☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

  • 6.98K Posts
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Joined 5 years ago
Cake day: March 30th, 2020
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOPtoWorld News@lemmygrad.ml•Vietnam plans US$67bil high-speed railway with no foreign capital
    3·
    6 hours ago

    I’m not as sure about that. High technology relies on global supply chains. Minerals are mined in specific parts of the globe, there are specialized factories that only exist in certain parts of the world, and so on. Take advanced chips as just one example of that. You can count the number of foundries on the palm of your hand.

    As the climate continues to become more unstable, we’re likely going to see a breakdown of global tech chains. In fact, there is historical precedent to this with the fall of the Roman empire where a lot of provinces rapidly descended into the dark ages in a span of a few years.

    It’s also a question of whether there it’ll be possible to support large cities agriculturally. Even temperate areas will end up having large climate disasters. For example, we’re already seeing this happening with massive forest fires in US and Canada. These kinds of disasters are disrupting food production already, and it’s only going to get worse.

    One solution could be to start growing food indoors. Incidentally, China is already starting to do a lot of indoor farming which is a good way to ensure steady food supply even in face of stuff like heat waves or other disasters. China is probably also in the best position when it comes to preserving supply chains given that most manufacturing is already happening there.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mltoThoughts on ...?@lemmygrad.ml•Thoughts on Modern Monetary Theory?
    3·
    2 days ago

    Very much agree, another way to approach the problem is by asking what exactly is an economy. Fundamentally, it’s a system for ensuring that labor and resources are allocated to meet the needs of the people living in a particular society. Money is simply the mechanism that’s used to direct the allocation.

    From this perspective, what a government does when it issues currency is stimulate activity in a particular sector of the economy where that currency is allocated. For example, Chinese government starting to do investments into chip development is resulting in that sector of the economy growing. Similarly, when private spending and markets allocate funds towards some area of the economy then supply grows to meet that demand.

    That’s literally all this is, and obviously the government can issue as much currency as it wants, there’s no fundamental problem here because all it’s doing is directing the growth of the economy. Hence, as you point out, the issue isn’t with the money supply but how that money is used. The problem we have under capitalism is with labor and resource allocation being driven primarily by the interests of the capital owning class. Their goal is to direct labor to grow their capital, with any social benefits being strictly incidental. This breaks the connection between the government issuing currency and that currency being used to direct labor in a productive way.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOPtoEurope@lemmygrad.ml•If war ends I’ll restore relations with Russia, Slovakia’s Fico says
    5·
    3 days ago

    Over the past two years I’ve learned that things do take longer to develop than you’d expect. That said, it does look like the rate of Russian advance has accelerated dramatically. From what I understand, taking Ugledar splits the front too so it will be very difficult for the AFU to support the troops in the south. There are no strongholds past it, so Russia can now just march all the way to Dnepr.

    Furthermore, all the reports now say that the AFU is out of ammunition, and the troops aren’t motivated because there are large numbers of conscripts who’ve been dragged off the street with no training. Hence why we don’t see much resistance happening anymore. It used to take Russia months to storm a fortified town, and they ended up levelling it in the process. With the latest push in Ugledar, they basically just walked in and took it in tact in a few weeks. And this is a self-reinforcing phenomenon. The more strategic and fortified positions Ukraine loses, the less places they have to fall back to.

    On top of all that, we have the cauldron in Kursk where Ukraine sent a bunch of its best troops and NATO equipment. Now, they can’t pull out politically, so thy managed to split their own dwindling forces for a PR stunt.

    And of course, now there’s a high chance that Israel will start a war with Iran which means the US has to husband whatever weapons they have left for that.

    Given all that, I expect that Russia will be in full control of Donbas in 3-4 months, and once that happens I think we might see Ukraine surrender. Their fighting capacity is likely going to be non existent by then. If they don’t then I would expect that Russia would move past big cities like Kharkov and Kiev, cutting them off from the west. They would also want to take Odessa because it connects to the sea and gives a route all the way to Transnistria.

    My expectation is that Russia will take over parts of Ukraine that are either pro Russian or neutral, and then leave a rump western Ukraine for the west to deal with. The west will have no choice but to pour money into it to keep it on life support because otherwise there’s going to be a huge refugee crisis in Europe. However, I expect it’s going to be Europe stuck holding the bag either way here. So, the economic situation is only going to get worse.

    There is a question of what the west does in response to Ukraine buckling. Personally, I don’t think boots on the ground are likely, but I wouldn’t entirely rule that out either. The hysteria is going to be incredible, so there’s a chance for a major escalation as a result.

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