Tag: market

The Ecologically Destructive Technique of Blast Fishing and Cyanide Fishing

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Blast fishing was introduced in Southeast Asia post World War II, by American soldiers who threw grenades into bodies of water to yield a large cache of fish, a technique which is used  during the modern day to produce fish as a food resource in local markets. Dynamite is often used but any explosive will perform the task effectively, even improvised devices which utilize an explosive chemical within a glass drinking bottle with an improvised wick lit by a cigarette. Cyanide fishing is an ecologically destructive method of catching fish in which a diver takes bottled cyanide and pumps it into reef areas where fish reside, stunning the fish and making them easier to catch, so that they can be extracted for the pet and live fish trades. These techniques result in coral reefs losing their color and ultimately dying, eliminating a major food source for marine life within the region. Both methods are extremely damaging to the ecosystem and left unchecked, can decimate entire ecosystems within a few short years. Portions of and entire coral reefs which have slowly built over thousands of years can be destroyed in a matter of seconds by using either of these harmful techniques. Fortunately, both methods of fishing are illegal in most of Southeast Asia

The Rationale Why Pharmaceutical Organizations are Not Incentivized to Develop Antibiotics and Why This is Dangerous for the Worlds Next Pandemic

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Within 5 short years of release, approximatly 20% of antibiotics become subject to resistance from bacterial pathogens which means that antibiotic proliferation is chronologically limited within its life expectancy. Coupled with this, if an antibiotic is highly effective, the scientific and medical community often rally against its usage so that such a tool can be saved in reserve for a global bacterial pandemic. In either scenario, return upon investment is less than what it would be with a different class of medication (e.g. selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, statin, hypnotic etc.) which is why pharmaceutical organizations are less interested in research and development dedicated to antibiotic medicine in favor of other, more profitable medication categories. This lack of investment however is myopic and will inevitably backfire upon the pharmaceutical industry as a whole if new antibiotics are not developed because medications used to treat cancer will become less in demand due to the fact that cancer patients are highly likely to acquire an infection during treatment when their immune system is comprised, with this infection often killing the patient if antibiotic solutions are not available. This would expectedly lead to a sharp decline in cancer medication treatment and subsequently pharmaceutical sales of related medications as patients would be likely to adopt living the rest of their life as fully as possible and forgoing treatment as they would be damned if they accept the cancer treatment and develop an infection which kills them but also damned if they don’t accept the treatment and let the cancer run its course which is almost always fatal. To provide comparison of the research, development, and manufacturing contrast between oncology medications and antibiotics, as of 2020, there are currently 800 medications in development for cancer and hypertension whilst only 28 antibiotic medications undergoing that same research phase and development process, with 2 of these antibiotics expected to become fully developed and able to reach the market and patients. The last new antibiotic class, lipopeptides, were introduced in 1984 with a gap referred to as an “antibiotic void” occurring during the 1990’s, 2000’s, 2010’s, and now moving into the 2020’s. The urgency of this threat is projected to become dire within the coming decades, with scientists predicting that by 2050, medicine could potentially come full circle to the pre-antibiotic era, with microbes which are completely and totally resistant to every antibiotic known to medicine

The Effect of Chinese Investment Capital Upon the Vancouver, Canada Housing Market

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In 2015, $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion) USD left China which set a new historic record for the amount of currency exported from China within a single year. This dump of currency directly coincided with the July 2015 real estate jump of 30% – 40% of Vancouver, Canada the Greater Vancouver Area and the Fraser Valley. Many economists and financial experts working in China have correctly predicted a growing problem in which the financial bubbles that have been created in China have caused investors to become spooked and therefore cash out of these bubbles to put their income into hard assets around the world. This creates a bubble in other markets which are international, which would lead to the plausible conclusion that the Vancouver, Greater Vancouver Area, and Fraser Valley real estate markets are now bubbled in that they have taken the place of many Chinese companies valuations and debts (e.g. stocks and bonds) within the Chinese market. It is estimated that 90% of condominium sales in Vancouver are due to speculative buyers who are often offshore and never set foot in the asset they purchase yet they are paying top dollar, making home costs surge ever further for those who actually live and work in said market. Some of this activity is thought to be due to the ability to create offshore tax havens by owning property outside of one’s country of residence. Most of the condominiums built in Vancouver are single bedroom units, which act as safety deposit boxes for investors as families cannot physically fit into such tight quarters and therefore these units are designed so that the only people purchasing them will be investors and single individuals if they can afford it. It has been said that Vancouver is a manufacturing city which manufactures condominiums; the only caveat is that the exports manufactured stay put making future condominiums worth even more as there is less and less space available to build continuously with consistency. The resource of land is finite and unless buyers are willing to move further out from this hotspot economy, they will be forced to rent or live in less than acceptable living conditions, and sometimes both

The Unsustainability of Massive Debt 

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A major driver of prosperity during the last 50 years of the 20th century has been debt. Prior to World War II, significant debt (e.g. mortgages) did not exist. Debt has been the fundamental driver of all of this forward momentum. This system of prosperity is dependant upon one’s financial ability to service it, and although it is accepted as normal, it is unfortunately unsustainable. This movement has created the enormous financial sector and markets which the industrialized world is now familiar with. The mindset of enjoying now and paying later creates a mindset in which people are divorced from affordability. History has consistently demonstrated that this model is highly volatile and worse, unsustainable in the long run

The Vancouver, Canada Housing Market and the Greater Fool Theory

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The Fraser Valley is the fastest growing suburb in Canada. The housing market in Vancouver, British Columbia is by far the most expensive in Canada, even more so than in Toronto, Ontario which for a long time was the most destabilized market in Canada. The most expensive region of Vancouver to live in is West Vancouver. 65% of residents of Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Area which includes the Fraser Valley are homeowners. Fundamentally, the Vancouver housing market is easy and cheap income, and from that, lots of it. The chasing of returns on a speculative basis has no basis in reality in terms of what an assets (e.g. a physical property) true valuation is but it is justified on the notion that it does not matter what a buyer pays now, as another buyer will pay more in the future. This is referred to as the “Greater Fool theory” in that the next person will cover the cost of the last person. This model is for obvious reasons unsustainable

The Japanese Tsukiji Fish Market

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The largest fish market in the world is the Tsukiji Shijō (Constructed Land Market) (Tsukiji Fish Market) located in Tokyo, Japan. Nearly 1700 tonnes of fishery products are handled in the Tsukiji wholesale market every day, and approximately 480 different kinds of fish are traded. Over 12,000 employees work for various fish dealers and over 30,000 customers come through each and every day