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These are good points, I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. That said, I think it still makes sense for western countries to sanction Russia. Yes, sanction

These are good points, I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. That said, I think it still makes sense for western countries to sanction Russia. Yes, sanctions are wasteful of resources, which could lead to food shortages and people dying, but that's kind of the problem with war: It kills people and wastes resources. Even without sanctions, there would be many Ukrainians (and Russians) killed, and Ukraine would not be keeping up its wheat exports. Ideally, we'd like to prevent this kind of thing from happening very often, which in practice means there needs to be some kind of deterrence against strong countries invading their weaker neighbours. Since western powers can't fight directly against Russia, as it would risk nuclear war, sanctions are one of the few tools available for deterrence. Sanctions aren't about waving a blue and yellow flag or about showing how much you care. They're about preventing similar future conflicts and hopefully giving Ukraine a better negotiating position so the war can end sooner. Also, it seems like European and North American sanctions shouldn't be a problem for most poor countries unless they're also participating in those sanctions themselves? While sanctions make sense for rich countries, the first priority should definitely be to feed your own people. So if the government of India decides that in order to feed its people, it needs to import potash from Belarus, more power to it.

llanowarelves 4y ago
Is it really hurting Russia? Their currency is up against the Euro since the sanctions; and against the dollar, it's the same as where it was before.
mike_hearn 4y ago
I think that's fair enough. The issue with sanctions and poorer countries is that commodities are liquid markets. If rich countries raise prices internally by sanctioning some sources then the higher prices draw supplies away from poorer countries. Or put another way, if you reduce supply whilst keeping demand constant then prices rise, and they rise everywhere. That's what China seems to be trying to wall itself off from, which it can probably do, but it can cause a domino effect where everyone feels they have to go protectionist. So it boils down to whether you think the concrete pain inflicted on the poor today is worth it to avoid hypothetical pain inflicted on them by a future conflict.
- c1ccccc1 4y ago
  Makes sense. Once we're talking about liquidity, though, there's a wide variety of rich country behaviour that raises food prices: Eating large amounts of grain-fed meat, turning food (or crops grown on land that could have been used to grow food) into ethanol, etc. Maybe the message should be: "Support Ukraine by eating less meat and planting a victory garden." In terms of a concrete government policy, that might look like fixing food and fertilizer imports at last year's levels (from non-Russia countries, imports from Russia would be fixed at 0 due to sanctions), and then figuring out how to feed the country on that plus whatever can be produced internally. That should more or less zero-out the effect of sanctions on global food prices. (Rich countries still contain poor people, so internally they would need to work out a subsidy for plant-based foods.) It should still be easy to feed everyone in a rich country where there's high meat-consumption, high food wastage, and only 1% of the population are farmers. Just stop eating so much meat, and have a few more people start being farmers. The government could hire a bunch of patriotic chemists and engineers to quickly spin up more Haber-Bosch reactors. Rich countries have lots of chemists and engineers. All this will cost money, sure, but think about it as just another kind of military spending. If someone came to me tomorrow saying: "we're building a bunch of Haber-Bosch reactors so we can maintain our sanctions against Russia, the pay is minimum wage, are you in?", I'd quit my current job the very same day. For some reason, our current governments aren't doing these things. Maybe they don't realize the severity of the situation. Maybe they don't care about the world's poor people. Maybe they're smarter than me, and have an even better plan. Still, it's insane to me that getting our butts in gear and making some relatively minor sacrifices in order to cover the shortfall is not being discussed as an option.

llanowarelves 4y ago

Is it really hurting Russia? Their currency is up against the Euro since the sanctions; and against the dollar, it's the same as where it was before.

mike_hearn 4y ago

I think that's fair enough. The issue with sanctions and poorer countries is that commodities are liquid markets. If rich countries raise prices internally by sanctioning some sources then the higher prices draw supplies away from poorer countries. Or put another way, if you reduce supply whilst keeping demand constant then prices rise, and they rise everywhere. That's what China seems to be trying to wall itself off from, which it can probably do, but it can cause a domino effect where everyone feels they have to go protectionist. So it boils down to whether you think the concrete pain inflicted on the poor today is worth it to avoid hypothetical pain inflicted on them by a future conflict.

c1ccccc1 4y ago
Makes sense. Once we're talking about liquidity, though, there's a wide variety of rich country behaviour that raises food prices: Eating large amounts of grain-fed meat, turning food (or crops grown on land that could have been used to grow food) into ethanol, etc. Maybe the message should be: "Support Ukraine by eating less meat and planting a victory garden." In terms of a concrete government policy, that might look like fixing food and fertilizer imports at last year's levels (from non-Russia countries, imports from Russia would be fixed at 0 due to sanctions), and then figuring out how to feed the country on that plus whatever can be produced internally. That should more or less zero-out the effect of sanctions on global food prices. (Rich countries still contain poor people, so internally they would need to work out a subsidy for plant-based foods.) It should still be easy to feed everyone in a rich country where there's high meat-consumption, high food wastage, and only 1% of the population are farmers. Just stop eating so much meat, and have a few more people start being farmers. The government could hire a bunch of patriotic chemists and engineers to quickly spin up more Haber-Bosch reactors. Rich countries have lots of chemists and engineers. All this will cost money, sure, but think about it as just another kind of military spending. If someone came to me tomorrow saying: "we're building a bunch of Haber-Bosch reactors so we can maintain our sanctions against Russia, the pay is minimum wage, are you in?", I'd quit my current job the very same day. For some reason, our current governments aren't doing these things. Maybe they don't realize the severity of the situation. Maybe they don't care about the world's poor people. Maybe they're smarter than me, and have an even better plan. Still, it's insane to me that getting our butts in gear and making some relatively minor sacrifices in order to cover the shortfall is not being discussed as an option.