Раньше считалось, что падение рождаемости (fertility rate) удел развитых экономик. Предоставляем женщинам равные права, доступ к образованию, трудоустройству, и на выходе решение проблемы перенаселения. Так оно и было.
Необходимый уровень рождаемости, для поддержания численности населения - 2.1 ребёнка на женщину. Но это в развитых странах, где детская смертность ниже. В беднейших африканских странах этот показатель достигает 7-8 детей.
Уже 20 лет человечество живет в эпоху смартфонов. Кроме прочих очевидных плюсов и минусов, новые демографические исследования отмечают практически универсальное снижение рождаемости в глобальном масштабе. Бедные страны не исключение. Политическое устройство не имеет значения. Рабочая гипотеза, объясняющая данные наблюдения – развитие мобильной связи и смартфонов. Регионы, где пенетрация смартфонов (на душу населения) слабее показывают улучшенную статистику.
Но если копнуть глубже, оказывается, что доминирующая причина провала рождаемости – уменьшение образования пар/семей. Если сфокусироваться на этом сегменте, то там рождаемость соответствует долгоиграющим трендам в конкретном регионе. Эти явления, более подробно раскрыл Патрик в очередном видео.
Озвученная версия кажется правдоподобной. Тем более что она косвенно пересекается с другими исследованиями, отмечающими уменьшение сексуальной и социальной активности среди зумеров (рожденные в 1997-2012 годах).
Предположу, что распространение и внедрение ИИ ещё больше усилит данный тренд. Поколения с деградирующими социальными навыками будут тяготеть к использованию ИИ. Зачем напрягать себя трудностями живого общения, если можно попросить робота о помощи. Удобно, просто и легко. Намёки на это видны уже сегодня.
Так что господа автократы, хотите прибавки населения? Выключайте мобильную связь, а ещё лучше электричество и будет вам счастье.
Demographics is destiny
Спустя 11 лет они озвучили вердикт. Ложка дорога к обеду, господа.
https://www.echr.coe.int/w/judgment-concerning-ukraine-2
The disappointment with the left gave us Trump 2.0. Right or wrong it's irrelevant now. The dissatisfaction, real and imaginary, could pale in comparison with what the current administration has in store. Many are clueless and find refuge in the throw-everthing-at-the-wall tactics, where some residue is destined to be net positive. Rampant cherry-picking and confirmation bias hide the unpleasantries.
Those applauding the cancelation of grants for research on menstrual cycles in transgender men are missing the boat on devastating cuts to NIH and other national labs, which wasn't properly funded, to begin with. (Bloomberg's article is behind a paywall, but the Odd Lots episode on the subject is free). This might have enormous negative outcomes for decades to come. It's worth remembering that government-sponsored scientific research was instrumental in this country's success story post-WW2.
People cheering up job cuts at the federal government in the name of efficiency are sticking their heads into the sand for what's brewing. I lived through the disintegration of the Soviet economy and witnessed what happens when enough people lose jobs. I'm not suggesting we're anywhere near the scale, but unintended consequences and multi-variable systems are impossible to predict and prepare for.
Many Trump voters, whom I know personally, welcomed and helped Ukrainian refugees under the U4U program, are oblivious to the potential shutting of said Biden-era initiative, with disastrous consequences for people caught in the middle — something which wasn't hard to predict given the anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Yes, we do have problems. Yes, democrats went overboard with lots of idiocies. Yes, we tried slow solutions for the national debt and they failed. However, it feels each passing week results in more instability and more shenanigans. The commander-in-chief is declining to rule out a recession, in case you've missed a hint to that during the State of the Union address. As of this writing, betting markets are pricing the probability of a US recession in 2025 at 37%. I would be a seller at this price.
I hope that people who were not satisfied with the color of their nails won't find both of their hands amputated.
#politics
March 2025
Вчерашнее событие — это домашняя заготовка или экспромт? Пришлось посмотреть всю пресс-конференцию. Манипуляции – территория коротких нарезок.
Отталкиваясь от Бритвы Оккама версию о домашней заготовке, стоит исключить как крайне маловероятную. Жечь вживую больше подходит для амплуа актера. Что он и сделал, аж дым пошел.
Если суммировать, то не очень умный, дерзкий и импульсивный ребёнок был жестко унижен двумя сильными взрослыми мужиками.
Почему не умный?
