I don't put too much trust on these indicators because every recession is different and happens for different reasons, which are clear only when it happens. If there was a way to predict recessions precisely, they won't happen at all.

Wrong. People who use crypto as a casino - that is, "invest" into it or "trade" it - are a numerical majority but they aren't those who make actual money there. Actual money is made by those who use it for:

- Tool/facilitation of "brick and mortar" crime, as well as some cybercrime (moving drug money across borders, way to pay ransom in a way difficult to track, etc).

- Tool for scams.

- Hacks, including (but not limited to), on-chain hacks.

I know a lot of people who made 9-digit sums in crypto. None of them invested or traded coins (none were from the 'crime' category either). Most typical kind of people are those who did hard-core (hundreds of thousands of accounts) sybil attacks on ICOs and launchpads in their heyday in 2017-2021. So it was scripting/scraping/cloud deployments using residential proxies/buying passport scans on darknets.

Also those who ran Solana nodes from massive sybils too (up to 200 people - it's 1 node per person so one has to have many persons). While that probably qualifies as speculation/"trading" Solana, servers being little but a booster, so in part it was "casino".

What is the "company itself" if not its owners (private equity company that is)? Everything else is just an asset of it. If they see a way to maximise profit by draining the company that's better than any other one, why not? After all if company is then simply liquidated, it frees up market opportunity for new entrants.

This is the best thing we can wish for. These low-tech, mass-slaughter conflicts put Russians at severe disadvantage because of their low birth rates. A good "sink" for baddies where they disappear without a trace.

I personally do not wish for this. Per the article they are committing these atrocities indiscriminately. African civilians are people, too.

But this is a rare case where Russians are put into a fight in a situation where they are deprived of their only advantage: low value put on a human life in Russia both for cultural reasons (it's a political, and thus cultural, descendant of the steppe nomads of the Golden Horde) and economic ones too (petrostate does not need too many people and is not dependent on consumption of the masses for its economic survival). In Africa, they face enemy where value of a human life is even lower and unlike in Russia, they can actually sustain this approach due to their insane birth rate.

It feels like the cry of a yellow cab company operator after Uber came to the town

I think Russia running out of money may be more practical than them running out of people.

In a way yes. Because running out of money will mean running out of people faster as they will use cheaper simpler tech that increases their casualty rate.

Let's face it: Russia can't stop, their whole society is war-oriented and stopping means catastrophe even if they stop by winning.

Russia as a whole would be fine stopping. Putin less so. Maybe they'll get rid of him one day?

Not really. Except Moscow and St. Pete and a few oil-rich boomtowns, the rest of Russia never enjoyed living standards as high as today that only exist because of war economy jobs, war-induced worker shortage in the private sector, and money sent back home by those fighting at the frontline. Even industries far away from this domain, win: coder pay is amazing because there's acute shortage just because too many of them emigrated being afraid of conscription.

Even more importantly, everyday Russian, living in a petrostate economy, always felt redundant and useless because he knew Putin doesn't need him: he's little but an extra mouth to feed, wholly dependent on Putin's kindness. In the last 4 years, for the first time ever, Putin needs everyday little guy because war isn't going to win itself and just Chechens are not enough. They are legitimately afraid of being pushed back into irrelevance if the war ever ends. So are naturally interested in continuing regardless of how well it goes.

Russia did ok before the 2022 invasion. I'm kind of surprised Russians don't have another revolution and join the modern world. I mean I watch things like https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1996684184010870831 about how they are treated and wonder how they put up with it.

But these shouldn't be in contradiction. Oil and gas will end when they will be unprofitable, priced out by much cheaper renewables. Of course this will result in more and cheaper stuff and energy, boost economic growth rates not suppress them.

It's hard to compete with something that is allowed to externalize the majority of its costs.

Well, regardless of what government does, renewables will eventually price out oil and gas. And the government and the megacorps will be on their side because that way they will be making more money. Not before.

