably less impact).
China had a warning in 2003 to shut down their wet markets and arrogantly ignored it. They reopened the wet markets shortly after covid-19 broke out and covered up the outbreak. This is not even getting into the quite plausible walked-out-of-the-lab theories and it's still clear they're responsible for the pandemic.
The CCP are a dreadful totalitarian government who should be held to account. Instead they sabre-rattle, lie, spread misinformation and attack any country that dares question their narrative threatening economic consequences (see e.g. Australia).
Chinese people are the biggest victims of them. Many more millions will die before that awful group get overthrown. But their time will come.
> I also find it astonishing that you seem to think a country that could have prevented 95% of cases having not covered it up should be lauded for giving advice about self-isolation and lockdowns after it caused them. The families of 0.95 * 1.5M people thank you so much for the clarification.
In no way do I think China should be lauded. They should obviously be condemned for failing to contain this while it was a localized epidemic and not a pandemic, and for actively hurting and silencing the doctors that tried to do so. The CCP is a despicable regime that has caused much harm to its own citizens and to the world in general, in this crisis and in others.
However, I can do little to change the regime in China. However, I have much more power to influence and change the regime in my own country, and so I am much more interested in how they handled the crisis at least once information got out, and it is hear where I think the press should also focus, as they rightly have.
China's reputation for covering up should have been ample reason to start pandemic preparation in December or at least January, as Taiwan, Vietnam and other countries with successful responses did.
European countries and the US instead chose to believe China's early lies. They then added their own lies on top once China started telling (some of) the truth, claiming that masks are not useful, claiming that the disease is not that bad, claiming that it will go away in the summer and myriad other lies.
They then avoided as long as possible to take any serious measures that could have curtailed the spread of the disease early on extremely effectively, with some more serious but very short term economic impact, leaving the rest of the year for growth.
Instead, they chose lukewarm 'lockdowns' where many stores remained opened, they chose to only do contact tracing for direct contacts (serious countries were contact tracing and isolating up to 3 levels of contact), they chose to not even recommend masks until the second half of the year (particularly stupid regimes like the one in Sweden have only recommended them last week!) etc.
These are all things for which we can hold our politicians accountable. We can't hold the CCCP accountable.
By the way, I'm neither a citizen nor a resident of the USA, Trump is not 'my president' in any sense of the word.
China is the second largest economy in the world, and at current growth rates, will be number one in about five years.
You can't put sanctions on them. The world economy would collapse if countries stopped allowing Chinese goods into their economies. We can't just retool overnight.
The reason they get away with their concentration camps is precisely for this reason. There is very little leverage the rest of us have to stop them.
The best the world can do is slowly twist the screws until they are less powerful. This is already happening. You can see some manufacturing is already moving out of China into other parts of Asia because the US is making small but steady changes on how goods from China can be consumed. This is the only option right now unfortunately.
> There is very little leverage the rest of us have to stop them.
That is not true. China main product is physical goods. If the western world would stop consuming irrelevant physical goods (like cocktail umbrellas) and limit itself to essential (and food and western media) then China would be gravely impacted. To be fair, the whole world economy would be impacted, not only china.
But the western world only pays lip service to the "Never again" mantra and will do nothing that affects its standard of living, camps or no camps.
Have you ever tried eliminating Chinese made goods from your life? You'd have to start by ditching your phone and computer, because they're pretty much all assembled in China.
We frankly don't even have access to the information we need to make an informed choice. Even things that don't say "made in China" most likely have some Chinese made parts inside.
I think we the people could, in theory, make a difference and stop buying anything else but necessities from China or at least reduce the amount of crap we buy from there. But I don’t really see that happening. Western people are addicted to “cheaper” anything and CCP knows that weakness
The alternative is to shrink government spending to the minimum possible and put everything into the economy, liberalise the economy so that we can start producing cheap products like China does.
But let's be honest, this is never going to happen. Politics keep idiots fighting between each other while our society gets slowly boiled alive by the Chinese Communist Party.
I wonder if it's because they already bought us and we don't know yet or if it's just sheer incompetence.
I think it's precisely an attitude like this which is the problem. The US/UK and China are incomparable. For example, you can say what you just said without consequence. Try that in China. There is no rule of law there, prosecutors get a 99% conviction rate and political opponents are disappeared. The communist government system has killed over 100M and China actively organ harvests political prisoners.
the US and UK may have done terrible wrongs but they are held endlessly to account. I don't want to get into a dreadful endless debate about foreign adventures (I am not a fan of the Afghan or Iraqi wars by the way) but there is just a world of difference between a totalitarian state and a democratic one.
Imagine the police turning up and arresting you for that comment and you disappear never to be heard from again. That is the reality for many Chinese dissidents. Don't undervalue the freedoms gifted to you by the imperfect state in which you live.
TBH, sanctions are inconceivable on China for the same reason - they are now simply too large and too much money is at stake.
There's also the question of effectiveness. Iran has been under sanctions for most of my adult life, and still appears to be islamist. Ditto north korea. Going further to provoke a war is much worse.
The uighur situation is far more concerning than the errors of the pandemic, which was like Chernobyl a mistake and misgovernment rather than intentional.
While I found that sort of intimidation tactic reprehensible, an actual arrest is clearly a step beyond it, enslavement or murder as practiced by the CCP is on yet another level.
A lot of diseases originate in Asia for various biological, cultural, and geographic reasons, not always political ones. Swine flu originated in the US and infected over a billion around the world, and the world didn't have "instant and severe" sanctions against the US.
