A Rebuttal To "William Spaniel"

This video is prime evidence of NPC thinking

This video, “How the West Can Exploit Russia's "Dutch Disease" and End the War in Ukraine”, is rife with the kind of narrow minded, NPC thinking that is currently prevalent in Western society.

It repeats a lot of an invented scenario called “Dutch Disease”, which is a scenario that argues an increase in one sector will lead to the decrease of another.

It Immediately Contradicts Their Own Proposal

The video trips up almost immediately on it’s own bland, generic, NPC thinking by suggesting that sanctioning Russia’s energy sector entirely would somehow lead to “Dutch disease”… even though the scenario only occurs when an industry increases, which is the total opposite of a sanction, which reduces.

It Conflates GDP Types Without Context

The video dwaddles on, trying to argue the Russia GDP is negative using a flashy but ultimately uncited and unspecified graph. He conflates Russia’s annual GDP growth rate with GDP, and fails to compare it to other world powers. The US previously had a -1.6 annual GDP growth rate, and it is currently -0.9, with a GDP to debt ratio of 266.2, compared to Russia - the lowest out of the listing - with a GDP to debt ratio of 18.20.

It is easy to artificially inflate your GDP with mass money printing, but the US’ contraction even with massive debt spending, is a far worse signifier than Russia’s GDP contraction without the mass money printing.

It Doesn’t Actually Propose Anything New, And Confuses ‘Success’

The video eagerly regurgitates sanctions a lot, admits that EU countries are dependent upon the import of Russian oil, gas and coal, and then tries to suggest a reduction in the number of oil barrels sold is a “victory”.

The flaw with that is the cost of oil for Europe has gone up substantially. So it buys less, but pays more, which is why despite selling oil at discount to India and China, Russia have continued to make a profit, because the lower quantity of oil and gas they’re selling to Europe costs Europe more.

Even if Russia weren’t the ones making a profit, Europe still has to pay more from other suppliers, meaning the European economic is going to collapse long before the Russian economy does.

It Suggests Lifting Iranian Sanctions

Going even further to contradict their NPC “Dutch Disease” theory, they suggest reducing energy business with Russia and instead buying from Iran. Which would mean Iran would suffer from “Dutch Disease” instead.

Ignoring for a moment that America is under the thumb of Israel, and Israel do not want an empowered Iran, even if we assumed Iran wanted to help the West that kept screwing them over… OPEC+, of which Russia are a part of, would just reduce oil output, in order to retain the same prices. Saudi Arabia have already threatened to do so.

Reducing oil output isn’t a loss because the prices remain the same for longer. Iran burn out their initial supply on the cheap, and then OPEC+ resume output. OPEC+ could even do another 1970s style oil output boycott if they really wanted to.

Bonus Round: Refuting The NPC Comments

The video is rife with NPC comments that need refuting as well.

Even though this idea has been already floated by Western media and governments, it simply doesn’t work because non-western insurance companies will insure the tankers instead. What, are you going to turn into a closet racist and ban every company that “isn’t western”? Who is going to enforce sea entry routes anyway? You can’t even stop migrants crossing the borders.

Russia already have a work around that involves transferring oil, gas and coal to another ship that is insured via a third party proxy, not to mention the Siberian oil blends (49% Russia, 51% someone else’s oil).

Russia wouldn’t need to reduce exports because they would just scale up manufacturing to meet demand. The sluggishness of the US in supplying weapons, as well as the US being overly cautious on giving countries weapons means there will always be a market for foreign exports.

NATO countries haven’t “switched over” to NATO equipment because of the ‘flaws’; the Soviet era equipment they kept was already out-of-date and antiquated. Not that the US equipment is faring any better against said antiquated equipment because 20% of Ukraine is now under Russia’s control.

The delusion of thinking Ukraine could score a “decisive” victory is an amusing one, and talking hypotheticals of possible future military outcomes that aren’t likely to happen are meaningless fanwanking.

