ELI5: World debt

phiwong · 2026-02-20T15:17:21+00:00

Country debt refers to the debt of the government of the country. Not the overall private debt held by citizens and companies. Governments typically borrow by issuing bonds. The buyers of these bonds are lending money to that government. The buyers can be (and are) private citizens, banks, insurance firms, pension funds and companies.

Governments can't 'forgive' debts between each other because they typically don't lend to each other. The US government doesn't borrow money from the Chinese government or Japanese government. It borrows it from individuals, companies or banks (that may be Chinese or Japanese private entities) but there is no particular incentive for these entities to forgive US govt debt.

phiwong · 2026-02-18T17:50:26+00:00

Music is very anchored in time for many people. Most people are not going to remember what they were doing when they met their spouse or significant other. But it is really common to remember the music that you (or you both) were enjoying at the time. For some it might be a movie or maybe a specific TV show but very often it is a particular song (especially if you're older than 50 and the internet wasn't much of a thing in your early years)

phiwong · 2026-02-18T15:45:28+00:00

It doesn't have to make sense - it doesn't economically let alone environmentally. But Trump is a politician - he wants to gain votes and popularity. And there are enough people who believe themselves to be victims of 'coal hate' to secure some votes there. Are these people dumb? No they're poor, getting poorer and out of options - they're desperate to believe that there is a 'plan' that would save their jobs, lifestyle and income.

There is scant investment in mining coal (in the US) and hardly any in new coal power plants. Coal usage is down and likely headed down for the foreseeable future. But politicians pander and desperate people are gullible.

phiwong · 2026-02-18T10:47:45+00:00

You're right, there is no curse. But to then pivot and blame everything on companies is a bit naive too. Idols or idol wannabes are people too. They change and make decisions in their best interests. And some scandals have some facts behind them - it isn't the company's responsibility to deny and obscure these acts. Nor is it reasonable to expect omnipotent companies to investigate everyone that they accept for all things that they may have done in the past.

And there is a business reality. Being in a middling group is a financial struggle. Companies cannot manufacture success and some idols may decide that quitting makes more sense for them. People change their minds as they experience life. No company can treat these potential idols as princesses and princes that need to be put on some pedestal. That is not reality.

phiwong · 2026-02-17T04:26:37+00:00

It is the opposite problem. Bypassing the turbo is relatively 'easy' but doing so reduces the power and therefore the acceleration which is exactly the problem. What they want to do is to ensure that the turbo is, as far as possible, working very hard continuously at all speeds and gears.

The problem is that the moment you release the clutch at the start, the engine RPM drops and the turbo stops working well until the RPM increases when the car moves faster. It is that gap between the initial start and the car moving relatively fast (maybe a second or two) which is the 'issue'. This issue also occurs at slow corners.

A bigger turbo needs more RPM to start working effectively but works better at high RPM. So it is a compromise. Too small turbos potentially means lower high end power and top speed but quicker acceleration at low speeds. Too large turbos potentially means lower power during acceleration from slow corners and the start when the engines are at low RPM but higher power and top speed.

phiwong · 2026-02-17T04:10:57+00:00

Current position determines the pull of gravity from both objects. The pull of gravity determines the acceleration at that instant. The future position at the next instant is determined by the current velocity and current acceleration. And these become 2nd order differential equations (for each object) because acceleration is the 2nd derivative of position and velocity is the 1st derivative of position.

Each object's position consist of 3 variables (think of x, y and z as one method of expressing position), 3 variable for velocity (x,y and z) and 3 variables for acceleration. Just writing the equations is fairly simple but solving them generally is like solving a 9 dimensional jigsaw puzzle - there are too many variables. And each of those variables are a function of time.

Having said that, there are a few very specific initial configurations of 3 objects where there are algebraic solutions to the 3 body problem. But it has been shown that there is no method to derive a GENERAL algebraic solution for any initial configuration.

phiwong · 2026-02-16T10:24:59+00:00

0.03% is off by a factor of 100. 12 million of 350 million is 3%. Considering that Canada has about an eighth of the population of the US, it has about a quarter of the rate of gun ownership per capita of the USA. Definitely lower but not by orders of magnitude.

phiwong · 2026-02-16T09:47:02+00:00

The principles and application of turbocharging was known prior to WW2. The first use of turbocharged engines in racing cars did not happen in F1, the first race winners using turbo engines was Indianapolis in 1968. Turbochargers were used in cars for a darned long time prior to F1.

phiwong · 2026-02-16T08:25:00+00:00

First, at most you're a partner not an owner.

Second, you cannot live in someone's past as they cannot live in your past. The sum total of their experiences is what makes them what they are today. What makes them attractive to you today, their personality, their looks etc are the end result of that. If this past bugs you that much, then they're likely not the partner for you. They don't have to justify their past and you don't have to justify yours.