Swine flu didn't kill 1.5M. Swine flu wasn't covered up at source with doctors arrested and sanctioned. Swine flu didn't come after a very similar outbreak in 2003 where worldwide experts told america 'this particular kind of market is a huge pandemic risk, you should stop that' which america adhered to for a brief period then reopened and promoted. America didn't stop flights internally after the outbreak while permitting international ones. There wasn't indication of the WHO being overtly influenced by the US to cover up the seriousness of swine flu.
America acted to address the issue and prevent future outbreaks. China is doing precisely the opposite, and looking to save face rather than save lives.
Anybody with half a brain should be aghast at what's going on very blatantly right in front of their eyes. The next pandemic might not have a 0.4% case mortality rate mostly affecting those at the end of their lives/with comorbidities.
Taking the point separately about disease prevalence in Asia - absolutely, and there are many reasons as to why - the wide biosphere, the broad consumption of many species not consumed abroad, the prevalence of high risk animals with similar biology to ours but higher tolerance for e.g. fever/respiratory disease (bats are unfortunately extremely good at this) - this is precisely why we have to be extremely vigilent there.
This is also what makes the Chinese refusing to allow serious investigation into the outbreak (now only permitted via the highly questionable WHO) along with them opening wet markets shortly after the initial outbreak and worse of all the undenaible cover up particularly egregious.
Perhaps the next pandemic would be unavoidable even with China doing all they could to prevent it - but for them to play dice with the future of civilisation with what control they have is unforgiveable.
This is not exactly the same, but police searched the home of a Florida data scientist and confiscated her computers, because she kept reporting Florida coronavirus statistics, when the state government would have preferred to keep true numbers secret.
The Chinese government is clearly not great, but I see blaming them for covid as a scapegoat for the massively bungled response in the US. If China did a good job instead, it's still be unlikely to have contained the outbreak entirely within it's borders. It's still each countries own responsibility to protect it's people, and the US had no one to blame there except itself. Sure, China deserves some blame, but I think saying that it's the "real" story is dangerously understating the massive, ridiculous, incompetence of the US response.
Officials covered up covid because China takes pandemic response seriously. A mayor of an American city would have no incentive to hide an emerging disease because they know that report would have no impact on its own. In both cases, nothing is done until shit hits the fan. The difference is that China actually managed to control the pandemic, as evident in how you're allowed to be mask-free in many cities.
As far as sanctions go, they only make sense if you're goals are strictly economically related. Punishing China with sanctions for the pandemic largely ineffective strategy because you're hurting your own side just as much.
I'd be surprised if in your hypothetical scenario there would be sanctions against the US or the UK. Neither country would try and cover it up which is what's been truly despicable about China's response. I do wish the wider world started taking notice of the vile crimes the CCP are committing.
There'd certainly be rigorous demands on precisely how either country would demonstrate that the risk had been mitigated and widespread damning coverage and condemnation.
The CCP (who have all but destroyed and coopted the great history of ancient China) are a despicably evil state who will cause a great many FURTHER deaths if the world doesn't start taking note and action.
What is a journalist for if they don't even tell the truth when the elephant in the room is the size of a meteor? Not a single mention in this article and most I read recently.
Blame China? The truth is the international political system is designed to be adversarial and fueled by lack of trust. To expect China or any country to suddenly "de-rogue" is naive.
There are countries that have done quite well with Covid. Taiwan comes to mind. Others could have done similar. But instead those others put trust in a system of distrust; an unstable system that they actively contributed to and participated in. That's not on China's shoulders.
Furthermore. There were previous respiratory virus pandemics. Where were the lessons learned from that? The stockpile of masks? The stock pile of PPE?
I'm not suggesting China is innocent. But as governments go, it's not alone in its guilt.
Only after watching a short but interesting documentary on youtube about wet markets in China [1] I understood why they are so interested in keeping that industry operational. It's as bad as it is, but unfortunately wet markets also seem to play a massive economic role in some parts over there, where many people depend on it.
I'd sure hope, that the western world would put more pressure on China, but instead it seems we'll be facing even bigger pandemic threats in the future..
“The majority of the people in China do not eat wildlife animals. Those people who consume these wildlife animals are the rich and the powerful –a small minority.”
Thanks for that, I viewed that some time ago and found it very informative. I am not sure I'd agree it plays a big economical role, rather it became an alternative outlet for some producers but mostly it appears to be a luxury item for the rich and thus entirely viable for China to ban.
I'd have a lot more sympathy if poor people ate such animals to survive (as with a lot of 'bush meat' in Africa) however that isn't the case.
China have no excuse for not closing these, at all. Traditional Chinese 'medicine' where they grind down very many animal parts in extremely unclean environments is another big flashpoint.
The risk is at the species-extinction level yet the actions by the world and the coverage by journalists is so low. Astonishes me.
> It's as bad as it is, but unfortunately wet markets also seem to play a massive economic role in some parts over there, where many people depend on it.
Ok, so what? Adapt.
Like the rest of the planet did. As an example, Restaurants also play a massive economic role in the western world and pretty much everything involving gatherings of people. Or my grandparents doing their groceries without risking their lives. So we managed to more or less adapt to the new reality.
Wet market importance pales in comparison to the changes to the rest of the planet, honestly.
The so-called 'Wet market' is basically the counterpart of the farmer's market in the west. It's the concept of the 'market' for average person, not only for Chinese but also for east and southeast Asia, banning it equals banning the 'market'. In my experience, I feel like 99% of the market I've been don't sell exotic animals. Here's a really good example of an average wet market [0].
