Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Some Countries Need Less Population

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On December 23, 2024

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There is a genre of population decline doomerism. An example:

Here’s the thing, Japan imports about sixty percent of its food. Japan is, by any reasonable measure, over-populated.

If you can’t feed your population and if there is no reasonable prospect that you could feed your population, perhaps you have too many people?

Another country for which this is true is Britain, which imports about 80% of its food. Yet the British have also been importing over a million people a year.

One might suggest, as well, that any country which has a large number of homeless people is also overpopulated: clearly it has more people than it is capable of taking care of. (Though we all know that’s usually a choice, not a constraint.)

The world is overpopulated by humans and our domesticated animals. We are in classic population overshoot.

When climate change and ecological collapse and resource depletion hit, there isn’t going to be enough food to go around. When that becomes the case, countries are going to prioritize themselves first and their close allies second. Entire countries which are now breadbaskets will either produce less, or will no longer produce enough for themselves. When the Gulf Stream turns off, which is expected any time in the next 50 years, for example, Europe as a whole will face a huge food deficit.

Better to start shedding population now, gradually, than to do it thru famine, food riots, revolution and war.

If you can’t feed your population, you have too much population. (Partial exception for city states and small states. Partial.) If you can’t house your population, you have too much population.

There are very few countries in the world which genuinely need more people. Russia, perhaps. Japan doesn’t. China doesn’t. India doesn’t. Most European countries don’t. Most African countries don’t. Etc…

Population doomers never ask the simple question: Under what circumstances is population growth good and under what circumstances is population decline good?

And for whom?

There was no better time to live in Medieval Europe than after the Black Death.

Decline now, while it’s gentle. If you insist on not doing so, you will do it the hard way.

(Much of this is driven by prioritization of GDP, a desire for low wages, and a deep misunderstanding of what makes an economy strong. More on that in the future.)

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024

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On December 22, 2024

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024

By Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

From the Middle Out and Bottom Up: The president of the United States outlines his economic principles, and his record.

Joe Biden, December 16, 2024 [The American Prospect]

…When I took office, the economy wasn’t working for most Americans…. economic policy was in the grip of a failed approach called trickle-down economics. Trickle-down tried to grow the economy from the top down. It slashed taxes for the wealthy and large corporations and tried to get government “out of the way,” instead of delivering for working people, investing in infrastructure, and ensuring America stays at the leading edge of innovation.

But this approach failed. Too many Americans saw an economy that was stacked against them with failing infrastructure, communities that had been hollowed out, manufacturing jobs that were offshored to China, prescription drugs that cost more than in any other developed country, and workers who had been left behind.

[TW: I was surprised BIden’s writing in The American Prospect did not attract much interest. Probably because after the electoral victory by Trump, everything Democrats do seems anticlimactic. There were many more articles on why Bidenomics failed, such as James Galbraith’s article in The Nation on December 9, Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust. But I think even these pulled back from fully exploring the anger and rage most working people have towards elites, which was fully revealed by the murder of a health insurance CEO in Manhattan. It is exactly that anger and rage that Trump is able to manipulate — “I am your retribution” — but which Democrats are too cowardly to acknowledge and condone. As I posted in April 2008, Euthanize Wall Street to save the economy.

[LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

– Psalm 94:3 ]

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Open Thread

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On December 21, 2024

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Elon Musk Threatens Congress Successfully

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On December 20, 2024

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This is some amazing shit:

Congress was about to vote on a bill called a “Continuing Resolution”, which would fund the operations of the federal government. But yesterday, Musk started tweeting around the clock about how he hated the bill and that he would fund the campaigns of politicians who ran against Congress members who supported it.

….Shortly after Musk decided he was against the Continuing Resolution, Trump and JD Vance issued a statement saying they were against it, too. The politicians in Congress fell in line, and now it looks like the government funding plan is dead.

Here’s the thing. Being rich only means you’re good at making money in a specific way. It doesn’t mean anything else. Gates, for example, pushed the “Common Core” education changes, and there’s no evidence they did any good and some reason to think they were harmful.

We have a rich man (maybe a billionaire) as President. We have Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent a lot money helping Trump win as one of the most important people in the new administration, who has said he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Money is the ability to tell people what do. It let’s you control their actions, either directly or indirectly.

FDR defined fascism as:

Ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power

The US has been trending towards oligarchy for ages. The final victory for oligarchy was probably “Citizen’s United”, which made money the same as speech and thus protected under the first amendment.

