China patiently waiting for the US to run out of THAAD missiles in Iran while simultaneously being pissed about their oil getting blockaded every other week
China basically saved the planet when they removed themselves from the global oil market and started to almost exclusively use their own reserves, I believe they have upwards of a year of storage.
Probably saved many countries from near irreversible damage, but it also bailed out the US administration, while proving themselves as "about that life".
Are they doing it to flex? Are they doing it because they want to work with these clowns? Are they doing it because they know Republicans are causing insane levels of harm to the US economically and want to keep them in office? If they move on Taiwan will it be during Trumps term? Or will they wait until a Dem gets into office and completely derail their presidency like the abysmal failure of the afghan pull out starting under Trump did for Biden?
If I ran an economy that relied on exporting goods to countries that rely on the petro-dollar to purchase goods, I'd make sure the petro-dollar doesn't collapse over night.
Regardless of the strength of American democracy, the Taiwanese silicon shield still exists and will take at least a decade to diminish, so we can hope America can restabilise in that time.
Discussing asshole diameter is at some level objectification, so you could connect that to a discussion about sexuality, and then connect that to a discussion about how people view sexuality, and then you can connect that to a discussion about how governments make laws about sexuality
Also, Freddy Fazbear is, as an animatronic possessed by a soul, a victim of objectification by William Afton (who uses them to study Agony) and ultimately the theorizer (the soul’s name is (probably) Gabriel, but no one has a reason to call him that outside of mere background knowledge).
When the function has geopolitics and ethnic groups discussions (i love learning about where people came from and how the local environment/terrain played a role in it!!!)
What's the one economic myth or misconception people constantly parrot on the internet that makes you want to pull your hair out?
This is a good question, actually. I'll come back to you on this.
What’s an economic trend or policy debate right now that actually gets you excited, but almost nobody outside the field is paying attention to?
This is an old one, but there were plans for an asteroid capturing experiment in 2017 that the Trump Administration killed the funding for. This could have been something that would have revolutionized resources if we built the infrastructure for low-orbit asteroid catching.
As for something more modern, I'm thinking the removal of copper wiring in modern infrastructure and replacing it with optic fiber cables (unless you're Germany who is clutching it's copper like it's gold). With the current rise of service economies in the First World, I'm interested in seeing how more efficient internet and electricity will be. We're reaching a point where Optic Fiber is just more efficient cost wise than copper cables. We could see a world in the coming decade or two where everyone has fast internet, waiting times for even massive projects get cut down to a few minutes, and information moves even faster.
What’s the most mind-numbing economic concept you had to push through before you got to the stuff you actually love?
We learned a lot about Ayn Rand's theories in Uni. I don't think I need to say anything else.
I went to Columbia in America. We did an optional course about all kinds of political theories. I wanted to read about something involving more libertarian economic ideologies, and the professor didn't have anything. We both accepted it wasn't gonna be good, and admittedly, it was my fault, but I had to stick with it.
The counter is resource over-abundance. Most of our exotic metal extraction is done by Third World countries, mostly by exploited poor people, while a lot of iron comes from Australia, and less exotic minerals like aluminum come from China largely. Africa is the second largest mineral-industry, to put it into perspective, and unlike China and Australia, most of it's miners are exploited, uneducated people. China and Australia could relocate it's workers if needed, but African countries don't get that same luxury.
(Yes, I know it's pretty stereotypical to generalize "Africa" as one thing while China and Australia are two countries, but most of the African mineral industry is the same infrastructure and law wise, produces similar resources, and has the same issues)
Unsurprisingly, space mining would be done by specialists and be more automated and less menial. This would cause mass unemployment in most of Africa and strain (or potentially even collapse some) governments. From here we either shift the status quo and Africa develops more as it can no longer rely on mineral extraction + the developed world no longer relies on it for resources (looking at you, France), or Africa leans more heavily into exotic food production, like chocolate (which is one of the most exploitative trades in the modern world)
Basically, the only counter-argument is that it'd be expensive to start and shift the status quo, but the status quo fucking sucks.
I see. It would disrupt the global status quo too much, though I could see some potential for African countries to edge away from their reliance on this industry to build up further but it’s not as simple as that.
Pretty much. The current status quo is that (most. Again, looking at you, France) resource extraction countries like South Africa, Zambia, OPEC members, etc, get some level of autonomy and have leverage against the First World, at the cost of their people living shitty lives mining coal, diamonds, etc and drilling up petrol.
Pretty sure there's a conspiracy theory somewhere that the us and France couped or supported a coup to remove a Haitian head of state after he demanded that France payback the money stolen
Not just that, it controls the value of the currency in a lot of those countries, which dictates the strength of their economy. The CFA Frank is a fucked-up thing.
This one is a pretty well known one, but Mansa Musa caused several economic collapses due to foreign gold gifts. He had a pilgrimage to Mecca and gave so much gold away that it resulted in economic turmoil and so much inflation it'd make a Sonic fan blush.
Gold-backed policies rely on the idea that gold is universally seen as rare, valuable, etc. This is good when the rare thing is, well, rare.
Accounting and economic consultancy will ALWAYS be in business, especially with the growing service economy. Lawyers will always be on the look out for economic consultants during corporate cases. Honestly, I'm gonna keep it buttery with you, any position involving math will have a good job market because people hate math.
There are some less obvious jobs like working in casinos too. I have a few friends who live in Vegas.
