Although the complexity of this situation makes it impossible to make any forecasts, consider: a worst case scenario is much much worse than stagflation. Just wrap your mind around the consequences the merely the two outcomes described above: a fair bit of famine and supply shortfalls, even potentially problems with maintaining some critical infrastructure due to chip scarcity. Some of that productive capacity loss could become permanent due to business failures.
And let us remind youβ¦.so far we are discussing only what the West has done to itself. What happens if Russia goes full Smoot-Hawley and retaliates, or engages in the passive aggressive version, as in no formal pronunciations, just supplies go to friendlies and the West gets chocked down, not 100% but enough to feel like that.
The Democratic Party is in the process of executing a controlled flight into terrain. Too bad that we are along for the ride.
"But understand we have crossed a Rubicon in the last few months that financial institutions and Govts can take money because they do not like that person or their activities."Breaking fundamental trust, much like how the Central banks have done so with Russia's Reserves of late. A currency crisis is now inevitable.
Preaching liberation while sequestering into gated communities is endemic to tech. The βpersonalβ computer was going to free us from the grip of IBMβs dominance in mainframes, but it fell under the even greater control of Microsoft. Apple claimed to be a revolutionary fighting Big Brother, but it erected the greatest tollbooth for creativity in history (the App Store). βInformation wants to be freeβ was the rallying cry of earlier web company managements trying to convince fawning, idiotic content companies to exchange their content for pennies on the dollar.
The wheel turns once again, and the loudest barker at the carnival is venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, which has raised a $2.2 billion crypto fund and is deploying its general partners across the internet as missionaries. One partner preaches decentralization to his nearly 800,000 Twitter followers, and Marc Andreesen (the founder) blocks people who speak ill of web3 (including Jack) β he makes cool memes about it. BTW, I donβt think thereβs anything wrong w/blocking people β¦ itβs your feed.
As @Jack would say: βWords.β Andreesen Horowitz is putting its actual dollars into companies that build centralized, toll-taking platforms (OpenSea and Coinbase are both Andreesen Horowitz portfolio companies) with the middlemen needed to fix all the user-experience issues and trust issues that come with a decentralized system. Meet the new boss β¦ heβs your old boss.