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China Isn't Going to Make It
•�September 24, 2021
•�600 Words •�438 Comments
I have been a long-term China bull since I began blogging. Proof (2008). A lot of what the Western media was writing about China were based on Sinophobic fantasies that had no correlation with reality. Just to be clear, I am still a China bull, at least in the sense that I'm sure its GDP... Read More
Where Are the Afghanis?
•�August 20, 2021
•�1,100 Words •�160 Comments
The past is the best guide to the future, so there's no surprise that there is already a rebellion breaking out against the Taliban. Finding its core in the natural fastness of the Panjshir Valley, which foiled repeated Soviet attacks during the 1980s, the Northern Alliance is reconstituting itself under Ahmad Massoud (the son of... Read More
It's a Zoomer's Market
•�August 15, 2021
•�200 Words •�71 Comments
Like them, hate them, or consider them genderfluid TikToking herbivores, but one thing the zoomers undoubtedly get right is that they know the value of their labor and aren't afraid to spell out their conditions to seething boomers. Isn't this, like, the free market at work? Why would a supposed "libertarian" have a problem with... Read More
Corona Babies
•�June 19, 2021
•�600 Words •�102 Comments
We know the effects of Corona on mortality and GDP. As data trickles in, we are now getting an increasingly clear idea of its effects on fertility rates. (via Twitter demographer @BirthGauge) We generally see no large-scale effects from Corona. There were usually fertility shocks as the lockdowns first went into effect, but they were... Read More
7 Years On, Ukraine's Economy Fails to Impress
•�June 5, 2021
•�1,600 Words •�102 Comments
Now from the onset, I want to make a few things clear that I made in my last major Ukraine sitrep from 2018: Ukraine hasn't collapsed (desires of more deluded pro-Russians aside) nor has it come closer to it. While Ukraine's economy remains in the gutter, ahead only of Moldova in Europe, it is the... Read More
Overview of Russian Ports
•�May 29, 2021
•�300 Words •�55 Comments
Cargo traffic through Russian ports has almost doubled over the past decade (only Corona, a temporary factor, prevented a full doubling), after increasing by a factor of three during the previous decade. Here is how it looks like per port/region (h/t genby): The blue section corresponds to Arctic traffic and it had a full doubling.... Read More
China's Population Stands at 1.41B
•�May 11, 2021
•�400 Words •�419 Comments
Results of the 2020 Census have been released. Some links: Reuters summary Chinese state statistics service communique (in Chinese) Here's a table of the regional change: 2020 2010 % Beijing 21893095 19612368 0.12 Tianjin 13866009 12938224 0.07 Hebei 74610235 71854202 0.04 Shanxi 34915616 35712111 -0.02 Inner Mongolia 24049155 24706321 -0.03 Liaoning 42591407 43746323 -0.03 Jilin... Read More
The 2020s FOMO Into Russian Tech
•�May 2, 2021
•�2,400 Words •�212 Comments
You missed the Big Tech explosion because you didn't understand what de facto monopolies wedded to economies of scale can do. You have been deplatformed by Zuck and @jack for being a racist and a white supremacist, and you don't even have their stonks for consolation. You didn't hop aboard the Tesla train because you... Read More
Mental Populations
•�April 25, 2021
•�500 Words •�510 Comments
Population is power, so it pays to keep track of it (along with national IQ and GDPcc), for those with an interest in geopolitics and futurism. I used to spend way too much time poring over statistics almanacs and the CIA World Factbook during my school years, so I have a pretty good fix on... Read More
Ethiopia in the 2010s
•�April 14, 2021
•�200 Words •�158 Comments
Ethiopia has long done quite well by Sub-Saharan African standards. It has a good record of human accomplishment, being the only country in the region to have developed a literary corpus before European colonialism. But it was, until recently, extremely poor. But no longer so after a decade of some of the highest growth rates... Read More
Making It
•�April 6, 2021
•�600 Words •�251 Comments
It strikes me that most of life's most exquisite comforts can be had with ~$10M or so. Apartment in the center of a world class city (luxury condo if in the Second World). Holiday home. Nice vacations and gourmet restaurants. Model-tier gf. The virgin financial docs sleuthing to suggest Bad Orange Man isn't a billionaire... Read More
Broke: Suez. Woke: NSR.
