Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

The Iron Curtain cut through the heart of Europe, dividing east from west. Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia, walling it off from all of Europe. Things will be so much worse for people on the inside this time. It will be like Soviet Russia without the Warsaw Pact to support it. It is one thing to be without Twitter and Hollywood movies, but can Russia feed itself? Can any country? Modern industrial agriculture just assumes parts and equipment can flow easily across borders. How soon before that too is locked behind sanctions?

View on HN

Russia is a leading producer and exporter of wheat, corn, and fertilizer [1][2]. The question you may want to ask is whether the rest of the world be able to feed itself if Russia loses access to its markets [3]?

[1] https://www.rbth.com/business/332948-russia-leading-wheat-ex...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-04/russia-ca...

[3] https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2022/0309/1285347-world-foo...

Russia's top agriculture export markets are Kazakhstan, Belarus, China, Ukraine and Turkey. Out of those, Ukraine and Turkey probably can't be count on to remain open with sanctions. But the "rest of the world" seems open if we just assume that China is Russia's main agri importer.

Yeah, with Czech tractors - https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501369950463836164

They can probably feed themselves. Growing calories is something we're good at, especially Russia.

The hard part is dealing with a scenario where there is plenty of wheat, but people have no money to buy it.

Ireland, in the 1840s suffered a horrific famine. Grain was being exported the while time. Food existed. People couldn't afford it.

During the US' great depression, people were hungry while agricultural products piled up, rotted in or burned to defend a price floor.

I don't think Russia will starve, but economics is hard. There are a lot of ways this can get really bad.

Well, the wheat will be affordable because Russia won't be able to export it.

But then that only means it's not attractive for the farmers either.

They're going to manipulate their currency the same way China does.

Keynes said: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford". Money is just a way of divvying up the productive capacity of a country, so not being able to afford a country's own production is either a preference for foreign trade or a distribution problem.

Not that is much comfort to Russian's -- Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

> Russia has a massively unequal distribution of wealth.

The Netherlands has the highest wealth inequality in the world.[0] No one considers that some backwater country, or its people starving or somehow impoverished.

There's more that's going in Russia than "a massively unequal distribution of wealth."

[0] https://uweb.berkeley.edu/2021/04/11/the-duality-of-the-dutc... It's also the oldest country to implement capitalism. Maybe capitalism plays a role in producing wealth inequality? It's certainly been increasing in the US since the 1980s, when "greed" was embraced as good and we started shipping jobs overseas.

Russia has inequality, poverty and widespread sanctions. Getting rid of just one of those three factors would allow them to afford food.

> Getting rid of just one of those three factors would allow them to afford food.

According to the USDA, 37 million Americans are food insecure.[0]

I'd like Americans to be able to afford food. What factors do you think are preventing that in the US? Is it inequality? Poverty? Something else? (We don't have sanctions as far as I know.)

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/02/magazine/food...

> the top 20% in the Netherlands earns only 4 times the income the bottom 20% do. As a comparison, the U.S’s top 20% earns 16.65 times the amount the bottom 20% do.

> However, this article isn’t meant to push the false narrative that the Netherlands’ citizens are all miserable as a result of this wealth gap because they aren’t. In many metrics of standards of living, the Netherlands is ranked among the highest in the world. In fact, the Netherlands placed 10th on the social progress index and 8th on the Human Development Index.

For some reason, the linked article claims the Netherlands has a Gini coefficient of 0.902 but the linked source claims a Gini coefficient of 0.281, significantly lower.

I can find no other sources claiming a Dutch Gini coefficient higher than 0.3 at any point in recent history. A Gini coefficient of 0.902 is practically unheard of, perhaps the article was written in error? Seems strange to put so much effort into writing an article without checking the source or questioning the number.

By comparison, Russia's Gini coefficient is 0.375 with the noted caveat that it can be very hard to track the true wealth of the most powerful Russians. The United States is 0.414 according to same source.

From How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE

> The Netherlands skew falsely high on the GINI coefficient because house loans are insured by the state, causing many families to technically be in large debt, beyond the value of their houses.

That makes it hard to trust the wealth numbers, e.g. things like "the top 10% of the country owns 60% of the wealth" (according to the OCED). The bottom 60% of the country owns "almost no" wealth. It also explains why, if you visit The Netherlands, it doesn't seem like it is struggling with inequality…

Source: https://www.oecd.org/netherlands/OECD2015-In-It-Together-Hig...

Keynes was not a farmer. Nobody can afford to not plant during planting season, not harvest during harvest. There are all sorts of things that a country is capable of doing at time A that will spell their doom come time B.

This is true, but Keynes was just encouraging a macro perspective, in that statement.

An economy, by definition, can afford it's output.

It's still true that what we build, destroy, deplete and such affect the future. All keyenes was trying to spell out was that we can't really save or borrow from the future outside of these kinds of things. Economic output doesn't store like that.

All of this stops the day Russia stops attacking Ukraine, it’s not like Russia is a helpless victim here.

Edit: I agree there will be reverberating consequences. Criminals have to pay their debt to society. Russia is already deep in a hole. Even if this war stops today, their economy is set back many years. The economic might of the peaceful world is being used to make an example of a warmongering nation. But Russia can choose to stop digging. There is no end-game for Putin in continuing this war.