Also exotic animal trading has been seriously crashed down in China early this year. I bet you won't be able to see it happening in the following decades at least.
As an aside, this thought experiment is currently being prepared in real life. In 20 years when emigration, drought and storms will have started to cost serious money, what will people do with those that even now continue to say 'the sea level is not rising'?
> unleashing a pandemic which has killed 1.5M people
If a similarly dangerous flu mutation jumps from a pig to an undocumented agricultural worker in the United States, and goes viral across the globe, will you also refer to that as 'unleashing a pandemic'?
Animal rights advocacy groups have for decades been reminding us that conditions in modern farms are dangerous and unsanitary, so it's not like we don't have any advance warning for it.
... Also, it became incredibly clear to anyone that was paying attention that COVID was a serious threat in January. Yet, most of the western world collectively sat on its hands for the next month and a half. Will your historians also leave a few chapters on the subject of just how incapable our societies are at dealing with epidemics?
Where China failed was not in allowing the virus to jump to a human, it was in covering it up. I'd like to hope that if the same thing happened in the US, the free press would be screaming about how it started, we'd be taking samples and warning other countries, and we would work with other countries to limit travel of those who may be infected.
> we'd be taking samples and warning other countries
After the first US covid case was detected in Washington state on Jan 20th, the Seattle Flu Study scientists wanted to use their existing flu swabs samples to test if coronavirus was already spreading in the wild in Seattle (it was). But state and federal government did not allow them to. Finally on Feb 25th, they started testing their samples without permission, and found community spread.
There are other interpretations of this story, but any sensation-seeking newspaper would surely run this story as the government attempting to cover up that the virus is already spreading.
> To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China
The coverup was incredibly unsuccessful, and delayed global response by about two weeks.
We squandered a lot more than two weeks of time in reacting to it.
Given the low quality of press coverage, and of public accountability in the US for how the pandemic was handled, I can't imagine how it would have been any better if we had patient zero.
Also, note that the CCP cracked down hard on the leaders responsible for the failure in handling the pandemic. Many senior politicians lost their jobs. The US, meanwhile, nearly re-elected the president, did re-elect the senate, and most of the state governments up for election.
You look at that, and tell me - which of the two countries actually held their political class accountable for its failures? Note that the scope of failure in the US was two orders of magnitude worse...
It does astonish me how poorly people understand different in _magnitude_ between offences and how quickly we get into whataboutism.
>If a similarly dangerous flu mutation jumps from a pig to an undocumented agricultural worker in the United States, and goes viral across the globe, will you also refer to that as 'unleashing a pandemic'?
Absolutely, why on earth would you think I wouldn't? I'm borderline offended by the implication and this subtle-not-so-subtle 'if you criticise x you're racist' narrative is dangerous nonsense. Refrain from it please.
>Animal rights advocacy groups have for decades been reminding us that conditions in modern farms are dangerous and unsanitary, so it's not like we don't have any advance warning for it.
Absolutely, and spillover from ecological incursions is a huge issue. I hope there is more emphasis put on the risks now. I recommend the book 'spillover' on this topic.
However it's vitally important to realise - some countries are at higher risk than others for various reasons, China being a HUGE flashpoint for this issue, and there ARE things we can do.
Wet markets are disgusting horrific places and also HUGELY risky from a spillover event perspective. In 2003 and SARS 1 (note covid-19 is literally SARS v2) this is precisely how the virus emerged. China's response was, as now, to only briefly close these horrific places of animal torture. The world remained silent and no pressure was put upon them to change this. We already had our warning.
They additionally covered up the outbreak and punished those who reported it. Do not defend this either implicitly or explicitly. There are reports that, had they immediately reported it, we could have avoided 95% of worldwide cases. 1.5M * 0.95 is quite a lot of deaths to be directly responsible for isn't it?
As I said in another comment, it is very possible another pandemic could break out even if China did everything they could to prevent it. But to ignore serious points of vulnerability which indeed caused a previous outbreak and then to try to cover it up is unforgivable. There is a genuine case for that being considered at the very least a crime against humanity if not an act of war given the consequences.
>... Also, it became incredibly clear to anyone that was paying attention that COVID was a serious threat in January. Yet, most of the western world collectively sat on its hands for the next month and a half. Will your historians also leave a few chapters on the subject of just how incapable our societies are at dealing with epidemics?
China told the WHO there was no human-to-human transmission in January as per their famous tweet. And it came out later evidence to the contrary came not from Chinese authorities but in fact WHO representatives on the ground. So believing the WHO and China is part of why.
No question most countries utterly fucked this up however, and there is much to improve, but to ignore the totalitarian, evil government responsible for many millions of deaths and who harvest organs and put people in concentration camps and to do the whole 'oh but you'd never say that about the USA lol' thing is really not on. I would be just as firm on any country responsible and if they did not do EVERYTHING in their power to prevent and mitigate this I would castigate them, even if it were my own country.
In China doing that gets you disappeared. Remember that and remember the privilege you have to disagree with me. The Chinese do not have that luxury.
> Absolutely, why on earth would you think I wouldn't?
Because in this very sub-thread, you're making statements like:
> China's response was, as now, to only briefly close these horrific places of animal torture.
In contrast to what? The horrific places of animal torture from where our supermarket meat comes from?
Pardon my skepticism, but I'm not sure you're applying the same standards to their barbarism, as you are to our barbarism. You don't seem to be applying the same standards to their ineptitude and malfeasance as you are to our ineptitude and malfeasance.
