from Hacker News

Why the World Economy Hasn’t Collapsed Yet

by mactitan on 7/1/22, 6:55 PM with 41 comments

• by hnarn on 7/1/22, 8:37 PM

  To be quite honest, I expect more intellectual honesty from an HN post. This reads, at best, like an opinion piece and most if not all of the controversial “facts” presented are not sourced in any way — not for lack of trying though as the piece does the classic sleight of hand of actually linking plenty of other sources and factual images, hoping that the reader will gloss over the fact that these do nothing to prove the claims made which are mostly pure conjecture.

• by jnwatson on 7/1/22, 8:51 PM

  The author ignores that the source of inflation is multi-faceted. Eventually the supply chain issues and the war will be resolved, and we’ll be left with moderate inflation.

  The world is actually quite fortunate that there’s the beginning of a sort of natural carbon tax right as we desperately need to decarbonize our economies.

  This is essentially a trial run for running out of oil. It has already spurred significant European investment is diversifying energy sources.

• by kube-system on 7/1/22, 8:54 PM

  It hasn’t collapsed yet because the people who predict a collapse keep cherry picking data to justify their doomsday predictions.

  There are just as many or more indicators that things are going great.

  Yes, we’ve had some road bumps here in the past couple years, but that’s on the tail of the strongest expansion of the world economy in human history.

  At the end of the day, the strength of the economy is just a matter of the exchange of goods and services. As long as people are working and spending, the rest is just microeconomic noise.

• by somethoughts on 7/1/22, 8:51 PM

  It would be interesting if the government could figure out a way to hold the price of energy at a higher price when the economy is going well and energy supply is high.

  Or perhaps there should be some sort of non-strategic reserve stockpile. I'm almost curious if the US government has made money by buying up oil during the pandemic when the price of oil was spiraling downward and then selling at today's inflated pricing.

  This would actually probably not be opposed by the energy lobby as the profits would go to the firms (as opposed to a energy tax).

  This would act to set a higher and more stable floor for energy costs to enable the development of alternative energy sources.

• by trentnix on 7/1/22, 8:40 PM

  we have most probably reached peak oil extraction in 2018

  We’ve been assured this is imminent for 50 (FIFTY) years. I’d bet the farm this prediction is dead-ass wrong too.

• by fleddr on 7/1/22, 9:37 PM

  This author sure loves to escalate things. His optimistic take is for Europe to slide into full poverty, the pessimistic scenario total nuclear annihilation.

  There's no regard at all for the current aggressive plan for energy savings and energy alternatives. There's incredible potential for using less energy whilst not destroying the economy.

  The author also fails to understand that the pre-pandemic economy was a bullshit economy. Pumped up for more than a decade, creating bullshit demand that enable bullshit jobs.

  For sure it's going to hurt when it deflates, but it's not like we can't take a hit. In fact, we might as well use it as an opportunity to relocate the limited workers we have to parts of society that matter most.

  If anything, we should be concerned about the developing world that have less options to plan around these events. Sri Lanka is an example, but also large parts of Africa are directly dependent on particular commodities in a truly existential way.

• by _eht on 7/1/22, 8:35 PM

  > Current price increases are not a result of too much money, or bad policies

  This seems naive. Was the sudden onset of printed USD not a factor in the Feds rate surging?

• by nhunter on 7/1/22, 8:58 PM

  It's an entertaining read, but mostly subjective opinion. I love doom predictions in general, they're always correct if you wait long enough and keep the framing loose, like saying we're in the process of collapsing. Something will eventually cause a severe global disruption, and when it happens it's easy to just say you were off on the timeline.

• by cglan on 7/1/22, 8:42 PM

  I don't have enough expertise to make anything other than a totally uneducated rebuttal. I'm honestly a little bit more optimistic than the author. I think he's on the money for a lot of things. The world economy is going get screwed because of energy and our leaders are dropping the ball. We're seeing the results in Sri Lanka but also in Europe. On the other hand, I think he does discount renewables more than needed. There is very little barrier to us rolling fields of solar panels and batteries other than purely a political one. There is also a lot of flex in the system. Simply removing meat and replacing it with chicken would save untolds amount of energy. Imagine if we were forced to live off beans

• by geedzmo on 7/1/22, 8:57 PM

  Classic Malthusian viewpoint, nothing new to see here. If only it were true that oil is running out - it might force us to think about alternatives more.

• by labrador on 7/1/22, 9:05 PM

  The 1970's called. It wants this article back.