Note: I have a new post up behind the green door. I’m buy a car, which I hate more than just about anything, so I will be posting about that experience for donors. Given my loathing of car buying, it will be an adventure.
One of the first lessons in economics is that demand drives supply. The more a product or service is desired, the greater the supply of it, barring some artificial constraint on supply. The relationship between supply and demand is expressed in the price for the good or service. A rising price means demand is outpacing supply and a falling price means supply is outpacing demand. If demand falls low enough, supply will disappear as there is no profit to be made in the transaction.
Supply and demand used to be an article of faith in capitalist countries, but it seems that our rulers have abandoned that axiom. Take for example labor markets. They insist that flooding the American labor market with new people from abroad will lift wages and increase employment. All that diversity will cancel out the collapse in demand relative to supply and something will happen. With regards to the labor market, the new article of faith is that unlimited supply drives up demand somehow.
Now, a lot of people think this new universal truth about the labor markets is just a trick to fool people into voting away their inheritance. Collusion between the cheap labor lobby and the cheap voter lobby has resulted in this weird libertarian argument that the old axioms about supply and demand do not apply to labor markets. That way heritage Americans will not resist the flood of foreigners into their country. That could be true, but it is not an isolated example of this new economic law.
You may have noticed that the car makers are making a big splash by announcing they will abandon the internal combustion engine within the next decade or so. Jaguar is the latest car maker to say they will stop making normal cars within the decade. They say they will be fully electric by 2025, which is not far off. Other carmakers have been less aggressive in their target date, but the general consensus is that all of them will be electric-only within the next decade.
The question no one asks is why? The embrace of electric cars has been tepid in the United States and Europe. They are an interesting experiment. If you are the sort that likes owning a novelty product, then buying a Tesla is an option. The government literally pays you to buy one, so there is that. Even so, the demand has not been great, because there is not great need for electric cars. For most people, a car is a tool and the current internal combustion models do the job perfectly well.
Then there is the fact that it is a terribly impractical thing to own at this time, as there are few charging stations and charging takes too long. More than half of US drivers cannot have a charging station at home, because they live in a rental unit. Many homeowners cannot have one because of the cost or their homes are not capable of having one installed. Then there is the power grid. Estimates range from $4 to $10 trillion to upgrade the power grid for electric cars.
This is of no concern to our rulers. They are sure that if they crank up the supply side the demand side will do something and then something else will happen and before long the roads are full of electric cars. Now, some will claim that these announcements are just like Soviet five-year plans. They are not realistic targets and the people behind them have no intention of doing what they claim. In other words, they still accept the laws of supply and demand, they just like lying.
Maybe that is true. The fake meat business, on the other hand, suggests they really believe the new economic model. Five years ago, the number of people walking around demanding a burger made from beetles that tasted just like a burger was zero. We have vegans and vegetarians, for sure, but we also have schizophrenics and manic depressives too. Mentally ill people are a part of the human condition. Normal people want to eat a balanced diet that includes meat.
Despite zero demand for meat made from grass and insects, the “Impossible Meat” racket is picking up steam. The billionaires are getting in on the racket and the Davos crowd is telling politicians it is the future. In fairness, the fake meat is not revolting, but that is not the threshold. Cat food does not taste terrible under the right conditions, but people do not want to eat that either. Fake meat is the e-book of the food business, in that it is a solution is search of a problem that was solved long ago.
These are some big recent examples, but they are part of a general trend in which the overclass abandons the laws of supply and demand. Given that market capitalism starts with supply and demand, it may be that we are now post-market societies. We are becoming something like a high-tech version of the palace economy. This was a common way to distribute goods in the Bronze Age. Given that the managerial class has a distinctive Bronze Age quality, it makes perfect sense.
On the other hand, supply driven economics has a poor history. In the 1970’s the great and the good pulled out all the stops to impose the metric system on America, but it was a complete failure. No demand meant no acceptance. The same is true of soccer and women’s sports. For half a century the great and good have been pushing these on Americans, but they remain fringe interests. Those iron laws of supply and demand, like reality itself, are resistant to wishful thinking.
The other side of this is that the people pushing these fads know this and believe they can warp reality to their will, or they are lying. Jaguar marketing is probably packed to the gills with the sort of people who live in whites-only neighborhoods, but demand the company bring in Robin DiAngelo to lecture them about their privilege. Fake meat and electric cars are just the latest boutique moral signifiers. Another turn of the wheel and some other fad will fill this role.
Of course, this raises an important question. Is it better to be ruled by maniacs who think reality is an optical illusion or is it better to be ruled by a class of sociopaths willing to lie about everything? From a moral perspective, the former is worse because they really believe in their cause. There is no reasoning with a fanatic. On the other hand, can you reason with a pathological liar? How can you know? These questions suggest that the real supply problem is at the top.