It comes off as nationalistic baiting, which is incredibly frustrating, because it's happening in the context of lordnacho's post. There's a prevailing zeitgheist in the US that all our problems are the fault of other, bad countries - which is used as a diversion from finding actual solutions to these problems. We've seen this play out over the past year, to the tune of 250,000 dead.
You're surely familiar with the meme of a an incompetent authoritarian regime that's busy blaming everyone around them for their domestic problems, while their people starve. Over the past year, we've been living this meme. We should be looking back at it with self-reflection, as opposed to cheerleading it.
I don't think it's so much whataboutery as disappointment about the west.
What you say about China is true, there's a one-party state that has done some brutal things.
The disappointment is that we in the west thought we had a better way to govern, but the state where the disease originated is doing quite well despite all those criticisms, and the states where people are supposedly free are the ones where people are locked up in their homes unable to celebrate Christmas with their families.
We had a head start, we had sources that knew the truth about the disease, we'd seen smaller outbreaks before, and we have more money.
It's also simplistic to blame China for the whole thing. "They could have saved 95% of lives" is not the whole ethical story. If you know you're living next to someone unreliable, you need to take your own precautions.
I'm reading between your lines, but by "totalitarian measures" do you mean asking people to temporarily wear masks, wash their hands, stay home, and restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
If so, that is as totalitarian as requiring people to stop at red stoplights.
In the UK law is being passed by decree without parliamentary approval, fundamental democratic freedoms are being specifically prohibited - freedom of speech, assembly and association and prosecution of people conducting hitherto legal and proper businesses.
The pattern is entirely that of emergency 'enabling law' examples from the past when equally scary things gave them apparent justification.
Boiling things down to 'just asking to wear a mask' is at best deeply naive and at worst arrogantly dismissive. Break out of the soundbites and take a moment to think about what's happening in historical context.
If you want a serious and reasoned analysis of the worries, concerns and threats under these circumstances (at least from a UK perspective) I firmly recommend you view Lord Sumption's thoughts on this matter (recently retired judge from the supreme court of the UK with a long and highly respected career in the judiciary) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDv2gk8aa0
Unfortunately under circumstances such as the covid-19 mess we all live under (and thank your lucky stars you are in a 1st world country, the 3rd world will suffer at unimaginable levels, highly likely considerably moreso due to covid-19 aid cuts than covid-19 itself) things are considerably greyer than 'conspiracy theory nuts vs. just asking to put a mask on'. If only it were that simple.
Sorry, I don't have time for an 1h16m video. I skipped the intro and started listening to Lord Sumption's part and quickly got bogged down in politics about the current government came into power saddled by constitutional baggage, blah blah. It sounds like he is trying to score points on unrelated matters and gave up.
There are an infinite number of things which one might be worried could happen, and it is good to stay vigilant to those things. I have little fear that once the pandemic is mostly behind us that these temporary restrictions will be lifted -- we already know that many republicans think it is a political hoax, and I don't know of a single liberal who wouldn't love to get back to normal.
Thank you for taking the time to take a look. It is a lengthily one but I do certainly recommend spending the time to listen, it is of course very UK-centric but a lot of the points he makes are valid globally.
I am not advocating some absolute zero-measure approach but I also don't agree with the lockdowns which have repeatedly failed to work on any kind of permanent basis and whose costs are entirely ignored.
The rational approach is a measured one taking into account all costs. Unfortunately politics, especially partisan ones don't work that way...
The costs are not being ignored. Government frequently talks about the need to keep schools open to avoid some of those costs; we've recently had rapid release of suicide stats (no rise so far, but lots of caution needed); we're v worried about access to other forms of healthcare (London has today said they can't guarantee ambo service to home birth delivery that goes wrong) etc etc.
People are constantly checking we've got the balance right.
But the fact remains: covid kills lots of people and it seriously harms very many others. Those people who are harmed take time to recover and that has long term financial and health implications for them and their families.
I am trying to avoid discussing a particular political position, but rather going by the dictionary definition of totalitarianism as a system where "the state strives to control every aspect of life and civil society" through the use of propaganda, control over economy, censorship, surveillance, limited freedom of movement, and so forth.
Even if you believe these are means to a noble end in the context of COVID-19, I think it is hard to deny that the response has used quite a few tools from the totalitarian toolset. Even explicitly, the early calls for lockdowns used China as a positive example.
Getting into why some totalitarian measures might be reasonable:
I suspect more extreme up-front measures would actually stop the virus up-front. As a result, the other restrictions like masks wouldn’t be necessary for as long. So overall, one might say that the approach of nations like China, while more strict up front, had resulted in less overall restrictions in the long term, many fewer deaths, and even more economic activity. In the case of an out of control virus, people would be too scared to fly, for example, so economic activity would still be severely hindered. (Even with no restrictions at all.)
What are the alternatives for dealing with pandemics which have the possibility to entirely destroy human life and society? If nothing at all is done by governments, it becomes up to individual responsibility and the markets to control the situation. This only works if people are too scared to do anything or go anywhere, which means things would have to get really bad (read: a lot of death) before it would work.
What is the purpose of government if not to provide a safe and stable society to live in? We (unless you’re an anarchist) want laws and enforcement so that we can be free to live our lives without threat from others. You could even argue that infecting others when you knew you could avoid it is something we should restrict. In that way, wearing masks isn’t totalitarian, instead it’s a law which protects us from others.
>I suspect more extreme up-front measures would actually stop the virus up-front.
