We Need China To Survive
Greetings from my workspace 🤚
I can't tell you how nice it feels to have a desk again. I love the cafe down the road, but my own space beats it hands down. Besides, I'll appreciate the cafe more when I visit now that I'm not there every day :).
Another benefit of getting my space back is that I've already saved myself a heap of money that would have otherwise been spent on coffee and grub. Hey, we're in a recession, or going into one, and we're going to need every bit of savings we can make.
This might not be be as economical as I'm thinking though. Considering that, when winter arrives, I'm going to need to heat my home more, use more electricity and water, I may actually start going to the cafe more often again haha. Let them provide the heat. The energy prices are set to skyrocket here and I'm not looking forward to that. Let's hope we get a stellar October in crypto, as has been the case for many years, and a parabolic November.
Mind you, I'm not optimistic this year will follow the usual pattern, given the macro factors. China, a major player in world economy, is having a terrible time. There is a massive heatwave paralysing a part of that country that isn't even making the news. You may not like the CCP but we really need China to survive this crazy crisis. They also need to not attack Taiwan.
In case you're wondering, that contraption behind me in the first photo is a little hack I put together. It consists of a cheap ring light I purchased at Asda, a cheap overhead phone holder from Amazon and my Logitech C920 webcam mounted with a sawed-off selfie stick I got from PoundLand. It's all pretty cheap, with the exception of the C920, but it does exactly what I want perfectly. It saved be having to spend hundreds of pounds achieving the same thing.
All of these products, without exception, were made in China. Heck, all the products on my desk, including my MacBook and Visio monitor, were made in China! That kinds of puts it in perspective how much we've come to depend on China for everything and how directly we will be affected if the worst was to happen over there. Basically, "over there" is pretty much "over here" now. Globalisation and all.
Peace & Love,
Adé
It seems most of our gadgets are made in China. I wonder if that will change any time soon. They do seem to be getting more belligerent and we don't need another pariah superpower like Russia right now.
I wonder how cafes and other places will survive. If their costs shoot up can they charge £20 for a coffee to cover it? I think a lot of them struggle even now. It doesn't look like the incoming PM will be any use in sorting this out.
Stay well.
I think we've outsourced everything to China that it will take decades to get any kind of manufacturing going in the UK again. People have become used to cheap (and crappy) products and we can't ever match China at churning that stuff out.
You can already get £20 coffee in Harrods haha.
If China goes down, Brazil goes down. We've always been a commodity country. Our historical market cycles follow commodity boom and bursts: sugar, cotton, coffee, gold, etc... and more recently soy bean is the big boom, with China as a leading buyer. The west created the monster, now we gotta feed it.
Yup. And it's a very hungry one.
By the way, Brazil has also been in the league of "second tier economy" countries with China along with Russia and India. The so called "BRIC" countries.😂
And there's that! Our president flew to Russia just before the war to secure our fertilizer trade: about 80% of our fertilizer comes from abroad, 20+% from Russia. That explains our neutrality. During WW2 it was the same.. neutral until the US threw a fuck ton of money in our economy.
Hahaha. Well, your president has to do what's best for Brazilians first, to be fair. It's not your war, so it may be best to sit this one out, especially when there's so much at stake for your economy.
I'd love China to manage its problems and bring them under control, too.
I'm afraid that the stronger China becomes, the more likely it is to assert itself militarily. I've talked with Chinese nationalists online and they're not nice people: they tend to have a big chip on their shoulder and be angry and dogmatic in their way of thinking. I guess very strongly nationalistic people tend to be like that everywhere.
I can imagine. Yes nationalist extremists are never nice people but I believe the Chinese government uses some psychological brain-washing techniques to create these ones with the militant mindset. I read a book about it recently and it's pretty scary actually.
It's absolutely to the advantage of the government to direct all their negative emotions against the outside world. That isn't hard to do because there is some residual bitterness among the Chinese people for what the dominant world powers did to them in the 19th century and the early 20th century when they were weak.
But it is hardly constructive go down this path now.