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There’s an observation in environmental economics about mining for resources acting similar to a banking instrument. As more resources are devoted to a scarce r
by ianai 4y ago
There’s an observation in environmental economics about mining for resources acting similar to a banking instrument. As more resources are devoted to a scarce resource like cobalt more mines become economically viable. Most easily seen with oil where whole fields will shut or open with the movement of the price of oil. Forget the name of it, buts it’s yet another case of economic actors reacting to market incentives.
Just remember this the next time someone says something can’t be done because of the immediate inflexibility of supply to meet demand in a market. There’s almost always a lag time between start of production and demand for it. They might be uninformed or trying to misinform.
I suspect similar will hold true for charging infrastructure, solar panels, and other grid infrastructure. Wiring up new power plugs is not fundamentally new technology. Good time to be an electrician I suspect.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoThis is also a great example for why capitalism is so successful. It's not perfect, but a centrally planned system would, in practice, react much more slowly and/or less accurately.
- ianai 4y agoYes. No central planner had to be convinced or bribed to let cobalt be mined. Just capitalism doing its thing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 4y agoI might be missing sarcasm, but Glencore is a corrupt company operating in corrupt countries. They bribe officials and have decent fines to pay as a result of their practices when setting up cobalt and copper mines. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63858295.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63858295.amp
- saiya-jin 4y ago... which is valid for every single similar multinational corporation, if you don't hear it in the news it just means they are a bit better in hiding it. In another news, water is wet. It literally doesn't matter what resources you pick and 3rd world country location, its the same story for last 70 years at least. That's not what this thread discusses, and OP didn't need to be sarcastic. I've lived in centrally planned economy, and it was a failure on every single meaningful level, just like any other centrally planned economy. There were frequent shortages of basic items, some stuff like exotic fruits were literally impossible for common people to buy, or it took 3 hours of standing in the queue. I think some of the western spoiled kids argumenting for some form of communism would be a bit smarter if they actually grew up in systems they push so hard for (of course this time the pipe dream would actually work because XYZ, but these things keep failing because of basic nature of people, good luck fixing that). Its just like if people generally needed to fear the failure a bit, and society needs to let some people fail in order for the rest to thrive now and in the future. Remove this thread, and next generation will be significantly weaker.
- bumby 4y agoCorruption is a very relevant topic if you consider stability to be a necessary aspect of economies. Yes, there will be some corruption in practically any large economy. But certain ay promote more or less, and there is always a tipping point where the economy becomes less stable due to excess corruption.
- ianai 4y agoNo sarcasm. It’s easy to poke holes in the thing. The holes are largely a reflection that it’s not been regulated. There’ve been attempts and even successful regulation in certain markets across time, but the current economy has warts. Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind as an upswell of regulation. I think it wasn’t until 1938 or 1939 that someone actually went to prison for the 1929 crash. Then much of the bank reforms introduced following 1929 were repealed. Buybacks were illegal used as part of them. Etc The current push to onshore production actually feels a little regulatory. It’s a system that does need some “light” steering from time to time. (I could go on that if a company publishes ads they’re operating market power that should be countered. The reason to the counter is market power means the supply side isn’t producing the market clearing amount of product and instead of selling what they produce there is always waste. But this particular point in time is very anti-progress.)
- Llamamoe 4y agoI wish it was more commonly understood that capitalism's success lies precisely in the fact that it's a decentralized, self-regulating system robust against the failure of individual nodes, and has very little to do with the "capital" part of it, which if anything appears to drive wealth inequality more than anything else.
- Jensson 4y agoWealth inequality is the overhead cost of running capitalism. It isn't a very large cost given the cost of all alternative systems we have tried, especially since regulations can greatly reduce the wealth inequality without losing the benefits of capitalism.
- pharmakom 4y agoUnless you have a UBI or negative income tax.
- rs999gti 4y agoYou're always going to have inequality regardless of what social system you apply to redistribute wealth. See North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Union, and China as examples. With the exception of China those example countries have either rich or poor people. There is no middle class. At least in capitalist driven societies like western nations there can be a middle class that lives relatively well off and cheap options of consumption that also allow poor to have the basics in life.
- revertmean 4y agoThe Soviet Union hasn't existed for nearly 32 years. That's practically a third of a century. It's not a good example country for today.
- Akronymus 4y agoAnd while capitalism has increased inequality, by quite a lot, it also elevated the poor in the process. Living standards are better across the board.
