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Products don't grow on trees.

If the fed buys every USD bond in existence ( aka monetize the debt ) - it would lead to a good amount of inflation.

Even brazilian breath oxygen.

What "suffering" has the rest of the world done to brazil ?

Organized labor was extremely problematic for capital since WW2.

The new dealers ( FDR, Truman ) gave organized labor tremendous power because without it the USA would probably have had a big communist party.

They also knew the deflationary period of the 1930s lead to the rise of fascism and nationalism in Europe. So the petty greed of capital was scarified at the altar to maintain peace. They were also willing to sacrifice growth to maintain peace.

We are going through a similar period of deflationary shock, so it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out and ends.

Most likely the source of unrest may not be US but China.

Most websites and their owners on the internet are broke.

Github is flush with cash ( relatively speaking ).

Makes sense why they would go after them ( Microsoft ) , not that it will stick.

You are talking as if these engineers grow on trees outside US borders.

The US is the largest source for this type of engineering, other countries are simply not doing any of it.

The cost of buying a Ferrari is prolly lower than getting a Phd from Stanford on any of those topics.

The fact is companies are not willing to pay for the training etc for it.

There simply is not enough demand at the economic price point for it, or else companies would be spending billions in retraining.

Even I want to own a Rolls Royce and date Katey Perry.

The US is also, essentially, entirely energy self-sufficient, with Canada's help. Something China is nowhere near being. The US could shut off China's access to foreign oil and a lot of coal supply very easily and it would grind up their economy.

China can import as much energy as it wants from Central Asia and Russia, it chooses not to because Saudi oil is cheaper.

China also is not as dependent on fossil fuels, due to extensive rail links between their major cities. Its just convenient to use jet planes, also the CCP actively wants to create a Boeing alternative.

If we do end up in a situation that becomes an existential threat to CCP:

- China would aggressively dump US treasuries.

- China stops exporting rare earths that even the US military depends on.

- China starts importing Iranian crude ( providing navy escort ).

- Chinese nationals are forced to sell their holdings in the US.

All of these things would cause a major financial crisis in the US, the Baby Boomers do not have the stomach for it and would vote Trump right out.

Anyway, you are right, the US doesn't depend on trade.

But 44% of US corporate sales happens overseas. A shutdown of global trade would be quite bad for the Chinese, but it would be worse for the "richest nation on earth".

This is the fundamental mistake China made by keeping its economy so restricted and locked down to foreign companies. Most of the US economy doesn't have a critical dependency on China.

Why should the Chinese open their economy to US companies without getting something big in return ? US firms are not entitled to free access to anything outside their borders.

We know what Facebook, Google can do to a country, it's better for humanity if US companies are not given completely access to every market.

It has a lot to do with the Asian diet, this includes India and Pakistan too.

Most people in those countries do not consume large amount of meat, massively reducing their need for large amount of agricultural land.

Soil fertility is just part of the equation, does not explain Egypt, Pakistan and a multitude of other countries.

What prevents Coinbase to go offshore then ?

So all the money spent on mosquite coil, net , aerosol, skin cream ( while harming your own body ) was worth for nothing ? Nature had a better solution all along.

If we lived in forests mosquitoes won't be a problem, well at least all those activities increased GDP.

Being able to "price" something requires existence of a functional market.

Markets can only exist when contracts can be enforced.

Being able to enforce a contract requires monitoring and ability to issue fines, you also needs appropriate laws.

All of the above does not exist when it comes to ground water harvesting - especially in India and even in a police state like China.

When it comes to your wallet - it doesn't matter if you are a progressive or conservative. You are going to protect your financial interests.

It's a principal as old as Life itself.

Not only that, by expanding the industry - tech has been able to "eat" other industry, due to its inclusiveness.

20 years ago the internet was less than 0.01% of global GDP. Tech will continue eating industries that are structured unfairly.

Why cant everybody just learn Linux ? Why cant microsoft just invest the same amount of money it does for Excel for Linux ?

Are you over or under 30 ?

Normally vision stabilizes at 20-30 of age.

computer work normally does not lead to blindness, I have spoken to a large number of different eye doctors and specialists about it.

Computer work may lead to eye strain but it hasn't shown to have any long term detrimental effect.

Putting supply chain in a single location reduces cost.

Most of it had little to do with China but decisions made by the US corporate sector.

Essentially the US Govt. cannibalized it's middle class to feed the electronic, military and finance sector.

It's hard to deal with voters and labour unions, its much easier to deal with authoritarian regimes when you are a multinational.

Yanis V. has documented this dynamic of globalization quite well in his books.

Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and India are becoming satellite hubs of manufacturing in Asia.

Why do you think US multi. nationals avoid India ? Given it's a parliamentary democracy and has a large english speaking population ? Why did they set up shops in China ?

