@cstross Right-to-repair is a huge issue for farm equipment.

One of the reasons is not so much that the OEM prices are high is that the stocks of spares are sized based on the order rate against the high prices; you order it, they make it, and you get it many weeks later.

Combine "the software servers are down" with "the supply chain to the plant that makes spares is disrupted" with "fuel prices are too high for profitable farming according to the financial system" and food supply shrinks.

@cstross What I think people don't get is that the farm skillset in the US is in old people (on the whole and by and large), COVID has been hard on them, and the ethnic cleansing has taken away big chunks of the skills base.

Compelled system change in a context where you've got some patrician landowners and invalidated-axioms agribusiness and not much else is not going to hold together so well. Then throw in the extreme weather events, plural, the US has already had through the Midwest.

@cstross A lot of this has been driven by a desire to re-open Russia's sales channels so they can afford their war of conquest. (Dropped sanctions by the US, calls from the EU right, etc.)

We're seeing late stage Carbon Binge efforts to use military force to be the last supplier standing.

What we aren't seeing yet is the Coalition to Decarbonize; I think we're gonna, and then we're going to see military efforts to prevent any such thing.

Society insists you buy gas, even when there isn't any.

@cstross I don't think India can join. Too much incumbency.

It's kinda strange, really; is Xi's ruthlessness and the tottery state of China's economy a consequence of "get with the program or else, comrade" or is he doing the bloody-handed tyrant power consolidation thing? is it going to be possible to distinguish these cases in Xi's (or my!) lifetime? Probably not.

@cstross The "every empire established since the late medieval has exploited a power source" take goes slaves (Spain; slaves existed since time immemorial, but not the way Spain did it); coal (Britain); oil (US); electricity (China).

It's not that neat in the historical record but there's a lot to be said for it as an analysis, even before it makes George H. W. Bush the greatest villain in human history.

One of the exceedingly frustrating things is that anyone else could go electric anytime.