The truth is, Argentina knows what’s happened but is likely powerless to stop it. If they acted to curb the issue, China would stop bribes to the Argentina leadership and likely impose sanctions of some kinda.
At the same time, while I am anecdotally aware we are experiencing a range of shortages right now, it never seems to quite show up in our economic data.
Take for example the FRED data on global fish prices [0]. When you look at that chart you see nothing particularly interesting. You can pore over all of the commodities charts and if that was all the data you had you would soon come to the conclusion that nothing obvious is wrong with our environment (at least from an economic standpoint).
To be absolutely clear, I'm not questioning that something is wrong, I think we're in major trouble. But I am still genuinely surprised that this peril doesn't present itself in any economic data I can find. Any insights into when we will feel this our how/when this environmental destruction will become visible in our economic data would be appreciated.
Surely you can't parlay indefinitely, but there hasn't been an implosion yet... until there is... but then everyone who enjoyed the political and financial benefits of parlaying is long dead, their inheritors heavily insulated... or there isn't a financial implosion... or there's some other disaster rendering this disaster moot... or something else (free energy? Second Coming?) appears and fixes it, allowing the reckless to get away with it... if we ever agree on who the reckless were...
We could just follow Taleb's warnings (the precautionary principle, antifragility, black swan events), but we can't even agree on basic reality, and the people who are greatly benefiting off their version of reality will never budge, and the people who might suffer aren't yet born (probably).
I’ve heard the limit described as “when the nation can only afford the interest payments on the principal” which means the nation can never pay back the principal itself. I heard that 10 years ago
Also, fish are not a long term investment. The price only depends on how hard they are to find combined with demand to eat them sometime soon. If you could buy a fish now with the expectation of selling it later when stocks dry up then I think you’d see a lot more upward pressure.
Simply put, The environmental destruction isn’t what you think. For instance, Based on my experience climate modeling and working with environmental papers - I don’t believe carbon emissions has a meaningful impact on global warming.
Further, and in way of example: the warming should lead to increased food production (they often say as much in their papers). What will happen is greater soil erosion, so we have to protect against that (or we will long-term) have crop problems.
The general point, is the system is more complex than we realize. There are no one-off answers because the system will always be adjusting to try to keep an equilibrium AND so will humans. Farm Fishing is on the rise, protection zones are being setup, global fishing rules have been ignored, but local ones have not, etc etc
Like most simulations, they pretty much only can match reality so closely. for instance, we don’t have many long term measurements, so we make (educated-ish) guesses. Academics also repeatedly run their models, tweaking parameters to get the results they want. Frankly, I don’t trust any research using simulations, after being paid to work on environmental, biological systems, simulations for drones and machines (trucks, construction, etc). (Drones and other machines at least had a way to quickly test).
Out of curiosity, what are some examples of these measurements/guesses you are referring to?
Climate modeling is a tricky thing because the system is so complex and we are continually surprised by interactions and effects we didn't expect.
However, climate science is about far more than just models. The models are actually the least compelling part.
That’s an appeal to authority though. What’s wrong with the following statement?
“95% of numerologists strongly believe in the predictive power of numerology so therefore we should trust them.”
When people question the foundations of an entire field, presenting a giant sample of people who work in said field an implicitly agree with the foundation by labeling themselves as such isn’t really a compelling argument?
Guess what percentage of catholic priests think faith in Jesus is important?
I think the difference in this case is the arguments and evidence presented by climate science is generally accepted by experts and policy makers outside of the field.
It was definitely well-known amongst the scientists on the ship that the operations were illegal. I know they made an effort to report as many as they could but my impression was that officials were overwhelmed by complaints and the illegal ships would work together to avoid detection/quickly move to international water so, since it was a losing battle, the government didn’t put forth too much effort.
Whether that’s the real reason nothing is done or just the good reason used to justify their inaction is anyone’s guess. I will say there were a shocking number of ships that I could see and I wouldn’t be surprised if they outnumbered the Argentinian navy.
Negative publicity where? I’m sure within Argentina this would be very popular and if China protests it’ll have to own up that these illegal boats are coming from there, which it may not want to do.
Their other boats will take them home. Probably have to toss over some of their illegal catch to make room, though.
Obviously the crews should be taken off first, then returned to land and then deported as soon as possible. There's not much point in punishing them any further.