•�March 26, 2021
•�700 Words •�83 Comments
The blockage of the Suez Canal and the 12% of world cargo trade (1 billion tons of cargo per year) that flows through it raises the profile of an obvious and much shorter alternative that global warming is making increasingly attractive. Arctic sea ice continues to retreat at a very rapid clip (currently running below... Read More
Map: Population Growth in Eastern Europe 1990-2020
•�March 21, 2021
•�100 Words •�116 Comments
(h/t @popdemography) Anyhow, very good/comprehensive map, with almost surprises. The only thing that was a real TIL to me was the increase in Belgorod oblast, which is the green region next to Kharkov oblast in Ukraine. Its TFR is low like in most central Russian regions, but it's apparently a popular destination for Russians from... Read More
Russian Manufacturing Productivity on Par with France'S. (In 1908).
•�March 7, 2021
•�1,000 Words •�85 Comments
Lychakov, N. I., Saprykin, D. L., & Vanteeva, N. (2020). Not Backward: Comparative Labour Productivity In British And Russian Manufacturing, Circa 1908 (WP BRP 199/HUM/2020). National Research University Higher School of Economics. (h/t @devarbol) This recent paper says that the Russian Empire, far from being in a general sense of "economic backwardness", was better viewed... Read More
Who Will be the World's First Trillionaire?
•�February 23, 2021
•�1,600 Words •�132 Comments
Currently jostling in the top rankings: Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Elon Musk (Tesla), both at around $200B. Amazon is a mature company that dominates the US e-commerce market and has substantial fingerprints abroad (about a third of revenue). Also not to be underrated is AWS, which accounts for a third of the global cloud computing... Read More
Musical Chairs
•�January 27, 2021
•�162 Comments
As a rule: If it's in the news, it's already too late to make money from it.
Musk Industries' Teleology
•�January 14, 2021
•�900 Words •�100 Comments
One observation I've seen people make is that Elon Musk's industrial empire seems ultra-optimized for the distinctly non-commercial ambition of establishing a Mars colony: SpaceX for providing the reusable rockets to throw large payloads into space at much lower cost. Tesla to provide the batteries for Mars vehicles. Boring Company to dig out the tunnels... Read More
Musk Becomes Richest Man on the Planet
•�January 7, 2021
•�300 Words •�95 Comments
Approaching $200 billion ($195B according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, vs. Bezos' $185B), he has blown his way past Bezos after Tesla shares surged north of $800 today. Its p/e ratio is now above 1,600 and accounts for more than 40% of the market capitalization of all the world’s automakers combined. Brian Wang of NextBigFuture, who... Read More
World Births in 2020
•�January 4, 2021
•�300 Words •�180 Comments
From Twitter demographer Cicerone (now @BirthGauge): For some countries, this is the last update (November) for which realized births still reflect fertility decisions taken before the onset of Corona - which, judging from anecdotal reports, will crater them further, but we'll see*. Broadly, this continues a trend I have already observed of most of the... Read More
India Fertility Falls Below Replacement
•�December 28, 2020
•�100 Words •�50 Comments
This the news from the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), covering the years 2019-20. (h/t Cicerone, now Tweeting as @BirthGauge): Previous NFHS surveys at Wikipedia stretching to 1981. India overall is now at TFR = 2.1 children per woman. Kerala, long one of the lowest TFR states (as well as one of the most... Read More
Sunset on Silicon Valley
•�December 25, 2020
•�400 Words •�72 Comments
AI safety research outfit MIRI say they're thinking of leaving Berkeley on account of: Translated from rationalese to /pol/speak, they're presumably saying they don't want to stay in the new "designated shitting streets" capital of the world and pay high taxes for the privilege. This would be highly symbolic - just as Tesla is perhaps... Read More
Irkut MC-21 Maiden Flight with Russian Engines
•�December 16, 2020
•�300 Words •�78 Comments
This is largely an update to my 2018 post Overview of Russian Airports & Aircraft Construction. Narrow-body airliner for 211 passengers and a competitor to the Airbus 320/Boeing 727 has now made its maiden flight with the Russian-made PD-14 engines, which replaced the American Pratt & Whitney 1400G engines. This marks the biggest step forwards... Read More
Maddison Project 2020: New Historical GDP Estimates
•�December 11, 2020
•�400 Words •�53 Comments
Forgot to blog about it at the time, but latest version of the Maddison Project was released a month ago. In my last post (on the MDP 2018), I noted that many of the results for Russia were very strange: The new figures make a lot more sense, to be frank. USSR/RSFSR-RF GDPcc as %... Read More
Tesla as EVs' Apple?