- wahnfrieden 4y agoCentral planning is not the only alternative to capitalism
- nanis 4y agoCould you list some?
- monocasa 4y agoThe market communism varieties orbiting around mutualism and other market socialism variants.
- wahnfrieden 4y agoanarcho syndicalism. or for further historic reference see graeber & wengrow's dawn of humanity on other alternatives relevant today.
- 7sidedmarble 4y agoI think it's short sighted to picture a 'centrally' planned economy as the only alternative to capitalism. I'm not an expert, but if you read Marx directly, he didn't say much about the structure of what proletarian ownership would look like. I think it's safe to say market structures.m can coexist with democratic ownership of the economy: see unions, coops, etc.
- hobobaggins 4y agoCoops, yes, but those are essentially groups of independent producers, while unions are much more in keeping with Marxism. To the point, I haven't seen any actual examples of modern unions that are anything but a drag on production. Perhaps you can mention one?
- TulliusCicero 4y agoUnions, in principle, are market-oriented. Nothing inherently non-market about people banding together to increase negotiating leverage. Obviously in practice there are often regulations concerning unions, but that's true of basically every part of a market too.
- Tiktaalik 4y agoYes Unions are def market oriented. They Want To Make Money. More money for the business = more money for their members. For example in British Columbia where a relic of alcohol prohibition remains in that the government manages liquor distribution and still has some (unionized!) liquor stores, the union agitated to have those liquor stores open on the weekends. The government initially wasn't interested! Union members though wanted more hours and more money and to sell more liquor.
- bumby 4y agoOne counterpoint: Unions tend to have vastly better safety records. It’s hard for individual workers to remain productive when they are injured.
- 4y ago
- _hypx 4y agoCapitalism works because it can find an alternative to the resource that is running out. Something centrally planned systems struggle with. And a big reason why centrally planned systems fail is because they are usually ruled by conservative men who cannot imagine a world without said resource. Meanwhile, a capitalist system will “creatively destroy” the old way of doing things and replace it with a new one. Ironically, people who cheer on capitalism often struggle with accepting the new way.
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago[dead]
- TulliusCicero 4y agoMarkets tend to be results oriented in a way that governments tend not to be. Of course, sometimes that result involves exploiting the shit out of workers and destroying the environment along the way, but by God they'll get the thing done if said thing makes them money.
- ianai 4y agoAnd yet modern day would be impossible if we bulldozed all our roads, highways, and rail. That stuff needed massive government investment.
- johngladtj 4y agoDid it need that investment? Do you believe that such infrastructure did not exist prior to government? Who do you think funded the first railroads exactly? Hint: if you think it was the government I suggest you start studying the railroad bubbles of the 1830s and 1840s
- aeternum 4y agoInterestingly, the Nordic countries (often used as examples of ideal socialism), have a high percentage of private roads. Might actually work better than the national infrastructure approach: https://devoelmoorecenter.com/2018/02/28/why-the-u-s-should-adopt-the-nordic-approach-to-private-roads/ https://devoelmoorecenter.com/2018/02/28/why-the-u-s-should-... Also, nationalizing passenger rail travel in the US (Amtrak) seems to have led to one of the worst passenger rail services in the world.
- bumby 4y ago>react much more slowly and/or less accurately. I’m not making an anti-capitalist point, but I don’t know how well that point holds because it seems like the same case can be made for the other side. For example, the financial markets were slow to react to information in 2006-2007 until we had already driven off the cliff. Some would say the same about climate change etc. It seems to me that a hybrid system is actually the best as balancing that risk.
- steveBK123 4y agoIf you think our housing bubble in the capitalist west was crazy.. wait until you read about the ongoing one in central planned China...
- bumby 4y agoThat’s my point. The same effect exists in both systems so it doesn’t make a very strong argument against one or the other.
- hobobaggins 4y agoGP is making a point about the relative scale of the problem in one vs the other, not that the problem doesn't exist in both.
- bumby 4y agoIt’s hard to be worse than wrecking the world economy until central planning had to bail them out.
- xorcist 4y agoCapitalism have no universally agreed on definition but by many definitions, certainly any Marxist one, modern China is very much a capitalist society.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ajuc 4y agoThe reason solar power was growing so fast last 2 decades was mostly EU and German central planning. Not to say that central planning is better in general, but reaction speed isn't inherently better in capitalism. One common problem is capitalism getting stuck in chicken and egg dillema - central planning had advantage there. Granularity of adjustment is the main advantage of capitalism. And some kind of hybrid is the most efficient.
