Ian Welsh

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

Category: Economics Page 4 of 94

Doomed Tesla (RoboTaxi Edition)

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On July 1, 2025

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I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

Tesla was contacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday after videos posted on social media showed the company’s robotaxis driving in a chaotic manner on public roads in Austin, Texas.

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker debuted autonomous trips in Austin on Sunday, opening the service to a limited number of riders by invitation only.

In the videos shared widely online, one Tesla robotaxi was spotted traveling the wrong way down a road, and another was shown braking hard in the middle of traffic, responding to “stationary police vehicles outside its driving path,” among several other examples.

Elon Musk is not that smart. He chose to use cameras only, and not Lidar, against the advice of his own engineers.

China has robotaxis already. They work fine. They have Lidar.

Tesla is doomed. Their cars are worse than those of their competitors and more expensive. Robotaxis aren’t going to work. The only thing saving Tesla right now is 100% tariffs on Chinese autos, but even non Chinese electric cars are better and often cheaper.

Meanwhile Musk is in a feud with Trump, Trump has threatened to remove subsidies for Musk enterprises and Musk (again, an idiot) has said Trump should go ahead. And yes, he does need those subsidies.

The majority of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla, and it’s days are numbered. Meanwhile Starship keeps exploding, the last time during fueling, not even after launch. There are a lot of competitors to SpaceX, and w/o NASA contracts SpaceX doesn’t look so hot either. Right now NASA is stuck with Musk, but that’s not going to last.

Musk isn’t going to be the world’s richest man much longer.

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When Financiers Win, They Lose

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On June 4, 2025

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One of the simplest lenses to look at an industrial society is whether it’s run by financiers or capitalists.

Socrates famously noted that some people live to eat and others eat to live.

Capitalists need money so they can do things. Financiers do things so they can get money. To a financier it doesn’t matter how money is made, so long as they won’t go to prison. All that matters is rate of return.

A capitalist has something they want to do: Ford wanted to build cars. Edison wanted to invent. The Wright Brothers wanted to fly. They need money so they can do whatever it is that turns their crank.

Capitalists create great societies. Financiers destroy them.

As soon as rate of return becomes the only consideration, a society becomes less interested in doing new things or doing old things well and starts searching for “unfair advantages.” They offshore and outsource jobs to lower cost domiciles: either for labor or for environmental regulations. They seek a monopoly or oligopoly positions in businesses where people have to buy: healthcare is the gold standard. They buy functioning businesses and load them up with debt. The business dies, but they are richer than they would have been had they run it.

Systematically they run the economy down. They become rich, but the society suffers.

This isn’t to say that finance isn’t necessary. As the saying runs “financiers make good servants and terrible masters.” But when finance becomes the primary driver of any economy: when it becomes a better way to get rich than being a capitalist, they ruin societies.

You can see this clearly in the West, especially in America and Britain. Sixty percent of people now can’t afford a decent lifestyle in the US, but America has the richest rich who ever lived.

This may seem like a victory for financiers, but it’s a Pyrric on. Yes, the America’s rich in 1950 or 1980 or even 2000 were not nearly as rich as America’s rich today, BUT America was the most powerful nation in the world, with the strongest economy. Now American elites are filthy rich, but rule of the second strongest economy, and China is pulling away from them: the difference is accelerating.

Do you want to be king shit of turd mountain? That’s the choice that America’s elites made. “Our country will suck ass and no longer be dominant but we will be rich, rich, rich!”

Ask Britain’s elites how that worked out. Would you rather be a British industrialist in 1870 or today, even if today you’re richer?

And as financialization destroys a country, that money matters less and less. In time, American elites will have to buy the best from China: cars, planes, electronics, etc, etc… Most of what they really want, America won’t make, because America will be backwards.

All this before losing the joys of being a super power.

Financialization is the destruction of countries, and the elites who pursue it lose more than they gain. Better to be a millionaire in 1955’s America, than a billionaire in America today, because wealth is always trumped by power.

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The Unifying Goal of Right & Center Elites

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On May 15, 2025

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Getting elites attention

What the right wants from its followers is for them to be riven by hatred of any difference, thus making them easy to manipulate and willing to sell out their economic values in exchange for seeing brown people beaten, and women and trans people losing control over their own bodies.