•�December 8, 2020
•�300 Words •�67 Comments
Worst prediction on the history of this blog? (Consolation is that said prediction wasn't mine, though I did think it interesting enough to highlight). Anyhow, far from "going to zero", Tesla stonks have increased tenfold since May 2018. Tesla now constitutes something like 30% of the market capitalization of all the world's automakers combined, at... Read More
Chinese GDP in 2050: The Debate
•�November 18, 2020
•�1,700 Words •�604 Comments
Where will Chinese GDP end up: At ~US level, or 2-3x the US level? Very important question - after all, it will determine whether the world will remain unipolar (if China ~= US, the latter will remain dominant thanks to its alliance system and soft power) or "bifurcated" between a US-Western sphere and a Sino-centric... Read More
GDP Revisions 2020
•�October 16, 2020
•�600 Words •�271 Comments
The IMF has released new GDP (PPP) estimates based on the latest International Comparison Program, where price levels are compared relative to the base year 2017 (the previous such survey was in 2011). There were some notable changes (h/t commenter Annatar for many of the observations): China dropped by 18% from $21.0k to $17.2, this... Read More
Magic Laogai Soil Theory
•�September 15, 2020
•�200 Words •�72 Comments
Alesina, Alberto F., Marlon Seror, David Y. Yang, Yang You, and Weihong Zeng. 2020. “Persistence through Revolutions.” Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research. The descendants of former Chinese landlords and rich peasants earn 16% more than average - despite them being barred from inheriting land or other asse
Magic Gulag Soil Theory
•�August 29, 2020
•�300 Words •�63 Comments
Toews, Gerhard, and Pierre-Louis Vézina. 2018. “Enemies of the People.” Working Paper. (h/t Emil) The presence of Gulag prisoners - especially concentrations of "enemies of the people", i.e. "politicals" who overwhelmingly hailed from the Tsarist-era educated elites in the professions, aristocracy, and kulaks - had positive long-run effects on development in those regions. This is... Read More
Economics Won't Magically Bind Belarus to Russia
•�August 15, 2020
•�800 Words •�86 Comments
Now to preface this, I have argued extensively that many factors make it unlikely that Belarus institutes a hard anti-Russian zmagarist regime in the event of a successful color revolution against Lukashenko. However, there are also some arguments to that effect which are if not outright false then significantly flawed. Perhaps the biggest one is... Read More
Obesity & Corruption
•�August 5, 2020
•�52 Comments
Blavatskyy, Pavlo. 2020. “Obesity of Politicians and Corruption in post‐Soviet Countries.” Economics of Transition and Institutional Change 9 (July): 81. Obesity => corruption QED. "Correlation doesn't equal causation" is for nitpicking losers. Ringing endorsement of powerful Bronze Age Pervert proposal to filter aspiring politicians by physical prowess and physique.
City Upon a Hill. But for How Much Longer?
