To be quite honest, I expect more intellectual honesty from an HN post. This reads, at best, like an opinion piece and most if not all of the controversial “facts” presented are not sourced in any way — not for lack of trying though as the piece does the classic sleight of hand of actually linking plenty of other sources and factual images, hoping that the reader will gloss over the fact that these do nothing to prove the claims made which are mostly pure conjecture.
Yes, this contradicts everything I thought have learned. Without any credible sources I have to assume the whole article is bogus.
I am annoyed he portrays the professionals as idiots that did not see things coming, but I remember professionals making clear that the current inflation is partly 'real' inflation and partly inflation due to post-covid/Russian agression/.. developments. So rent hikes are still justified for that first part of inflation.
The author ignores that the source of inflation is multi-faceted. Eventually the supply chain issues and the war will be resolved, and we’ll be left with moderate inflation.
The world is actually quite fortunate that there’s the beginning of a sort of natural carbon tax right as we desperately need to decarbonize our economies.
This is essentially a trial run for running out of oil. It has already spurred significant European investment is diversifying energy sources.
It hasn’t collapsed yet because the people who predict a collapse keep cherry picking data to justify their doomsday predictions.
There are just as many or more indicators that things are going great.
Yes, we’ve had some road bumps here in the past couple years, but that’s on the tail of the strongest expansion of the world economy in human history.
At the end of the day, the strength of the economy is just a matter of the exchange of goods and services. As long as people are working and spending, the rest is just microeconomic noise.
It would be interesting if the government could figure out a way to hold the price of energy at a higher price when the economy is going well and energy supply is high.
Or perhaps there should be some sort of non-strategic reserve stockpile. I'm almost curious if the US government has made money by buying up oil during the pandemic when the price of oil was spiraling downward and then selling at today's inflated pricing.
This would actually probably not be opposed by the energy lobby as the profits would go to the firms (as opposed to a energy tax).
This would act to set a higher and more stable floor for energy costs to enable the development of alternative energy sources.
The stock is so big relative to the flow that I can't imagine how anyone has confidence in claims like this. Even if we will completely run out of extractable oil in N years, consumption could continue to grow for the next M << N years.
Every time some limitation is predicted, particularly when the only limitation is investment, it's usually surpassed. There's more extraction that can be done, and more efficiencies that can be found, so we're not at 'peak', but I can believe that we're at a point of diminishing returns.
Plenty of oil yet to get. The constraint is limited capacity.
We only have radical politicians to thank for that underinvestment by private companies.
Politicians who, by the way, have no real interest in solving the climate crisis de jour but instead are simply trying to create special programs, credits, subsidies and other govt perks for cronies.
This author sure loves to escalate things. His optimistic take is for Europe to slide into full poverty, the pessimistic scenario total nuclear annihilation.
There's no regard at all for the current aggressive plan for energy savings and energy alternatives. There's incredible potential for using less energy whilst not destroying the economy.
The author also fails to understand that the pre-pandemic economy was a bullshit economy. Pumped up for more than a decade, creating bullshit demand that enable bullshit jobs.
For sure it's going to hurt when it deflates, but it's not like we can't take a hit. In fact, we might as well use it as an opportunity to relocate the limited workers we have to parts of society that matter most.
If anything, we should be concerned about the developing world that have less options to plan around these events. Sri Lanka is an example, but also large parts of Africa are directly dependent on particular commodities in a truly existential way.
It would be a factor but larger factors would be supply and demand issues due to COVID and sanctions on Russian oil due to the war in Ukraine. Without Russian oil on the global market, supply is down, causing high fuel prices. These high fuel prices not only affect the cost to fill your vehicle, but increase the cost of transporting every good and even some services. High transportation costs increases the cost of everything you buy that wasn't locally produced.
There is so much oil, so insanely much, and we constantly find new sources. The biggest risk to oil is governments outlawing / taxing it to be uncompetitive.
It's an entertaining read, but mostly subjective opinion. I love doom predictions in general, they're always correct if you wait long enough and keep the framing loose, like saying we're in the process of collapsing. Something will eventually cause a severe global disruption, and when it happens it's easy to just say you were off on the timeline.
I don't have enough expertise to make anything other than a totally uneducated rebuttal. I'm honestly a little bit more optimistic than the author. I think he's on the money for a lot of things. The world economy is going get screwed because of energy and our leaders are dropping the ball. We're seeing the results in Sri Lanka but also in Europe. On the other hand, I think he does discount renewables more than needed. There is very little barrier to us rolling fields of solar panels and batteries other than purely a political one. There is also a lot of flex in the system. Simply removing meat and replacing it with chicken would save untolds amount of energy. Imagine if we were forced to live off beans
Dietary adjustments would arguably help us more from a health and medical expense perspective. In terms of energy, agriculture apparently only uses around 2% of US energy consumption.