And, 2)
> These distant-water fleets mainly fish for shortfin squid, which are vital to Argentina’s economy
1 and 2 combined make me wonder if destroying the ocean ecosystem, and damaging Argentina's economy could be a goal in itself, somehow.
Maybe to (now I'm guessing), in the future, get to lend out money to the government in Argentina, if they're in a bad economic situation -- and make the country depend on the CCP or something like that?
I'm just guessing and wondering. However it'd be weird to me if the CCP hadn't thought about what'll happen, because of the overfishing, and they said that, yes this is good for us; it's something we want (the party, probably not the people).
There are plenty of other cultural differences in these stories but overall I'm always left wondering whether some of these reflect broader cultural attitudes or if this is like if someone tried to get a deep understanding of western culture by reading Spiderman comics and that's it.
I've seen multiple spins on the scenario you've described, in which some scenarios the exhaustive approach is justified (the half-D world is on the verge of collapse, or about to fall to a corrupting force which will decay the resources, etc.);
is reasoned (if the protag leave the sustainable portion, their opponent or enemy will plunder the rest, basically 0-sum game);
is sustained (instead of harvesting everything, they transfer the resource to their own half-D, or if it's non-competitive, they do leave sustainable parts).
Then other genres of the wuxia and xianxia type where the protag is the leader of a faction, and have the faction resources (garden, mines, etc.).
I think you are thinking too deep into this. Reading a popular novel doesn't mean the readers agree with every action or idea the protag or the author take/presents, popular novel are more like fast food, maybe this fry is a bit too salty, maybe that fry is not salty enough, maybe the cola is lacking ice, etc.
One could perhaps look at the behaviors of Chinese tourists at buffets as another example: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/976211.shtml
But it's just a curiosity since as you say, it's not a representative sample and it's just a genre of fiction, not some real psychological / sociological study.
I've also heard the explanation that this particular behavior could be a reaction to recent history - in particular the famines that China went through in the 20th century. People still have through direct experience or through their recent parents of grandparents that experience of literally starving.
half-d? = half dimension / pocket dimension? don't know what half-d is.
So typical Chinese fantasy/ high-level Wuxia/ Xianxia goes protag need resources -> need lots with no strings -> a failing pocket dimension to exploit! -> maybe discovered through conflict / treasure map / etc.
Why though? Think of them as a one-time map in an RPG or something, where you access once for some material/etc. but can never revisit.
As for the behavior of that bunch of Chinese tourists, I would say that wasting was an issue in the recent generations (but won't be in the next generation), due to a number of factors such as the abundance of food on the market and in restaurant, hospitality (by providing more-than-can-eat), showoff (by providing extraordinary amount of food), corruption (government paid for, no need to hold back), etc.
However, the fight against corruption in recent years and recently passed laws that prohibit display in public and in video of wasting food would mean that the next generation growing up would have a different standard of what should be considered as waste.
Similarly, those growing up in the 70s-90s that had experience of a lack of food variety and amount, would either be very harsh on any waste of food, or would be overly lenient on wasting food.
As to the theory that this behavior came from memories of grandparents that experienced the famines, I'd say it's stretching it. There's too many variables that would affect the amount of influence, especially if the grandparents weren't around to educate about not wasting food. And if the grandparents didn't educate correctly, it could even cause a backlash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fir...
From the man himself: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/t-magazine/george-rr-mart...
> And it would be an unfair and silly comparison anyway.
Your personal opinions on the allegory don’t affect the author’s intent.
Agents of the imperial European powers used to act in the "interests of the empire" abroad without significant oversight ~200 years ago so this situation could be similar with the Chinese fleet being paid with incentives that encourage bending of the rules.
It's not in their territory, they likely don't give a rat's ass. Ecosystem damage in the western hemisphere might actually be a good aspect for some of those who might crack down on this.
I suspect we're all well aware that vessels and crews of any nation pulling this in China's territorial waters would not be treated kindly.
No need to inject unsubstantiable allegations in an otherwise sensible comment.
The power imbalance between a small country with long-standing financial issues and a history of inability in enforcing its complex borders, and a rising global superpower, is quite evident.
