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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Remember the big energy crisis that Europe was supposed to be doomed with for years to come? Yeah, it's pretty much gone. Worth pointing out two things.

First, natural gas demand has been much weaker than anticipated since China is weaker. Indeed, there is now a surplus of gas in the world market.Some people claim that "last winter we got lucky", but this doesn't explain how gas storage is at historically high levels. Germany, Europe's biggest gas consumer, has an excellent position going into the autumn.

Second, renewable energy is beating new records by the day. In Northern Europe, electricity prices are bouncing around zero and occasionally dipping below the line into negative territory.There's also a structural trend of rapidly growing renewable energy, which means that even as gas prices return to historical norms, it is unlikely that consumption will stay the same. The shift now underway to renewable and clean energy (e.g. nuclear) is permanent. Russia had its chance at energy blackmail and it turned out it was a dud.

I think there are a couple of conclusions to draw from this. The most important one is that scaremongering and hysteria rarely pays to listen to. We can broaden this to a discussion about climate change or even immigration. Sure, there will be issues, but the doomsters on both issues were proven wrong historically. So were the doomsters on Europe's supposedly "permanent energy crisis" thesis.Then why do people persist by wallowing in fear? I don't have a clear answer but perhaps there are evolutionary adaptions that were beneficial to those who were erring on the side of caution?

Another important takeaway for me is once a crisis gets going you should never underestimate humanity's capacity for adaption and change. The system we inhabit may look brittle, but it's probably a lot more sturdy than we give it credit for. Some of us still remember the panicked predictions about the food supply chains breaking down when Covid hit, and plenty people stocked up on tons of canned food, often for no good reason. Some even talked of famine.

Perhaps being the optimist just isn't socially profitable. You're taken more seriously by being a "deeply concerned" pessimist. If this is true, then social incentives will be skewed to having the bad take. People who will be aware of this will probably draw the right conclusions in times when most other folks are losing their minds in fear.

The one big problem with looking at prices by themselves is that they're a function of demand AND supply.

And so when you see a plunge in price, it's worth trying to notice if it is due to an increasing abundance of something, or a sudden drop in the demand for the thing. And why the demand might decrease.

And the big thing I notice is that European Manufacturing is decreasing in relative and absolute terms.

So it seems like a completely plausible interpretation for an overall decrease in energy prices is that manufacturers are shutting down and less stuff is being produced and thus there's less demand for energy inputs... even if the amount of available energy remains relatively constant.

Pretty similar to how gas prices fell hard in 2020 BECAUSE FEWER PEOPLE WERE DRIVING CARS.

So if you completely ignored anything else that happened that year, and just tracked the gas prices, you'd say "hah, anyone thinking we were in an energy crisis are stupid!"

But anyone actually living through 2020 would note that they couldn't really enjoy the low gas prices because they were literally unable to work or vacation or do various things they would normally buy gas for.

Economic activity being reduced is generally a bad thing even if it means we see energy surpluses.

I strongly suspect we're seeing a similar impact here, which will shake out over the next year or so.


Also, you might notice that the price of Bud Light is at all-time lows too but it sure ain't because we've made breakthroughs in light beer productivity.