I’m not sure if that includes industrial energy which goes into producing fertilizer. If not, it would only bump up the percentage a fraction of a percent.
Even if we all eat beans, we won’t stop climate change.
I’m not saying the effort wouldn’t be worth it. Research shows unequivocally that eating more beans is a great idea. Well, eating more plants. The energy saving would be icing on top.
But then how are you going to employ the people who grow feed for livestock, and the people who raise livestock? If we all ate beans, we’d need fewer farmers. That’s a radical change we don’t have a plan or strategy for.
Classic Malthusian viewpoint, nothing new to see here. If only it were true that oil is running out - it might force us to think about alternatives more.
[+] [-] hnarn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exceptione|3 years ago|reply
I am annoyed he portrays the professionals as idiots that did not see things coming, but I remember professionals making clear that the current inflation is partly 'real' inflation and partly inflation due to post-covid/Russian agression/.. developments. So rent hikes are still justified for that first part of inflation.
[+] [-] MarcoZavala|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jnwatson|3 years ago|reply
The world is actually quite fortunate that there’s the beginning of a sort of natural carbon tax right as we desperately need to decarbonize our economies.
This is essentially a trial run for running out of oil. It has already spurred significant European investment is diversifying energy sources.
[+] [-] timbit42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|3 years ago|reply
There are just as many or more indicators that things are going great.
Yes, we’ve had some road bumps here in the past couple years, but that’s on the tail of the strongest expansion of the world economy in human history.
At the end of the day, the strength of the economy is just a matter of the exchange of goods and services. As long as people are working and spending, the rest is just microeconomic noise.
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
If there's still a chorus predicting collapse, we're not there yet.
Then, once everyone is convinced we are now in a permanent dark ages and all advanced civilization is at an end, it will rebound.
[+] [-] somethoughts|3 years ago|reply
Or perhaps there should be some sort of non-strategic reserve stockpile. I'm almost curious if the US government has made money by buying up oil during the pandemic when the price of oil was spiraling downward and then selling at today's inflated pricing.
This would actually probably not be opposed by the energy lobby as the profits would go to the firms (as opposed to a energy tax).
This would act to set a higher and more stable floor for energy costs to enable the development of alternative energy sources.
[+] [-] trentnix|3 years ago|reply
We’ve been assured this is imminent for 50 (FIFTY) years. I’d bet the farm this prediction is dead-ass wrong too.
[+] [-] InefficientRed|3 years ago|reply
The stock is so big relative to the flow that I can't imagine how anyone has confidence in claims like this. Even if we will completely run out of extractable oil in N years, consumption could continue to grow for the next M << N years.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/global_oil.php
[+] [-] nhunter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bequanna|3 years ago|reply
We only have radical politicians to thank for that underinvestment by private companies.
Politicians who, by the way, have no real interest in solving the climate crisis de jour but instead are simply trying to create special programs, credits, subsidies and other govt perks for cronies.
[+] [-] fleddr|3 years ago|reply
There's no regard at all for the current aggressive plan for energy savings and energy alternatives. There's incredible potential for using less energy whilst not destroying the economy.
The author also fails to understand that the pre-pandemic economy was a bullshit economy. Pumped up for more than a decade, creating bullshit demand that enable bullshit jobs.
For sure it's going to hurt when it deflates, but it's not like we can't take a hit. In fact, we might as well use it as an opportunity to relocate the limited workers we have to parts of society that matter most.
If anything, we should be concerned about the developing world that have less options to plan around these events. Sri Lanka is an example, but also large parts of Africa are directly dependent on particular commodities in a truly existential way.
[+] [-] _eht|3 years ago|reply
This seems naive. Was the sudden onset of printed USD not a factor in the Feds rate surging?
[+] [-] timbit42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seibelj|3 years ago|reply
There is so much oil, so insanely much, and we constantly find new sources. The biggest risk to oil is governments outlawing / taxing it to be uncompetitive.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nhunter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cglan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|3 years ago|reply
Dietary adjustments would arguably help us more from a health and medical expense perspective. In terms of energy, agriculture apparently only uses around 2% of US energy consumption.
I’m not sure if that includes industrial energy which goes into producing fertilizer. If not, it would only bump up the percentage a fraction of a percent.
Even if we all eat beans, we won’t stop climate change.
I’m not saying the effort wouldn’t be worth it. Research shows unequivocally that eating more beans is a great idea. Well, eating more plants. The energy saving would be icing on top.
But then how are you going to employ the people who grow feed for livestock, and the people who raise livestock? If we all ate beans, we’d need fewer farmers. That’s a radical change we don’t have a plan or strategy for.
[+] [-] geedzmo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orwin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] labrador|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pretdl|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]