sugar_in_your_tea OP , 6 months ago

I’m not in charge of the trees

This is related to the tragedy of the commons. Basically what’s happening is that farmers are intentionally setting the forest on fire so they can have more grazing land. This article explains it a bit better and suggests private property rights are the solution. I disagree with that conclusion, but the argumentation is interesting.

I think the solution instead is to solicit donations from other countries to help fund protection and prosecution efforts.

it keeps going up regardless of what’s thrown at it

It keeps going up because value keeps being created. Life is getting better for the average person every year, and that’s because our economy keeps growing. We’re getting more useful work done per person than ever before, so there’s even more money available to invest in R&D.

evergrande

I wouldn’t put a Chinese real estate firm on the same level as Western companies, the business environment in China is way different.

shares were recalled

So what is it, are shares fake or real?

Shares represent ownership stake in a corporation, so recalling shares makes no sense whatsoever. That’s like state or federal governments recalling private property, that’s just not how the contracts work.

If you want to control a corporation, you just need to buy a majority stake. Elon Musk did that with Twitter, and you could do that too if you had enough money. Shares absolutely do represent real ownership.

USA debt is in the trillions and it can’t pay it back

Correction, it chooses not to pay it back. Borrowing money has been cheap, so fiscal policy was to borrow like crazy. Now that rates are high, the budget is getting squeezed.

However, the US absolutely could pay it back if there was political will to do so. All we’d need to do is stop running a deficit and the debt would eventually go away, but that means cutting spending (Democrats don’t want that) and raising taxes (Republicans don’t want that), so it’s a bit of a political quagmire. If push comes to shove, perhaps the US will get a Milei that’s serious about eliminating the deficit.

My belief is that the next humanity civilization disaster will be financial

I think it’ll be a mixture of climate change and war. There are so many areas that just need a spark, and climate change is like a massive torch.

At the end of the day though, it’ll be reflected as a financial issue, but I the root cause won’t be financial mismanagement, but mutual destruction because we couldn’t work together to avert disaster.

Then again, I’m also pretty bullish on humanity, so I think we’ll find a way through it, we’ll just do it at the 11th hour like we usually do.