The End of the World is Just the Beginning
Mass development and industrialization extended lifespans while simultaneously encouraging urbanization.
Globalization leads to the whole world being better than the sum of its parts, but de-globalization will lead to all those parts getting significantly weaker.
Each epoch of history is defined by its respective geography of success—the location/climate/resource conditions that are conducive to success given that period’s needs and technology.
It takes about 12x as much energy to move things on land than on water.
The United States’ success is largely due to its perfect geography satisfying every quality a major power needs: rich in commodities (energy and farmland), plentiful waterways for interstate and international trade, and easily defensible.
The American-Canadian border is the least patrolled and longest undefended border in the world.
The barrier islands, such as the Florida peninsula, give the United States more natural port potential than all the other continents combined.
Among the world’s major powers, only the United States has major populations on the coast of two oceans.
Some of the biggest contributing factors to America’s success as a world power were it had the only navy big enough to patrol and protect global trade and the only market big enough to support all the exports from other nations.
Prior to urbanization, children were free labor for farmland, but in cities, they are financial burdens, which is why industrialization/urbanization leads to lower birth rates.
Industrialization also leads to lower birth rates because women tend to focus more on careers and have less time to raise children.
The faster the transformation and growth on the front end of a population, the faster the population collapse is on the back end.
China, in 2022, is the fastest aging society in human history.
Fewer people (worsening demographics) means less chance of keeping anything that requires specialized labor working.
There is a short list of countries that have managed a high degree of development while avoiding a collapse in birth rates: the United States, France, Argentina, Sweden, and New Zealand.
Capitalism trades away equality to maximize growth and socialism sacrifices growth in the name of inclusivity and social placidity.
The only countries in a post-2022 world that might be able to maintain an overseas empire will have to have three main things going for them:
1. A serious cultural superiority complex.
2. A military capable of reliably projecting power on locations that cannot effectively resist.
3. And TONS of disposable young people.
The United States has more high-quality, temperate-zone, and arable farmland than any other country and its entire agricultural supply chain is contained within North America. It is the largest agricultural producer and exporter.
Courtesy of the shale revolution, the United States is the largest oil producer in the world and has the lowest unsubsidized energy cost.
The United States is the first-world country closest to the equator, giving it the most potential to capture solar energy, while the position of its mountains relative to its coasts grant it the most wind power potential in the world.
Globalized supply chains are all about tapping into different skillsets and labor cost structures to generate the most economically efficient outcomes.
With the globalization of agriculture, every nation was free to expand beyond its natural limits, as regions were no longer limited by their capacity to grow food.
Long-haul transport, which is necessary to maintain globalized supply chains, requires peace across the world.
Remove the Americans and China loses energy access, income from manufacturing sales, many of the raw materials needed for the goods it produces, and the ability to import or grow its own food.
In a successful system, the stability a real currency provides generates economic specialization and growth, which require ever-larger volumes of currency to lubricate ever-growing volumes of economic activity. Those ever-growing volumes of currency, in turn, necessitate ever-larger volumes of stuff to back that currency, and getting that stuff is far easier said than done.
Asset-backed currencies are incompatible with rapid growth because the creation of goods outpaces the creation of currency, which is deflationary and discourages economic activity.
Under fiat systems, every single person can be successful so long as the money keeps coming.
China’s financial system, paired with its terminal demographics, condemns it to not being consumption or export led but lending led.
If you raise the cost of credit in a credit-based economy, everything slows down because nobody has enough money to buy things in full—everything is, in practice, just more expensive.
As a general rule of thumb, a change in supply of 10% for an inelastic good like oil will result in a 75% price swing.
Oftentimes, oil refineries are designed for a specific type of crude and using other kinds can damage the equipment or lead to run-loss.
Lighter, sweeter crude is usually the most desirable and it mostly comes from American shale plants.
Solar energy is about 1000x less dense than other conventional energy sources, and neither wind nor solar are dense enough to serve populatino-dense urban areas, even if the wind/sunlight are abundant, which is already a rarity.
Green energy is only suited for electricity. It doesn’t address any of our other energy needs, namely, transportation, agriculture, high-heat industries like steel production, etc.
From 2014 to 2020, solar energy has only increased to 1.5% of total energy use.
Peak demand for energy (nighttime and winter) is ostensibly the opposite of peak supply for solar energy (afternoon and summer).
California has enough total (not just battery) storage to power the state for just one minute.
In a de-globalized world where countries have limited access to global energy sources, the most ubiquitous and readily available energy source (coal) will, unfortunately, be used much more.
Iron ore comprises the majority (often >90%) of every bit of steel used.
China imports more iron and steel than the rest of the world combined x3.
The frame for an EV requires roughly 5x the energy input as a traditional ICE vehicle.
The average pair of jeans is touched by hands in at least 10 countries.
The longer and more complex the supply chain, the more likely it is to face a catastrophic and unrecoverable breakdown.
Electrification technology does not yet exist that can manage the high power-to-size requirements of heavy equipment or oceanic shipping.
There is no existing technology or burgeoning technology that can replace oil or natural gas in the agricultural sector.
Oil is typically the primary ingredient for pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, while most fertilizers’ base materials include natural gas.
In the current world of hyper-globalized and specialized agriculture, we grow or raise every plant and animal where it makes the most economic sense within a holistic system. This model collapses in a de-globalized system.
Corn consistently generates the greatest output per acre for agricultural goods.
They key to mapping climate change is humidity, not heat. Rising global temperatures will likely make low-humidity areas (deserts) even hotter and drier, while making high-humidity areas (tropics) even wetter and more humid.
In dollar terms, California is the most productive agricultural zone on the planet.
The two most important crops for humanity are the ones facing the greatest danger from climate change: rice because of disruptions to water cycles, and wheat because it’s grown in already dry areas that will get too dry to grow effectively.
Free-range chicken is more expensive per pound than beef, which is why enclosed chicken farms are necessary for low prices. It’s also why America is the only significant chicken exporter.
Bananas are the food with the largest chemical and carbon footprint, and the industry with the highest turnover from death.
It is the magic mix of industrialization and urbanization that makes modernity possible.
The combination of de-globalization breaking down agricultural supply chains and climate change adversely affecting yields in various regions will lead to massive food shortages over the next several decades.