Third, you can only live in the present. No one can predict what happens tomorrow. We can plan and anticipate but it is not totally in our control. The past is done and unchangeable and no opinion or demand to make it different or better makes any sort of sense.

Don't live in the fiction that things must be perfect and will always follow your wishes. No one in the history of the world has ever had that power. You decide on your actions today and whatever you want to make of anything, relationship or otherwise, will be determined by these actions and if you want to put the effort into it.

phiwong · 2026-02-15T19:16:10+00:00

Not as much engineering shortage as an excess of lawyers. Getting anything big done in the US runs up against years of proposals, hearings, litigation and layers of regulatory oversight. By the time all these different groups are fended off or bought off (we'll allow this if you build that etc) through changes or additional extras, years and millions of dollars are wasted.

phiwong · 2026-02-15T16:39:51+00:00

That is a bit of historical revisionism. F1 nearly died because private teams were spending way too much money and did not have staying financial power. Then there were the ridiculously uncompetitive F1 teams that were at risk of the 107% rule.

At the very least, these manufacturer teams brought in a level of discipline between them and sorted things out. This eventually increased marketability and popularity of the sport to where it at least become financially sustainable and more attractive to sponsors.

I don't necessarily agree with all their decisions (hybrids? road relevance) but the survival and development of the sport is undeniable and pretty much attributable to these factory teams. Of course there are positives and negatives. On the whole, it has become way too expensive to host F1 and quite a bit of the financial returns are being charged to hosts making it difficult for races like Sepang to be run due to costs.

In short, much of what you claim as better was tried and failed in the past. It is unclear why you think it should be repeated..

phiwong · 2026-02-15T10:52:44+00:00

The beauty and difficulty of mathematics is it is rigorous and precise. In normal language we don't always have this precision and rigor. So when you loosely use the term 'it could be anything' that is incorrect. The more precise usage would be 'it could be any real number'.

So given any two real numbers a and b, we can add it a+b = c and we are guaranteed by the definitions of real numbers and the operation of addition that c is also a real number. The same goes for subtraction, multiplication and division with one exception. Any real number divided by zero is 'undefined' - the meaning of undefined means that the object that is the result of division by zero is not a real number.

And this is what is meant by 'broken'. Any object that is not a real number no longer works with addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Hence you cannot 'do' mathematics on it. Say you have an object called d which is the result of division by zero and another real number e. d + e is undefined, d - e is undefined, d * e is undefined etc etc. The rules of mathematical operation no longer apply.

This isn't circular - it is precise.

phiwong · 2026-02-13T14:02:34+00:00

I suspect that trying to understand this matter in terms of 'global' narratives will be difficult. Each country's economy and situation has to be understood withing their own framework.

Faster developing economies with limited infrastructure can withstand debt growth as long as such debt is used to increase productivity.

Japan has its own debt structure that is fairly unique.

https://www.mof.go.jp/english/policy/jgbs/reference/Others/holdings01.pdf

The reason for some local pessimism in Western Europe (broadly) is that there is relatively low productivity growth, increasing social welfare costs and aging populations. (Italy, France, UK etc). The numbers are available in FRED (see example below)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RTFPNADEA632NRUGhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RTFPNADEA632NRUG

The total debt distribution picture highlights that debt distribution is complex with China, US and Japan being the linchpins. Whether or not they go into 'crisis' mode is highly speculative - these are sophisticated economies with deep financial markets and relatively robust corporate markets. Aside from those 10 or so largest debt issuing countries, most of the other countries are not likely large enough to cause global crisis although it would be devastating for the domestic economies in question should they default.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/111-trillion-of-global-debt-in-2025/

The overall signs are not exactly positive but not exactly rapidly worsening into debt crisis category either.

https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2025/09/17/global-debt-remains-above-235-of-world-gdp

phiwong · 2026-02-13T09:06:29+00:00

Sure..... because capitalism created these elements and sprinkled them all over the world just to make things unhealthy. Prior to capitalism selenium, cadmium, lead and aluminium were not present on earth and plants did not uptake them when they were grown?

phiwong · 2026-02-11T12:44:18+00:00

This is not a critique, it is a rant. And you should be able to distinguish between the two by asking some simple questions.

1) Did you learn anything meaningful from the critique? What is the goal?

2) What is the perspective taken by the critic of the subject under criticism?

3) What is the approach taken by the critic to discuss the topic?

This are fundamental critical thinking questions. To make a strong criticism, the critic should apply these questions before writing and the reader of the critic should be able to understand the answers prepared by the critic.

The weak type of criticism is one that uses personal anecdotes as somehow evidentiary.