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“Five years ago, the number of people walking around demanding a burger made from beetles that tasted just like a burger was zero. “
Ah, Zman! You’re sense of humor doesn’t hurt your message one bit, but may be the tiny nudge that gets people over the edge to this side!
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With cars it seems they want to start all over again as it was in the early 20th century. The infrastructure will have to be redone on a massive scale just like roads and gas stations were back then. A solution in search of a problem and with electric cars many problems. Total cost of use to start but also the numerous problems everyone here surely knows.
Who knows with all these great tech prognosticaters that maybe some other alternative or major revision will come along in the near future. Also as an aside, Bill Gates really does want us to eat shit sandwiches. Read about this psychotic’s foray working with feces.
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Yeah, as usual all the White countries have to fully embrace a bug/plant based diet or else. My contempt for these people knows no bounds.
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Bill Gates is an enemy of the American people and should be treated as such. His latest comments are about forcing people only in the developed world to eat fake beef to “save the planet.”
My theory on the electric cars is that it will be forced and that it being impractical and too expensive for the average person to own is a feature and not a bug for elites. They want to force us to use public transportation and ride sharing services while they still go wherever they want in their driverless, electric cars. They don’t plan on greatly increasing the supply of electricity, they plan on greatly lowering demand.
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“This is of no concern to our rulers. They are sure that if they crank up the supply side the demand side will do something and then something else will happen and before long the roads are full of electric cars. ”
Let’s be honest, how many people screamed for touchscreen devices and for social media before year 2000. Plebs(like animals) eat whatever the oligarchs feed them, meaning their philosophy has worked so far.
“Despite zero demand for meat made from grass and insects, the “Impossible Meat” racket is picking up steam. The billionaires are getting in on the racket and the Davos crowd is telling politicians it is the future. In fairness, the fake meat is not revolting, but that is not the threshold.”
All media has to do is have Gates claim Covid spreads through farm animals, 24 hours later the government is deploying veterinarians to kill the livestock all over the western world.(for our own good ofc)
Luckily, Gates will be available to sell us his synthetic meat, but only after we take his vaccine ofc.
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“All media has to do is have Gates claim Covid spreads through farm animals, 24 hours later the government is deploying veterinarians to kill the livestock all over the western world.(for our own good ofc)”
Please, stop! This extremely realistic scenario is too much to bear!
Legions of veterinarians would then be elevated to hero/military veteran status, while dissenting farmers–livelihoods destroyed over a scam– would be vilified and spit on by coastal elite and liberal plebe alike.
Just thinking about having to endure yet another sanctimonious selfie overload of Becky “Vets” is enough to make me wanna bash my head through a plate-glass window.
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People didn’t scream for touchscreen devices and social media before 2000 because they didn’t exist. They are an example of the product creating the market which is still S & D. One can’t clamor for an item not yet either created or manufactured but once created how many people now don’t have those things?
I have never seen libertarians argue that supply and demand don’t apply to labor market.
I have. Sorry no link but as I recall it goes something like “a human being is not a widget”, or “human labor by definition is always additive (makes GDP number bigger)”.
Please find a link. I would love to see a libertarian ague that.
The last line is funny but…maybe there’s a problem with demand, too. This will get interesting in the food realm because the meat producers and suppliers have quite a bit of political juice, too, and the Black Market will be lit AF.
There is definitely demand for elites on our side of the divide, while there is almost no, or low quality supply.
We have a decided over supply of maniacs and pathological liars. Demand for the opposite should be rising.
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Also, re electric cars, they actually are more reliable and technologically sound. As pointed out earlier, the problem will be the mass infrastructure revision coupled with an inadequate electrical supply. The last may be a feature and not a big (burger).
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“Also, re electric cars, they actually are more reliable and technologically sound.”
Perhaps but they’re no F’in fun.
I don’t think you can discount the possibility that the motives behind the push for electric vehicles are overtly sinister. Electric vehicles are overly expensive, unreliable and incapable of going long distances. That’s exactly the kind of transportation the ruling class wants you to have to rely on. If you’re a deplorable who can’t afford transportation, you’re just not deserving of it. You can use public transportation if you’re deemed “essential” in times of perpetual pandemic. And even if you can afford a car, the ruling class doesn’t want you to get the idea you can just drive wherever you want whenever you want no matter how distant your destination. They want you perpetually monitored and connected to electrical grids so you’re easy to monitor and track. I’m sure the EV’s will be packed to the gills with a variety of kill switches too so they can conveniently and remotely disable your electronics if need be. Laws of supply and demand won’t hold because there will shortly be no other choice than the government-mandated electric car. I assume that illegal aliens will still be permitted to drive around freely in unlicensed and unregistered transportation just as they are today, but a U.S. citizen will be out of luck on that score.
