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Animats

This time it's much worse.

Last time, the crash was mostly financial. This time, it's real world.

- Pandemic

- Major war in Europe.

- Global warming has forced enough climate change to reduce worldwide food production.

- Last time, the presentation says, US overcapacity was a problem. Now, it's undercapacity. Shortages in food, semiconductors, cars, fuel...

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When lots of people feel poor (ie, lost a lot of money on their house), it's real world. When lots of people's retirement savings flush down the toilet, it's real world. When millions lose their job, real world.

The idea that 2008 wasn't real world is nonsensical.

I lived through the 2008 meltdown. The goddamn crisis was more than real. In front of my eyes, people lost their jobs including my own colleagues. No one had money. Even those with jobs came to work fearing it was their last day. I just hope such a day never comes again. September to December 2008 and even Q1 2009 was really bad.

Just because it will probably be worse now doesn't mean it wasn't bad then. Then I lost my house and struggled to scrape through financially. We learned from that experience and are better prepared to weather this round. It may be a blessing for many that 2008 was so recent, and this recession has trumpeted its approach for a while: maybe they've used the time to prepare.

Why would it be worse now?

It was bad on Main Street, but 2008 brought the App Store boom, so us developers, of which HN is biased towards, saw stupid money being thrown at us with everyone rushing to become the next "Fart App" millionaire. For tech, 2008 was a golden age. This time tech is the one getting hit.

Food shortage has nearly nothing to do with climate change and nearly everything to do with sanctions against Russia, resulting in skyrocketing prices of potash, nitrogen and ultimately fertilizer. Combine that with the fact that Ukraine and Russia are also major wheat exporters. Aside from China, most of the countries are running very lean food reserves, resulting in added pressure.

Correct. HN loves the climate change boogey man theology

Don’t blame the sanctions. The sanctions didn’t bomb the wheat fields of Europe into shit and blockade all the seaports in Ukraine

Climate change has a definite impact on crop yield. The recent impact on wheat crop in India is a case in point:

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-india-wheat-crop-snags-export....

> An unusually early, record-shattering heat wave in India has reduced wheat yields [...] Climate change has made India's heat wave hotter, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College of London [...] "But now it is a much more common event—we can expect such high temperatures about once in every four years," she said.

> India's vulnerability to extreme heat increased 15% from 1990 to 2019, according to a 2021 report by the medical journal The Lancet.

Energy is the key behind inflation. The West moved towards no more oil and gas and it's coming back to haunt it. That's an inflation component the Fed can't control.

It will take years to get some new nuclear plants and oil/gas rigs. And between the ESG nonsense and $0 prices in a lockdown, those are risky enterprises. Also there are price controls (in UK several energy companies collapsed last year [1]). Would you risk your money making a nuclear plant, an oil rig, a gas pipeline, that might get shut down or could become worthless? [2]

[0] Nov 16 2021 https://www.dw.com/en/german-agency-suspends-certification-f...

[1] Dec 21 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/dec/01/zog-energy-...

[2] May 13 2022 https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/company-behind-nord-str...

That’s overly doom laden. These things get a lot of column inches, but I don’t think any represent the end of days.

The pandemic for instant is ancient history in most parts of the world outside of California.

The US just passed 1,000,000 dead. It's not over. Declaring a victory and going home doesn't work. Did that last summer, remember? US case rate has tripled since April 1. Deaths lag that by about a month.

We let the MBAs and PMs optimize every ounce of redundancy away for “efficiency” and “share price”.

Now a small ripple becomes a tidal wave, and we all pay the price for not letting the engineers run the show

Yeah, engineers never over optimize on some dimension. Never happened.

Never? Of course not. But they do a much better job. I don't know the current stats, but I recall hearing something like 70% of china's ruling party have engineering degrees. Whereas the overwhelming majority of ours are lawyers.

I think that plays a part in why China's infrastructure is so good, and why they've been kicking our ass the last 30 years in terms of growth.

I don't buy it.

Pointing to China isn't convincing. China has been growing off a small base. Let's see how their GDP growth goes off a base like the US. US is 5-6x larger per capita.

I don't know which engineers you work with, but my experience is that engineers will prematurely optimize just about anything they can measure and put in a promotion packet. Or heck, just for fun. I'm no exception either.

I think system theorists probably would have the best shot of helping anticipate the negative feedback loops we're experiencing.

Engineers love buffers though, and building fault-tolerant systems.

It has nothing to do with letting a certain specialization run the show, but having people in leadership that have fewer conflicts of interests, a deeper understanding of things other than just politics, and a willingness to work in/on a team.

That’s reduction in worldwide food production for export, which is not that much. Food production itself is fine; India would’ve had issues as they import the most from Ukraine/Russia, but they have an unusually large domestic supply this year.

(from Sarah Taber)

I’d encourage you to read Taber with a grain of salt. As someone with some on-the-ground experience with production agriculture, I find her takes sometimes distorted and one-sided. They do feed a narrative that clearly resonates with folks without that background, though.

If India has an unusually large domestic supply this year, why are they now restricting exports?

Rainy day fund?

Unfortunately, the correct answer is that a badly timed heat wave damaged their harvest:

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-slashes-wheat-outp...

- Global warming has forced enough climate change to reduce worldwide food production.

source?

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