The famous Princeton oligarchy study, which used data from 1981-2002, which is to say from back when the rich weren’t nearly as powerful as they are now, found that:

…when one holds constant net interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans, it makes very little difference what the general public thinks. The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change (refer to the top panel of figure 1).

By contrast—again with other actors held constant—a proposed policy change with low support among economically-elite Americans (one out of five in favor) is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four out of five in favor) is adopted about 45 percent of the time. Similarly, when support for policy change is low among interest groups (with five groups strongly opposed and none in favor) the probability of that policy change occurring is only .16, but the probability rises to .47 when interest groups are strongly favorable (refer to the bottom two panels of figure 1). Footnote 41

Musk is the world’s richest man. He threatened members of Congress using his money, and they caved.

It’s always amusing when Americans call Russia an oligarchy. It isn’t. Russia’s oligarchs have very little power compared to Putin. If they cross him, he destroys them. They do what he wants, when he wants or they go to jail or have to flee the country, giving up any wealth in Russia.

America, on the other hand, is sickeningly an oligarchy and it’s going from indirect to direct oligarchical control.

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Batshit Delusional Canadian Conservatives

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On December 19, 2024

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I want to highlight some tweets, because they’re representational of a lot of what modern Canadian conservatives think:

Trump’s 51st state rhetoric regards Canada is serving a number of different functions, but beneath it all Trump understands the threat posed to the United States by the Laurentian Elite who run Canada, and their disgraced and soon to be replaced poster boy, Justin Trudeau.

Trump and his people are well aware of a number of growing threats to US interests happening with the neighbors. His talk of tariffs is merely a negotiating tool to force the Canadian government to start governing like adults.

An incredible amount of illegal migrants, terrorists, and highly dangerous drugs like Fentanyl are flowing into the US from the northern border, and Trudeau has done squat fuck all to stop it, and in many ways has encouraged it through his globalist immigration policies.

Canada is also moving into the Chinese sphere of influence and control. Let us not forget that CSIS confirmed ChiCom interference in Canadian politics back to Mulroney, and direct interference in the last two elections. Nothing has been done about that.

China is also buying land and resource access in Canada, which Trump, and every administration previous to his, rightly viewed as theirs, insofar as the historical precedent has been set by Canada and the US having an incredible trade relationship. Trump wants them out.

The discussion around tariffs was a component of the disagreements between Trudeau + Freeland last week which lead to her resignation as Deputy PM + Finance Minister. Trump is already orchestrating major Ws for Canada, and signaling to the government he means business…

…TL;dr – what Trump is doing is good for The United States and will ultimately be good for Canada. We will not become an official 51st state, but Canada will definitely improve if it heeds to Trump’s demands. The status quo is leading us to hell.

This is so insane it’s hard to even respond to, but let’s give it a shot.

Canada’s policy has been massively anti-Chinese all thru Trudeau’s reign. We have sanctions on China. We arrested a Huawei VP for the US, which previous government officials felt was insane. We are not friendly to China, and their influence ops are not particularly effective. Our intelligence services are working against Chinese influence but do nothing to stop American or Israeli influence.

America has 100X the influence that China has over Canada. Israel has a 100X the influence that China has over Canada. China is not even in the running.

Canada’s land and resources do not (or should not) belong to America. As Russia proved recently, if the resource is in your country, you can take it away any time you really want to. BA Canadian is saying that the US rightly owns our resources is beyond offensive.

There are only two countries in the world which are a threat to Canada: the US and Russia. Russia is a minor threat to some our northern island possessions, the US is an existential threat. There is only one country in the world which could invade and conquer Canada. We have one-tenth the population and an army which is a joke. We are no threat to the US at all, and if we moved to let Chinese military forces in (which we won’t) America would bomb or invade the hell out of us.

America, on the other hand, has a proven record of being run by deranged warmongers who will invade or otherwise destroy foreign countries. We are zero threat to the US, the US is a huge threat to us. It is a maxim of strategy that you plan based on other countries capabilities, not their intentions, because intentions can change.

No one who doesn’t want a nuclear deterrent is a Canadian patriot. It is the only way we can be safe from the implicit (or under Trump, nearly explicit) threat of American force.