And if we were to allow these "more extreme measures," what's to stop a hostile actor from weaponizing our submission to totalitarian regime, by creating and releasing more viruses, in order to extend and increase said concentration of power?
You assume benevelonce. You really WANT Drumpf to go full Pol Pot on your ass?
"Only if he does what /I/ say, which is good for society, and not anything else!"
Don't you see the flaw in your logic here? Haven't we see this play out in history many times before?
If it’s just one person or even a group of people arbitrarily saying what we should do, I’d agree with you. On the other hand, we have a genuine health crisis and medical professionals are telling us what we should do. Further, there is an end in sight, and no way to extend those curtailments due to other reasons not related to health. Also, the powers that the states are exercising are ones they have held since before the US was even a country, and have been upheld since, with restrictions. Hand waving about dictatorship doesn’t really apply here, despite the extreme measures being taken.
I think there is an important distinction between onerous measures pursued by most democratic countries due to COVID-19 and those pursued by illiberal regimes.
In the first case, the measures don't benefit the politicians much. People hate wearing masks and not being about to congregate in churches to discuss non-political topics.
In the second case, the measures are usually targeted at suppressing negative sentiment against the political appointees.
But in the cases of the democratic nations and their measures throughout, negative sentiment against politicians and the government who implement these measures are all allowed to run rampant by the government (in some cases by other politicians themselves). Protests are still held, and the government is still scrutinized and criticized by civil society.
So going by your definition, there are important domains of society that the government does not attempt to dominate, that continue to serve as a check. Only those that are essential to the COVID-19 response are temporarily weakened.
No, even by that definition, most COVID restrictions are no more totalitarian in nature than existing health and safety codes. They’re more intense and broad restrictions, of course, in response to an intense health crisis, but they’re hardly different in kind than existing regulations. And yes, I’m sure there are exceptions.
In my mind totalitarianism is a means to an end. The end with these "tools" now is to limit death, but the means aren't working well (in the west, anyways). In a traditional auth. situation, the end is usually perpetual power and/or some ideological bend (genocide or something).
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think we're in a traditional auth. situation now. It's a classic "never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" in my mind.
Sure we're seeing some signs of government overreach, but the impetus is to save lives, not some consipriacy to control the masses. Doing so misses the mark and distracts from the real issue at hand.
One problem is, it’s very hard to get a government to give up so-called “emergency powers” even after the emergency is long over. How many times has the Patriot Act been renewed now?
What part of the pandemic response do you think will be difficult for government to give up? Certainly the large measures (lockdowns) will be lifted once we are vaccinated. Is this more of a general fear, or do you have something relevant to the current situation?
What makes you think that the lockdowns will be lifted after we are all vaccinated for this particular strain of COVID? That’s like saying “surely the government will stop monitoring private communications and correlating metadata, and disband unconstitutional FISA courts after Al-quaida has been defeated”
> What makes you think that the lockdowns will be lifted after we are all vaccinated for this particular strain of COVID
Because I think most reps are acting in good faith, and nobody wants these lockdowns - they are just necessary. Why would someone want to continue them after Covid?
Maybe as a show of good faith, those same reps should stop extending the patriot act, to convince the more suspicious among us that advances in tyranny are not permanent. Until that happens, I am not convinced, and I will continue to tell people like you that you shouldn’t fall for it either.
> I'm reading between your lines, but by "totalitarian measures" do you mean asking people to temporarily wear masks, wash their hands, stay home, and restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
Did your government really just ask?
My local government responded by drafting and frequently, but irregularly, updating an increasing complex document—by decree rather than through the legislature—the violation of which was a misdemeanor (or, for businesses, may result in being closed down). To this day, individual businesses are asking the government what steps they need to take in order to operate. The answers they receive are not in any legally drafted document. Effectively businesses are asking government what they need to do to avoid the scrutiny of government; not what they need to do to stay within the law.
This was a massive insertion of government control into the lives of individuals, which is the essence of totalitarianism. I agree that wearing masks, washing your hands, and avoiding unnecessary contact with others are all good things to do. I do those things voluntarily; and would have done so if asked, even if it wasn't a misdemeanor not to do so. That doesn't mean I'm blind to the totalitarian measures some governments took to get there; or to the risks that imposes for the future.
>restricting the density of people at gathering spots?
Restricting the density to... Zero? Is that what they are calling the forced shutdown of indoor and outdoor restaurants, gyms and other places of business and subsequent jailing of violators now?
(And jailing of mask violators as well, despite mounting evidence that mask mandates don't work and/or make the problem worse)
Where I am at (Austin, TX, USA) it is a sliding scale. Depending on a number of metrics (eg, rate of infection, hospital occupancy), the percentage occupancy allowed in restaurants goes up or down. And yes, when it is at stage 5, it changes to zero occupancy, allowing only to-go orders.
I have zero worries that this is part of a power grab by evil overlords; they have nothing to gain from this, unlike the power grab to make encryption have government accessible backdoors, or routing all internet traffic through NSA scrapers.
> jailing of mask violators as well
Where are they being jailed? None in the US that I know of. I'm sure there are a few people who have created such a disturbance that they had to be removed by police, but that is ancillary to the reason they are getting nabbed, such as the guy at a Costco screaming at people and threatening to hurt them because they told him to put on a mask. He was arrested (but not jailed) for threatening people, not because he didn't wear a mask.
Yes, the shutdowns are having bad consequences for a lot of businesses. There is a pandemic after all, and pandemics cause negative consequences.
