domain:alexberenson.substack.com
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12m ago
Food security should not mean '% of all peacetime food that is produced domestically' but '% of minimum food produced necessary to avoid health problems'. Rising demand means people wanting better Australian lobster, extra grain or preferring foreign milk to domestic milk (for admittedly understandable reasons), not that China is incapable of providing enough grain or whatever is needed to sustain its population and workforce.
If grain from overseas is cut off they can buy from Russia and Central Asia instead. They can rationalize production away from wine or whatever else they grow. They can eat into stockpiles. They can rationalize consumption. The existence of significant obesity in China proves that peacetime consumption is higher than needed.
Britain imported 60% of its food in 1939 yet found ways to cope with an imperfect blockade. China can do the same because their actual food security is not the same as domestic production as a % of peacetime food consumption.
They can do all of these things way more than Taiwan can, in relative terms, which is why I maintain that food security is not a big problem for China like it is for Taiwan.
lagrangian
27m ago
Reading the details, this strikes me as reasonable on the part of the Biden admin.
Two major caveats on what you've written:
- The news in the press release is about an additional 7.7 gigadollars for 160 kilopeople. Your figures are for the total over his entire term.
- This is, like all previous loan forgiveness by Biden, not a giveaway so much as letting people qualify for forgiveness programs for which they fell through the cracks. E.g. from here
Automatically cancel debt for borrowers who would otherwise be eligible for loan forgiveness under income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, like the SAVE Plan, or Public Service Loan Forgiveness but are not enrolled in those programs.
It's also forgiving loans for people on permanent disability. That one's a little more questionable - I imagine some "permanent disabilities" are sketchy at best. But, still not "free money for all."
I think it's important to acknowledge that this is (afaik) very much not a giveaway to all or even most loan holders, including those doing well. I'm against executive orders/overreach, and I want to see the government stop giving out loans for underwater basket weaving as much as the next Mottizan, but this is just much less crazy than it seems at a glance.
Mottizen
38m ago
Could probably use a decentralized exchange of some sort to swap it into stables and then various ways of getting it into physical USD.
Mushguffler
1hr ago
That's kind of a Latin American thing, right? electing outsiders. Fujimori in Peru, Bukele in el Salvador, I think some others I'm forgetting. They like electing ethnic outsiders.
Forgotpassword
1hr ago
Still Catholics have been a fairly large chunk of the population for the majority of the USA's history and include quite a few successful European ethnic groups that have not experienced significant censure. The Supreme Court is 6/9 Catholic (according to Wikipedia I have no idea who's practicing/adherent)
ThenElection
1hr ago
Many of these loans were taken out with the expectation of securing a valuable job.
Were they?
I sincerely doubt that CS or EE majors are anything but underrepresented in the recipients of these bailouts. Which does point to a third possible party who has at significant share of the blame: universities themselves. They encourage students to take massive loans of dubious benefit with false advertising. More economically advantageous majors are often even limited in enrollment.
I don't hold the student loan debtors too responsible for the issue. They're young idiots who are told by pretty much everyone that it's a good idea to go on what's effectively a four year party vacation because they'll automatically get a good job afterwards. It's akin to someone who doesn't understand how interest rates work taking out a payday loan. But we really should be punishing the institutions that put them in that position.
They refuse to interpret it based on the author's portrayal and instead substitute their own. As a human living in 2024, I find the thought of making beads, baskets, hunting and growing corn dull and dreary and who are you to say it's not? That's the best fit. Final answer. As you can see I have now proven the question is dumb and we are unfairly giving kids low marks.
jeroboam
1hr ago
Mining and banking have sucked in any country.
Yeah, most developing countries only have 3 kinds of stocks: banks, resource extraction, and telecom.
Today it’s 30% consumer defensive.
In light of my above comment, that's interesting. Do you have a favorite Mexican stock?
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
1hr ago
It’s questionable whether Joe is Catholic at this point as he’s not in communion with Rome.
I don't believe Joe has been formally excommunicated by anyone. There was a discussion not too long ago about Biden being told he could not receive communion from a bishop, but that's not a formal excommunication just a pastoral decision. Otherwise any sinner who hadn't gone to the confessional would be "excommunicated."