What neoliberals want is for their followers to be convinced that each group, even each micro group, is on its own, unable to understand each other and thus that solidarity is impossible and all one can hope for is that some member of the identity group is allowed to join the elite, while most of all groups remain in poverty.

They’re very similar, really. In both cases hatred of other groups is inculcated as the core value, as a way of making manipulation easy and avoiding having to actually deal with broad issues of well being.

Both of these are variations on “divide and conquer”. It costs a lot less to give a few people something than to give many people something. “Want some women and minorities in power? Sure. Costs us almost nothing.”

“Want women to be forced to bear rape children and die in pregnancy due to lack of necessary abortions? Sure, costs us nothing. Our women can still get abortions.

“Want trans people excluded and denied health care? Sure, they’re a tiny part of the population and rich trans people will be fine.”

On the other hand giving everyone healthcare would cut a lot of profits. Giving everyone a liveable wage or assistance to those who can’t work or find jobs: that would cost a lot of profits.

“You can have anything you want, as long as it doesn’t make elites poorer.”

On that the right and center are unified.

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Capitalists Only Respond to Threats

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On May 14, 2025

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Stumbled on this chart recently:

It kind of tells its own story.

It’s worth reading The Communist Manifesto. People have weird ideas about it, but a lot of it is really unexceptionable. For example, Marx and Engels demanded pensions for old folks.

Capitalists looked at this, and said, “Oh, we can do this if the alternative is worse,” and introduced them. Someone as hard-headed as Bismarck responded this way.

The threat of a credible enemy ideology which treats ordinary people better than capitalists do forces capitalists to change. For a long time, we haven’t had that, but the single party “Marxist-but-with-capitalism” CCP offers another. And yes, they do (overall), treat their workers better, as well as being better at capitalism than capitalists. No one is as obsessed with how markets actually work as Marxist economists.

Let’s look at another of my favorite charts:

Oh hey! Having powerful organizations taking the part of workers matters.

Something happened right after Reagan took power:

Strikes involving more than 1,000 workers

Strikes involving more than 1,000 workers

Then there’s this:

(The numbers have gone down since then, but they’re still vastly high, and far, far higher than China.

Break the unions and lock up the people who won’t obey bullshit (a.k.a. drug) laws.

Class war is real, and constantly ongoing, and elites have won that war.

Power and fear is all that capitalists ever respond to.

Always remember that.

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“Art of the Cave”: Trump Walks Back China Tariffs For 90 Days

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On May 12, 2025

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Well, maybe. Who the hell knows what he’ll do. Anyway, tariffs are back to 30% on China and 10% on America.

This is exactly what China demanded, for tariffs to go back to what they were before April 2nd.

There will still be a two month trade burp. Ships weren’t leaving China for the US at all, literally zero. Lot of freight companies are about to make a mint, though. So expect some shortages, but nothing worse than Covid, and hopefully lasting less time.

The fundamental problem remains, however, which is that there’s no certainty around any of this, so business people can’t make long term plans, including plans to build or relocate manufacturing. Trump and the US can’t be trusted to stay steady on policy, so avoiding making big plans involving the US makes sense.

The Great Power picture is clearer, however. The US tried to impose its will on China and failed. China wouldn’t negotiate till its pre-conditions were met. The world has two great powers, with the EU bidding to become the third (I think they’ll fail, but that’s what the rearmament is about.)

And, in economic terms, China is by far the pre-eminent great power. It isn’t even close. The era of American hegemony is officially over. The US tried to impose its will on the world and failed.

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Yes, If You’re American There Will Be Serious Shortages Starting In About A Month

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On May 6, 2025

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Effective tariffs are over 100% on most goods coming in from China. Everything from medicine to toys to machine and electrical parts will start running out soon. If your air conditioner or fridge breaks, the parts necessary to it may not be available. America doesn’t make these parts, and it’s endless. For example, magnets used in appliances.

So, yes, if stock up if you can.

No way of knowing how long this will go on for, and it’s worth noting that some factories in China have just shut down, period. You’d think they’d move production to other countries and some are trying, but since Trump has declared his retard trade war with entire world, and since he’s completely fickle (he just put a 100% tariff on films, claiming national security, which isn’t even allowed for films, but who knows) decision makers are reluctant to re-shore to other countries. Trump might have another one of his distempered starts and tariff them.