> mounting evidence that mask mandates don't work and/or make the problem worse
I'm sure such studies exist, but there are plenty that contradict your claim, and I do not believe there is a trend in your direction. There are also people who believe condoms not only doesn't reduce the spread of AIDS but makes it worse [1]. Otherwise smart people can believe also sorts of outrageous stuff if it comports with their existing belief system.
The article you linked to was jailed for not listening to the judge. Yes, it was about his refusal to wear a mask in the court. But if someone in court talks while the judge talks and the judge commands them to be silent, the judge can jail that person for refusal to be quiet. Or if they eat in court and refuse to stop eating. Or any number of things that are completely legal outside the courtroom.
Do you have evidence of the claim that mask mandates don't work? Not trolling - I'm genuinely interested. My understanding was that masks worked to reduce transmission.
Except if you read the papers they aren't saying that. You are trying to spread BS here. We can take a look at China where the lockdown worked quiet well.
>Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions became effective
>From both sets of modelling, we found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some non-essential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders and closure of all non-businesses was not associated with any independent additional impact
>Conclusions: A national lockdown has a moderate advantage in saving lives
AIER is a libertarian think tank which exists solely to reduce any type of government "interference" in freedom. I don't trust them to be honest arbiters of science -- their sole angle is people and companies should be free to do whatever they want (including infecting other people apparently).
Yes, you provided a link to a site which has links to 24 other papers. Providing proof in this case required you to cut and past a URL; you are asking me to read and rebut 24 papers, and I'm not about to. However, I did look them up and the wikipedia article about them [1] said the scientific community has condemned their positions on COVID, which is herd immunity -- everyone should get sick, we should live with 3M deaths in the US, so businesses can get back to selling stuff like normal.
Yes it is astonishing - I think the fact the context ends criticism of measures that would be considered laughable at ordinary times goes a long way to explaining similarly extreme measures we find difficult to understand from the past.
History tells us govts that gain powers during emergencies are extremely reticent to give them up once the ostensible emergency is over.
Gaining the power to shut down businesses that are a public health threat? They already had that power and use it. Most people are glad restaurants are held to cleanliness standards and concert venues have capacity limits per fire code.
Requiring people to wear something in public? They already do that too with shirts and pants. And again, I think most people prefer it that way.
Again you are trivialising things that are far wider-reaching as do many on the 'forever lockdown' side. They are not just shutting down public health risks and asking people to wear masks, they are instituting, at least in the UK, law by decree (as per provisions by the Public Health Act 1984) clearly exceeding the intentions of it, for example. I recommend the lord Sumption video I linked in another comment if you want more details, but authoritarian measures are being used and govts historically do NOT like to let go of powers granted during emergencies.
E.g. the Patriot act...
The thing with stuff like that is people like me who point this out will get sneered at at the time, but later when these powers are abused you'll forget that we warned you. This is NOT trivial. This is NOT small.
> History tells us govts that gain powers during emergencies are extremely reticent to give them up once the ostensible emergency is over.
New Zealand had a 8-week lockdown from late March to early May, and then they had perfectly normal general elections in October. The government that ordered the lockdown 7 months earlier, did nothing draconian to prevent the free elections taking place.
I'm very proud to see this go to negative votes, as it entirely proves my point. Every time democracies abandon that for authoritarian measures there is always a seemingly highly justified reason at the time and those who speak out would be similarly pilloried...
All functional democracies have mechanisms to establish totalitarian control during a state of emergency. Applying this during a pandemic is completely reasonable.
I feel like this take is just overused. This whole line of thinking presupposes that Western Democratic Societies gain anything from locking people down, which I don’t think they do. Our economies are (generally speaking) consumer economies built on a base of individualized consumption and hedonistic pursuit with no regard for collective good. Locking people down and inhibiting the engine of our capitalist economies serves no benefit. Not to mention all the other avenues of control that are already existent and much more obscure. It wouldn’t make sense to destroy the economy and the legitimacy that props up the current power structures in order to gain control that already largely exists either through the state or private industry.
This feels like a way of contrasting the current situation with measures take post 9/11, which I think are much more nefarious and unjustified.
To be clear, I’m sure historians will be interested in the measures taken to fight this pandemic, just not for some “totalitarian control” reasons but rather for the necessity of fighting the virus on a global scale. The scale of the measures are unprecedented, but locking down isn’t some crazy novel idea. I mean even in Camus’ “The Plague” there is mention of that kind of strategy.
Article forgets the biggest of them all. Peace in the Middle East.
Not once in my life did I think 2020 would be the year when many middle eastern countries sign peace deals with Israel. Heck there’s already Israeli Jewish weddings in Dubai!!!
The us government who helped broker these deserves a peace prize. If not with their help and assistance these peace deals would not have occurred.
I look forward to what 2021 will bring with the Middle East better aligned to future industrial and cultural growth.
No, the chances for real, long-lasting peace in the Middle East have actually ended with this year (or at least, this presidency).
While 4 years ago there was some hope, it is now impossible to imagine that:
(1) there will ever be a peaceful 2 state solution to the Palestinian crisis
(2) there will ever be another deal between the US and Iran
The fact that a handful of arab states have agreed to join Israel's side instead of Palestine's is in no way an end to the threat that the conflict between the two creates.
And let's not forget that the war in Yemen is still ongoing, with US military support for the aggressor, Saudi Arabia.
The countries involved weren't really all that hostile to each other, though. More Seinfeld vs. Newman than Hatfields vs McCoys.
Some of them weren't even that, with the two countries already having unofficial trade, security, and diplomatic relations and this new deal just making it official. And they got or will get US arms deals out of it.