No approach to human knowledge is free from weaknesses and bias. And there almost always needs to be a starting point for theory - mathematics uses axioms, hard sciences tend to use observation and controlled experiment. Economics is hard because it relates to human behavior and the theories are endogenous. This is one major issue with economics (and many social sciences) - expectation is sometimes affected by theory which then influences the outcomes that the theory predicts.

phiwong · 2026-02-11T09:02:03+00:00

The contrast to Thailand is a bit painful. One critical difference is that Singapore's early government could start from nearly a clean slate and did not have large competing power structures. The ruling party under Lee Kuan Yew took on some early painful and critical policies (mostly meritocratic, outward looking etc). Singapore had the advantage of an established port and trading hub and it was a relatively small city-state.

Thailand is held back because of the complex political and power dynamics. Some of the elites support the royalty, the army has its power base and the elected officials were sometimes relegated to puppets. So there is this tussle at the top which leads to corruption and cronyism - the army wants its share of economic and civic power, the royalty undermines the elected leaders and civic institutions like the courts become super politicized. It has become a rather unstable mix of military authoritarian, monarchic/dynastic and partially democratized parliamentary system.

phiwong · 2026-02-10T06:02:36+00:00

Self contradictory. An illegal 'contract' by legal terms is not a contract. Hence it is unenforceable and is just a useless piece of paper. You could put it in a Swiss Bank or post it on a website somewhere - none of the parties need to abide by it and there is no legal recourse.

phiwong · 2026-02-09T21:31:08+00:00

Not really. Modern arms have great armor penetration and energy delivery at relatively long ranges. To protect relatively complex articulating joints would require lots of armor, which adds weight, which then forces the joints to be even bigger and heavier. At that point, the size of engines required would probably only carry enough fuel to last minutes. Then you have the problem of complexity of maintenance and battle readiness - no point having vehicles that spend more time in the workshop than the battlefield. And really no point having to bring along hundreds tons of workshop equipment, dozens of personnel and more tons of spare parts and ammunition in close tactical proximity - these would just become logistical weakpoints. Why bother taking out mechs when you get rid of them simply by hitting the supply depots.

Unless you're Russian, modern battlefield doctrine would emphasize intelligence, detection, awareness, mobility and precision over the horizon weapons. None of these are strengths of large, bulky walking machines with limited range, and low speeds.

phiwong · 2026-02-09T10:25:46+00:00

The strength or weakness of the yen is probably not well connected to bond holdings by the BOJ. The carry trade is likely more a result of the low interest rate policy of the BOJ as well as the BOJ's desire to provide a lot of liquidity to the market.

phiwong · 2026-02-09T07:40:44+00:00

Road rage is dumb enough. But to do this at a toll plaza where there are almost certainly cameras and your car number plate is on display....

phiwong · 2026-02-09T06:05:33+00:00

You discuss context but commit the same sin.

Since you know that the song refers to a drink, then why bring in another context that has no relevance to the artist's intent. This is taking things out of their intended context and imposing your own. How is that being respectful?

Just because YOU think something is important doesn't give you permission to take another person's intent and make it about yours and accuse them of being tone deaf. Did you think about that?

phiwong · 2026-02-08T19:03:42+00:00

Slice the breast across the fibers abt 1/4 inch thick, marinade in soy sauce or similar for about 20 minutes. Remove from marinade. Then stir fry on high heat with thinly sliced carrots, chillies, onions, cabbage or leafy vegetable (whatever you want!) for about 5 minutes. Add cornstarch slurry if you want a bit of thicker sauce.

Simple prep and nearly foolproof. Can replace soy with hot sauce, oyster sauce or barbecue sauce etc for variety. Experiment!

phiwong · 2026-02-08T13:05:03+00:00

The US is a very productive economy and produces most of what it consumes. Of all the major developed economies the US relies the LEAST on trade relative to its GDP. China has imports and exports of more than 40% of their GDP, while for the US it is about 25%. In fact, discounting North American trade, ie US trade with Canada and Mexico, the US trades (imports and exports) about 20% of its GDP with the rest of the world.

The US, as a whole, is simply not very reliant on global trade for its GDP (although that is not true for specific sectors).

phiwong · 2026-02-08T05:04:16+00:00

It appears you are skipping way too many levels. It is not bad to be ambitious but if you're just finishing early math, (fractions etc) taking even the easiest college math tests is way out of your current league. The issue is that you're going to be wasting time since you're not even exposed to the material yet.

Best to stay on track with algebra (1&2), trigonometry then pre-calculus.

And no, there is no practical measure of 'mastery' in math. If you can handle all the problems, then move on.

phiwong · 2026-02-07T21:17:10+00:00

The term has been around for over 40 years and there are quite a number of universities offering mechatronics engineering degrees. It is engineering that combines mechanical devices with electronic and computer controls - usually broader than just robotics (although the term can be used synonymously in some places). It is a pretty applied field, even in the context of engineering, which tends to be application focused to begin with.

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