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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

The question is, how would you do that preparation?

Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US. I'm preparing by learning how to design and make things so I can do my own manufacturing in-house to minimize dependency on supply lines that could be disrupted. Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest.

> Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps move to a country that maintains cordial relationships with both China and the US.

I moved to Singapore a while ago. Not for those reasons, but being on good terms with almost anyone certainly is a nice bonus.

Though my question was rather, what policies would a country want to adopt?

> Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest.

Yes, but that's essentially just a hobby or at most craft production. So that is neither competitive as mass production in peace time, nor of much use for mass production in wartime.

(It definitely sounds like a great hobby, though!)

A mostly self-sufficient homestead isn't a hobby, it's a way of life.

And the user you're replying to is advocating for that way of life because they are predicting a severe downfall in the quality of life for those who stay in the global system.

I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to be right.

> I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to be right.

Over what time horizon? The market consensus is definitely not giving this a big probability any time soon.

I'm skeptical that market consensus (whatever that really means anyways) is good at predicting events like ecological collapse and deranged authoritarians launching senseless wars of aggression.

> [...] market consensus (whatever that really means anyways) [...]

If we had proper prediction markets for arbitrary events, I would just directly talk about what those prices are. In the real world, we have to look at the prices of existing financial instruments and see which of these can be used as proxies for the events we are interested in.

For some events that fairly easy: if Russian government bonds trade at high prices in 2021, it's unlikely that Russia's dictator will start a senseless war of aggression soon. (In reality, the price of Russia's bonds went down in the runup to the war.)

For other events you have to be more clever: if you want to get a sense of the market estimate for the probability that an asteroid impact (or similar) will erase all life on earth, you can't just look at the price of a straightforward bet that pays out one dollar, if the asteroid hits: most of us would be dead, and the dollar would likely be worthless.

However you can create a bet that has the right structure: Alice gives Bob 100 dollar now, and in five years, Bob gives Alice 500 dollars (but obviously only if the asteroid hasn't killed Alice and Bob). The market price of such a contract can tell you something about the market consensus estimate of a collapse.

My argument wouldn't be that the market consensus is particularly good at prediction, just that it's better than any other prediction mechanism we have; because it can and will incorporate those other prediction mechanisms, and people have a financial incentive to do so.

Btw, why do you think markets would be particularly bad at forecasting ecological collapse? Is there any ecology you are particularly worried about?

What you describe won't account for a tumour growing in a dictator's head that makes him decide to press the big nuke button one day.

It won't account for a volcano erupting and burying a society in the ashes as happened in Pompeii, or the global equivalent.

> What you describe won't account for a tumour growing in a dictator's head that makes him decide to press the big nuke button one day.

Yes, the market consensus can only reflect the information that available to (at least some) market participants.

Of course, the market mechanisms also give people incentives to acquire that information. Because any informational advantage gets rewarded with money.

> It won't account for a volcano erupting and burying a society in the ashes as happened in Pompeii, or the global equivalent.

It can account for the best estimates we have for the probability of that happening.

Again, I'm not suggesting that market estimates are perfect, nor even necessarily any good. I'm just saying that market estimates tend to be at least as good as any other estimates we have. Ie market estimates tend to be the best ones available.

I don’t doubt the danger, but I still feel safer in a city with people to trade with than going full Walden

You can still trade with people when living outside of a city. I don’t expect complete civilizational collapse, there will still be roads and internet, I just like living remote.

If we need to grow our own food, gasoline is a problem for most American ideas of remote homesteading.

With some modifications you can run cars on ammonia which can be made, albeit inefficiently at small scales, from solar power. Perhaps some new catalyst or meta-material would enable a more efficient process.

You can also put a horse in front of your car. It works, but is a bit inefficient. You can feed your horse with grass which you can grow with solar power.

Perhaps some new catalyst or meta-material would enable a more efficient horse.

The current processes are not that inefficient, it’s currently commercially inefficient because the margins are small, but if there were issues in obtaining alternative fuels the margins would increase to make micro scale ammonia generation economically viable. There are supposedly already catalysts that exist to make small scale ammonia production competitive even at current margins and there is some interest in using this for solar power energy storage. For me this technology is still in the category of I’ll believe it when I see it. Most people who need ammonia today need a whole lot of it so small scale production wouldn’t make sense even if it was just as efficient. The other issues with ammonia are that it’s rather toxic and pretty easy to make into explosives. Eventually I’m planning on having an excess supply renewable energy so dumping that into ammonia production is a no brainer.

> [...] I just like living remote.

That's good, and enough justification for your lifestyle. No need to come up with stories of imminent global collapse (unless that kind of roleplay enhances your enjoyment of your lifestyle, I guess?)

My sincere apologies, I’ll be sure to check with you next time.

Sure, feel free. I can't guarantee any response times, though.

Being on nice terms is a policy. One way is by having a defensive oriented army and not getting involved in conflicts. Big chunks of the world already do this.

While I am treating it as a hobby I do have a garage full of CNCs, 3D printers, laser cutters, a pretty complete machine shop and the ability to do some foundry work. I am not expecting a complete collapse of society, mainly the collapse of the middle class as gradually the things they need get more expensive and they earn less. Being able to make stuff myself is already saving me money - you’d be surprised that for many of the bespoke things I need it is far cheaper to make it myself than send it out to a job shop. The idea is to be able to make replacement parts to contribute to the success of my local community so that it’s in their interest to shield me from whatever is going on beyond my gates.

Bring back something like Bretton Woods. When it ended in the 70s and the dollar was no longer tethered to anything physical, is when the financial system started eating up more and more of the economy. Using the financial system as the middleman for money creation (as opposed to e.g. directly depositing helicopter money into people's accounts, or having a non-inflationary currency) necessarily entailed a continuous transfer of wealth from main street to wall street.

Haha, Bretton Woods wasn't magical. The dollar had long been unmoored in practice, that's why the Bretton Woods agreement collapsed.

So if you see any trends that only show up after Bretton Woods was _formally_ abandoned, then those trends can't have been kicked off by the unmooring.

What trends are you worried about anyway?

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