Been listening to @alanallport.bsky.social’s “Britain at Bay” and now “Advance Britannia.”

Currently at the Dieppe Raid. And the repeated, seemingly limitless incompetence and lack of coordination within the British armed services and with civilian leadership is just stupefying.

It’s a world where we see campaigns for big Tx, clean firm, UOG or UOVRE against the dispersed and likely private models of kit dissemination on the basis of month-to-month cost. Again, better if we plan with all resources in mind.

There’s going to come a point where we have successfully built a ton of distributed VRE and storage. We *will* have debates about centralized utility gen + storage + Tx minimizing a DER overbuild if we haven’t already planned and built accordingly.

That is not a world in which renewables are free.

We’re gonna need to revamp regulatory structures to treat more consumer-facing equipment as rate base-able infrastructure. We’re gonna have to figure out how to charge people equitably and in a way that encourages efficiencies and economic development.

We’re gonna need to cost allocate infrastructure for heavily renewable systems too! That’s not a future problem; it’s affecting interconnections today.

Would be nice if we could leverage public finance, rate-basing, and public buying power. All of which need political backing.

Renewables represent the fastest way to economize fuel costs in the short-run. But VRE generation is most assuredly not free. Will be apparent as we try to overbuild, cost allocate fairly, network localized buildouts, or hedge for reliability.

Better we plan knowing this!

Yes, though I think hegemony specifically requires much more than gains or goodwill from the control of production and supply chains - even technologies of the future as such. Something I think tech competition folks in both powers get wrong.

I am as usual, with @buddyyakov.bsky.social. Big change domestically in China? A federal Europe? An America that grips its democratic governance crisis? Let’s talk!

For all its faults, numerous complainants, et al…the U.S. order had (?) stakeholders. China among them. All of whom say in it something for them and burdens they’d rather not deal with. What is the equivalent here?

I think it was Mayank on X who clocked this. But a CAS financial hegemon usually has their currency tied to another asset. And in this case, that asset is….dollars? Which the Chinese are helping to lend and presumably economize with Yuan-based trading arrangements?

This is the electro-yuan?

Other countries could raise their demand even further to create further value for electrotech. But if the Chinese still channel that value through their producers, the result still looks like a giant Danish-disease problem for their economy - especially as the rapid green buildout phase recedes.

I’m certainly not the first to notice this, but what happens if the Chinese try this while refusing to touch their macro policy’s specific dependence on net exports as a means of securing multipliers? If you’re saturating the global market with those outputs, then the math for growth looks worse!

There’s also the thing of exerting coercion for peace. What just vision of enforced peace requires threatening the Ukrainians or their backers to secure a ceasefire?

It’s sad to see Keynesianism reeling because the U.S. system based on consumer-led growth has / had a pathway to more robust pairings of public investment and redistribution.

But the conversation can’t seem to A) get past net exports; B) prioritize macro policy; C) separate pre- and redistribution.

Yes! I also don’t recognize the kind of hegemony Tooze has in mind. Absent a green investment push in which it secures captive customers, what public goods is this China offering the global system? And what coercive capabilities does it receive in turn?

Most importantly…for what strategic purpose?

@adamtooze.bsky.social has a list of five things China should do to gain hegemony. I agree with all of them and ideally would add a pledge to not use force against Taiwan. The problem is I’m not sure China wants to be a hegemon.

Thanks Tom!!

Thank you Tomas! Will have more time to gab about macro on here with you all no doubt 😀

Thanks Josh!!

Thank you!!

Thank you so much for all the support, Lenore!! Wouldn’t have gotten this far without it!

Walk before you run. Rome wasn’t built in a day. More mixed metaphors, but they’re all about state capacity.

(And thank you!!)

Omg I didn’t even think of that!

Thank you Karthik!!

very proud of newly minted PhD @cthelala.bsky.social who successfully defended his thesis this afternoon!

Chirag is a brilliant strategic thinker who is a joy to work with; finishing a thesis is not easy esp. w/ work & life & he made it happen

v. sweet of @publicenterprise.bsky.social to show up!

You're a rent seeker It's an economist insult. It's devastating. You're devastated right now.

The “profit motive” really isn’t the enemy when it comes to investment. It’s almost always a signal of some other problem: the availability of finance, insufficient infrastructure, demand certainty!

And the public sector may not need profits…but it has de facto hurdle rates!

IMO we should stop saying “developers only build for profit” when we mean firms or their investors have an insufficiently high risk tolerance for more capex.

Latter accounts better for the challenge, derisking solutions, and political hurdles to public sector risk appetite.

Thank you for the shoutout! 🫡 we so appreciate it!

I love this analogy. Regulatory reform is vitally important to expand capacity. But we need to pair it with federal investment policy to actually fill that capacity.

We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.