Gas isn’t a competition for Russia given they had already cornered the European market, and it was clear there was an ethnic Demograph aspect because you didn’t do your homework. The irony is, you’re saying this as someone supporting the US with a rabid history of aiding or invading countries purely for acquiring their oil and gas, so, a lot of projection there.

“8% reduction in profits” - easily made up by charging additional fees which you’ll be paying for in one form or another. Also, a slight reduction in profits never stopped a war.

Even assuming the modular reactors were ready for prime time (hint: they’re not, see molten salt reactor explosion from the solar panel mirror array setup), they actually cost more to run long-term and produce more nuclear waste. Plus, you’d still take 4 years to build such technology. Yet more fantasy about future hypotheticals that won’t happen.

For those of you not savvy, “capex” stands for ‘capital expenditure’. Essentially they are bemoaning the fact that Russia is not a ‘money printer go brrr’ type economy and that, despite the fact Russia have some of the highest availability of raw minerals, an outright lie that they supposedly have a “prevalence of imported raw materials and machines”.

Russia literally restricted exports of raw materials in retaliation for the war. They already export oil, gas, coal, and you think they don’t have other raw materials?

The only valid argument is “machines” but Mark fails to preface what type. Industrial? Computers? Russia have plenty of more primitive industrial machines, but fewer high tech ones. However, this isn’t the gotcha the West thinks it is… because no country has the ability to produce computers, due to the skewered distribution due to bats**t insane globalism policies.

America doesn’t even manufacture their own machines these days, and CapEx is less of an economic driver than you think it is - especially if $40 billion gets wasted down the drain due to corruption immediately.

This incoherent, poorly written rambling has some of the worst arguments in the comment section imaginable, and it is insane 186 people upvoted this filth. Your argument is the energy price rises aren’t nearly as damaging as a complete globalist shutdown of the economy due to a pandemic?

What kind of garbage argument is that? You’re trying to suggest a period where businesses collapsed, governments had to give bailout money, and insane policymaking was worse than energy price rises, so the energy price rises are somehow acceptable?

By this logic we could argue losing Ukraine is acceptable because it isn’t as bad as all the countries that got destroyed in WW2. It is a bats**t insane logic, one of the classic ‘lesser evil’ fallacies that need to be shot down. The energy price rises are worse than the cost of energy during the pandemic. That alone shuts down this insane argument.

No it’s not. The energy was cheap. As you’re finding out in your bills.

Get outside of your thought bubble and literally read some news. Even the mainstream media outlets reported Saudi Arabia would cut production. Why the hell would they increase it? That just lowers the price point on a precious commodity.

This wall of text needs paragraph breaks. Floating LNG terminals don’t work, because they contain highly explosive gas and, you know, the sea is unstable, they’re usually extremely bad ideas except in niche situations.

The EU reducing gas imports from Russia doesn’t mean much if you’re paying out the eyeballs for imported gas. Pipeline gas will always be cheaper than shipped gas, and there is only so much LNG storage capacity any port can hold, so this is a deluded wet dream.

‘Looking for alternatives’ 6 months on really translates to ‘couldn’t find a solution and are just pretending to search’. Lower supply doesn’t mean lower earnings: it means higher prices. So Russia are earning more selling less.

This has to be written by a literal child given the rife spelling mistakes. “rasing intrestrates”, “energie”, “efficiant”. Children are trying to give world economic advice now?

The fact a child this poorly educated thinks Russia is ‘not so efficient in producing oil’ despite being one of the biggest suppliers of Europe and the world in general just shows how horribly our education systems have failed and how much media propaganda has succeeded.

If this is a slice of society and how they think so one-dimensionally - without covering aspects of the different types of crude, refinery designs and more, it’s not a surprise these idiots are driving the economy into the ground. Practically zero understanding how economies work, how trade adapts, how supply and demand work. The video didn’t even cite a single example of so-called “Dutch Disease” stopping a war.

It’s just imaginary NPC fanwank, where they delude themselves as being heroes coming up with unworkable proposals which have the liberty of never being tested.

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