Solarbird 
do doot do doot doot
Jigme Datse@moira Um... Fuck... Let me go back and look at that to confirm it's not being deceptive... Oh it is. But still an overnight increase of 15% is fucky enough... For something as long established as that certainly.
@JigmeDatse Deceptive?
Oh, you mean zero-based Y-axis graph. I understand that argument but it doesn't apply everywhere all the time. Oil has what amounts to a profitability floor around $60/barrel, under which you start seeing large-scale production cuts. (This is something you'd know if you watch the market much, but wouldn't otherwise. See also XKCD 2501.) So printing all the way down to zero obscures data by squashing detail rather than enhansing it by providing context which, in this case, it honestly wouldn't.
(Yes, in earlier inflation eras the profitability floor was lower. That's a "technically true but irrelevant to the current economic window" fact, however.)
@moira Deceptive, not so much as it may have sounded. I'm aware that if that was plotted with a zero-y axis it would just look like a blip. But as it is plotted it looks like a doubling of the price, instead of a 15% increase of the price.
Deceptive as, "It doesn't mean what it looks like it means at first glance". It's a massive change of price, but not the apparent doubling.
Deceptive as, "It doesn't mean what it looks like it means at first glance". It's a massive change of price, but not the apparent doubling.
@JigmeDatse It's a doubling of the price _within the profitability range_, which - again, if you understand the market - is the relevant measure of geopolitical risk as priced in oil, the relevant commodity in this illegal war.
_If you know the market_, what you see on first glance _is_ correct.
@moira Fair. I rarely understand these sorts of things about economics. I don't understand why "our" (parents) financial advisor thinks that crypto is viable.
@JigmeDatse Lemmie try to explain.
If oil goes meaningfully under $60 and somehow nothing else is changing (note: impossible) and _stays_ there despite production cuts, _oil stops being produced_. That's it for oil.
Again, that can't happen. They'd cut production, then costs, etc etc etc. More expensive modalities (shale) would shut down, low-cost sites would continue to produce.
But _if it did_, then fairly shortly thereafter, there wouldn't _be_ an oil market. Not as we understand it now. It would be completely different and substantially smaller. Old numbers would no longer apply.
(if it drops below, I dunno, $45ish? $35? There wouldn't be _any_ oil market.)
This is what they're trying to avoid through fascism, btw. Exactly this.
@moira I'm not convinced that we can go entirely fossil fuel free, but every time I try to find something that absolutely requires it, either we don't, or the solution is just around the corner. Right now the thing closest to "requiring" fossil fuel, is the chemical industry, but I'm not aware of anything actually requiring it (ie. I'm not aware of anything which we don't have another means, though possibly using other resources we'd rather not focus on, due to the low cost of fossil fuel sources). Plastics have been argued to require it. We need to reduce plastics production, and we have means of handling it (though at great cost, compared to using oil). Most of our plastic use is because it's cheap. At least to produce. So, the possibility that oil might drop too low for there to be oil production doesn't entirely bother me.
@JigmeDatse Oh, I actively _want_ that.
But in terms of reading economics data in the context of current market framing - which is what got all this started - it's not relevant.
@moira Yeah, I was understating my desire significantly. I want it too.