Most of us spent an entire lifetime in a particular model. The model being that supply is pretty much unlimited, given that you have money. And even money is a pretty fluid concept. Not only is everything unlimited, in recent years we've also made most of it instant. We've become completely detached from real world resources like commodities but also workers.
Indoctrinated to the maximum into this consumer economy, ordering something and learning that you can't have it despite putting up the money, comes as a system shock. The very concept of "NO" is back from past times. What do you mean, no? I said I want it.
Optimists would find it an excellent time to recalibrate society. Acknowledge critical dependencies and in-source them. Spent limited resources, such as workers, on areas considered vital instead of dispersing them across a million things less vital.
Of course, none of this will actually happen. Just like during COVID where we had the "nature is healing" meme, we soon learned that it's same-old as soon as restrictions were lifted. We're unwilling to let go of a fragile and unsustainable global supply chain. We're afraid to make any hard choice at all.
Unlike China. We're all aware their economy is more planned but one of their most fascinating moves is to slash the tech sector. And with "tech" I mean what the US considers tech. Which is the stuff coming out of SV. Most of it is entertainment, social network stuff, games, the like.
According to China, this isn't tech. It's unimportant soft tech that in many ways is a net negative to society. Plus it's hard to censor. So they decimated the entire thing and re-calibrated "tech" to real-world tech.
I'm in no way in favor of this type of intervention but I do find it a fascinating example of making actual hard choices. In the West, we don't seem to prioritize anything at all, we'd rather continue with the limitless illusion in a world that isn't.
This is well written but also very alarmist. There are supply chain issues, but in the west they're limited to certain industries. Amazon orders still arrive in two days. My grocery store is still stocked full. Inflation sucks, and so does the stock market, but we're in the middle of a European war and just out of a global pandemic. Demand has already risen to pre-pandemic levels, so supply will eventually reorient to meet it. All things considered, the economy is still doing pretty great!
Mine have been up to a week now. Prime stuff shipping 5-9 days, only very few select items show up in 2 days. Since 2020 or so the "FREE 2-day shipping" has been replaced with "Free Prime shipping" in the UI and I no longer see 2-day promises. Most "basic needs" items are often 3-4 weeks out or "in stock soon"
> My grocery store is still stocked full
I won't starve, but it's weird noticing a lot of holes in the shelves. They're stocked, but missing certain flavours or product lines. Sure there are lots of other energy drink options, but I can't find Mountain Dew Energy in cherry limeade and haven't been able to for 3 weeks now.
> I won't starve, but it's weird noticing a lot of holes in the shelves.
That’s a completely different part of the supply chain issue, even if you can produce the goods you have to get it shipped which is yet another bottleneck.
Not enough warehouse workers to load the trucks, not enough drivers for the trucks, shipping costs are pretty high due to the fuel surcharge tacked onto each load and having to complete with other manufacturers who also want their goods sitting on the shelf.
SF. It depends on the item, some things still arrive within 2, but a lot more are wildly variable now.
- I have a Baseus USB power bank that was ordered yesterday, arriving next Friday.
- I have some ESP32 kits that has gotten this multiple days in a row: Your package is on the way but running late. We’re sorry for the delay. Now arriving tomorrow by 10 PM.
- USB cable from prime day, amazon basics brand, no shipping ETA, no prediction, and "not yet shipped"
I don't envy the Amazon people though. Already seeing pileups in the mailroom, floor to ceiling boxes dumped on the floor, every delivery locker filled.
Not in Germany at least (for an European data point). I get my prime orders usually in one or two days and the estimated date at the checkout is usually correct.
Without invalidating your larger point that getting something to eat is generally a non-issue, there is nonetheless one group in the US for whom the food shortage is at this very moment acute, national in scale, and unprecedented in recent memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_infant_form...
There's all kinds of stuff that's affected though. For example, if you want a 16x7 garage door, you're looking at getting it in November or December of this year if you're ordering now [1].
