If anyone knew who to resurrect some of these developing countries, it would have already happened.
Countries can and have turned themselves around in short spaces of time. In the 1950s, Singapore was an impoverished, crime ridden, hell hole. 30 years later it was transformed into a ultra clean, safe first world state. This was achieved with a lot of heavy handed government and central planning mixed with some business friendly policies
China has essentially copied the Singaporean model and did the same on a much bigger scale. Deng Xiaoping was enamoured by Singapore and sent 1000s of technocrats there to study every aspect of it.
A number of African countries are seeking to emulate Singapore, notably Rwanda, with some success.
Kagame has been drawing parallels between the two countries for years. He refers to Rwanda as the “Singapore of Africa.” He cultivates Singaporean expertise, on everything from urban planning to the police. And he has even managed to replicate the Singaporean emphasis on tidiness. First-time visitors to Kigali, the capital, are invariably surprised by the spotless roads, the carefully ordered traffic, and the conspicuous absence of trash. While Kagame hasn’t gone so far as to follow Lee’s bans on spitting or chewing gum, he has outlawed plastic bags.
I would suggest Singapore grew due to selection bias. It did not grow by taking a fixed population and applying some standards, it created standards and selected talented individuals to enter.
This is a chicken or the egg question. Are countries developed because the people who reside there or are the people developed because the standards are created? Would (insert developing country) become developed if only populated with (insert people with first world skills) or does the country create the people with first world skill? I posit that if the most ambitious Americans were given an opportunity to settle in another area that is dilapidated (pre-WWII Singapore) it would eventually develop. But adding all the rules and regulations of the Western world on (insert developing country) would have no long-term impact.
@WFJ - I would largely agree. Singapore is basically run by highly paid experts who engineered its third-to-first world journey and micromanage the economy and society. They have largely avoided ideological thinking and have focused on what works.
“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” ― Lee Kuan Yew
This post is coming from the perspective of a young person who believes the collapse of civilization is near(ish). While I know this is a highly individual question, I was wondering what your thoughts were on investments that will be preserved/grow in a crisis scenario. I am considering this less from the "prepper" approach of storing food, medical supplies, etc. and more from the investor's angle; somewhere to put my future savings that would not be ruined by a large scale disaster or something relatively smaller like a stock market crash.
“Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, than lost in the corrections themselves.” Peter Lynch.
Probably if there is a total collapse of civilization it won't matter what you're invested in as it will likely become useless in that situation. Unless you know what is going to cause it and where in advance.
I am an idiot when it comes to investing and I don't particularly like Peter Zeihan but in the last minute of his most recent video he said a few things I hadn't heard elsewhere and wondered what those you who think about this kind of stuff more than I do think about it. Seems like it could have serious future implications.
ETA: For those who cannot watch, he says that the US can legally shut off oil exports, creating one global and one local (US) energy market where the price in the US market remains artificially low and the world price is much higher.
1. Not all crude is the same (sweet, sour, light, heavy), which means not all oil fields and refineries have the same capability. Crude is NOT truly fungible, something to keep in mind when people start talking about substituting supply from different producers.
3. The U.S. administration has multiple options other than an export ban, like doing another Strategic Petroleum Reserve release, relaxing restrictions on permits and drilling, and gas stimulus checks (the latter has been implemented by some European governments)
Last edited by white belt on Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
3. The U.S. administration has multiple options other than an export ban, like doing another Strategic Patroleum Reserve release, relaxing restrictions on permits and drilling, and gas stimulus checks (the latter has been implemented by some European governments)
Alaska has issued these before (2006 IIRC?) and is set to do so again this year, if the bill goes through (it appears it will). $1300 for each Alaskan resident on top of the annual Permanent Fund Dividend checks.
Thanks whitebelt. It seems awfully strange to me that we've worked so hard to create these worldwide markets and suddenly we would throw it out the window then things get a little tough.
First, guns, ammo, oil, and skills will be great for trading. Friends are essential. After that, several passports, residence in multiple countries in different continents, deep tech and off the grid skills, self custodied btc with a private node running through tor and linked to starlink, private plane with skills to fly ideally, farms in several countries.
First, guns, ammo, oil, and skills will be great for trading. Friends are essential. After that, several passports, residence in multiple countries in different continents, deep tech and off the grid skills, self custodied btc with a private node running through tor and linked to starlink, private plane with skills to fly ideally, farms in several countries.
My main problem with such approaches (also preppers etc.) is that it basically requires too much investment, to the point of being self-defeating. You basically need to sacrifice a ton of your valueable time and energy to protect your life (aka time and energy) from possible future threats. The math doesn't work on anything beyond the simple preparations, and that's probably why only people who are mostly doing it for other than pragmatic reasons (basically hobby preppers) are seriously into it.