Perhaps he's done something that merits automatic excommunication, but that would have to be adjudicated. And I don't see how he could, unless you count "officially endorsing abortion" as "being an accomplice to people procuring completed abortions" which I don't see how that would make sense.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1hr ago
China is a net importer of grain from North and South America, and those trade routes will definitely be cut off. China only has the capacity to feed 65% of its domestic consumption: if you switch everyone to just eating rice you still don’t have enough to square that circle. And the problem is getting worse: by 2030 their self sufficiency will be in the 58%. China doss not make enough food to feed its people, not by a long shot.
Yes, middle-class women are the modal beneficiary. One of the worst parts of the bailouts is that they discourage a lot of useful "women's work" the most useful of which is of course motherhood.
Just for a quick clarification, by "excess elites", I mean that they are not elite. They are aping the values of the elite, but there is no more room in the elite class. A true elite can spend 6 years studying literature at Williams and not need a government bailout. The same behavior is bizarre among non-elites and should not be subsidized.
JulianRota
1hr ago
In my opinion, you are way overthinking this. I think this ties back into the subject of this thread, but probably 90% of tests are written for people who aren't particularly intelligent by other people who also aren't particularly intelligent as a clumsy and ham-fisted way to see if they're good enough for something. They're meant to see if you can think along with the author's mid-tier thought process, not stimulate discussion and sophisticated consideration.
I solved it in like 10 seconds. Skim it, check the answers, go over it a little more carefully, the words of the story are obviously meant to be about being productive and peaceful, mark D, done, move on to the next one. If you've managed to make it through a first-world school, you probably have an idea how tests are written and how the people who will grade them want you to answer.
The Motte loves our overthinking things. Most of the rest of the world does not. You (metaphorical you) will frequently in life be judged by people who are much dumber than you, but have power over you anyways. It's to your benefit to learn how to appear to pass their tests while being submissive to them temporarily. Giving the answer that they want fast codes to them as smart; going on a long tangent about how technically true it actually is may actually be a sign of greater intelligence, but will signal to them that you're an uncooperative weirdo spewing what seems like gibberish to them, not a supergenius.
sliders1234
2hr ago
I did include the weirdness of a Jew in this discussion because I think it’s interesting.
The lack of Catholics in the U.S. is not weird at all. Catholics have to maintain loyalty with Rome on certain matters. That’s a problem in a non majority Catholic country. But makes them very appealing for Supreme Court Justices.
It’s questionable whether Joe is Catholic at this point as he’s not in communion with Rome.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
I think he was wrong about that, and that was a significant part of his problem. Remember, his entire hypothesis was "women aren't going to find me attractive unless I engage in a life or death struggle". Which is false on its face - most men haven't engaged in a life or death struggle (and a lot haven't engaged in any sort of physical struggle at all). Yet they attract women just fine. I'm very skeptical that women would even be able to tell if he did complete the Hock (short of him turning into "that guy" who can't stop talking about it), but it certainly wasn't required.
YouEssAyyy
2hr ago
Always thought it was wild that Biden is only the 2nd Catholic president.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
And China is only 70% food self sufficient, not 90+.
That's including luxuries, meat, lobsters and so on. Not just grains, which is what I am focused on. You can not have so much meat and still be food secure. But if you don't have primary staple crops like grains, then you starve.
This is my point with the pigs. The current overall food security numbers include the pigs and imports to feed them. So if imports are cut off and they slaughter pigs, their food needs go down. They've lost calorie imports but also lowered calorie demand by switching to a less meat-rich diet. Food security should not mean '% of all peacetime food that can be produced domestically' but '% of minimum food necessary to avoid health problems'. The former includes unnecessary and expensive things that are fun to eat, the latter is like the WW2 ration cards you learn about at school.
And imports aren't totally cut off because they have land trade partners who they can buy from instead, at a higher price and with lower throughput. So as I said above, unlike Taiwan China has land imports and food security on grains.
Has Russia struggled with farm equipment? No, not really. Why would China struggle? In 'other agricultural machinery' China exports more than they import, same with machinery excluding tractors:
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/other-agricultural-machinery/reporter/chn
https://oec.world/en/profile/sitc/agricultural-machinery-excluding-tractors-and-parts-thereof-nes
Including Tractors is paywalled but I expect it says the same thing, China is apparently a 'fast growing exporter': https://oec.world/en/profile/egw/agricultural-machinery-incl-tractors
"AMLO" is the nickname of the outgoing president, López Obrador. Reuters says that the party is Morena (which, admittedly, was founded by López Obrador).
Wait, I'm confused. So she started in the social democrat party, then moved to the current president's center-left party? So this election was between two candidates in the same party?
edit: nm, i'm wrong. Mexico has term limits, so the current president wasn't running.