> South Korean, Spanish, and Taiwanese vessels conducted 26 percent of estimated fishing activity in the study with nearly 200 vessels. Almost “90 percent of the Spanish vessels that fished along Argentina’s national waters appeared to turn off their public tracking devices at least once, and Spanish vessels spent nearly twice as much time with AIS devices off as they did visibly fishing,” according to the report.
If power imbalance is the main issue here, surely something can be done about the other 1/3 at least?
Can't tell if this was a Falkland Islands / Great Britain reference or not.
https://theglobalamericans.org/2021/02/new-directions-in-the...
>Corruption fuelling illegal fishing
>[Argentine journalist Roberto Maturana] says that in Argentina, these arrangements are facilitated by corrupt officials at the government sub-department of fishing, responsible for granting fishing licenses. ‘Often officials will issue an Argentine license to two different Chinese boats. So whilst one is in port, the other will be out fishing’.
Given Argentina's corruption problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Argentina), and China's fishing agenda (https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/china-beijing-fishing-a... ), it would be a surprise if corruption was not happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_prefecture-l...
The same has to happen in the oceans.
https://www.cleanseas.com.au/custom/files/media/our-farm-2.j...
Edit: I should say part of the issue. There are other ecological concerns with farmed fish.
If you live on the ocean, you have every human right to fish fo nourishment. The issue here is militarized mass scale industrial fishing, illegally raping reassures to feed foreign people, mostly landlocked people sushi rolls and fish fillet.
What we need is a culture that eats local. Its a consumption issue. Farmed fish are most of the time also destructive to the environment, they are fed less than ideal and sustainable feeds, are not as healthy to eat, and most importantly are not healthy and happy fish, they are slaves in horrible life cycles.
My perspective is that there are simply too many people and they are leading an increasingly modern (high consumption) lifestyle.
I would advocate for lots of intermediate size cities but that doesn't seem to be what anyone in power wants.
Also, are you advocating for Thanos like mercy here? ;)
We need a shrinking population and less consumerism. We are not currently sustainable (and unlikely to become so anytime soon).
I think this is a big, and very sad misunderstanding.
Back in humanity's hunter gatherer days, we truly lived off what the planet spontaneously produces, and that sustained world population of something like 50 million people.
The we invented farming, and all sorts of technology, and now we're 7000 million.
So how do those 6950 extra millions survive?
I think the best way to think of it is that they (we) produce their (our) own food!
Each mouth to feed also comes with two hands to produce food. The planet doesn't have to do the work. We make our own food.
> The planet doesn't have to do the work. We make our own food.
We don't just conjure food from the ether, it requires space and resources, both of which are finite. We're already using half of the world's habitable land for farming, and we need to retain some wild spaces to perform all of the ecological functions that farmland can't. There's a limited amount of fresh water, etc.
And food isn't the only bottleneck. If the current population all lived a modern western lifestyle, we'd be emitting an even more unsustainable amount of carbon.
The planet is a closed, finite system, so by definition there must be some upper limit to what it can support.
2 hands to produce it? No. Modern agriculture relies on machines for most things. The high yield monocrop pattern is how we feed so many already. I firmly believe that increasing people will decrease suitability.
That way we can better analyze the context of what "much" actually means.
Please don't do this.
> are not healthy and happy fish
Citation needed that wild fish are "happy".
And it's dishonesty to assume unsustainable farming and sustainable wild catch in your argument.
Do you have any evidence that sufficient wild catch exists to feed the population?
Wild animals are likely to have parasites. Farmed animals can be controlled for that.
Think anti biotic use in chickens for example. And the resistances that come with it. And fish tanks that do exist already have some of these issues already as well. How expanding that even more is a good thing is nebolous to me.
This hostility to transporting goods you see occasionally is hard for me to understand.
I mean, I know I disagree with it, but what's weird is I don't even understand the underlying reasoning.
I mean what on earth year are we in again?
It's about disruption of an ecosystem that material reality demonstrates we still very poorly understand.
There's exactly zero evidence that anyone other than very specific tribes of indigenous peoples who sustained thousands of years, that humans writ large know how to maintain ecosystems.
All evidence points to our current practices having massive deleterious consequences and that we are already a few decades into a mass extinction event.
If that's not enough evidence to harbor every ship (or at least 95%) until we figure out what the fuck we're doing, there's no hope.
That's the truly repulsive aspects of barbarism, it's about the combination of ignorance and indifference as to the consequences of our actions
There definitely seems the need for some international waters rules to be agreed on, but given today's politics it seems unlikely the major powers would approach that with goodwill.
