Zeihan predicts end of growth everywhere except North America

[zbigi]

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdp6z2yC2R4

If it's true, it means ERE (not to mention FIRE) outside of NA just got harder. On the other hand, it's potentially good news for the environment, although it's been proven that poorer people care less about environment and thus pollute more.

[loutfard]

Zeitan is a geopolitical analyst, ex-Stratfor. How useful are his predictions about economic growth? How useful are _any_ predictions about economic growth?

> If it's true, it means ERE (not to mention FIRE) outside of NA just got harder.
In that scenario, those still able to run surpluses and buy US shares should be fine, regardless of where they live.

> it's been proven that poorer people care less about environment and thus pollute more.
That sounds like an extremely broad claim. Do you have any source to back it up? Genuinely curious.

[chenda]

Isn't this the guy whose being predicting the collapse of China for decades?

[zbigi]

> If it's true, it means ERE (not to mention FIRE) outside of NA just got harder.
In that scenario, those still able to run surpluses and buy US shares should be fine, regardless of where they live.

Buying US shares comes with currency risk, so is not a great retirement strategy overall IMO. I mean, even if you can get even 1% more growth yoy in US stocks compared to your domestic stocks, if dollar plumets by 30%, the gains will be obliterated. Not to mention, everybody notices that US economy is the last sure thing to bet on, so the SP500 stocks are already strongly overpriced.

> it's been proven that poorer people care less about environment and thus pollute more.
That sounds like an extremely broad claim. Do you have any source to back it up? Genuinely curious.

It's a piece of research often quoted by Jordan Peterson, whichi finds a correlation between country population's environmental concern and GDP per capita. I can't find the link to it. It seems very common sense though - clean environment is a luxury you don't proritize if you don't have enough money for neccessities. Developed countries have a lot of environmental policies, while developing countries are polutting like crazy, since it allows them to catch up economically. On a microscale, people around me who still burn coal tend to be poorer, so the savings from using coal vs something that does not produce smog (like say natgas) are meaningful for them.

[chenda]

It's a piece of research often quoted by Jordan Peterson. It seems very common sense though - clean environment is a luxury you don't proritize if you don't have enough money for neccessities.

It's because rich countries have exported their polluting industries to poorer nations. In terms of CO2 per capita rich countries are far worse offenders if you consider consumption rather than just territorial emissions.

[zbigi]

Isn't this the guy whose being predicting the collapse of China for decades?

ERE's thesis is gradual collape of everything (peak oil and overshoot-style), with US being the last man standing, so it's in line with Peter's predictions. The causes given are different - in Zeihan's case it's people not having enough babies - but, you could try mapping things like overshoot on people wanting to have less babies.

[zbigi]

It's because rich countries have exported their polluting industries to poorer nations. In terms of CO2 per capita rich countries are far worse offenders if you consider consumption rather than just territorial emissions.

Agreed. People mostly care about clean environment around them - they want clean air, clean rivers no toxic stuff in the ground etc. To achieve that, production had to be moved overseas. People care much less about intangibles like CO2 emissions, so there are no policies to tackle that. However, EU is planning to introduce a carbon import tax (" Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism") in 2026, which will mean offshoring some CO2-heavy activities will no longer be beneficial. I'm not sure if it's the will of the people though, or if Brussels lawmakers are trying to slip it past people hoping they won't notice - my understanding is that the new tariffs will be mostly on stuff like steel or concrete, so not things people buy themselves.

Also, interestingly, people who do "moral calculus" on CO2 emissions forget that, in XIX century, it was Brittain who was a major exporter of processed goods (stuff like textiles, chocolate etc.), serving markets around the globe. So, Brittain's CO2 emissions in XIX century did not serve domestic consumption (as is suggested by people who say "you've polluted enough, now allow others to pollute"), but a global one.

[Jean]

not caring about the environment and polluting are too different things.
The worst thing you could do is give people who don't care the mean to pollute.
But if you consume 10 times more than someone else, even carefully, you're quite likely to polute more than him, even if he doesn't care.

[NewBlood]

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I just saw this, posted as a response to Jordan Peterson on twitter:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-vs-gdp

Looks like Jean is right.

[zbigi]

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I just saw this, posted as a response to Jordan Peterson on twitter:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-vs-gdp

Looks like Jean is right.

See my reply to @chenda above. People predominantly care about local, tangible emissions that are immediately ruining their day-to-day lives (it's easy to care if the air is foul or you see dangerous-looking foam on your nearbly lake). CO2 is not that.