•�June 27, 2020
•�200 Words •�111 Comments
As I argued in my 2011 article on National Wealth and IQ at the Edge: American Exceptionalism, East Asian Mediocrity, the US is surprisingly wealthy for a country for a country of its national IQ, which is respectable but modest by developed country standards. There are many possible reasons for it, which I listed (e.g.... Read More
Global Baby Bust, 2020
•�June 16, 2020
•�600 Words •�163 Comments
Shows zero signs of letting up, according to Twitter demographer Cicerone: "Birth data for the first months of 2020: Slight recovery or flatline in Western Europe, Easternmost Europe continues its sharp decline, Hungary stronk, South Korea ever more doomed." My observations: Uzbekistan now has as many births as France & 50% of Russia's. South Korea... Read More
Podcast with Robert Stark About Corona
•�June 15, 2020
•�200 Words •�3 Comments
This month's "Coronacast" with Robert Stark and Dain Fitzgerald: Robert Stark is joined with Moscow based Unz Review columnist Anatoly Karlin and Bay Area based blogger Dain Fitzgerald who has written for Spliced Today, Rachel Haywire’s Trigger Warning, and The American Spectator. Follow Anatoly and Dain on Twitter. Topics: Going back to Anatoly’s initial predictions... Read More
Corona Probably Out of Control in Dagestan
•�May 19, 2020
•�600 Words •�86 Comments
Russia has been running at ~100 deaths per day for the past three weeks. As most everywhere (~60% across 14 analyzed countries), this is an underestimate - in Moscow, by a factor of ~3x. Something that we can tell when the gross mortality stats became available a week ago, suggesting ~2,000 excess deaths vs. 642... Read More
Russia World's 5th Largest Economy. (Again)
•�May 12, 2020
•�200 Words •�110 Comments
According to the April 2020 update of the IMF's WEO Database. List by the IMF
New Paper: Max World Population ≈ 200 Billion
•�May 5, 2020
•�400 Words •�171 Comments
A correspondent brought this new paper to my attention: Binder, Seth, Ethan Holdahl, Ly Trinh, and John H. Smith. 2020. “Humanity’s Fundamental Environmental Limits.” Human Ecology, April. This is in the same order of magnitude as my ~100 billion estimate. Our results also approximate those of models tied to current technologies. De Wit (1967) and... Read More
Open Thread 100: Христос воскресе!
•�April 19, 2020
•�300 Words •�273 Comments
Ironically, despite the retreat of globalization in the past couple of months, Corona-chan has if anything shrank the world. For instance, I started participating in Zoom meetups with my old futurist group from the Bay Area again, four years after leaving the US. Which is not, I suppose, a bad thing. As many of us... Read More
Corona Opportunities
•�April 10, 2020
•�900 Words •�198 Comments
Although the idea that "crisis" and "opportunity" are represented by the same Chinese character is "fake news", it is nonetheless true that the two often go together. As we stew in our respective lockdowns, let's think about Corona-chan may make the world better: For the first time, many older people will be sufficiently incentivized to... Read More
Should the Third World Lockdown?
•�April 5, 2020
•�600 Words •�42 Comments
For instance, take Sub-Saharan Africa. Median age is ~18 years, and only 3% of the population is above the age of 65 (for Italy, these figures are 45 years and 24%, respectively). Their mortality rates are already very high, so the net impact on their life expectancy will be modest, since age is the single... Read More
New "Coronacast" with Robert Stark
•�April 2, 2020
•�400 Words •�11 Comments
Here it is: Coronacast with Anatoly Karlin: Episode II List of topics: Russian Unz Review blogger Anatoly Karlin returns to talk about the recent stats and political implications of the coronavirus pandemic. (Note updates have occurred since recording of show). Check out Anatoly’s updates on the pandemic on Twitter. Topics: Why the US is still... Read More
Standstill
•�March 28, 2020
•�200 Words •�62 Comments
FlightRadar24 is a live map that shows all the world's commercial air flights in real time. The world is at a standstill, with the major exception of the US. Though I hear that many of these flights are empty or near empty. Nonetheless, I do wonder when we last saw such a high North American... Read More
Putin Sends Russians on One Week Holiday. But What Next?
