Russia is the third largest oil producing country, this plan was never going to work because oil is a fungible resource. Sure you can stop buying from Russia and buy from someone else, but that just kicks off a game of musical chairs where everyone is backfilling from someone else and eventually _someone_ is buying from Russia to make everything whole. If Russia was some insignificant player the world could have frozen them out entirely but they simply produce too much oil for the world to absorb the loss of all of it.
Everyone is aware that Russian crude oil will still enter the market through various channels regardless of sanctions. The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.
> The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.
How's that working out? Apparently someone miscalculated.
Be careful of the goal. Sanctions are unlikely to directly bring someone to the bargaining table. Sanctions make is harder to get the things Russia needs to fight way. It will take years to catch up, but Russia has a smaller economy. Russia has mostly stopped using tanks because they can only make a few of them (1-3 per day depending on what source you ask), and they have no ability to make more, sanctions are part of this.
The real question is what if there were none - Russia would have more money and thus have done a lot more damage to Ukraine - but there is no way to measure damage they could have done.
> The point of sanctions is just to slightly reduce Russian government revenue. In combination with other measures this provides some leverage in negotiations over a peace settlement.
The words you apparently missed from what GP wrote are: "slightly reduce" and "some leverage". Nobody said that sanctions end wars or bring about peace negotiations on their own.
The idea is to incessantly put pressure on their economy until it breaks or adapts. At which point you put more pressure until they become the DPRK or Iran.
Right, that would be a good outcome. North Korea and Iran are annoyances but not existential threats and they have minimal capability to project power far outside their borders. The goal should be to cripple and impoverish Russia through a sustained policy of maximum cruelty that includes everything short of kinetic attacks.
And if the world/environment/context of the business didn’t change then the monopolies might last, but because there is change there is room to innovate and outcompete the monopolies.
Yet, if you confiscated (taxed) the entire wealth of the top 400 ($3.2 trillion) that would not even cover an entire year of the U.S. federal budget ($5.5 trillion).
That's a comment that I hate. They could still be taxed an appropriate amount. Why should the majority of the tax burden be on the middle class? We pay a larger percentage of our income in taxes than they ever did.
// Why should the majority of the tax burden be on the middle class?
I think it's a common misconception that the rich don't pay taxes. According to a quick Google (but in line with prior research):
In 2020, the bottom half of taxpayers paid 2.3 percent of all federal individual income taxes. The top 1 percent paid 42.3 percent of all federal income taxes.
First, that quote you found is cherry picked from 2020 which is not representative of most years. [1] The argument is also sneakily abusing the fact that federal taxes are intentionally applied only to income above the poverty level.
Second, it’s well documented that our billionaires pay around 8% (only on their “reported income”, btw, which is often tiny compared to the wealth they have access to. Google says Bezos pays more like 1% on the money he makes when you account for all of it.) 8% is obviously far far lower than our middle and upper middle classes pay. The millionaires might pay taxes in proportions similar to the middle class, but the super rich do not. The sources on this are plentiful and easy to find.
This makes me wonder about the free rider problem. If a hostile force invades the country, what do you do with the people that are delinquent on their "Military Defense" subscription?
That's not true. Most countries will want their share of your property of you try to move out, and some like US will try to tax you regardless of where you live.
You’re contradicting your own argument from above, and moving the goal posts. Sure the US will tax if you if you try to keep citizenship. If you wanted to do what you proposed, which is not pay for US services and not live there, then you should actually commit to moving out, right? Taxing your land on the way out is just a byproduct of living there, and happens weather or not you stay or leave. That’s a one time thing, and once you leave it’s done.
> Most countries will want their share of your property of you try to move out,
Under your model, what happens if I buy property and default on my military/police payment? Presumably I at least lose the rights to access that property, and I likely also lose rights to the property itself (since I'm no longer paying for its defense).
The standard leftist slogan of "billionaires should not exist" implies that somehow eliminating anyone's ability to accumulate wealth is good for society. The reality is that destroying a few thousand people is cathartic to those who have envy and hatred in their blood, but will not solve any problems of society. I would also argue it will dramatically harm society, as many billionaires accumulated that wealth through building new companies in the private market (and therefore earned their wealth by satisfying more needs of consumers more efficiently), and are therefore far more competent stewards of wealth than our spendthrift and indebted governments.
They're also extremely local, so it can be quite hard to scale.
The standard SV "ignore the laws until too big to fail" Uber/Airbnb is just not going to fly. You've never seen enforcement until you've seen the building inspectors crawl up someone's back unpermitted retaining wall (going so far as to take the sheriffs to order a backhoe to knock things down).
This isn't a business strategy because any reduction in taxes or ease in permitting also benefits your competition. Unless you mean that a company should lobby to increase difficulty/taxes so that they're the sole survivor.
While many generation sources were negatively impacted, including natural gas around Feb 15 - natural gas drastically increased generation between February 8 and 22, increasing the overall generation as well as making up for shortfalls in other generation sources. The federal EIA has ok charting and a really good API:
https://www.eia.gov/opendata/embed.php?geoset_id=EBA.NG.WAT.HL&type=chart&relation_mode=line&map=none®ions=&series_id=EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.COL.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.WAT.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.NG.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.NUC.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.OTH.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.SUN.HL%3BEBA.TEX-ALL.NG.WND.HL&date_mode=range&start=202101&end=20210401&periods=
https://api.eia.gov/series/?api_key=<your API key>&series_id=EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.COL.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.WAT.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.NG.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.NUC.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.OTH.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.SUN.HL;EBA.TEX-ALL.NG.WND.HL&start=20210101&end=20210401
(Get an API key for the second URL from https://www.eia.gov/opendata/commands.php)