It is true that the neoliberals who have run the country from Mulrooney on have been terrible for Canada. But they have been terrible exactly because they over-integrated us with America from the Free Trade and NAFTA deals on. The old Canadian economy, from about 1880 to 1990 or so was based on having a real manufacturing sector to balance the resource sector. When resource prices were high, we subsidized industry. When resource prices were low (and thus the dollar was low) our manufacturing became more competitive and we subsidized the resource industry and paid welfare to laid off resource workers. That mixed economy produced one of the best economies in the world for over a century.

But American style conservates in Canada seem to want to deepen our vassalage to America. Our interests are not the same as America’s in all cases and acting as if they are is delusional.

The last real Prime Minister of Canada was Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre. He was willing to tell the US to go to hell when necessary. During one trade dispute he actually closed the border to trade flow to the US.

No PM since then has been willing to give the middle finger to the US and they have made us weaker and more dependent on America. We used to not ship raw seafood or logs, for example—all primary processing was done in Canada.

Now, ever since the fall of Britain in WWII (they won the war and lost the peace) there’s no question we’ve been a vassal state, but there’s abject vassalge and there is dignified vassalage where you’re able to stand up for your own interests.

Too many American influenced Canadian conservatives have bought into ridiculous ideas. To think that Trump cares about the welfare of Canadians is so out to lunch that I can’t find words to describe it. It’s questionable if Trump cares about anything but Trump. He cares about America as an extension of himself. He sure as hell doesn’t care about any other country except perhaps Israel.

Trump wants things from Canada which he thinks will make America better off. That’s all. This isn’t a “tough love” situation where he’s trying to make us do the right thing because it’s good for us. It might work out that way in some parts, but it’s not his intention, it’s a result of him destroying the post-cold war international order which was terrible for Canada and Canadians and putting the boot to neoliberalism.

But Trump’s policies are intended to take industry away from America’s allies and bring them to the US, just as were Biden’s. He’s more brutal and honest about it, but Canada can’t afford to lose even more industry.

Get nukes, and run Canada for Canadians. Only a Canada with nukes can be a sovereign country, free from the implicit threat of invasion. Force the Americans to downsize their embassy and move it far from Parliament, and watch Americans like hawks so they don’t run a color revolution.

Both the neoliberals who run Canada now and the American-style conservatives who want to replace them are bad for Canada and any Candian who wants Trump to push Canada around is a traitor. Someone who wants to pucker up and kiss the boot that’s kicking him.

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Canadian Finance Minister Freeland Resigns

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On December 18, 2024

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This isn’t about all the high minding crap she said (lost the confidence of the PM, etc…) it’s an attempt to pressure Trudeau to resign, so the Liberals don’t have him as an albatross hung around their neck during the next election. The Liberals will still lose, I’d think, but they won’t get slaughtered, or that’s their hope.

Freeland has terrible politics. She’s the worst sort of neoliberal. She’s been Trudeau’s strong right hand, and done most of his dirty work. Given this is the case, I don’t think she’ll make a good candidate if she’s the new Liberal leader.

Trudeau may want to hang on, knowing he’ll lose the next election, with an eye to running again after four years of Conservative rule. It’s what his father did, and he may wish to emulate Pierre.

Pollievre, the Conservative leader, will probably be the next Prime Minister. He’s right wing of the modern American variety. Nativist, nasty, and stupid. About the only good thing I can say about him is that he’ll fight if Trump goes ahead with tariffs.

Trump’s threatening everyone with tariffs. The Euros, Chinese, Mexico, Canada and so on. The smart response would be for all of these nations to coordinate their response, rather than each midget fighting on their own. More on that in a later post.

How The Resource Squeeze Will Play Out

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On December 17, 2024

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Contrary to what many economists will claim, we’re going to move into a resource constrained era. This is a combination of climate change, environmental collapse and civilization decline.

Simply put, per capita, there’s going to be less stuff. As Gibson’s line runs, the future will be unevenly distributed. This will hit some places harder and sooner. Germany and Europe are in decline already. China is actually increasing production and availability of most products. The US is in decline, but actively cannibalizing its allies, especially Europe, but also Taiwan, so the stuff shortage will be slower and there may be short to medium term increase.

This is exacerbated in most countries by the insistence of elites that they need to grow their wealth and income in both absolute and relative terms. They must have more, and they must increase the percentage of their society’s wealth and income. So even as there is less to go around, they must have more. When they try to deal with problems like climate change they institute policies like older retirement ages, reduced pensions, lower welfare payments, cuts and privatization of healthcare and regressive carbon taxes. They don’t get rid of, say, mega-yachts and private jets, or tax the rich more and distribute to those in need.