In India you can have labour strike of 31 million people !

A 2 dollar / day earning India voter has more power over its government than a 30 dollar / day earning Chinese citizen.

They will move to Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand and continue their exploitation there but will avoid India. This just shows how misinformed you are about Asia.

The key change in Asia has been China, who are setting up technology companies in other parts of Asia, including India ( often US stolen IP being shared ).

The main goal here is to get rid of the importance of dollar / yen swap lines. It has caused a lot of problems for trade between Asian countries.

You need to be more specific about "automation".

My kids still need a lot of manual human labor to be educated ( services ).

You still need a lot of manual labor to create roads, bridges and apartments.

People were talking about flying cars 50 years ago, all those flying car investors must be billionares ?

On the ground things haven't progressed much, regardless of how much you would like to believe it.

Cape Town literally ran out of water !

If you mean automation for producing cheap plastic toys for Westerns ? If I was African why should I care about being exploited for white skinned consumers ?

China pulled a fast one, with selling cheap plastic goods to move up the value chain, steal technology and create Huawei.

African countries should do the same. If the US/EU imposes tariffs due to to currency devaluation. Africans should band together and only sell their natural resources in a new currency. Lets see how long the EU/US lasts when the most resource rich continent pulls a King Faisal.

I do not have eye strain.

I have astigmatism - something that is heredity. I use tabs.

My spherical power is normal.

Are you saying anyone without perfect vision should quit coding ?

There's massive cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity. The continent spans countries which are middle income to the lowest in the world. Unity and cohesiveness are difficult regionally, less across the entire continent.

You could replace Africa with India / EU / China / US the same properties exist.

Who created the borders of African countries ?

Most African if asked the question.

"Are you African ?" would answer yes.

So please give African some credit ?

Manufacturing, traditionally the ladder that countries climb to prosperity is being automated at an unprecedented rate.

Hold your smartphone right there. Most of this narrative is driven by media in the West to placate their population, so that they dont form labour union.

Travel anywhere in the world with the labour part of the supply chain. Most manufacturing still requires 100s of million of workers. You just cant see it in the West due to ships bringing it to them.

Humans are cheap - much more than robots. You can keep humans alive in the developing world for 100 dollars / months (its not starving wage for them ). For 100 dollars / month you are getting the most advanced robot any company can build.

Total factor productivity has been declining for a while, regardless of how much automation you bring to the table you cannot solve for human entropy ( death catches up with everyone eventually, even the most advanced human roboticist dies eventually or has to retire ).

Why is it outrageous ?

What solution do you propose then ?

Money is always decoupled from value ( Warren Buffet paraphrased ).

Sometimes people who add negative value like the oil men in the Permian basin get paid 100x then your pip developer.

Screw that, large amount of the surplus generated by technology companies ends up in the hand of land owners instead of stockholders ! let alone the engineers building it - who might be riding on the work of open source volunteers. Its turtle all the way down.

If you are a volunteer, you are forgoing payment and are subjecting yourself to exploitation by others by definition.

Unless you have a mechanism for enforcement you are shit out of luck.

Which country was your exit IP ? was it the US ?

What happens if you route it through servers in Qatar, Thailand or Singapore ?

I am not sure why this is not talked about often enough.

Prior to the 1980s, Japan's economy functioned as a sort of War economy. Companies would spend and invest to gain market share at the cost of margins. share prices were rarely something a company worried about, it was always about product.

This was key to Japan's insane post WW2 success.

Then came the 80s, with it US style shareholder capitalism. and within 10 years Japan's economy collapsed - never to recover.

If you notice, China is following the same exact pattern, running a War economy with a razor focus on market share over profitability. It's what causes great fortunes to be made and lost in China.

Coming back to Boeing, because of the monopolist dynamic here, nothing is going to change. Especially since the people who died were mostly foreign nationals. I doubt even if some unfortunate event like that happens in the EU,NA Boeing would go bankrupt - there would be a lot of noise for a few years, maybe some board members get fired. Too many pension plans and retirement plans depend on Boeing's survival.

No because I said they were different, if a 20 something emigrates, the country they grew up in has spent years educating that child, keeping it healthy, supporting the parents while they bring up the child, then just as the payback should be starting the child leaves.

See this is where we fundamentally disagree.

What if the private sector / government is unable to provide them jobs ?

India adds 1 million new white collar graduates to its workforce every month ! do you think the government would really care if 1 million of them just left ? there would be another 1 million added next month.

In fact the Indian government actively wants to send more young people to every part of the world - latin america, middle east and europe. Since those worker send back forex income.

Most of these young gradates end up working in call centers or their talent get wasted doing other low productivity work. The Indian economy cannot absorb so many graduates.

I've reread my original comment and its clear enough what I said. I've also clarified what I said, so why do you keep ignoring what I have actually said in favor of what you imagine I said?