The stuff I've seen issues with have fairly clear demand-side stories behind them. For instance: everything home construction or renovation-wise. A lot of things that were planned around a certain level of demand is struggling to keep up with a boom.
"Supply is unlimited" was 'fleddr's impression of the old status quo, but I don't think that was ever accurate. I think demand was predictable and well-planned-for is a better description of what the status quo was. Historical supply constraints showed themselves in areas like console launches - a certain level was planned for, and it wouldn't be economical to meet that all on day 1 vs a lower steady-state production, for instance.
Covid-induced behavioral changes shifted a lot of demand around very rapidly. We are learning that the system can't respond instantly, but:
* how surprising is that, and is it really something that could realistically be avoided in the future in case of other major instantaneous changes? Investing a lot of money in new garage door production right now is a big gamble - what happens if you clear that backlog and demand settles back to historical levels?
* and, how concerning should that be? Is it indicative of permanent societal decline or future failure? That's the part I'd consider alarmist and poorly supported based on what we've seen so far. Many sorts of leisure goods, grocery store items, etc, have nearly fully recovered compared to summer of 2020 shortages. My amazon orders anecdotally mostly are coming in 1 day. Not all of them have, but which way do we think it'll go?
I just find this really silly that something as simple as a garage door takes 5 months and held up by a global supply chain, given this is the United States and our history of steel and machinery manufacturing.
Carter and Reagan and basically every president afterwards decided that it was better for the economy if the USA didn't have steel plants. They were probably right too unfortunately.
Read Peter Zeihan, who very much agrees that it's the end of an era. In his view, globalization is coming to an end, and the supply chain issues we're seeing now are just a hint of what's coming for the rest of the decade.
He's not optimistic about China's prospects, though.
The problem with Zeihan is that he spots a pattern (correctly), then extrapolates and escalates it to the very maximum, and leaves the conclusion at that.
Meaning, the very concept of agency or intervention to correct course does not exist in his world view.
Except a broken clock can be right twice a day, here the extrapolation I dont think is an exaggeration but a very likely outcome.
If in 2019 December, you warned the world about a pandemic, you would've been laughed out of the room. Same here, we are on a trajectory towards a massive war.
You can always tell when the mainstream media is who usually airs on the side of sensationalism tries to quell fears and attack people for being fringe.
I'm afraid Zeihan is very correct this time, not only on China but the outcome of this Russian conflict. Ukraine won't be the last country for Russia to touch, there will be more and it's going to come down to a nuclear stand off.
Zeihan points out that there is no NATO response for a tactical nuke detonation. If Ukraine receives an artillery strike with a low yield nuclear warhead it would immediately send NATO to its highest combat ready status but it will not sacrifice its major cities to protect a smaller non-EU country.
Zeihan points out that there is no NATO response for a tactical nuke detonation. If Ukraine receives an artillery strike with a low yield nuclear warhead it would immediately send NATO to its highest combat ready status but it will not sacrifice its major cities to protect a smaller non-EU country.
Not that simple. A nuclear attack against Ukraine would put the Budapest Memorandum into play. In such a situation there will be a huge debate about the meaning of "security assurances" as opposed to "security guarantees," but the longer the US permits such a debate to go on, the worse it will look.
Turning our backs on Ukraine under such circumstances would make the Bay of Pigs look downright honorable by comparison. There will be a lot of pressure to respond with force.
The way I see it, anything can happen, and putting a label "very likely" on it as it comes to nukes, is suspicious. You'd need to be exceptionally close to the source of decision making to call this likely, you can't just base it on speculation.
I've seen other argue that Russia's nukes probably won't even work. They haven't done a test since forever.
You have to be more specific, the world ending ICBM nukes will likely never be used but a tactile nukes have been deployed in the field and does not come with the same cadence of lauching ICBM from subs.
I suggest found it weird that NATO would declare first that they have no treaty response for tactical nukes (sub 1KT) being used.