It will take quite a while to see if these agreements actually make the region more peaceful or they were just going through the motions to get access to US arms.
In the case of the Morocco deal, there is a decent chance it will lead to more violence, due to it including the US recognizing Morocco's claims over the disputed Western Sahara.
I agree, though I would say "several" instead of "many". There are, I think, four countries. That leaves 10 or 20 to go, depending on how you define "middle eastern".
It's way to early to know if these deals will make any lasting difference. The countries in the middle east have been parties to similar pease agreements for decades, but so far they don't seem to last.
If the peace continues to last, sure, we can acknowledge those who were involved. But it's way to early to acknowledge anything yet.
Yeah it has a few mildly interesting points, and then starts going on about lab grown meat as if that's a thing anyone wants. Proper food please for me.
Also remember that U.S. has finally become fully and truly energy independent this year. And, return of U.S. human spaceflight and final, completely American victory over any real competition in space launch technology, which will result and already resulting in many other positive developments.
Why are the greatest achievements of 2020 the things most beneficial to the parochial interest of the United States?
The rebalancing of the US energy sector to natural gas has locked it into a new fossil fuel economy, at the very time that we need breakneck renewable investment. Oncoming carbon regulation, consumer reaction against gas, and the declining price-point of renewables, mean that the US is sitting on a carbon bubble waiting to explode.
One of the real silver linings of 2020, conspicuously absent from the Vox article, is that South Korea, Japan and China all committed to reach net zero emissions by around mid century, while the EU also brought forward it's targets. I would add that the Iranian nuclear deal is now being revived, breaking the power of militaristic hardliners in Iran, and quashing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Note that both were achieved despite the US: it left the Paris Agreement and reneged on its commitment to the Iranian nuclear deal.
> I would add that the Iranian nuclear deal is now being revived, breaking the power of militaristic hardliners in Iran
As far as I know Biden has not taken any step toward this so far, but many House Democrats are urging him to do so. At the same time though powerful lobbying interests are pushing for the deal to be renegotiated under stricter terms, so I wouldn't count our eggs too early.
More importantly, I would think this is entirely negated by the fact that we just murdered two of their country's most prominent public figures. Diplomatic relations might improve, but I have to imagine that a lot of Iranians would be radicalized by these events and not really care which particular administration is responsible ultimately. Trump might catch the blame, but these type of targeted killings in Iran of scientists and other civilians go back much further than just the last term.
An article was published under Biden's name in the May/April issue of Foreign Affairs in which he explicitly committed to rejoining the deal. It is almost certain that he will try, and just as importantly, the EU is onboard. It was supposed to be a legacy achievement for the Obama-Biden administration, it's obviously in his interests to revive it.
Iranian contempt for the United States is nothing new. It didn't block an agreement in both party's interests last time, and it doesn't have to now.
was that by backing carbon based fuels such as fracking and also by wanting to sell their gas abroad (see Nord Stream 2).
the future is not extract resources until a lucky few can escape to space, it's to fight together for climate goals (US failed here) and find a way for humanity to live sustainably with what we have.
Well, predicting the end of the world and promising an unbearable heat for the non-believers sounds very non-atheist to me. Actually, it sounds very familiar.
So far, none of the catastrophic predictions from the last ~70 years have come to fruition. Actually, none of the catastrophic predictions from the last 2000 years have.
Thus far, every reasonably scientifically based prediction for the past two decades has consistently been conservative.
The IPCC has existed for about 30 years now. We are now starting to have data to compare their climate reports with. Independently of how you look at the data, we are mostly tracking the worst expected outcome. Everyone has a duty to do this for themselves. All the data is public.
It is a too large field for one to research alone, but I am familiar with the effort to track global leaf area and desertification. So here is my small contribution to the discussion:
2013: "Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert" begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
2014: Global Greening Is Firm, Drivers Are Mixed - Harvard "Evidence for global greening is converging, asserting an increase in CO2 uptake and biomass of the terrestrial biosphere. Evidence for these trends comes from firm empirical data." http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.B31A0515K
2016: Greening of the globe and its drivers - Nature "Satellite records from 1982–2009 show a persistent and widespread increase of leaf area (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing leaf area (browning)." https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3004
Elevated CO2 as a driver of global dryland greening - Nature "Recent regional scale analyses using satellite based vegetation indices such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), have found extensive areas of “greening”" https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20716
Rise in CO2 has 'greened Planet Earth' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36130346 "Prof Judith Curry, the former chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, added: "It is inappropriate to dismiss the arguments of the so-called contrarians, since their disagreement with the consensus reflects conflicts of values and a preference for the empirical (i.e. what has been observed) versus the hypothetical (i.e. what is projected from climate models)."
If it is already inevitable, then why worry? Just learn what will consequences will be, and put money where it will make profit THEN (like, buy land on high latitudes where it is currently almost worthless, and short land on low elevations and/or low latitudes).
Because, if you read the article, it's actually not "inevitable." What it would take is drastic, coordinated action, lead by the United States, within the next 10 years to reduce emissions to zero or near zero in order to prevent the worst case scenarios from being realistic. This can be done, but not without the cooperation of the top climate polluters, almost all of which are American corporations. Oh, and also the US government is one of those top polluters.
Do you think it can be done? I mean realistically, not theoretically?
I see this as far too demanding for everyone, and far too short for viable alternatives to come up to be a realistic target. On the other hand, this year has shown that people are far more prepared to make huge sacrifices for what we think is the greater good than I would have expected just a year ago.