[Ego]

The current shift, which is already underway, is reshoring manufacturing. The high-end stuff to the US where energy production has been trending cleaner for a while now. Northern Mexico is already seeing a huge boom. New plants there are less polluting than their Chinese counterparts and the region is the perfect place for solar. Shorter supply chains are also much less polluting, trains vs ships, though many raw materials must still travel a long way.

[ducknald_don]

It's because rich countries have exported their polluting industries to poorer nations. In terms of CO2 per capita rich countries are far worse offenders if you consider consumption rather than just territorial emissions.

My understanding is this effect isn't as large or as long lasting as you might expect (from a UK perspective). One reason is our largest trading partner is Europe, most of our trade is with similarly developed nations rather than poorer ones. Also emissions from manufacturing are dwarfed by those from services, domestic energy and heating and transport.

[chenda]

My understanding is this effect isn't as large or as long lasting as you might expect (from a UK perspective).

I don't know how it splits between first vs third world imports, although there is big difference between territorial emissions per capita vs actual emissions (about 6 tonnes vs 10 tonnes, or 13 tonnes if you count CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases)

But back to the original claim, I think the idea of no economic anywhere but North America seems highly implausible.

[zbigi]

But back to the original claim, I think the idea of no economic anywhere but North America seems highly implausible.

I guess we'll see quite soon. The nice thing about Zeihan's predictions is that they have actual timeline attached to them (China collapse before 2030, low to no growth in Western Europe and SEA starting now etc.).
Speaking of outlandish predictions, there was a journalist guest in Jordan Peterson's podcast about 2 years ago, who predicted that war in Ukraine will start a chain of events leading to 1-1.2 billion people dead around the world by 2025, mostly in third-world countriess (due to famine and it's higher-order consequences - wars, epidemics). There's still around 22 months for that to unravel, but I'm not holding my breath...

In general, such predictions often have the flaw of assuming events will just play out without anyone (notably, governments) attempting to correct them. That's what happened to Zeihan's prediction about Germany's deindustrialization due to Russian gas being cut off (and now, 2 years later and nearing the end of winter, natgas in Europe is no more expensive than before Russian invasion). However, the predicted economic malaise caused by demographics is sort of unique, because there isn't much governments can do about it (the time to act was decades ago). One way to do it would massive work automation, to replace the missing workers, and then taxing company owners and giving that money to people in a form of UBI, so that they can actually consume the produced goods (thus fixing the demand side of economy). But that sounds like a quasi-SciFi scenario.

[conwy]

Alternative perspective: Carlota Perez predicts European-led "smart green growth".

[daylen]

But that sounds like a quasi-SciFi scenario.

I suspect SciFi has increasingly become the norm but we just keep expanding our belief of what is possible. I mean, we created mind reading helmets recently and hardly anyone noticed.

[chenda]

In general, such predictions often have the flaw of assuming events will just play out without anyone (notably, governments) attempting to correct them.

Absolutely. Wealthy countries can fix the demographic problem simply by allowing more immigration (although that often comes at a cost to the poorer countries, whose educated talent gets poached by the rich ones)

The Fall of Civilisation is a good channel for some of the historical context around collapse. The end of Roman Britain: https://youtu.be/glKe9njOB24?si=znmimke5-ljqveCT

[zbigi]

Absolutely. Wealthy countries can fix the demographic problem simply by allowing more immigration (although that often comes at a cost to the poorer countries, whose educated talent gets poached by the rich ones)

Accoring to Zeihan, it's too late for that. He said something to the effect of Germany right now needing to import two million people every year for the next 25 years in order to just be able to maintain their working population (or the ratio of workers to retirees? not sure about that.). In other words, something that's absolutely not feasible, politically or otherwise.

The Fall of Civilisation is a good channel for some of the historical context around collapse. The end of Roman Britain: https://youtu.be/glKe9njOB24?si=znmimke5-ljqveCT

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out. Thanks.

[giskard]

Isn't this the guy whose being predicting the collapse of China for decades?

I found over the years that almost everything he has said has turned out to be wrong.

He's also like the definition of a Washington insider thinktank guy (which is increasingly insulated from reality). So how much of what he says is true, and how much of it is group think propaganda? I think you can figure that out yourself lol.

[Humanofearth]

This guy hasn’t been to India. Keeps getting better and better there. Heard stories of people defecating on the streets but I saw none of that there, I’ve predominantly seen that in NA.