#jet-plane — Public Fediverse posts

“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing”*…

Prices are on everyone’s minds these days. Brian Potter looks underneath the costs of the finished products and services that we typically track to examine the costs of the commodities that go into them…

This American Enterprise Institute chart [above], which breaks down price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has by now become very widely known. A high-level takeaway from this chart is that labor-intensive services (education, healthcare) get more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms over time, while manufactured goods (TVs, toys, clothing) get less expensive over time.

But there are many types of goods that aren’t shown on this chart. One example is commodities: raw (or near-raw) materials mined or harvested from the earth. Commodities have many similarities with manufactured goods: they’re physical things that are produced (or extracted) using some sort of production technology (mining equipment, oil drilling equipment), and many of them will go through factory-like processing steps (oil refineries, blast furnaces). But commodities also seem distinct from manufactured goods. For one, because they’re often extracted from the earth, commodities can be subject to depletion dynamics: you run out of them at one location, and have to go find more somewhere else. In my book I talk about how iron ore used to be mined from places like Minnesota, but as the best deposits were mined out steel companies increasingly had to source their ore from overseas. And the idea of “Peak Oil” is based on the idea that society will use up the easily accessible oil, and be forced to obtain it from increasingly marginal, expensive-to-access locations.

(Some commodities, particularly agricultural commodities that can be repeatedly grown on a plot of land, don’t have the same sort of depletion dynamics, though bad farming practices can degrade a plot of land over time. Other commodities get naturally replenished over time, but can still get used up if the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment; non-farmed timber harvesting and non-farmed commercial fishing come to mind as examples.)

Going into this topic, I didn’t have a great sense of what price trends look like for commodities in general. Julian Simon famously won a 1980 bet with Paul Ehrlich that several raw materials — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten — would be cheaper (in inflation-adjusted terms) after 10 years, not more expensive. But folks have pointed out that if the bet had been over a different 10-year window, Ehrlich would have won the bet.

To better understand how price tends to change for different commodities and raw materials, I looked at historical prices for over a hundred different commodities. Broadly, agricultural commodities tend to get cheaper over time, while fossil fuels have a slight tendency to get more expensive. Minerals (chemicals, metals, etc.) have a slight tendency towards getting cheaper, with a lot of variation — 15 minerals more than doubled in price over their respective time series. But this has shifted over the last few decades, and recently there’s been a greater tendency for commodities to rise in price…

[Potter offers a thorough– and fascinating– analysis, concluding…]

… historically commodities have generally fallen in price over time, but recently this trend has increasingly shifted towards rising prices. Natural gas and oil got cheaper until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, and since then have gotten more expensive. Beef and pork both got cheaper from 1970 until the 1990s, and since then have risen in price. Agricultural products were almost uniformly falling in price until around 2000, and have almost uniformly risen in price since then.

My general sense looking at historical commodity price data is that the more that production of some commodity looks like manufacturing — produced by a repetitive process that can be steadily improved and automated, from a supply that can be scaled up in a relatively straightforward fashion, without being subject to severe depletion dynamics — the more you’ll tend to see prices fall over time. The biggest decline in price of any commodity I looked at is industrial diamonds, which fell in price by 99.9% between 1900 and 2021d ue to advances in lab-grown diamonds production. This effectively replaced mined diamonds with manufactured ones for industrial uses; roughly 99% of industrial diamonds today are synthetic. Many other commodities had major price declines that were the result of production process improvements — aluminum got cheaper thanks to the invention (and subsequent improvements) of the Hall-Heroult smelting process, titanium’s price declined following the introduction of the Kroll process, and so on. (Steel also got much cheaper following the introduction of the Bessemer process, but that predates USGS price data.) And of course agriculture, which has evolved from crops being harvested manually to being harvested with highly automated, continuous process machinery, closely mirrors the sorts of process improvements we see in manufacturing.

Of course, this trend alone can’t explain changes in commodity prices over time, and there are plenty of commodities — steel, cement, silicon — that are produced in a manufacturing-type operation but which haven’t seen substantially declining prices over their history. And even commodities which resemble manufactured goods have risen in price recently. More generally, there are plenty of things that can shift supply and demand curves to the right or left: cartels, national policies, a spike or collapse in demand, and so on. But the question of “how much, over time, does the production of this commodity resemble a manufacturing process?” seems like a useful lens on understanding the dynamics of commodity prices…

“Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz.

* Karl Marx

###

As we brush up on the basics, we might recall that this date in the anniversary of two events that spurred commodity consumption.

Alexander Graham Bell spurred a boom on copper consumption when, on this date in 1915, he placed the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco, where the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations were underway and his assistant, his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson stood by. Bell repeated his famous first telephonic words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,” to which Watson this time replied “It will take me five days to get there now!” Bell’s call officially initiated AT&T’s transcontinental service.