Your original comment states that India should open its market, you do not have to be an Indian to understand how deeply offensive it might be to people of the subcontinent ( China too ). It's like talking about 'states right' to African americans.

Let me break down the history behind your argument.

- During WW2 the Brits used 'free markets' to argue taking rice from India to Britain during a famine where 3 million people died. They used British guards to protect grannies from civilians dying outside. I have spoken to people who were alive during that famine, how well do you think they will react if you made your argument about opening India to 'rapacious global market'.

- The brits heavily taxed Indian merchant ships, selling of Indian boats - just to keep their seamen and dockworkers in london employed. While Indian workers in Mumbai couldn't sell boats to Indian merchants in their own country !

- When the brits first came to India, India was the textile factory of the world. The arguments the brits make is that their superior 'technology' and 'industrial revolution' caused the collapse of the Indian textile industry. The reality was quite different that what British historian have been pedaling. Firstly, innovation in textile has been happening for 2000 years, there was no reason for India's textile industry to suddenly collapse just when the brits started ruling over India. The height of British colonial horror was cutting off the fingers of 300,000 textile workers.

So Britain's modern success has a lot to do with actions of its rule during 'Empire' ( which need I not remind you existed just one generation ago ).

do you think they'd want to risk sinking it (hows that for a mixed metaphor!) by exposing it to the rapacious global market?

The real 'rape' here was India's inability to protect it's interest.

How long do you think Britain will take to recover if some foreign power cut of the fingers of 300,000 bankers and coders in London ?

India needs tariffs since without it, a large number of its smaller manufacturing operations would collapse.

The best example is agricultural produce, India has high tariffs on foreign agri goods ( especially American ones) , because a country like America can just dump its large agricultural surplus onto India. This would increase rural poverty and increase rural unrest, (families earning 2 dollars / day would earn 0 dollars / day) - something India has been working towards improving.

We already know US has been subsidizing its agri sector for more than 100+ years. 100 years ago India was at the height of its colonial exploitation.

We can also examine Mexico where NAFTA increased Mexican rural poverty, increased inequality and made Mexico dependent on American food production ( something the americans would never tolerate happening to them ).

The price saving on buying American agri produce in India is also not extremely different that buying locally produced food. So its anyway a small subsidy from the well off to the peasant class.

Do you still think India should just abandon its 800 million farmers ? and introduce them to 'rapacious global market' - when their families didn't even have one generation to build equity ?

Also, when India became independent the brits thought India would collapse within 10 years, it's been 70 years and India's economy is the second largest in GDP/PPP. It's sending satellite to space and doing mars mission, and also has lifted the most people out of poverty after China.

So maybe they do not need your advice ? maybe they are doing something right ? The Ministry of Finance in India are not run by idiots, maybe finally the democratically elected government of India is doing what is best for it's people ?

Tariffs, markets and money are just tools and should be slave to national interests. In this particular case, india need to develop its own semiconductor capabilities. If it means stealing IP, tariffs, industrial espionage then so be it.

We can clap at the Brits making ARM chips, but the Indian government won't allow Britain a perpetual monopoly to sell chips in India, especially if it harms it's balance of payment.

Having said that, India normally plays by the rule much more than China due to being a democratic government ( which I think was wrong, India should have done what China did, but that is my personal opinion ) - only exception being pharmaceutical and nuclear weapons in 1990s ( both were existential threats, one to it's trade deficit and ther other to the state itself ).

The only reason why I spent so much energy on this topic is because it always hits my nerve, its deeply offensive to ignore the legacy of colonization in India when discussing free trade. It's like me trivializing north sea fish quota to Brexiteers.

Exporting humans is generally a bad thing for the exporting country (brain drain), exporting goods is generally a good thing. Goods can have tariffs applied, how would that work for humans. Immigration is much more politicized than free trade. 3 reasons why they aren't the same.

Goods are just one part of the overall economy, and an increasing small part of it. A large part of the economy is services that involves humans.

Would you consider there to be a goods drain ? or a petroleum drain ?

Exporting humans is fine if you have a surplus of them, they are just another input like capital, energy and iron. It's not the human that matters, it's the system that is capable of producing them. Your solution of nations restricting movement of its citizen is denying them their right of self determination. Would you rather keep them chained to certain countries against their will ?

Immigration is much more politicised than free trade.

Who said ? its not as charged in many Arab Countries who are much more conservative. You could issue 10 year passport with limited voting rights. There are many types of visas you could issue based on what your society finds acceptable.

So Italians should be apologizing for what the Romans did, and Mongolians for what Mongols did, and don't get me started on the Germans. I'm sure India has it's fair share of dark chapters

Who said anything about an apology ?

India is not some marginalized group in western society that is asking for handout. It's a nuclear state with the second largest standing army in the world.