If they are using SAM missiles meant to take down combat aircraft to attack ground targets, it means they are running out of missiles. Contrary to the popular opinion that the war will end when he runs out of missile, I believe Putin will opt for tactical nukes if somebody calls his bluff
Doing so would immediately draw lines in the sand in Europe
Wish I saved the link but recently there was an article documenting the exact opposite: every time somebody answers Russia's bluff, they back off and compromise.
I do agree he has his blind spots, and I'm not quite prepared to think things will be as extreme as he thinks. That said, his starting points are geography and demographics, both of which are very predictable, at least for the next couple decades. It's hard to find policy choices that overcome them.
First is that, in his view, globalization is mostly coming to an end. The US protected global trade and borders as a trade for help in containing the Soviets, and has been gradually pulling back from that effort since the Soviets fell. This is coming to a head, and is bad for everyone heavily dependent on the global system, especially if they import critical goods. China imports over 80% of their energy and agricultural inputs.
One reason the US can't afford to police the globe anymore is that the boomers are retiring. But at least US boomers had lots of kids, because the US urbanized slowly and built things like suburbs. Most other countries urbanized more rapidly, and their boomers lived in little urban apartments and had fewer kids. This is very much the case in China, which of course had the one-child policy on top of that. Their population is going to shrink dramatically over the next couple decades.
Russia has similar severe demographics. Zeihan predicted in 2014 that they would invade the rest of Ukraine around the end of 2021, because if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower. This is the first of many trade-disrupting conflicts he expects.
> Russia has similar severe demographics. Zeihan predicted in 2014 that they would invade the rest of Ukraine around the end of 2021, because if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower. This is the first of many trade-disrupting conflicts he expects.
"if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower" isn't really a reason to invade Ukraine. It's a reason to invade before waiting to long if you already have decided to invade for another reason. In 2014 lots of people were predicting Russia would come back at some point. Does he have a unique take on a more underlying reason for the conflict in the first place? That would be more telling in terms of predicting further global breakdown.
Sure, I skipped over that since the question was about China.
The reason he gave for Russia invading Ukraine is geographic. Over the course of its history Russia has been invaded fifty times, so they're touchy about that even if things look peaceful at the moment. Right now Russia has no real geographic boundaries, so it takes immense manpower to actually defend the borders, assuming you don't want to go nuclear. With the old Soviet borders, they had mountains and only nine passes to defend, which could be done relatively easily. Now they control one of those passes. Ukraine gives them two more plus a good base of operations to take the rest.
This fits his overall approach to geography: you want crunchy borders, good ports, and a productive interior with nice easy transportation inside. The US has all that in spades, a few other countries do to a lesser extent, most have various impediments, and all this drives a lot of everybody's history. His 2014 book applies this basic idea to many of the great civilizations in history, starting with ancient Egypt.
not if you are an authoritarian government which maintains power through violence. here Putin hits two birds with one stone: he gets rid of a problematic demographic and attempts to achieve political/geographic gains to ensure Gazprom lives on and pay dividends to his offsprings.
Xi faces similar problem. His growing number of unemployed, educated, unwed single male is another source of anxiety. The last thing he needs is a massive Tianmen Square event spreading and his button men unwilling to push the button. Not to mention internal competition from the opposition (Zhang Zemin faction).
All in all, we are headed for uncharted waters. For the first time we have more old people than young in many developed economies, and governments face a three prong dillema with only two that they can save: economy, housing and health care.
No country can have all three, you can have two but one needs to be sacrificed. ex. Japan sacrificed its economy but kept its housing and health care intact by ensuring homogenity to continue. Israel also does the same to a degree (since thats the point of its existence). UK sacrificed housing to continue its economy and health care. Canada did the same.
It boils down to do you want to open up immigration and allow them to keep your economy going strong? Different countries have different needs and wants.
Korea seems to be experimenting with immigration/multicultural society more actively than Japan which clearly has signaled it will not change. The countries that have chosen economy over homogenous population are definitely having their moment in Scandinavia and Germany.