This isn’t just a matter of greed. Capitalist elites are in a Red Queen’s race. If they fall behind other elites, those elites will buy them out (often whether they want to be bought out or not), and they will fall out of the true elite, those who control profit-making enterprises. They may still be wealthy, but they will lose their power and cease to be players.

So we’re caught in a situation where per-capita resources will go down even as elites take a higher share.

I’m sure you can understand what this means to you and those you know. Maneuvering around this means either being extremely valuable to elites, and irreplaceable, or finding ways to insulate yourself from their demands, which is difficult, since they have most of what you need and control the legal system and the violent enforcement mechanisms.

There will be a backlash. How successful it will be remains to be seen, but there is a point where people realize that risking their lives or even losing them is a better bet than remaining with the status quo. Food and water riots, “terrorism” and perhaps Mangioning elites will become a trend.

Plan for this, because it’s already started. You see it already in the vast numbers of homeless, the endless healthcare rationing, and the constant push to privatize and thus profitize ever bit of government which might make a profit if its put in hands which can squeeze.

If your having a good lifestyle doesn’t make some member of the elite richer than squeezing you into homelessness or denying you care, then you’re in the line to go on the butcher’s block.

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The UR Rule Of Civilizations Worth Living In

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On December 16, 2024

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I saw this rather revealing tweet recently:

Andreessen, if you don’t know, made his money during the dot-com boom, at Mozilla. He then formed a venture capital firm, Andreessen-Horowitz.

Now what’s interesting about this tweet is the word “guilt.”

Andreessen doesn’t want to feel guilt. He doesn’t like the idea that one should run society to try and do the most good for the most people.

Understandable, venture capital in the 21st century has mostly created firms which profit from using as few workers as possible and San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley, has gone to Hell. Andreessen’s filthy rich, and he has to see homeless people every day. If he felt guilt about being having way more money than he’ll ever need while other people go hungry and live without heat, cooling and a dry place to sleep, he’d feel guilty pretty damn often or would have to spend a lot of his two billion to feel good.

But that’s not the point I want to make.

It is fashionable to go on and on about taking care of family and friends, and that’s a good thing up to a point.

But only up to a point. Societies work best when members care about people they’ll never meet. If we all look out only for those close to us, the actions we take to do so often hurt those who aren’t near us. Private equity buys firms, loads them down with debts and they go bankrupt, destroying the lives of workers. Bankers create asset bubbles which burst. They get bailed out and if they don’t are still worth millions from bonuses based on fraud, but ordinary people lose jobs, homes and healthcare. Insurance companies and pharma overprice their services, deny care and get rich. Ordinary people aren’t blameless either, we NIMBY and care about schools in our neighbourhoods but not in slums, and complain about the homeless and tell the cops to move them out but don’t want to pay for their housing. We look after and we vote for truly evil people and a majority, it seems, would never vote for someone actually good. We want low taxes and cheap goods and segregated housing prices that never go down.

This is… stupid. Society is other people. If other people are sick, we’re more likely to get sick. If other people are poor, they can’t pay for whatever products or services we produce. If people are homeless we find that distasteful and unpleasant to be around. Unhappy people, of course, are not as fun to be around as happy people.

And so on.

The better off everyone is in society, the better it is for you and me, unless we’re rich enough to live in a bubble, rarely seeing anyone but servants and our fellow rich. But even a billionaire will sometimes see a poor person, if only from their limo or looking down from a chopter, and they might feel some guilt. (If Andreessen does feel guilt, well, that’s mildly impressive in a pathetic sort of way. I doubt most billionaires do. But he’s repressing hard.)

And then one day someone flips out and kills a CEO, and others start talking about how wonderful CEO killing is. Perhaps making other people poor and miserable and killing their relatives might be a bad idea even for the masters of the universe. Might just be a good idea to care about people Andreessen doesn’t know, because one of them might get past his security one day.

Or, I guess, we could have assassinations, bombings, riots and civilization collapse.

It really is one or the other. If oil company execs had cared about people they don’t know they wouldn’t have buried climate change and financed denialism. If insurance and pharma and hospital execs cared about people they don’t know, there’d have been no assassination because they’d be trying to make sure as many people as possible got the care they need instead of optimizing to make more money.

It might just be that only looking out after people you know and care about and not giving a damn about anyone else is not just morally right, but pragmatically right.

Or you can bet on your bodyguards and the security of your gated communities, I guess. That’s a good bet, till it isn’t.

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