1,837 karma · joined April 19, 2007
All positive growth eventually flattens out and becomes sigmoid, but a lot of phenomena experience negative growth and nose dive. No gentle curve, but a hard kink and perfect flat line at zero. Forever. I think it would be a stretch to categorize that pattern as sigmoid. Predicting a sigmoid pattern for negative growth implies some sort of a soft landing (depending on your definition of soft).
We can think of many populations that are no longer with us. So just a caution about over applying this reasoning in the negative case.
IIRC in 2012 the Earth missed a giant CME by one week, and had it hit Earth there would have been 80% casualties in the US (according to a US government committee), due to the fallout of failing electrical transformers. I'm not aware that this issue has been rectified - probably due to the magnitude of the task.
Edit: This suggests the issue is being addressed but not to what extent: https://www.space.com/space-weather-impacts-electric-grid-pr...
Thoughts?
Most people are ignorant about businesses that are not international consumer brands. However this only represents a tiny fraction of the total number of businesses out there.
This visibility problem goes back to even Napolean's time, when he dismissed England as a "nation of shopkeepers". In a way he was correct, but he failed to appreciate what such a nation was and is capable of.
Edit: Searching through my notes, I realised I've been down this rabbit hole before. Here are some more of the same:
The whole point of a having a backup plan is for when the primary plan isn't working :S
Inflation can be caused by economic success where everybody is richer, and businesses have an incentive to increase prices and salaries to compete with other businesses doing the same.
But this isn't what we're dealing with. This inflation hasn't been caused by economic success, it's been caused by quantitative easing - money printing. And lots of it. Prices are going up because there is more money for the same (or less) amount of goods. In my opinion it may be more helpful to think about 'currency devaluation' rather than 'price increases', despite the fact these are two sides of the same coin.
Any thoughts on what the specific energy might be?
Interests rates do not need to increase very much at all at this point, so that 100% of tax revenues would be needed just to cover the interest owed by governments. At this point (actually before) the currency is effectively dead and hyperinflation is inevitable, unless:
1) there is a draconian cut to government spending to match tax revenue, or 2) the current system is abandoned to one that is backed by hard assets (which would include a severe cut in spending but could also include a taper)
1. is politically infeasible, so we will default to 2. after a significant amount of economic pain. The US Dollar and most western fiat currencies are dead and are already long in the tooth by historic standards.
I knew an Osama at university in 2003. Poor guy had to change his name. Another nice name ruined.