Honestly? No, I do not. One thing this year has shown me is that a large portion of the population is 100% unwilling to make any sacrifices whatsoever, however small. It's going to take all of us working together to make it happen.
I'm not. Earth will be fine without humans, just as it was millions of years ago, before humans were even a thing.
If you believe that climate scientists enjoy preaching doom and gloom, you've honestly got a problem. Scientists have every incentive to publish and publicize good science. I suspect you didn't even read the article I linked, much less any of the papers linked within, did you?
Tell me: what does your salary depend on you not understanding that makes you unable to even consider the possibility that climate change is real, and it will likely destroy civilization?
I read the paper about The Titanic, would you suggest another one which you feel is better?
But please excuse me for a while, as I am off for a walk : we are having blue skies here in nothern NL and I look forward to get radiated by this giant nuclear fusion from the sky.
The fact that 10 models were correct doesn't say much unless we also know how many models were wrong. It's easy to cherrypick the best ones in retrospect. If there are enough models, even if all of them are bullshit, some will be correct, the same way a broken clock shows the correct time twice a day.
If it weren’t paywalled I could’ve done that. It seems that either you expected me to pay, or you didn’t realize this, which would put some irony in your almost obsessively and smugly bugging people about reading your links, when you didn’t even put in the effort yourself.
> How many climate models do you think there are?
I don’t know, probably more than the 14 they analyzed? What matters more than count anyway is whether the high-impact policy-shaping papers were accurate.
> What evidence do you have that there's been any cherry picking?
What evidence do you have that there’s not? If you trust the authors, that’s fine. I just personally happen to think trust isn’t enough.
Now: what evidence do you have of cherry picking on the part of the authors? You raised the issue, you questioned the integrity of the researchers, so it's your burden to show that there was cherry picking.
Actually, here, let me spoon feed you even more. Here are the first 2 paragraphs of the methods section:
> We conducted a literature search to identify papers published prior to the early‐1990s that include climate
model outputs containing both a time series of projected future GMST (with a minimum of two points in
time) and future forcings (including both a publication date and future projected atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at a minimum). Eleven papers with 14 distinct projections were identified that fit these criteria.
Starting in the mid‐1990s, climate modeling efforts were primarily undertaken in conjunction with the
IPCC process (and later, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects, CMIPs), and model projections were
taken from models featured in the IPCC FAR (1990), Second Assessment Report (SAR‐IPCC, 1996), Third
Assessment Report (TAR‐IPCC, 2001), and Fourth Assessment Report (AR4‐IPCC, 2007).
> The specific models projections evaluated were Manabe, 1970 (hereafter Ma70), Mitchell, 1970 (Mi70),
Benson, 1970 (B70), Rasool & Schneider, 1971 (RS71), Sawyer, 1972 (S72), Broecker, 1975 (B75), Nordhaus,
1977 (N77), Schneider & Thompson, 1981 (ST81), Hansen et al., 1981 (H81), Hansen et al., 1988 (H88), and
Manabe & Stouffer, 1993 (MS93). The energy balance model projections featured in the main text of the
FAR, SAR, and TAR were examined, while the CMIP3 multimodel mean (and spread) was examined for
the AR4 (multimodel means were not used as the primary IPCC projections featured in the main text prior
to the AR4). Details about how each individual model projection was digitized and analyzed as well as assessments of individual models included in the first three IPCC reports can be found in the supporting information
Do you still want to accuse these researchers of bad faith?
To you, the fact that their methods section didn't loudly announce they're cherrypicking might be enough evidence to trust them.
To me, the fact that climate science has made its fair share of vast, vast mispredictions, such as the prestigious Club of Rome's 1972 model saying we'd run out of petroleum in ~2000, means that the default assumption is mistrust, not trust.
You can call me a tinfoil hatter, but I think if one wants conclusive evidence on the accuracy of climate models they'd have to go over the body of research from that time and judge for themselves whether the researchers chose a representative sample. That's obviously way too much effort for a snide internet discussion, but the point is that if the field is mostly bullshit, that's just not refutable by pointing to the same people saying they're not bullshitting.
> You do realize that's what "literature survey" means, right? You know, the thing the researchers already did?
The very point I was making is you should do it yourself. Good job ignoring it.
> Do you insist on personally replicating every research paper you read, or just the ones that don't fit your world view?
You're mistaken, this paper fits my world view perfectly. It's saying climate science is mostly accurate, if you look at a set of accurate models. This is obviously sound reasoning. It's just not saying anything.
We shouldn't "fight for climate goals". Eventually renewables will outcompete fossil fuels by becoming cheaper, let them do it, but till then, name of the game is to pump and burn as much of the cheap fossil fuels as possible - this is the last chance ever to do so, for our children, vast majority of fossil fuels will be inaccessible because of energy costs - driven down by renewables - will be too low and won't pay for extraction.
As for climate change, just let it happen. It will happen anyway because if someone reduces their carbon footprint they only leave money on the table for others to grab - and those others will produce MORE carbon for the same amount of goods produced, because their energy efficiency is lower - so any attempts to "fight for climate goals" is destructuve and counterproductive.
Just do a fair assessment of future climate changes and proceed with regulatory actions to mitigate them (for example, ban any new capital construction on land which will be flooded in case of 4C temperature rise).
> ... final, completely American victory over any real competition in space launch technology...
No technology victory is ever final and complete, especially not between nations. What we have done can be copied. China has shown itself to be really good at copying, and they have some really smart people. They certainly can do it, if they choose to.