Ты приехал подписывать соглашение. Несколькими неделями ранее наш министр финансов уже летал к тебе по этому поводу, но что-то пошло не так. Плохой знак. Мы начали переговоры с РФ в качестве посредника. Если ты хочешь мира, то сбавь риторику в сторону врага и перестань публично горланить о своих амбициях. Ладно, ты уже прилетел, значит договоренности были достигнуты. Остались формальности и утряска деталей. Тебя пригласили на публику в Овальный кабинет. Согласие на прессуху, до подписания, не добавила тебе очков. Улыбайся, отвечай на заданные только тебе вопросы, в духе за все хорошее против всего плохого и выражай надежду. Подписывай, благодари и поезжай рассказывать дома о достижениях. Всё. Нет, не всё, твой английский не на том уровне, чтоб общаться в таком формате без переводчика.
Почему дерзкий?
Задал вопрос Вице-Президенту (40:30) в нарушение протокола, перешедший в фамильярность
what kind of diplomacy JD…
A very dense history of programming languages and what to expect.
1. Binary code (1940s-1950s). Instructions were written directly in binary (0s and 1s). Tedious and highly error-prone.
2. Machine code (late 1940s-1950s). Slight improvement to octal or hexadecimal representations.
3. Assembly language (1950s). A major improvement with human-readable mnemonics and symbolic names for memory locations and instructions.
4. High-level languages (late 1950s onward): FORTRAN, COBOL, C, Java, Lisp, and everything we use today.
The first three categories were hardware-dependent. Programmers had to be aware of the specifications of the hardware they were writing code for, but this need mostly disappeared with high-level languages.
The jump to high-level languages was met with performance-related criticism from incumbents. Early compilers were no match for seasoned assembly programmers. But problems were getting bigger and compilers were getting better. Eventually, the domain for assembly languages became a tine one. My wonderful AI helper suggests it's less than 1% today.
Some say we're in similar dynamics today. AI-written code is all the rage lately. This implies that the next programming language will be English. If history is any guide, tools like Copilot will evolve and improve. Potentially to a point where knowledge of the underlying computer science concepts will become irrelevant.
There is fear among programmers. Their skills will be obsolete. I wouldn't be so pessimistic. The responsibilities will probably shift, but with ever-increasing problem space, better tools are naturally required, while somebody is going to apply and operate them.
#history #tech
February 2025
According to this source
MicroStrategy owns 499,096 bitcoins as of Feb. 24, 2025. MicroStrategy states the average purchase price as $62,473.01 USD per bitcoin with a total cost of $27.954 billion USD.
Perhaps pendulum has reached one extreme and will start to swing back. This proposal has a bipartisan support, or so I hear, and should sail through both chambers. Time will tell if this initiative was a watershed moment for a declined US maritime industry.
#AmericanDynamism
Есть два типа людей. Первые призывают подняться сидя на диване. Вторые их игнорируют.
#twotypesofpeople
Стоило гопникам надавать по щам, как попечители поспешили откреститься от них. Или этот глагол не совсем применим к мусульманам? При этом, сами гопники заявляют о применении баллистических ракет против авианосца и других военных кораблей. Палитесь ребята.
#AmericanImperialism
With the benefit of hindsight, one can conclude that "buy election and sell inauguration" worked well this time.
Now that the market is 10% off the all-time high, set less than a month ago, the speed with which said correction took place is worth noting. Over the past 100 years, there were 25-30 instances of 10%+ corrections. Some, but not all, preceded recessions. A 10%+ market correction occurring within just 3 weeks from the market peak would be approximately in the 75-80th percentile in terms of speed, based on historical data. This means a 3-week 10%+ correction is notably faster than average but not extremely rare.
What is different now, as compared to the 2022 slide, is that portfolio diversification did help. Yields went lower. Certain European and Chinese stocks went up. Gold too. Consumer staples and utilities held ground. Overconcentrated portfolios in the tech space got hammered. Looks like cross-sector rotation is behind us.
The biggest risk going forward remains a policy error. Who's buying the dip now?
Happy trading!
#finance
March 2025
Tariffs ON. Tariffs OFF. Then ON again. Then OFF.
It's hard to keep up with this madness.
#politics
Last night I watched the entire State of the Union speech for the first time. What can I say, I'm getting older. The absence of a historical perspective makes it impossible to perform a solid comparison. That said, a few things stood out.
- Vocabulary. It was wider and more natural than the usual spiel in front of cameras. Perhaps members of Congress are held in higher regard than the electorate.
- An excessive number of individuals and their personal stories for all sorts of praises.
- Rebellious gentleman from TX who was asked to leave the chamber.