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It’s not car companies. The UK passed a law banning the sale of new combustion engine vehicles by 2030.
Now, will that actually happen? Who knows. But they’re going to try.
Fake meat is the e-book of the food business, in that it is a solution is search of a problem that was solved long ago.
Hold on there, ebooks are awesome. You can store thousands of books on a small slab of plastic, and the battery lasts 5-10 books if you don’t turn on the backlight. It is lighter than a book and you can hold the book and turn the pages using one hand.
I was a paper snob myself until someone practically forced an ebook on me; a fanatic convert after only days of use. Sure, there are a few downsides but for text-only books, it’s awesomeness all the way down.
Be advised though, that pirating books, while easy and quick, is very illegal, even from sites that are not blocked or ridden by suspect files, like Library Genesis, so do not be tempted by the near-inexhausible number of titles available for free, including books blacklisted by mainstream distributors.
Sorry bad link. This one is the site you should avoid at all costs.
I see what you did there Felix. Concerning Zs paywall article on car shopping; I once bought a xc90 volvo from cosco. Best experience car buying i have had.
Same here. Used to travel a lot and usually have 3-4 books going at a time. The Kindle is handy. If want to keep permanently in the library will order a paper copy.
I just want to say that I hate this country. That is all.
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Me too. That is all, carry on.
All of this ridiculousness, be it glorified golf carts that transform a normal cross-country trip into a pioneer-like, multi-week slog or fake meat made from grass clippings and bug throaxes, is part of their master plan to take away the luxuries that have filtered down to the dirt people and make us suffer for Climate Change and white privilege.
It offends Bill Gates and the other plutocrats that we have affordable luxury cars, big trucks and suburban homes that would’ve been mansions 30 or 40 years ago and steaks available at every grocery store.
The Ruling Class wants us immobile and crammed together into diverse cities riddled with crime. They don’t want us to have freedom of movement (see the electric car that can only go 200 miles or so on a charge that takes all damned day). Electric cars, since they’re updated automatically, can also be shut down to render a population completely immobile.
They want us eating soylent green because Climate Change, which my co-workers in Texas are definitely not feeling in the grip of a massive electric outage.
Before I bugged out to the mountains, I had a suburban neighbor who had a Tesla. In conversations with him, he was doing good to get to downtown and back without running out of juice, even with a charge at the office. He said it can go 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, but what’s the point of that when you will barely have enough charge to get back home after a trip to the drag strip? And it’s soulless. When I floor my Bimmer, I hear the roar of its 8 cylinders as the automatic snaps off shifts with rifle-bolt precision.
What happens when you run out of power in an electric car? It’s not like a normal car where you get a gas can and huff it to a gas station. What happens when there is a Texas-style ice storm that knocks out power for weeks or a hurricane or a tornado? Too bad, our rulers say.
Cars are stupid these days, with all of this “safety” gimcrackery that requires you to pay $500 to have the cameras realigned when you get a new windshield and gadgets galore that really don’t enhance the driving experience. They’re designed to protect the idiots who do anything behind the wheel but drive, such as diddle on their phones.
To save precious gasoline, most cars now have a system that turns off the engine at a stop and hurriedly cranks it back up when you touch the gas. To deactivate it, you have to remember to do it every time you start the car. It’s intrusive and annoying.
I bought a 5-series BMW off lease years ago for cash and even though I like the way it drives, the do-dads annoy me to no end. I bought an old Prius as a commuter car and the hybrid system works very unobtrusively.
As I alluded to yesterday Portland is a test case for everything in this post. 30 years ago it was a normal, even desirable, place to live. Today it has given over to the Sustainability Unicorn Corps and has, consequently, become the city that doesn’t work. Replacing parking spaces with “natural” storm water swales in combination with high density housing mandated to have no off street parking is a prime example of the pie in the sky thinking of the oh so enlightened control freaks who presume to run this place. It doesn’t improve anyone’s quality of life, it just creates more angry people fruitlessly circling an ever expanding range of blocks so they can find a place to leave their car before losing their dinner reservation.
This arrangement will never work in a place like Portland because it takes too long with too many transfers to go anywhere. And one still always needs a car to, at the very least, drive to the terminal. Now that the geniuses in charge have turned downtown into a filthy, dangerous, shithole that’s not even a reasonable option for non-car living.
All the while many (including me) are heading into day 6 with no power. Mainly because the Agenda 21 freaks are too busy plotting how to get people out of their single family homes and into rabbit warrens to organize a maintenance system to trim the huge trees that hang around feeder lines and inevitably take them, and anything else in the vacinity, down when we get a not all that rare ice storm.
A society which ignores what needs to be done to keep it running smoothly to play at some virtue fantasy is not one that will last, ironically, given the banner these works fly under.