•�March 25, 2020
•�500 Words •�128 Comments
In today's federal address, Putin announced that the referendum on the Constitutional referendum - which nullifies his Presidential terms, and implicitly defines Russians as the "state-forming" people of the Russian Federation - is to be indefinitely postponed from its original date of April 22 because the "absolute priority" is to be the "health, safety and... Read More
Dulce et Decorum Est Pro GDP Mori!
•�March 24, 2020
•�700 Words •�318 Comments
Here's what a smart Trump would have done: Two months of hard containment in NYC, Washington, parts of Florida, and other hotspots to knock the epidemic back down to manageable levels. This is not going to be easy; the Chinese closed off Wuhan when it was at just 400 official cases, and the total number... Read More
Moscow Corona
•�March 24, 2020
•�300 Words •�57 Comments
Here's a map of Moscow's coronavirus cases to date: Notice something interesting? Although it's not a particularly clean demarcation, there is a higher density towards the center and south-west, while there's much fewer cases in the prole-ish south-east. This corresponds with: Property & rental prices "Racism" in house listings Liberal opposition's share of the vote... Read More
Doctors, Beds, Ventilators
•�March 22, 2020
•�600 Words •�97 Comments
Meduza has done a good job in systemically compiling regional data on ventilator/ECMO machine availability across Russia's regions (see below). Russia also has plenty of beds, thanks to the Soviet legacy (as I pointed out a couple of months ago). So in the event the epidemic is not contained, it probably won't do too much... Read More
Western Journalists Really Want There to be a Huge Corona Epidemic in Russia
•�March 21, 2020
•�1,500 Words •�172 Comments
The stream of articles suggesting that Russia is covering up its Corona numbers has increased from a stream to a veritable flood: CBC: Russia’s coronavirus count under scrutiny as Putin government denies hiding cases Moscow Times: Russia Says It Has Very Few Coronavirus Cases. The Numbers Don’t Tell the Full Story. Reuters: Sharp increase in... Read More
Podcast with Robert Stark About Corona & Animal Rights
•�March 19, 2020
•�300 Words •�26 Comments
Robert Stark talks to me about the coronavirus pandemic, as well as my old article on effective altruism, animal IQ, and animal rights. LINK → Robert Stark talks to Anatoly Karlin about the Coronavirus Pandemic & Animal Rights Here are the topics we discuss: Anatoly’s initial predictions Corona & the Cost of Doing Nothing The... Read More
Ukraine Is a Corona Hotspot
•�March 19, 2020
•�1,400 Words •�92 Comments
Russia's still quite low, though now rapidly expanding, number of cases has predictably provoked the Western media into a slew of headlines about how the Putler regime is supposedly suppressing information on what must, by now, be a raging epidemic: Russia's coronavirus count under scrutiny as Putin government denies hiding cases Russia Says It Has... Read More
Meet the New Russiagate, Same as the Old Russiagate
•�March 19, 2020
•�600 Words •�31 Comments
Though there have been some other, decidedly minor, world events that have pushed these developments off the front pages, we may confidently label March, 2020 as the final death of Russiagate v1.0 - the blockbuster hit that has spawned two official sequels to date, as well as an untold number of fan-made derivative works. First,... Read More
America First in Epidemic Preparedness!
•�March 17, 2020
•�100 Words •�166 Comments
At least according to something called the "2019 Global Health Security Index", which claims that: The US, which had, until recently, tested 100x fewer people per capita than Italy. The UK, whose game plan - at least until a couple of days ago - was to let most of its population get infected to make... Read More
� Earlier Items �
"Economics" Items Across Entire Archive
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.