And if an illegal fishing armada turned up would very likely sink a few vessels to send a message.
But yeah, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. But who would be willing to mess with China?
Surely China has bigger fish to fry (rimshot) with its foreign relations.
Yeah, probably. That's why I said if. It's an interesting scenario to think through, even if it's unlikely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American_Treaty_of_Recip...
It's true that the US consider South America "their own backyard", but there is a web of complex relationships which makes it unlikely they would blindly help this or that country retaliate against actions from superpowers - short of somebody establishing permanent strategic bases that are direct threats to the US mainland.
It's a yearly naval exercise conducted by many countries in the Pacific. In the event of a naval war with China, they would have to fight not only the US but Australia, Canada, Japan, Philippines, and countless other countries.
It would not go well for them, I assure you.
But if China did decide to project power, the question is not "would the US and its allies win a shooting war", the question is "will the US push back at all?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-American_Treaty_of_Recip...
Which again returns to the original question; would the US push back, and how far would they go?
The US has many overseas bases in Latin America already... including a few of them in Argentina.
The Rio Pact, the yearly naval exercises, the overseas bases... and the historical precedent of the Monroe doctrine makes it very clear that the US doesn't want any outsiders messing around.
Nobody in Argentina would buy Chinese products again, probably.
I predict that if they search a little, would find exactly the same pattern in Ethiopian waters.
Sure, but would that really affect Chinese decision making? I imagine that a partial US boycott would have a much larger impact than a full boycott in Argentina. Their GDP is 32nd in the world according to Wikipedia.
What are these bribes you talk of? Can you provide sources?
Are you talking worldwide freshwater and saltwater fish?
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/2218
https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/science-of-seaspiracy/
> Among the assessed stocks in the database, the average fishing pressure increased and the biomass declined on average until 1995, when fishing pressure began to decrease. By 2005, average biomass had started to increase (Fig. 1B). Averaged across all stocks in the database, biomass in 2016 was higher than BMSY, and fishing pressure was lower than UMSY. However, improvement is still needed for 24% of stocks, accounting for 19% of potential catch, which still have low biomass and high fishing pressure compared with MSY-based targets
> Since the mid-1990s, catch has generally declined in proportion to decreases in fishing pressure and was, in 2016, at 54% of where it was in 1989 for assessed stocks (Fig. 1B). This pattern is also observed at the regional level, where the correlation between exploitation rate and catch is generally >0.8 (Fig. 2). Global catch as reported by the FAO also declined during that period, but less so than for the assessed stocks reported here, likely because fishing effort in the parts of the world without assessment has not declined (18).
> Regions that have average biomass near or above BMSY are Australia, Atlantic Ocean tunas, Canada West Coast, European Union non-Mediterranean, Indian Ocean tunas, Norway/Iceland/Faroes, New Zealand, Pacific Ocean tunas, Alaska, the US Southeast and Gulf, and the US West Coast. Although these regions have not avoided the overfishing of all stocks, conservative management has kept most stocks at high biomass. Many areas where biomass was below BMSY in 2000 have seen reductions in fishing pressure and stock increases, including the Atlantic Ocean tunas; the East, Southeast, and Gulf coasts of the United States; the Canada East Coast; and the Northwest Pacific Ocean (Japan and Russia). Tuna stocks in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which were well above BMSY in 1970, were near BMSY in 2016.
> Stocks in the Mediterranean-Black Sea have low biomass and continue to decline, whereas stocks in South America have declined considerably in the last 20 y and were below target levels in 2016. Fishing pressure in South America has been dropping since the early 2000s. Only 4 of 36 stocks in NW Africa have MSY-based reference points for biomass estimated, all of which are large-volume, small-pelagic fisheries and are therefore unrepresentative of the many demersal fisheries in the region. The stock abundance for those small-pelagic stocks is above MSY targets, but exploitation rates were high (2.5 times UMSY) for the 6 NW African stocks for which exploitation rate reference points exist. Regional assessments (19) estimated that most demersal stocks were overexploited by 2008 and recommended reductions in fishing pressure.
It is of course difficult to create and enforce a regulatory regime to prevent overfishing, but there tends to be buy-in among fisherman once their fisheries collapse.