As the speech progressed though, the number of self-contradictions exceeded my ability to keep count. Below are a few that I had the opportunity to note. Paraphrasing here.
- Make America affordable again while erecting tariffs.
- End unelected bureaucrats running our country while praising Elon.
- Permanent lower taxes (earlier tax cuts are soon to expire) and a balanced federal budget.- Drill baby drill, to get cheaper oil, yet the price has been range bound at $65-80 for more than two years and currently at the lower end of $66. The break-even price is said to be around $55.
- Announcement of TSMC pledging another sizeable investment to build a fab in AZ while trashing the CHIPS act. Yet, acknowledging at the same time that it's not the first investment the said company has made recently, thus implying it was done under the aforementioned legislation, which it was.
- Boasting about most deportations of illegals. A quick fact-checking suggests that during the first month, the current administration deported fewer people than Biden's last year's average.
- Claims of geriatric people receiving social security benefits. This has been refuted here. Some young DOGE fellows need to learn a bit of COBOL and SQL it appears.
- Reclaiming of sovereignty. From whom? I don't recall the US was under the rule of another state. A change in political leadership isn't that.
P - populism.
#politics
March 2025
Кажется Британия и Франция повторят динамику 1956 года. Нет, не в военном смысле, а в дипломатическом.
#politics
Этот эпизод отлично продемонстрировал контраст двух менталитетов. Идеалистического и прагматического. Желающие сами могут наложить на удобные этнические стереотипы.
Идеалист, в борьбе за справедливость и правоту каких результатов добился? Срыва сделки, продолжения войны, жертв и горя.
Прагматик, упираясь на принципы realpolitik, нацелен на результат. Кто там прав или виноват, и в каких пропорциях, сейчас уже не важно. Главная цель – остановить войну.
И ещё, люди, выступающие с позиций демонизации одной из сторон как аргумента против переговоров, забывают два важных исторических прецедента. Рузвельт заключил полноценный альянс со Сталиным, а Никсон пошёл на встречу Мао. Эти два товарища уложили в землю десятки миллионов своих сограждан. Тем не менее, логика событий диктовала пренебрежение моральными аспектами в угоду бОльших целей.
Позволяешь себе оскорбления в адрес врага – подразумеваешь продолжение войны. Хочешь мира – спрячь гордыню и договаривайся отталкиваясь от реальности, а не от своих хотелок.
#politics
The actions of DOGE appear vulgar and destructive to many observers. Let's be frank they are. Young and ambitious libertarians driven by ideals of cut through efficiency slashing funding and people without proper due diligence. In some instances, realizing ginormous mistakes and attempting to rehire the same people, only to learn there is no easy way to broadcast the message. Rampant overreporting of achieved savings is a sad reality. It's a time-honored tradition to overemphasize the achievements of a white knight.
But....
If one believes there is an existential problem one doesn't have the luxury of going slow. We tried it and it mostly failed. In 1993 Clinton attempted the National Performance Review (NPR) / "Reinventing Government". Then under George W. Bush in 2001 the President's Management Agenda (PMA), and in 2002 the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). These attempts couldn't overcome the resistance of vested interests and went nowhere.
Just to remind proponents of the status quo. We've recently crossed the Rubicon by spending more to service our national debt than on our military. Historian Niall Ferguson recently claimed similar dynamic was a cause for empires to fall. The share of federal government spending compared to the GDP is approximately 23% as of 2024. The post-WWII historical average has been around 20% of GDP. This number is somewhat skewed higher by the profligacies of the Great Recession and COVID-19.
I do feel for dismissed government workers, but those of us in the private sector have always operated under the same possibilities. Lavish severance packages are typically reserved for the top brass of elite financial firms. When a crisis manager takes the helm of a business drastic measures ensue. Sink or swim realities dictate that. Moaning and squeaking always follow. Any resolution will make someone unhappy.
The federal government, which provides services to the general public is not a business driven by profits and efficiency goals alone. However, it cannot grow unchecked either. The Achilles heel of a democracy is that it is almost impossible to eradicate entrenched interests from within, and so the waste and cronyism always grow.
When a firefighter is tasked with putting off a fire he'll break windows, doors, and walls. As concerned as I am with DOGE's tactics I'm willing to extend a firehose to them. Hopefully, the results will be net positive. Time will tell.
#AmericanDynamism
February 2025
В мире 3,400-3,600 коммерческих судов, ходящих под Китайским флагом и 180-200 под Американским. Данные за 2024 год.
#factoftheday