My main problem with such approaches (also preppers etc.) is that it basically requires too much investment, to the point of being self-defeating. You basically need to sacrifice a ton of your valueable time and energy to protect your life (aka time and energy) from possible future threats.
It kinda depends whether you think of such measures as a "reserve" that's stored away in the basement only to be used in an emergency in which case I agree that it's too expensive OR you integrate these measures to make your normal life more robust and/or resilient.
For example, there's a difference between using the extra passport as "just in case" and going to that country regularly and setting up homeotelic goals with that activity. Instead of storing 365 days of freeze dried peas ... eat in a way that uses stored staples. Take parts of your home off grid, e.g. do all your cooking outside. Use a mesh grid as a hobby. Etc.
I don't think this thread/post thing has been posted here before, but I came across it awhile ago and there is a whole lot of wisdom here, relevant to this particular thread: https://lulz.com/surviving-a-year-of-sh ... um-thread/
I don't think this thread/post thing has been posted here before, but I came across it awhile ago and there is a whole lot of wisdom here, relevant to this particular thread: https://lulz.com/surviving-a-year-of-sh ... um-thread/
Interesting if depressing read.
The fable of the cat and the fox springs to mind here. Get very good at relocating quickly seems to be the easiest option.
Cut off oil = This is a pipe dream and will be like cutting of your face to spite your face. Oil and the refining industry is extremely complex, expensive and rigid. I've lived in a few different refining areas and have experienced booms and busts at different times due to small change in policies of one type of energy (see tanker decarbonization for a rule that always has unintended consequences). The systems can't adjust and must wait for policies to change again to recoup costs/losses. There is also a dearth of capable people to complete many tasks associated with the engineering and processing of energy. This is a terrible idea that will result in terrible outcomes for everyone along the supply chain (if you eat food that requires pesticides, fertilizer and transportation you will starve in a world of US only energy).
"Surviving" articles are like asking Steve Ballmer (right college roommate) Mark Cuban (greater fool to sell eventually worthless company) or other lucky individual "How did you do it?" and answer, "I was just lucky as 1,000's of other people did the same thing and are poor". In the case of survival, only those who survive healthy live to tell the stories, others are dead or crippled all did the same thing. Survivorship bias rears its ugly head once again.
The best way to "prepare for the end" is to do everything in your power to avoid the outcome and contribute to the development of society.
"Surviving" articles are like asking Steve Ballmer (right college roommate) Mark Cuban (greater fool to sell eventually worthless company) or other lucky individual "How did you do it?" and answer, "I was just lucky as 1,000's of other people did the same thing and are poor". In the case of survival, only those who survive healthy live to tell the stories, others are dead or crippled all did the same thing. Survivorship bias rears its ugly head once again.
And yet ... if you look at N>2 "surviving" articles and recognize commonalities in the methods of the survivors maybe a statistical signal can be detected under some confidence interval. A problem with traditional statistics is that variables are often treated as independent when corrected for. Frequentist statistics does not allow for contingencies beyond A.and.B, A.given.B, or A.or.B... essentially various Venn overlaps and exclusions between sets of outcomes. There's no way to detect an algorithmic method. It's only possible to test for inputs and outcome in terms of "trait" variables.
To give a better idea of what I'm talking about, consider how it's possible to "hide" an algorithmic approach so it still hides within a Gaussian distribution and thus appear random from a lens of simple statistical tests.
That's a very interesting problem. Lately my thing has been to go through multi-dimensional time series data setting up variables that capture something like "a->b->c happened prior to this point."
Do you know if there is a field where this type of problem is studied and what it is called? Closest I got was survival analysis. Not useful at all in this case.
That's a very interesting problem. Lately my thing has been to go through multi-dimensional time series data setting up variables that capture something like "a->b->c happened prior to this point."
I don't know if there's a field of study for it, but I've constructed decision trees like ID3 on a handmade variable set like that(*). It'll tell you how much information (entropy) is in a given variable. Best advice is to have a "physical explanation" for each "a->b->c" variable. Otherwise it easily turns into an exercise in data dredging ... or the algorithmic equivalent of a conspiracy theory You definitely want to retain some of your [training] data as a control group.
(*) This is used in language processing, like "subject->verb->object", so maybe that's the place to start?
The beauty of this approach is that one has supreme freedom to construct pretty much any variable (which really is a kind of explanation) ... only limited by whether the explanation is "reasonable".
You definitely want to retain some of your [training] data as a control group.