How Commodities Markets Cause War & Chaos - Rupert Russell

💥Join us on our Journey to 1 Million Subscribers💥 Rupert Russell is a writer and filmmaker who has made two award-winning documentaries and authored Price Wars: Adventures in the Financial Apocalypse.

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[richdobbs]

I waited through this interminable presentation just to verify that he would never touch on what I think is the key point regarding this situation: physical inventories and/or diversity of supplies. The price of wheat should not be hugely volatile because rather than having all of the production centralized in a few bread baskets, their should be diversified production and local stockpiling. The price of oil should not be hugely volatile if the market effectively factored in the risk of interruption on those low cost producers. Not a single mention of WTO and its actions that interfere with governments subsidizing stockpiles but failing to influence governments subsidizing exports. Realistically, we should have massive reserves of refined aluminum, steel, copper, coal, and every other non-perishable commodity. We should structure our tariff policy based on risk, rather than on maximizing short term GDP. Through modest changes in the tax code, we could make the system much more stable and predictable

[nwlly]

Correlation does not equal causation... just to point that out. Brexit was all about the desire of Brits wanting to run their own country, rather than unelected, unaccountable know-it-all technocrats and beaurocrats in Brussels, empowered by passing big sovereignty and constitutional power stripping treaties (like Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties - passed without consulting once citizens, especially as these were power transference treaties). So I fundamentally disagree with him conflating it with racism. Racist against who: white Europeans?!

[Michelle_Wellbeck]

It's been apparent to me since the pandemic that a lot of the stresses and instabilities that concern an average person's life are simply things that happen outside of any person's control. When you realize that things like being able to; find a stable job, buy a home, afford to retire securely, etc are substantially outside of one's control it can really change your outlook for the better. You begin to emphathize and are less judgmental towards people as a whole (except the super rich who knowingly make society worse). We're all in small boats on the open sea trying to stay afloat and maybe reach safe shores.

[cnrspiller]

Big fan of F&K, but this time fellas, I think you dropped the ball. Why did you not ask if your guest, perhaps, had all this the wrong way around?
Is it not more likely that chaotic World events lead to unstable markets? That, in fact, it is the speculators who remove risk for ordinary people by risking their own capital?
I liked the stuff on short-termism and positive feedback loops tho.

[BellIain]

I wanted to scream at this guy, the way you stop speculation is by allowing firms to fail and if the directors have taken investors' money then they should be held criminally liable for the negligence of having lost it. This would immediately rein in speculative excesses. The second point he got wrong was seeing money printing to bail out the 'too big to fails' as being a solution. In fact it's a cause since ceteris paribus more money => inflation which destabilises the economy and leads to greater risk taking in search of return.

Most people are wrong about most things most of the time. Error correction is the only reliable means of learning so freedom is required to allow people to learn from their mistakes and propagate knowledge through the system by copying the successful.

Instability is a characteristic of all non linear dynamic systems. Suppressing the error correction methods causes catastrophic failures such as famines and wars.

[tapiomakinen]

For the first third of the interview I was hopeful that I will learn something new if I stay until the end.

[johnlonglong]

He completely misses the eurodollar system & thinks he has discovered something that all financial guys have known for centuries.

[harrybuffery]

Another fantastic episode, Gents. Please keep them coming.

[theinquisitor]

Top tip. If you want to understand economics ask an economist … not a failed sociologist turned film maker.

[AndyJarman]

I can't recommend highly enough TIKhistory's explanatory video Private vs Public for an explanation of why the value of goods is dependent on where they are made available.

For example a bottle of water in your local supermarket will always cost less than a bottle of water in a motorway service station.

When governments interfere with this phenomenon (through taxation and price regulation) then larger governments can bully smaller governments into submission, and governments themselves become unable to establish the value of commodities because of the prices are so warped by intervention by domestic and foreign government intervention.

In Australia the tax on petrol has been halved to reduce the price at the Bowser, and Australian gas exports have Rockettes in value because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine starving the German economy.

Free trade cannot exist In a world where the largest economies set the prices to satisfy their political agendas.

It's true that Commu ism simply can't establish prices independent of an open trading system, but a lot of their impoverishment is due to USA embargoes for ideological reasons.

[cosmicdrambler]

I thought this was a really interesting interview. Rupert did a great job of explaining some complex topics and it was helped by the fact he was allowed to talk without constant interruption. The explanation about how free markets have evolved to become very centralized, despite this being the opposite of their original intention was new to me and good food for thought. Keep up the good work guys!

[charlytaylor]

goddamn I wish you'd put more interviews on where I don't get involved and have to spend the whole hour listening as they evolve. I've got stuff to do, you know.

[gillhughes]

First episode that I’ve watched that I feel very unsure of boys xxx

[RapidAssaultEuro]

Is this video being brigaded? Decent like ratio, but the comments are all bashing the guy. I thought it was an interesting conversation about how many problems are structural, not caused by individual actors.

[ClearlyCero]

With all due respect, there were price controls under feudalism, that and wage control meaning people were literally unable to access some commodities.

[ajb]

"I'm not an anti-market person." Well, that's clearly a lie.

[vesterwolfe]

i think this podcast ended where it should've started

[hlwebb]

Really informative interview, thanks.

[ddingopants]

How could someone in the same breath mention Venezuela and say that markets are the problem? Achieving market stability and reducing risk is exactly what the finance industry is supposed to do, but it comes at a cost which is obfuscated by low interest rates. He is right to say you want a doctor for healthcare. By the same token we should hope we don't get politicians and sociologists trying to run markets.

[Noland]

What a silly premise. The days of commodity markets driving world events are long gone. Capital & the intellectual quality of your population are the deciders in modern economies. Maybe a good thesis 500 years ago.