If you like traveling as well, and are multilingual, there's always a spot for someone who knows about the global economy in developing nations. I have a friend who graduated with me, he works for the government in Botswana.
Econ is one of the highest paying non-stem majors. If you turn it into a stem major by pairing it with statistics and learning some coding for data analysis you can do very well for yourself. I’m 3 years out of my Econ degree, I got my masters in data analytics to build on the econometrics I learned and now I make 6 figures as a data analyst at an investment bank.
Me when politics are actually the innate functions of a society that form a system of laws and processes and not just evil rich people being the most stupidest people alive
Mf’s when political decision making involves delicate trade offs and compromise among many different interest groups, and even well intentioned policy may have unexpected trade offs
Economics are actually pretty interesting. There's many misconceptions I've had.
Parties have to do sometimes dumb stuff for the economy even if they had good advisors because otherwise the public will dislike them. It would be nice if everyone was educated enough about the economy, school isn't enough. I want to learn more too as I now know that I know nothing
The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.
- Marx congratulating Lincoln on his re-election.
People want to work and be taken care of. Not a hard concept.
Mf's that are "into politics" when the politics are about questioning the inherent power structures that divide labor and capital in class society instead of economics and foreign trade affairs.
Same Mfers regurgitating stoicism as the pinnacle of all
philosophical thought, who sometimes wonder “why can’t history just be about the interesting stuff like WWII, or Ancient Greece?” and who want to prattle off word salad monologues about Adam Smith with their Georgetown poli sci degree, those types who “love” politics…. until it’s about power structures and labor, and then suddenly they get real quiet.
What if it's about the differences between ideological, geopolitical and economic doctrines of different competing parties, the plans for their country's future, and their internal and external achievements?
Ive actually seen the opposite happening for like the past year, people are getting really into economics, taxes, trade and policy related talks and have stopped caring and are even getting annoyed by race/culture discussions.
I’d rather economics and trade policies be what people think of when politics are mentioned instead of debating if some people deserve human rights or not.
I'm only into politics, because the OCD likes to convince me that there's patterns where there are none and then forces me to look at the news, before connecting what I've seen to some historical event and making me panic about it.
The OCD tries to convince me that a war, an apocalypse or an economic crisis is about to break out, the second an event shares similarities with other, historical events. Especially if it's a chain of events.
Its thought process is: "The dinosaurs died when a meteor hit the earth. We've had a meteor shower recently. This must mean... D:"
that just made me remember how before there was people saying they loved talking about politics but they would never want to bring minorities rights on the table because it made them uncomfortable crazy how privilege makes them being able to just be "uncomfortable" and avoid talking about lgbt women and poc
It's by design. Economics and foreign trade is hard. Culture war BS is easy and doesn't actually require you to do anything, in fact you're encouraged to do nothing, so you can keep running on it later.
The real war is always between the top and the bottom. The top is few, but has solidarity. They use their money and influence to pit the working classes against each other. While the poorest 90% are fighting amongst each other the top pick our pockets, and promise that if you vote with them on culture war issues, they'll make your lives better.
This of course, never happens. Instead they use their profits to buy up all the land, and all the houses. Renting them back to you to farm on, or live in. They do none of the work, but somehow get all of the benefits of the work.
"Why can't we have civil political disagreements anymore??"
"Well are we disagreeing on what the allocation of our local tax is being used for? Or on whether people like me should be shot? Because only one of those is something that we can have an actual disagreement and a conversation about."
This is interesting to me, because my very right-wing education leaned hard into talking all about the ins and outs of foreign trade and economics, only for all of that not to matter once the presidential candidate started talking about the gays and the browns.
Unironically the opposite. We've reached a point in the right-wing collective hysteria that any discussions about cultural issues are not only pointless, but structured more along the lines of ragebait. It's hard to debate someone who either doesn't believe in what they are saying, or doesn't know what they are saying.
The impact of interests rates on aggregate demand though? Luscious 👅
honestly my only conclusion is the economics seems to be stuck and we seem to have glorified weather forcasters rather than anyone trying to do it better
The economy is very important I will say, but man it's kinda boring, it's only really interesting at a surface level for me, which is a shame, I hope people have loads of fun understanding it
Exact opposite for me. I engage in politics that are about actual policy and economics and completely disengage with culture war bullshit, it pisses me off too much and I hate being pissed off. As a kid when I got angry I hurt people around me and I refuse to get angry if I can help it
I'm actually into politics when its about how tech billionaires keep attempting to make mass surveillance legal on multiple different frontlines because I think that that's somewhat important.
As a queer person, I hate that my identity is wrapped up in politics. My existence is not political. I personally enjoy politics (political economics) and reading economic treatises. But every “political” conversation I have is regarding social issues like queer people and PoC.
Mfs that are into politics the second they are forced into actual studies or even actual discussion instead of name-calling their "oppoennt" and acting smug.
economics are actually pretty interesting, I would encourage anyone reading this to pay attention to what Kevin Warsh is doing in the federal reserve (nothing)
"We need to be more like Poland, mostly christian/catholic, no immigration, no LGBT, no abortion, their success is tied to right wing politics!"
You do understand that Poland economically is further left than the majority of the Democratic party in the US and relies heavily on EU investment right?
I support Austrian economics. However the interesting part of it is debating it vs keynesian economics. The policies you should make based on for an individual issue will be the same 90% of the time.
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