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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Or the other way around. It might make China take requests from Iran very seriously. Depends on whether China needs the oil worse than Iran needs the money.

[Edit: I'm rate limited for my own good, so I'm replying to jimbokun here: Which do I think is more likely? I have no data. Particularly, I have no data about the elasticity of China's oil demand.]

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Ok but just logically. What’s more important? 80% of your economy? Or more expensive energy? Whatever we believe about the latter, the former is existential.

I don’t know why everyone in this thread is thinking so small picture. We’re in a Cold War.

> 80% of your economy? Or more expensive energy?

Logically they are the same thing. Economy makes things with energy.

Let’s use common sense though please. What’s more important?

~90% of government revenue that has no substitute?

Or ~10% of oil imports for which there are a plethora of alternatives?

Well, see, that was my question. Are there a plethora of alternatives for China? If they cut off Iran, where would they get the replacement oil from? Who has the capacity. Are they willing to sell to China? If so, at what price? If it's freely available, and at the same price, that answers my question. If it's only available at a higher price, then the question is, what does that higher price do to China's economy? And if it's not available at all, what does the absence do to China's economy?

You said "a plethora of alternatives". Are there, really? Can you (or someone) show that others are ready and willing to supply that much oil?

No matter what kind of interesting questions you want to pose, shutting down ~90% of tax revenue is worse than shutting down 10% of one source of energy. It’s frankly very silly to hypothesize otherwise.

Oil prices go higher and more countries open up rules to allow some Iranian oil. That 90% gets replaced but that 10% loss causes the 90% to increase.

Losing Iran's oil probably causes a world war.

Which do you think is more likely?

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