[panarky]

> This imbalance can't last forever

Why not? Debt doesn't necessarily resolve itself by default. Most of it is just lifecycle timing differences.

If I'm 40 years old, I'm saving for the future. I consume less than I produce, and I lend the surplus now so I can get it back later plus interest.

> interest rate paying spiral, slowing the growth of the economy

When I was 20 years old and early in my career, I didn't want to wait to pay cash for a house and car. Then I consumed more than I produced, and I'm thankful that debt allowed me to do that.

So more debt actually increases the growth of the economy, since it allows people to buy houses and cars earlier in their lives. Reduce debt and the economy shrinks (which is basically what happens when central bank raises interest rates).

> isn't it an indicator of rising inequality?

At any given moment, some families, companies and governments want to save, and others want to consume. Debt lets us trade time preferences so we all get more of what we want, when we want it.

In my example, I'm lending money to the United States so I can get it back 10 years from now.

That's not causing inequality, it's giving me the freedom to produce now and consume later.

[simonh]

Those are absolutely excellent arguments for why debt itself, as a mechanism, can be beneficial and useful. That isn't the questions. The question is how much debt is too much, and why, and what happens when the debt level becomes unsustainable.

Greece is an extreme example. They borrowed far more than they could ever pay back and wasted it. When borrowing is spent on things that don't pay back a return higher than the cost of the borrowing, and when that's done on a large scale with no other credible source of income to pay back the debt, both the borrower and the lender get burned. The problem is that you don't always know the return you're going to get on the investment, and you don't always know the full cost of the borrowing to fund it because interest rates can go up.

[belorn]

A central concept in the book Debt: The First 5000 Years is that peasants' revolts occurred when dept level becomes unsustainable. The reason why is that as debt goes up the security of the loans go down, which forces the lender to impose harsher punishment to defaulters. In turn this resulted in usury laws regulating loaning, or in other places making loaning a monopoly right of the state, the church or completely illegal.

Now days it seems that the risk of uprisings are low, and that when either whole countries or people en mass start to default, the governments simply steps in and shuffle tax money or print more in order to stabilize the economy. I don't think we actually know how far that strategy can work.

[hnick]

I enjoyed that book. I think another key point is it wasn't just uprisings, back in the day people literally fled to the hills out of the city to avoid their debts.

Not only did this lead to bands of outlaws roaming the countryside (and eventually posing a risk to the cities), it meant that cities lost a sizable part of their labour force and were unable to function as well.

Hence jubilees to let off steam and forgive all debt, welcoming people back into the cities every 7 years or so.

[chadcmulligan]

The real problem with countries and debt is the people who take out the debt aren't the people who have to pay it off. This is a real flaw in the system.

[panarky]

> when the debt level becomes unsustainable

I'm arguing that you can't determine what the unsustainable level of debt is for the world in total.

Yes, debt can be unsustainable for a family, or a company, or a nation.

But if I, as a creditor, decide to risk my capital by lending to my neighbor, or to the United States, that increases total world debt, but it's not necessarily bad or dangerous.

In the case of Greece's debt crisis, the important question is why creditors lent too much to a nation that couldn't pay it back.

There are many answers from ignorance to failed governance to corruption, but none of the answers have anything to do with the general level of debt in the world as a whole.

[ryanmercer]

>Why not?

A lot of the debt is based on real estate and physical goods. Realistically there exists a very finite amount of land (and a concrete limit with current materials on how high you can build) and raw materials. Without becoming a space-based civilization that can easily strip mine other planets and the asteroids... only so much of this debt can even be generated unless we move to some sort of society where everyone is like "I bet you 5 million dollars that bird drops a load on that car in the next 2 minutes" hey the bird didn't, pay up "hey man, can you just add it to my tab?".

At some point you run out of goods or land to sell, at which point you have debt holders that want their money and debtors that can't buy more because they are now out of work from manufacturing the goods they, or their peers, were buying.

Part of the reason we have such a disparity of wealth is because the owners (and lenders) of the resources and sellable goods are selling those things to the people making them. Instead of buying furniture from the local furniture maker, you buy Ikea. Instead of going to the neighborhood cobbler or sandlar you log on to Zappos or go to Finish Line. Instead of going to your local butcher you go to Kroger or Publix and buy meat that may have come from a massive corporate ranch thousands of miles away and in the case of ground meat might contain bits from a dozen animals.

We've basically become somewhat like a 'company store' society and many people carry debt for just their consumer purchases.

"Hey I want the new ninplaybox 720 so I can play MaddenBall 2099, charge"

"Hey I need a car, hey that one is 1.2x my annual gross, let me get a 6 year loan please"

"Hey I need a place to live, oh look this one is only 4x my annual gross, let me get that 30 year mortgage with 10% down that I'll probably refinance and/or get another mortgage and either spend 50 years paying off or move in 4 years and basically walk away with no equity pocketed".