I'm not sure about that. Even if every Russian tank turned around and went home, the sanctions will still be there for a while. There is already a call for seized Russian assets to be used for rebuilding efforts. Russia's credit rating will not bounce back quickly. And countries from Canada to Germany are looking to ween themselves off of Russian energy products. Damage has been done.

Even if the sanctions stop, I don't know if all the companies that left will come back the next week, month or year. There is restitution that needs to happen.

I don't think it's restitution that the companies care about. It's the perceived instability that will keep them from going back in.

They had to pull out once at great cost. They're going to expect that they might need to pull out again if they go back in.

Predicting the future is hard.

I imagine there'd be much pressure for Putin to resign, or age-out, and a calmer leader to ascend, before significant forward progress is made in healing relations.

Not now that Russia is nationalizing all the businesses that pulled up stakes.

>but can Russia feed itself

I saw some article on this topic, apparently 100% of "material" for inseminating cows is imported. Also like 80% of wheat seeds and majority of potato seeds (or whatever). Something similar with chicks

My grandad was a farm worker back in the old days before artificial insermination. You used to have a guy drive by with a bull, and it would take care of the process for you.

Much more damming, for Russia anyway, is that they apparently don’t have a single factory producing ballbarings. That isn’t going to be an issue for a while, and then it is really going to be an issue.

> Much more damming, for Russia anyway, is that they apparently don’t have a single factory producing ballbarings

They'll just get them from Ukraine which has plenty of such factories.

They’ve got plenty of opportunities with China.

That is such an unequal relationship. China is not kind to its colonies.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

At the cost of almost everything. China has vassals, not partners.

For now. But we are already seeing a few chinks in that armor. China prizes stability. Countries that start wars over imagined slights do not promote stability. China's largesse is not unlimited nor does it ever come without a price.

Maybe… their relationship with North Korea pints too exceptions to that.

They waited to go to war until after the Beijing Olympics, in coordination with China [0]. And China has been cheering them on [1]. Looks like someone made a friend.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukrain... [1] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/03/10/china/china-russia-disinf...

> They waited to go to war until after the Beijing Olympics, in coordination with China. And China has been cheering them on. Looks like someone made a friend.

Friends don't make friends delay invasions so that they will get bogged down in mud, or egg them on in disastrous courses of action that happen to serve the geopolitical interest of the cheerleader by consuming attention of geopolitical rivals.

That's callous exploitation, not friendship.

Crimea was invaded days after the 2014 Sochi games. The rest of Ukraine days after the 2022 Beijing games. It's becoming a Russian tradition.

If China allows after 2026 Winter Olympics it will be the Kazakhstans turn.

More like Georgia. In Kazakhstan the threat are socialists only

It's not over an 'imagined slight', but bringing back in old soviet states, weakening the EU/NATO (or preventing its expansion), and capturing Ukraine's agriculture and industry, both of which are significant, but the economy was also $800BN compared to Russia's $4400BN and it would have been a sizeable addition.

China is somewhat happy to support those goals; while everyone is fussing with Putin, they get to kick off expansion in the south china sea.

> For now. But we are already seeing a few chinks in that armor. China prizes stability. Countries that start wars over imagined slights do not promote stability. China's largesse is not unlimited nor does it ever come without a price.

China definitely prizes domestic stability, but its current leadership is also not keen on a stable US-led international order.

Russia absolutely made their move after consultation with China. We’re seeing Nato vs China/Russia unfolding

And China will not not notice that it is the sole buyer of Russian products?

What Putin did to Ukraine, made Russia smaller and weaker, and there is no going back.

China wants to export a bunch of stuff to Russia as well. They aren't going to ruin that two way relationship just to get a discount on agri imports.

There have been a number of negative indicators on that front in the last couple days, most recently:

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-sa...

If that means one less Russian tank in Ukraine so be it

With the amount of land and oil they have, food would never be an issue. Even an isolated Russia can conjure up basic lorries and tractors. The real question is would ordinary Russians be content in life without most modern amenities? Sure they can barter their natural resources in exchange for goodies from China but at what price?

Look to how North Korea is doing. They're also a client state of China. They (kinda) survive. Russia will too.

> Curtain 2.0 looks to be forming only around Russia

And Belarus.

Different countries today, but the etymology of the name remains telling. Belarus = Byelorussia = Belaya Rus = White Russia.

Well, if you're going to go by what the Russians themselves call stuff in Russian, then Ukraine (or at least a big chunk of it) is called "Little Russia", so... Maybe better not go by that, eh?

I mean, if we were to go by what people call places as a valid indicator for which people the places belong to, then everything from the Atlantic as far east as all of Poland and much of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia used to be called Grossdeutschland ("Greater Germany") as late as in my grandparents' youth... So better not.

And a bunch of pro-Russian puppet states Putin is building by conquest of all (if he succeeds completely in Ukraine) or part (South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and, with only partial success in Ukraine, Donbas and Luhansk) of some former-Soviet European states. But, still, limited to a subset of ex-Soviet territory, not the broad expand of Eastern Europe right up through part of Germany that the old Iron Curtain contained.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com