No one is trying to limit renewables just for the sake of it. They are trying to do so because so far renewables don't allow to make much money while oil and gas does. There won't be any reason for the powers that be, to resist them once this situation reverses.

Indeed the very foundational idea of Republican system ("no titles of nobility") makes this inevitable. It doesn't happen on similar scale in Europe simply because our stocks are shit and can't be profited much in any case, politicians just make money on bribes and kickbacks.

Extremely weird take. I can see why this system tends towards this kind of corruption but what do titles do except make the system even more profoundly corrupt?

Because people with titles of nobility were forbidden from participating in business at the risk of losing their titles; projecting to modern era, they'd be also forbidden from owning stocks at all. They must derive their means of existence from land rents and public/military service. Pretext was that engaging in commerce or business was "dishonourable" and below their status, in practice, it was a useful tool to avoid conflict of interest.

To think of it, there's something tempting in physically separating owning class from ruling class, isn't it?

> people with titles of nobility were forbidden from participating in business at the risk of losing their titles

I had never heard of this so I tried to look into it, here's a starting point for anyone else curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rogeance. It seems like this was true in some countries, like France, but not all, and where they did exist these restrictions were beginning to fall in the 18th century.

Projecting to the modern era, it seems obvious that a societal ruling class would not voluntarily block themselves from the center of power and make themselves irrelevant. Commercial restrictions made sense to them when the main mechanism of gaining power was acquiring and holding land, but they stopped restricting themselves once commercial activities became more important.

> it was a useful tool to avoid conflict of interest

I couldn't find any evidence for this and I find it pretty hard to believe. I don't even think the concept of "avoiding conflicts of interest" would make sense to historic nobility. Their interest was ruling over others, what would be the conflict in amassing wealth to expand their rule?

Edit: For a literal example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose_Duchy_Organic. This is a fairly successful company created by King Charles when he was the Duke of Cornwall, and is still owned by the current Duke. And obviously modern British royalty do own stocks, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_..., and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_.... These are immense conflicts of interest that nobody seems to be in a hurry to resolve.

I find all this rather flaccid, frankly. While the advent of capitalism provided an avenue for non-titled people to become wealthy, a lot of titled people also took that opportunity and I would guess a lot of generational wealth today still finds its ultimate source in entitled people.

In any case, I doubt society could successfully enforce this behavior in a contemporary context.

Indeed: promote electric cars: it's fine if they will be massive, if consumers love them, why force them to do otherwise? Tax ICE powered SUVs and trucks heavily but spare electric ones and give people one more incentive to switch.

Larger vehicles tend to have reduced visibility which can cause accidents, tend to more seriously injure pedestrians in accidents, and tend to wear down roads faster. If a government is taxing/restricting ICE vehicles to account for their negative externalities, then the same should be done for all larger vehicles, including large EVs.

The smaller the EV, the more efficient it becomes because it takes less battery, which means it's hauling less etc.

What we need is to normalise small about-town cars for groceries, commuting, and dropping off kids. Something like an e-Citroen.

For long-haul you still want ICE with hybrid.

Sounds like nice car marketing: sell everyone two cars instead of one.

Efficiency doesn't matter much with EVs: only ~28% of power is produced with fossil fuels in EU and that's expected to further halve by 2030.

There's enough fast chargers here in EU to travel any distance with an EV.

> sell everyone two cars instead of one

Not necessarily. You could rent a car for long-distance travel.

Renting a car has become an absolute nightmare recently. They overbook and chances are good that when you go to pick up the car they won't have one, or at least not the model you reserved. This is especially so at times of high travel demand like holidays.

Crossing my fingers that Aptera ships.

Living in a big city none of my practical problems with cars have that much to do with combustion really. I'm sure I would appreciate a lower particulate level or whatever but it's not the case that "at least it was electric" is consolation when another of my neighbors' children is killed in traffic.

The particulates from tires are pretty bad and EVs' weight makes their generation of particulates much worse.

So it's November 2027, almost another 2 years? Of course, volumes imported now are mostly symbolic, around 1/10 of pre-war maximums, but still...