None of this is sustainable and it certainly isn't scalable for the few billion people currently not living this way. In 2016 China had 289 million registered drivers, in 2017 they had 316.58 million registered drivers... that's 27.58 million new drivers and even if only 10% of them purchased a vehicle do you really think they paid cash or do you think the bulk of them took on debt? So 2-27 million new debtors in a year. Not sustainable.

---

>If I'm 40 years old, I'm saving for the future. I consume less than I produce,

You spend less money than you earn.

If you eat meat and aren't considerably overweight, it takes about 1/2 of an acre to produce the approximately 1996 pounds of food you consume a year.

The average American consumes around 500 gallons of gasoline a year.

The average American's household, work and transportation energy equals about 15,000 pounds of coal a year.

The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic a year.

The average American throws away about 4 pounds of trash a day.

Without very cheap labor, automation, machinery, relatively cheap fossil fuels, government subsidies, etc become impossible and as all of the things (including resources) involved in enabling our lifestyles they are wholly unsustainable over any long-term time scale.

With debt fueling a large part of this, increasing debt is also unsustainable.

[YorkshireSeason]

Land is not currently and in the foreseeable future a constrained resource: the whole world's population fits into land twice the size of Texas at Hong Kong levels of density.

Land is expensive / valuable only in a few locations (e.g. NY, SF, Tokyo ...), and in parts only due to legislation that presents density.

[ryanmercer]

>Land is not currently and in the foreseeable future a constrained resource

Sure, the Sahara has 3.552 million square miles of available real estate. San Francisco, NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, Paris, London, Canberra, Geneva, Soul, Oslo, Zurich, Hong Kong... not so much.

You also have a very finite amount of land that is arable and unfortunately we keep losing more and more of it to development, desertification, etc.

Again, sure there's a bunch of the U.S. that has extremely low population density but in most cases the land isn't very arable (if at all), there are no water sources for any sizable population, there are no exploitable resources to build industry around (mining, oil and gas, timber) to initially start towns around.

Realistically usable land, desirable land, land that can support populations is very much a constrained resource.

[YorkshireSeason]

   desirable land, land that can 
   support populations is very much 
   a constrained resource.

I'm afraid I don't agree.

We only loose land to development were we don't push density. Desertification is not a major problem, since -- due to global warming -- we win more new land in previously uninhabitable areas (e.g. Siberia). From a sustainability POV, it is desirable to increase density of human dwelling: the more density, the less transport is needed, the more public transport makes sense, the more heating / cooling, electricity production etc can be centralised, which means more efficient usage of resources.

[ryanmercer]

Research water rights, research where water comes from for large cities (sometimes hundreds of miles away, look at Tokyo/Miami/London/Cairo/Beijing/Bangalore/Las Vegas/Mexico City/New York City), look at water scarcity for Africa as a continent, look at the insane groundwater depletion going on for several decades now. As it stands now 14%, and growing, of the world's population suffers from water scarcity. Anything less than 1,700 cubic meters (for referenced an Olympic pool is 2,500) per person of freshwater is considered water scarcity.

Just because there is land, does not mean it's usable or should be used.

Functional real estate remains an extremely finite resource. Land prices will continue to rise, debt amassed for purchasing said land will continue to rise and will sooner or later hit a wall where land is largely only exchanging hands when the owner dies for large parts of the world.

[pjc50]

Inequality of ownership is definitely a problem, but this argument doesn't establish that debt itself is a problem. I mean, local stores used to offer credit too (and in the really old days would do so based on knowing your face in a small town).

> 2-27 million new debtors in a year. Not sustainable.

Why not? Simply because it's a big number? What number would be sustainable?

[ryanmercer]

>Why not? Simply because it's a big number?

Mostly because the people/institutions lending the money presumably have a finite supply and a point at which they won't lend more due to risk. `

Then you have wildcards. What if 10% of people in China end up with a car loan, can the lenders (or their insurance companies) survive if a natural disaster destroys 10k cars/lenders? 100k cars lenders? What if China enters into a war? What if tariffs continue to rise causing less trade with China from the US (clearing international freight is what I do for a living, freight from China has very much declined with section 301 already)? What if China does somethnig that causes trade embargoes/sanctions and their economy takes a significant hit? Can the lenders survive 1 million people unable to service their debt? 10 million? What if China enters a war with someone, say Russia, and has tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs disrupted via a draft/conscription or have to shift a million factory workers to wartime production and pay them even less than they make now and they can't service their loans?

With millions of new drivers a year, oil consumption increases. Oil consumption increase = price increase. This price increase raises the cost of all physical goods as transportation of raw goods and finished materials increases. With prices of manufactured goods increasing, trade can slow. Trade slows, jobs dry up. Jobs dry up, debt is defaulted on.

The more you have outstanding, the less sustainable it is, the more your risk increases, the more risk of absolute ruin increases.