Separate question than my other one: Strength seems like something that can only be measured relatively, so I am a bit confused by the demographic claim here - if the US is weak because they have fewer people the right age, but most other countries and especially China have urbanized and seen demographic change even faster... doesn't that mean the US would actually relatively stronger than other countries who were hit even harder by the same trend? If the population of the US was 400M but the population of China was 2B, say?
> Zeihan predicted in 2014 that they would invade the rest of Ukraine around the end of 2021, because if they waited much longer they wouldn't have the manpower. This is the first of many trade-disrupting conflicts he expects.
What's scary is China is going through the exact same issue as Russia. Their demographic is aging, after this inflection point they would certainly lose manpower. However unlike technologically advanced countries like Korea & Japan, it cannot modernize, not with US sanctions hitting it like it did Russia.
I'm afraid Russia is on a path of no return. No sanction uplift or normalization is possible at this point. Putin is in a do or die mode, he chose to throw his country in a perpetual war rather than being over thrown.
Question is will Xi do the same? I believe so. The globalization capital is dwindling and that is it's lifeline. Without rest of the world buying its labor output, it's sitting on a massive population that increasingly become uncooperative with a centralized leadership.
Couple that with young single unwed males living in city centers, its rife for a major revolution, much like what happened in Syria.
Defeatism and giving up on challenges is exactly what I want humanity to not do, but this kind of regressive society is being fed by social media constantly. To live poor, to eat vegan food, to give up technological progress and to save energy.
The fact that out of all places, HN advocates it, is truly an end of an era of human ambition. I come to HN for optimism and relentless push to change the world for the better.
Why you bagging on vegan food? Sure not all vegan recipes taste good but it is quite healthy and makes people feel good (at least me). The fact that it can be cheaper and less energy intensive is just a bonus. Think of it another way, that is money and energy you save for something else, like synths!
Well, perhaps you've come to the wrong place. Most tech discussed here, and produced in SV, is basically hijacking people's emotions to click on things. That seems to be where trillions of USD and the world's best engineers are working on.
Which is exactly my point: recalibration. Those resources should be spent instead on real tech that solves real problems.
Making renewables cheaper/more efficient. Advancing lab-meat. Innovation in housing. AI manufacturing to deal with the population pyramid.
Sometimes solving problems means working with the situation as it is and with what you actually have to work with. Very often that means doing more with less.
The world has gotten worse many times before. We need to be able to find ways to cope with and mitigate that rather than just hoping that things will work out and that we can keep on having more, more, more, more and more without ever making sacrifices.
Preventing further catastrophe can sometimes do a lot more to make the world better than making the next big shiny thing would. Ambition doesn't put bread on the table in and of itself.
>According to China, this isn't tech. It's unimportant soft tech that in many ways is a net negative to society. Plus it's hard to censor. So they decimated the entire thing and re-calibrated "tech" to real-world tech.
Sorry, didn't bookmark the article but when you search for "China tech crackdown" and/or "China slashes tech sector" you'll find many articles detailing what happened.
I'll update this if I find the article in question again.
I'm confused; are you bringing up China as a good example? Because they currently have much more dangerous problems both with economy and society than the first-world countries, and unlike first-world countries, don't really show agility and self-reflection required to address them.
I'm sure you're right, but my comment was not a pro/anti China comment or an assessment of the much larger scope you seem to make of it.
It's a mere example of a society making a hard choice in where it defocuses and focuses in the backdrop of supply limitations.
Plus, don't you think it's interesting how the incredibly lucrative SV tech sector, the one we consider to rule the world...is considered not just worthless by China, but a plain negative?
You should really look into the story of the slashing of their soft tech sector. It is the purposeful destruction of an entire sector and its billionaire class in record time.
I’m very tired of this outdated free market in a vacuum ideology that blames consumers for decisions made by and for the benefit of large corporations. Average consumers weren’t clamoring for mass outsourcing, JIT supply chains, or even faster deliveries. These are all decisions that had far more value for shareholders and balance sheets than the average customer.