And, on this date 45 years later, in 1959, the aluminum market got a boost when the first non-stop transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York. The sleek silver plane made the flight in airline official time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, half the usual scheduled time for the prop-driven DC- 7Cs then in regular use on that route.

source

“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing”*…

Prices are on everyone’s minds these days. Brian Potter looks underneath the costs of the finished products and services that we typically track to examine the costs of the commodities that go into them…

This American Enterprise Institute chart [above], which breaks down price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has by now become very widely known. A high-level takeaway from this chart is that labor-intensive services (education, healthcare) get more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms over time, while manufactured goods (TVs, toys, clothing) get less expensive over time.

But there are many types of goods that aren’t shown on this chart. One example is commodities: raw (or near-raw) materials mined or harvested from the earth. Commodities have many similarities with manufactured goods: they’re physical things that are produced (or extracted) using some sort of production technology (mining equipment, oil drilling equipment), and many of them will go through factory-like processing steps (oil refineries, blast furnaces). But commodities also seem distinct from manufactured goods. For one, because they’re often extracted from the earth, commodities can be subject to depletion dynamics: you run out of them at one location, and have to go find more somewhere else. In my book I talk about how iron ore used to be mined from places like Minnesota, but as the best deposits were mined out steel companies increasingly had to source their ore from overseas. And the idea of “Peak Oil” is based on the idea that society will use up the easily accessible oil, and be forced to obtain it from increasingly marginal, expensive-to-access locations.

(Some commodities, particularly agricultural commodities that can be repeatedly grown on a plot of land, don’t have the same sort of depletion dynamics, though bad farming practices can degrade a plot of land over time. Other commodities get naturally replenished over time, but can still get used up if the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment; non-farmed timber harvesting and non-farmed commercial fishing come to mind as examples.)

Going into this topic, I didn’t have a great sense of what price trends look like for commodities in general. Julian Simon famously won a 1980 bet with Paul Ehrlich that several raw materials — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten — would be cheaper (in inflation-adjusted terms) after 10 years, not more expensive. But folks have pointed out that if the bet had been over a different 10-year window, Ehrlich would have won the bet.

To better understand how price tends to change for different commodities and raw materials, I looked at historical prices for over a hundred different commodities. Broadly, agricultural commodities tend to get cheaper over time, while fossil fuels have a slight tendency to get more expensive. Minerals (chemicals, metals, etc.) have a slight tendency towards getting cheaper, with a lot of variation — 15 minerals more than doubled in price over their respective time series. But this has shifted over the last few decades, and recently there’s been a greater tendency for commodities to rise in price…

[Potter offers a thorough– and fascinating– analysis, concluding…]

… historically commodities have generally fallen in price over time, but recently this trend has increasingly shifted towards rising prices. Natural gas and oil got cheaper until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, and since then have gotten more expensive. Beef and pork both got cheaper from 1970 until the 1990s, and since then have risen in price. Agricultural products were almost uniformly falling in price until around 2000, and have almost uniformly risen in price since then.

My general sense looking at historical commodity price data is that the more that production of some commodity looks like manufacturing — produced by a repetitive process that can be steadily improved and automated, from a supply that can be scaled up in a relatively straightforward fashion, without being subject to severe depletion dynamics — the more you’ll tend to see prices fall over time. The biggest decline in price of any commodity I looked at is industrial diamonds, which fell in price by 99.9% between 1900 and 2021d ue to advances in lab-grown diamonds production. This effectively replaced mined diamonds with manufactured ones for industrial uses; roughly 99% of industrial diamonds today are synthetic. Many other commodities had major price declines that were the result of production process improvements — aluminum got cheaper thanks to the invention (and subsequent improvements) of the Hall-Heroult smelting process, titanium’s price declined following the introduction of the Kroll process, and so on. (Steel also got much cheaper following the introduction of the Bessemer process, but that predates USGS price data.) And of course agriculture, which has evolved from crops being harvested manually to being harvested with highly automated, continuous process machinery, closely mirrors the sorts of process improvements we see in manufacturing.

Of course, this trend alone can’t explain changes in commodity prices over time, and there are plenty of commodities — steel, cement, silicon — that are produced in a manufacturing-type operation but which haven’t seen substantially declining prices over their history. And even commodities which resemble manufactured goods have risen in price recently. More generally, there are plenty of things that can shift supply and demand curves to the right or left: cartels, national policies, a spike or collapse in demand, and so on. But the question of “how much, over time, does the production of this commodity resemble a manufacturing process?” seems like a useful lens on understanding the dynamics of commodity prices…

“Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz.

* Karl Marx

###

As we brush up on the basics, we might recall that this date in the anniversary of two events that spurred commodity consumption.