It does not matter what I think or you think. Your original comment is ignoring what India is.

Imagine for a second if every African country joined and formed a single country, suddenly Africa would have a lot more leverage in trade. They can get things horribly wrong but they can still come out ahead and bully countries like Switzerland. Africa could introduce 100% external tariff while Switzerland could be at 0% and Africa would still come out ahead. If Switzerland went ahead and introduced 100% tariffs their economy would collapse, because Africa in total has so much buying power.

Last year, there were 484 official heat waves across India, up from 21 in 2010.

Does it mean India is unlivable ? What if we changed the headline to USA being unlivable ? how often has CNN published USA being unlivable ?

CNN is responsible for climate change as much as any large oil company, they have always invited climate change denialist on their network.

There is also a undertone to 'India being unlivable' that rubs some people the wrong way. They said the same thing about Africa / India being unlivable for white colonist 300 years ago. So CNN should try to be neutral and informed in their writing - they could have said "North Indian cities like Delhi are becoming unlivable".

Putting all of India in one basket when India has extremely varied climate, make it seem they are much more uninformed.

"Plus free trade is about trade. Freedom of movement is about people. You can be in favour of free trade, and against freedom of movement"

Why ? Humans are a form of "good" so is capital and natural resources. You cant leave 1 out of 4 - the EU single market was created with this in mind. Some countries have excess capital, some have excess labour and some have excess natural resources.

Its awfully convenient for you to leave out the ONE thing that a country like India has a surplus in and leave in the thing India is deficit in.

and we have a minimum wage so they wouldn't be competing on $2 a day anyway.

Says who ? it depends on enforceability, ask any Indian or any Brit who lived through the Empire. Minimum wage is just a form of price control.

Any decent write ups on this? Not something I'm really aware of.

Sure !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglorious_Empire

If you turn back the clock 400 years ago

- The Indian rupee used to be similar to the swizz franc.

- people around the world used to hold on to the rupee since it didn't suffer from rampant inflation which even many european currencies did.

- India was a major exporter of goods to SEAsia, Middle East, Europe and Africa, and imported very little.

- All of it changed when the Brits arrived.

Which comes back to my original point.

You turn forward the clock 100 years and its quite likely every Brit would be singing a different tune, high tariff on Indian semiconductor, Indian medical devices, .... . They already sing a very different tune compared to just 15 years ago with Brexit today. Where are your open markets now ?

Its awfully convenient to sit atop 400 years of plunder and loot and claim fair treatment and 'free market'.

If you have to ask, then the answer is no.

Ideally avoid news about India from CNN,BBC,...

Most of these journalists have never set foot outside of their hotels in Delhi or Mumbai.

Travel 5km outside of urban core and India remains the same as it always has been. It's a tropical country so of course its going to get warm.

What has happened is really awful urban planning with zero account on the laws of thermodynamics. So you have European style urban heat effect from concrete but worse since its India.

The solution is already in the pipeline with insane growth in solar power.

As climate change heats up ( pun intended ) India is not going to be the biggest loser here due to the monsoon. It gets more rainy and the weather stays stable overall.

The most destabilization of weather is going to happen in Russia, EU, Canada, Australia and North America. So please try to fix your own backyard first ( since you guys shat your pants in the first place anyway ).

I am not sure if you a Brit, you sure do sound like one.

You are ignoring 400 years of trade history here.

Britain was known for imposing unfair trade treaty on the rest of the world, ( so called 'unequal treaty' in the case of the China ).

In the case of India, Tata was forbidden from selling steel in india, causing the indian steel industry to collapse.

Same for textile, boats, ... shall I go on ?

If you are so found of free trade, allow indians free visas to travel to the UK ? let's watch most brits try to compete with your 1.4 billion, 2 dollar a day indian labour ?

So there is more nuance then "muh can't sell ARM chips !"

"This is not such a big deal because there are other horrifying things that are an even bigger deal"

If India was Syria, then it would be a bit more horrifying, as even simple rain harvesting wont solve the problem in Syria.

India is filled with problems, let me put it this way, if India was blessed with the amount of freshwater as Canada, India would still misuse it terribly.

Its a good thing there is no petroleum.

The problem here is not rain, or climate change or drought - but politics, corruption and bureaucracy. India needs its own Meji Restoration - some type of shock therapy - or else the suffering will just continue to get worse.

This article makes me question all the other alarmist articles that comes up on HN.

India is not facing a "Water Apocalypse".

Salt water infiltration into groundwater and soil is a harder problem to solve.

Urban/rural India has no system whatsoever to manage water.

The problem is that without some sort of stick, nobody is going to do anything about it and the stick is almost here.

This problem will resolve itself in time, anybody who has been even slightly forward looking would have already invested in water conservation.

Sea Level rise and salt water infiltration in agri land is much more concerning though.