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It's definitely fake hyper romanticism but I do like the idea of Charles Albert living in a cave, eating conkers, climbing 8C+s all day

That vid is very cool. Its not often you see someone trying a move where they zoom in and you're like "that isn't a hold... it just isn't"
 
Yes, his ability to emerge from under a rock each morning with a pristine, brilliant white shirt and clean shiny hair is almost as impressive as his climbing.
 
duncan said:
The whole notion of off-grid living in a developed 21st century country is such bollocks: try doing the same in a country without functioning police and health services and let's see how long you last. It's good a society can accommodate the Charles Alberts but this dishonesty just encourages small state fantasists.
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I really liked the video.

I presumed his hair was self-cleansing, (perhaps like my car is).

I totally agree that France is admirable for having such a clean (nuclear) electricity grid so it's much better to be on-grid especially there.

I am a fan of rejecting consumerism though. Buying loads of clutter etc isn't a prerequisite for having a decent health care system or police etc.
 
I don’t think it’s the notion of reduced consumerism, simple life etc. more that he obviously was not living in that cave!
 
stone said:
I totally agree that France is admirable for having such a clean (nuclear) electricity grid so it's much better to be on-grid especially there.

I am a fan of rejecting consumerism though. Buying loads of clutter etc isn't a prerequisite for having a decent health care system or police etc.
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No it isn't a prerequisite, but the sad reality is most western economic growth which funds the societies we benefit from being a part of is founded in fairly mindless consumerism. Either out of sight over the horizon or in your face. And the UK has a very clean power grid, compared to where the bauxite was likely mined and smelted and the aluminium alloy was likely refined that went into making your carabiners. There are obviously marginal cases where this isn't the case but on the whole it is.

I'd guess that most keen climbers reject gratuitous consumerism of non climbing-related goods compared to the average person, if only to afford to be able to go climbing more!

Hopefully one day economic growth won't be underpinned by consuming stuff we find moronic, and all citizens will be as sage and low-impact as the most sage anti-consumerist climbers (who thrive from living in economies funded by moronic consumption...)... but until that day society will be funded by stuff we find insanely harmful and wasteful.
 
I am assuming his portraited lifestyle is a mixture of truth, irony, prank and weird gallic humor. When I had students in France named Charles (or Elouan, or Oscar) I assumed that they would score at least 18 out of 20.


petejh said:
No it isn't a prerequisite, but the sad reality is most western economic growth which funds the societies we benefit from being a part of is founded in fairly mindless consumerism. [...]
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I thought it did not matter much what kind of consumption we do? Seeing an opera or hiring a an lawyer has more or less the same impact on the economy? Same as building a solar-farm or a coal-powered powerplant is more or less the same for (short- to mid-term) growth?

Calling consumerism mindless is more about what we value in society rather than about consumerism in general.
 
Sorry for derailing way off topic...

But I totally reject that notion that somehow public services etc get "funded" by consumerism.

If anything, the reason why we get told we can't have decent health care etc is because so much of the real resources (ie people's work efforts) get directed to making/marketing consumerist fodder rather than doing hip replacements, washing dementia patients or whatever.
 
stone said:
Sorry for derailing way off topic...

But I totally reject that notion that somehow public services etc get "funded" by consumerism.

If anything, the reason why we get told we can't have decent health care etc is because so much of the real resources (ie people's work efforts) get directed to making/marketing consumerist fodder rather than doing hip replacements, washing dementia patients or whatever.
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Yeah this will be a total derailment. Public services are 'funded' by government fiscal policy. Government fiscal policy is not detached and free from the effects of GDP. Sustained negative levels of GDP would impact fiscal policy due to unsustainable ever rising levels of debt to GDP. GDP without current consumerism would be negative.
It isn't a direct link and it isn't that simplistic, but there isn't an infinite amount a government can spend to fund public services without it starting to impact on interest rates, inflation and devaluing the currency. Look to Argentina for an extreme example of a government that spends freely on relatively good public services and social services, but without commensurate income. They've suffered insane inflation and currency devaluation for a long time.

'Consumerist fodder'
People like to buy stupid shit and do stupid things. That's a large part of the economy.
 
Argentina's problem is down to them having USD-denominated government debt. Why they have that is a mystifying tragedy.

They don't have an excessive ratio of spending on public services compared to their GDP though.https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND

Nordic countries do give an example of where they have a higher proportion of their economy directed towards public services than we do in the UK. They have higher taxes and so wouldn't be able to buy as much consumerist fodder as we do were it not for the fact that they also have better productivity, labour force participation etc.
 
jwi said:
I thought it did not matter much what kind of consumption we do? Seeing an opera or hiring a an lawyer has more or less the same impact on the economy? Same as building a solar-farm or a coal-powered powerplant is more or less the same for (short- to mid-term) growth?

Calling consumerism mindless is more about what we value in society rather than about consumerism in general.
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Yes I agree. And societies as a whole do consume a lot of things that are not human-rights lawyer-based, solar-farm-based or opera-based, as well as things that are :) And a hell of a lot of consumption is consumption of goods manufactured in SE Asia, not Europe. For e.g. until next year when the Berlin gigafactory scales up, the majority of tesla model 3 and model Ys on the road in Europe have been manufactured in Shanghai, where the power grid isn't up to Stone's standards :) That's a tiny example and not meant as anything other then to illustrate a distinct trend of European/western consumption - it sort of does matter what kind of consumption we do (not in GDP terms though as you say), but we don't do it the right way.
 
stone said:
Argentina's problem is down to them having USD-denominated government debt. Why they have that is a mystifying tragedy.

They don't have an excessive ratio of spending on public services compared to their GDP though.https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND

Nordic countries do give an example of where they have a higher proportion of their economy directed towards public services than we do in the UK. They have higher taxes and so wouldn't be able to buy as much consumerist fodder as we do were it not for the fact that they also have better productivity, labour force participation etc.
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A big part of Argentina's economic problem is that it maintained high levels of fiscal spending to fund public services, and funded it by high levels of money creation, which led to devaluation of the pesso and high inflation. It then spannered its economy further by imposing capital controls so that money can't leave the country, in an effort to prop up the pesso. It's obviously not that simple, but that part is accepted.

Without looking I thought the UK tax burden was now historically high and close to the level of nordic countries (without the nordic services due to low growth/productivity like you say)?
 
From that IMF link:
Government expenditure, percent of GDP:
Argentina 37.83%
UK 44.87%
Denmark 50.81%
Iceland 49.23%
Finland 55.31%
Sweden 49.86%
Norway 48.19%
 
This Dieter Helm link gives a fascinating look backing up what Pete said about UK being responsible for considerable emissions via what we import https://globalisierungsklima.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/carbon_record_2007.pdf
 
stone said:
From that IMF link:
Government expenditure, percent of GDP:
Argentina 37.83%
UK 44.87%
Denmark 50.81%
Iceland 49.23%
Finland 55.31%
Sweden 49.86%
Norway 48.19%
Click to expand...

That IMF link is from 2021. And UK tax take has increased since then as we know.
 
Can we have a general purpose thread, Pete vs Whoever [Economics], where these itinerant discussions can be moved to as they arise?
(I mean this seriously.)
 
The moves look incredible on this. He flows really well through them, I reckon Bosi might be up for giving this a go, he loves a bit of grotty limestone roofing!

I’m dead keen to see updates on his Font projects too, they all look amazingly hard. Those crimps he ratting on look absurd to be quite honest.
 

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