What is the expectation, that individuals should turn up their noses at cheaper prices or faster deliveries to make a statement against globalization at their own expense despite having no real power to change it? I’m all for rejecting the supposed benefits of capitalism, but I don’t imagine that’s the goal for people who push this narrative of shifting the blame from literal decision makers with some hand-waving about “the market.”
I’m sure in 5-10 years we’ll have similar revisionist claims that trickle down from The Economist and WSJ that we were all begging for every product to have data-harvesting apps and SaaS billing. Don’t complain, you asked for it.
I agree in part that this type of economy was "enforced".
Still, it's absolutely critical to own our own role in it, as citizens and consumers. With the cheap unsustainable option being there, we all exploited it to the maximum. Also people that in no way needed to economically "optimize" like that.
You have a point in that it is predictable human behavior. In the same way that stocking a grocery store for 75% with cheap tasty junk food on average will lead to an unhealthy population. We just don't have that much agency as we like to think to go for the right choice, the 25%. We act on impulse and instincts not made for this modern world.
If that is true, then the more important point is that if we were to undo this mess (which I doubt), we must also accept the pain of the better way. To lose a portion of our fake unsustainable wealth.
The problem is of course that people cling to it, even to incredibly recent products/services at a particular price. As if it forever was a right they were born with. Further, any politician to propose such policy is going to be wildly unpopular.
We see a bad company but don't want to pay for the good company. We see bad politicians but vote away the good one. It's the main flaw of democracy: it has no solution for unpopular yet required measures.
No, because China doesn't produce chips (a few minor exceptions aside).
Producing modern chips such as found in smartphones, laptops, etc is pretty much done exclusively using ASML machines. Which are under embargo and cannot be sold to China. Hence, China imports chips.
They are machines so complex and high-tech that they basically cannot be reverse-engineered or copied, despite their attempts. China has launched a program to set up their own semiconductor manufacturing and is throwing a huge amount of money at it. You should see this as a two decade effort with absolutely no certainty if it will work at all.
Tech producing real, hard, undisputed value, typically in the real world. To make the distinction more clear, think of what you can take away.
Facebook could stop today and society will be just fine, despite some moaning here and there. The same is not true when you take away real world essentials.
It has some value. But if it goes away, there are other Apps that work similary.
Maybe not as slick, or have all the features, but they have most of them.
Hell even if whole App messenger ecosystem would go away, people could go back to SMS and voice calls and still manage to do 70-80% of what they used WhatsApp for.
Now consider what would happen if hardware phone vendors would go away. Or car makers. Or ...
Most of us spent an entire lifetime in a particular model. The model being that supply is pretty much unlimited, given that you have money. And even money is a pretty fluid concept. Not only is everything unlimited, in recent years we've also made most of it instant. We've become completely detached from real world resources like commodities but also workers.
Indoctrinated to the maximum into this consumer economy, ordering something and learning that you can't have it despite putting up the money, comes as a system shock. The very concept of "NO" is back from past times. What do you mean, no? I said I want it.
Optimists would find it an excellent time to recalibrate society. Acknowledge critical dependencies and in-source them. Spent limited resources, such as workers, on areas considered vital instead of dispersing them across a million things less vital.
Of course, none of this will actually happen. Just like during COVID where we had the "nature is healing" meme, we soon learned that it's same-old as soon as restrictions were lifted. We're unwilling to let go of a fragile and unsustainable global supply chain. We're afraid to make any hard choice at all.
Unlike China. We're all aware their economy is more planned but one of their most fascinating moves is to slash the tech sector. And with "tech" I mean what the US considers tech. Which is the stuff coming out of SV. Most of it is entertainment, social network stuff, games, the like.
According to China, this isn't tech. It's unimportant soft tech that in many ways is a net negative to society. Plus it's hard to censor. So they decimated the entire thing and re-calibrated "tech" to real-world tech.
I'm in no way in favor of this type of intervention but I do find it a fascinating example of making actual hard choices. In the West, we don't seem to prioritize anything at all, we'd rather continue with the limitless illusion in a world that isn't.