- cinntaile 4y agoSubsidies don't really count as central planning. It's a way to nudge market participants in a certain direction but they still have autonomy.
- ajuc 4y agoI don't really care about labels, but if you credit capitalism for cobalt mining increase achieved in states with hybrid economies because the part that helped was free market in spirit - then you should also credit central planning when the situation is reversed.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fires10 4y agoIt's almost like we need a hybrid model. Some things centrally planned and some things left more free.
- pfdietz 4y agoThey may have gotten the ball rolling around 2009, but today the EU accounts for only a small portion of solar installs. In 2022, the EU was about 15% of the global solar new installations. Now, in wind, Europe is still leading.
- cma 4y agoWould this cobalt stuff have reacted more quickly without the subsidies?
- UncleMeat 4y agoCapitalism is not the same thing as a market economy. You can have a market economy where businesses are incentivized to innovate and create business plans that fit an effective niche without separating ownership from labor. And although there are clear examples where market economies are nimble, there are also clear examples where market economies are fragile or don't actually produce outcomes that are best for customers or society. A health insurance company that puts most of its innovation effort into finding creative ways to refuse to pay out to its customers while obfuscating this outcome is a natural thing in a market economy.
- WalterBright 4y ago> A health insurance company that puts most of its innovation effort into finding creative ways to refuse to pay out to its customers while obfuscating this outcome is a natural thing in a market economy. Health insurance companies in the US are more or less run by the regulators these days. Obamacare has seen to that, driving out of Washington state all health care providers for self-employed people but one. I have all my other insurance with one company. Their premiums are higher than average. But the times I needed them, they were there with the money and even legal help. They're worth the higher premiums. It's the free market at work.
- UncleMeat 4y agoBut we've got decades of data from health insurance before Obamacare. It isn't like things were peachy before that.
- WalterBright 4y agoHealth insurance diverged from free markets back in the 1940s when health care got tied to your job due to the way it was taxed.
- UncleMeat 4y agoThat's still a market economy rather than a command economy. If you want, I can point at gazillions of other industries where markets have led to obviously suboptimal outcomes. Command economies have major problems and may be worse in almost all circumstances but "markets make everything good" is just observably false.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agocontemporary US "capitalism:" 1. preferential treatment for providers of capital to ventures when it comes to risk & reward (compared to provision of labor or IP) 2. minimal/reduced central planning (aka "free market") 3. regulatory and cultural environment favoring entrepeneurialism i.e. low barriers to starting new ventures/exploring new ideas. There's no inherent reason that we need to retain all 3 of these, and quite a lot of us would like to keep #2 & #3 and drop or substantially modify #1.
- hobobaggins 4y agoLet the market itself decide. If "providers of capital" do not fund promising new ventures, they will gradually cease to be providers of capital, and simultaneously new "providers of capital" will sense a good opportunity and step up. That's the foundation of capitalism, and detecting these opportunities is the heart of being an entrepreneur.
- bumby 4y agoThere are plenty of valuable markets that wouldn’t exist without central planning. Aerospace (and it’s offshoots) are particularly strong examples. The only groups that were large enough to bear the risk to foster such nascent industries were large govts.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoDon't agree. Being an entrepeneur can be (and often is) about making a living, not a killing. Most small to medium size businesses in the USA just about get by, they make payroll, covers costs and not much more. Their existence is good for society, but isn't much of an opportunity for substantial returns on capital investment. Also, #1 isn't about whether capital is required or provided - it is nearly always necessary. The question is about the distribution of risk & reward between the providers of capital, labor and IP. When capital has outsize economic and political power, it's not suprising that it also arranges for itself a political, economic and cultural environment in which it reaps more of the rewards than the providers of labor or IP.
- gregwebs 4y agoThis is just cobalt and not all the other resources required for electrification. The dramatic increase in cobalt supply seems to be mostly a side effect of increased mining for other minerals that are still in greater demand (Nickel). Otherwise it wouldn't be profitable. Meanwhile battery makers have figured out how to use less cobalt since it has a specialized role. There's still no supply for the lithium shortage (the lag time is a minimum of 7 years to open a new lithium mine) but we are waiting to see if sodium batteries will come to the rescue now.
- bartislartfast 4y agoSurely there must be a similar lag time for production of Sodium Batteries?
- yetihehe 4y agoFor Sodium Batteries maybe yes, but we already have so much of sodium chloride that we just sprinkle it on roads in winter.