Anyway, even after the trade war ends, which I suspect it will, prices will be higher and supply for some products will be thin, but unless you’re an insider in a particular industry it’s hard to say which ones. Setting up production in the US takes time, sometimes years, and, again, because Trump is so fickle, hardly anyone is willing to invest. Ironically if Trump believably said “it’s going to be 100% on everyone forever”, that would in some ways be better than the current situation, since at least people could make decisions and invest.

Note also that even if the trade war ended tomorrow, the pipeline has been disrupted and there’s at least a two month gap to overcome.

So, rocky road ahead if you’re American. Stock up, strap in, and pray.

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How Soon Empty Shelves

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On May 6, 2025

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I just listened to Chuck Todd say the following three things regarding economics, “eveything is unstable; everything is uncertain and we’re probably about a month a way from empty shelves.”

Ian and others far brighter than me, what say you?

I’m speechless.

Canada’s Future & The New Carney Government

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On April 29, 2025

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Mark Carney

Carney has won a minority government. He will have to govern with the support of the NDP. The NDP was slaughtered in this election, and there were a few ridings where people strategically voting for the Liberals actually led to the Conservatives winning. Iit’s worth pointing out that the Conservatives increased their seat count, which is why Poilievre is sticking around as leader, despite losing the election and his own seat. (A loyal MP will stand down and let him run in a by-election in a safe riding.)

The NDP lost their official party status in this election and their vote percentage was cut in about half by strategic voting. They need to bargain hard with Carney in exchange for support and be willing to walk away. The most important thing, for them and Canada, is to change the voting system. Proportional would be ideal, but it’s unlikely the Liberals would go for it. They would probably go for ranked ballots, assuming, probably correctly, that they’ll be the most common second choice.

But it would also benefit the NDP and make it less likely for radical conservatives of the current variety to get into power.

If I were the NDP, I’d go to the wall for this. There’s likely to be more polarized elections in the future, because the Conservatives remain a Trumpist style party and a lot of natural NDP voters will keep going Liberal to try and block them. If they want to get back up to near 20% of the vote, this is necessary.

Now as to Canada’s future: it’s going to depend on whether Carney can actually deliver. If he can make Canadians better off and win another election, Poilievre is toast and Trump style conservatism will be discredited in Canada. If he doesn’t deliver: if effective wages don’t rise and if rent and housing prices don’t go down, then Poilievre or his successor’s Conservative party WILL win the next election, just based on disgruntled voters.

Carney’s talked a fair bit of sense: doubling building housing, pivoting to new trade partners and creating vertically integrated industries within Canada. If he can pull it off, he’ll go down as one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers. But, at the end of the day, Carney is a neoliberal, and his impulse to always cut taxes on the rich and so on is going to hold him back.

He also needs a full term to pull it off. A lot of pain is coming down the pike and the next couple years will be ugly.

And that means he needs to keep the NDP happy. If they stop supporting him before he turns things around (assuming he can) he’s toast, and the Conservatives are in. So the NDP may as well force him to do some other things: pharmacare and universal dental, probably.

It’s going to be an interesting few years for everyone. Carney was right when he said:

America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen...

…

Our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over. The system of open global trade anchored by the United States, a system that Canada has relied on since the Second World War, a system that well not perfect has helped deliver prosperity for a country for decades, is over. 

But it’s also our new reality.

We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves and above all we have to take care of each other.

The old system is over. Carney’s problem is that he doesn’t see that for a ton of Canadians the old system hasn’t been delivering for a long time.

Every country in the world will have to adapt to the new economic landscape. Some will succeed, others like Britain, will fail. It remains to be seen if Canada is one which adapts well. What is certain is that if Poilievre gets in, he will usher in a new era even worse than the old neoliberal one. He will be prostrate before the US, will slash the civil service, healthcare and so on and will turbocharge the oligarchy.

So Carney’s it. He wouldn’t have been my first choice, but if he doesn’t pull it off, no one will.

This blog has always been free to read, but it isn’t free to produce. If you’d like to support my writing, I’d appreciate it. You can donate or subscribe by clicking on this link.

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