Quantumfreakonomics
2hr ago
If we're going to just be giving money away, give it to the workers, not to excess elites.
It's not really going to elites. It's going to middle-class young women. They are both the beneficiaries of the loans (being the ones getting worthless humanities degrees) and the ones who's salaries are being paid with the loans (being the ones working in education and education administration).
The industries of choice for middle-class young women are 1. Education, and 2. Health Care. A few rhetorical discussion questions:
-
Where does government money seem to be flowing these days?
-
Which industries are being ravaged by cost disease?
-
What demographic forms the base of the Democratic Party?
I am not sure at the moment which way causality flows, but I do not believe these things are unrelated.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
2hr ago
Slightly off topic, but it's kind of remarkable that Mexico elected a Jewish president before the US (and it's a younger democracy as well).
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
I think the cartels weaken the federal government's ability to impose its will on states which don't want to go along with it. I do not think they provide governance better than, say, ISIS.
A well known benefit of living in a failed state is the ability to just say no when the central government wants something. I seriously doubt Mexico has the state capacity to enact major structural economic reforms, positive or negative.
yofuckreddit
2hr ago
Lol ding ding ding! ~100 people so we are under the radar. Glassdoor doesn't have it on there yet.
But we've interviewed probably 2,000? I think it's still worth developing something, and even if someone knows the answer you can still qualify folks.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
That is patently ridiculous, since the Chinese cannot project force even to Kinmen much less to Taiwan, Korea or Japan.
OK, they haven't seized Kinmen. Either this might be because they can't or they don't want to. We know they employed a 'hide and bide' strategy for decades, they have a capacity for patience. Why would they blow their load on Kinmen before they're ready to attack Taiwan? And what do you mean by 'project force' - they can surely bomb and land troops there. It's only that doing so might be risky and they don't judge it to be cost-efficient right now. Like how the US might choose not to invade Iran.
If I were a Chinese strategist, I would wait until the balance of power was most favourable before taking any big risks. They've antagonized and bullied a lot of their neighbours, sure. But they also secured some gains from that - bases in the South China Sea. That's useful real estate, albeit hard to supply.
not contesting US interests in Northeast or Southeast Asia in a meaningful way
Isn't pounding Guam with missiles a threat to the US? Yokohama? Taiwan and South Korea are within sieging range. The North Korean military may not be great but they do have a lot of mass. With Chinese air power and a group army or two they'd eventually wear the South Koreans down. South Korea is very strong and it would be hard fighting but I expect China could force some kind of major concessions on the South, if only by constraining their ability to import food and energy for their war effort. They might aim for the ejection of US troops (I suspect the whole conflict might spring out of THAAD's relevance to Taiwan scenarios and other US capabilities there), access to naval bases, preferential access to semiconductors. Being a near-nuclear power is enough to escape annexation but they are facing 2-3 bigger nuclear powers. Can you really escalate to nuclear warfare over terms like that, Finlandization+?
In the 1950s, China was able to 'project force' in Korea, they even captured Seoul at one point. And that was when the US had overwhelming air superiority, artillery superiority, tank superiority, logistics, uncontested sea control. Why do you have such a low opinion of Chinese capabilities? It's a very big country full of pretty smart people, they're naturally powerful even when poor and undeveloped. They're not poor and undeveloped anymore.
If they can bully South Korea into quitting the war and bully Taiwan into being annexed, that alone would be a victory for China and a pretty massive blow for America.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
You think the cartels provide better governance than Morena? Or is there some other group which contests the central government?
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
For an added bonus, parents tend to vote much more republican than the general population, and it's unclear how much of this is mom's voting like their husbands and how much of this is differential fertility and how much of this is normal getting-more-conservative-as-you-age.
Looks like it’s still 50% materials, banks, and telecom but I bet that is still down a ton. Often it’s 100%.
I only looked today because it was interesting. My guess is if you bought today or tomorrow on election news and you bet that she won’t be a crazy commie and are right you probably get something like a 30% 1 year return. 10-12% discount from the election. I am seeing 10-12% expected earnings growth. And if the market rerates to she is a reasonable person you probably get 1-2 turns in valuation gains from pre-election. Maybe lose a little on the currency since I am guess they have higher inflation. Of course her political bias are not mine but today they priced in she could be dangerous. I do not know if she is dangerous.
On Twitter today is the day people are asking questions. There should be people answer questions in the next few days.
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