Alexander Graham Bell spurred a boom on copper consumption when, on this date in 1915, he placed the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco, where the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations were underway and his assistant, his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson stood by. Bell repeated his famous first telephonic words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,” to which Watson this time replied “It will take me five days to get there now!” Bell’s call officially initiated AT&T’s transcontinental service.

And, on this date 45 years later, in 1959, the aluminum market got a boost when the first non-stop transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York. The sleek silver plane made the flight in airline official time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, half the usual scheduled time for the prop-driven DC- 7Cs then in regular use on that route.

source

“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing”*…

Prices are on everyone’s minds these days. Brian Potter looks underneath the costs of the finished products and services that we typically track to examine the costs of the commodities that go into them…

This American Enterprise Institute chart [above], which breaks down price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has by now become very widely known. A high-level takeaway from this chart is that labor-intensive services (education, healthcare) get more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms over time, while manufactured goods (TVs, toys, clothing) get less expensive over time.

But there are many types of goods that aren’t shown on this chart. One example is commodities: raw (or near-raw) materials mined or harvested from the earth. Commodities have many similarities with manufactured goods: they’re physical things that are produced (or extracted) using some sort of production technology (mining equipment, oil drilling equipment), and many of them will go through factory-like processing steps (oil refineries, blast furnaces). But commodities also seem distinct from manufactured goods. For one, because they’re often extracted from the earth, commodities can be subject to depletion dynamics: you run out of them at one location, and have to go find more somewhere else. In my book I talk about how iron ore used to be mined from places like Minnesota, but as the best deposits were mined out steel companies increasingly had to source their ore from overseas. And the idea of “Peak Oil” is based on the idea that society will use up the easily accessible oil, and be forced to obtain it from increasingly marginal, expensive-to-access locations.

(Some commodities, particularly agricultural commodities that can be repeatedly grown on a plot of land, don’t have the same sort of depletion dynamics, though bad farming practices can degrade a plot of land over time. Other commodities get naturally replenished over time, but can still get used up if the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment; non-farmed timber harvesting and non-farmed commercial fishing come to mind as examples.)

Going into this topic, I didn’t have a great sense of what price trends look like for commodities in general. Julian Simon famously won a 1980 bet with Paul Ehrlich that several raw materials — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten — would be cheaper (in inflation-adjusted terms) after 10 years, not more expensive. But folks have pointed out that if the bet had been over a different 10-year window, Ehrlich would have won the bet.

To better understand how price tends to change for different commodities and raw materials, I looked at historical prices for over a hundred different commodities. Broadly, agricultural commodities tend to get cheaper over time, while fossil fuels have a slight tendency to get more expensive. Minerals (chemicals, metals, etc.) have a slight tendency towards getting cheaper, with a lot of variation — 15 minerals more than doubled in price over their respective time series. But this has shifted over the last few decades, and recently there’s been a greater tendency for commodities to rise in price…

[Potter offers a thorough– and fascinating– analysis, concluding…]

… historically commodities have generally fallen in price over time, but recently this trend has increasingly shifted towards rising prices. Natural gas and oil got cheaper until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, and since then have gotten more expensive. Beef and pork both got cheaper from 1970 until the 1990s, and since then have risen in price. Agricultural products were almost uniformly falling in price until around 2000, and have almost uniformly risen in price since then.

My general sense looking at historical commodity price data is that the more that production of some commodity looks like manufacturing — produced by a repetitive process that can be steadily improved and automated, from a supply that can be scaled up in a relatively straightforward fashion, without being subject to severe depletion dynamics — the more you’ll tend to see prices fall over time. The biggest decline in price of any commodity I looked at is industrial diamonds, which fell in price by 99.9% between 1900 and 2021d ue to advances in lab-grown diamonds production. This effectively replaced mined diamonds with manufactured ones for industrial uses; roughly 99% of industrial diamonds today are synthetic. Many other commodities had major price declines that were the result of production process improvements — aluminum got cheaper thanks to the invention (and subsequent improvements) of the Hall-Heroult smelting process, titanium’s price declined following the introduction of the Kroll process, and so on. (Steel also got much cheaper following the introduction of the Bessemer process, but that predates USGS price data.) And of course agriculture, which has evolved from crops being harvested manually to being harvested with highly automated, continuous process machinery, closely mirrors the sorts of process improvements we see in manufacturing.

Of course, this trend alone can’t explain changes in commodity prices over time, and there are plenty of commodities — steel, cement, silicon — that are produced in a manufacturing-type operation but which haven’t seen substantially declining prices over their history. And even commodities which resemble manufactured goods have risen in price recently. More generally, there are plenty of things that can shift supply and demand curves to the right or left: cartels, national policies, a spike or collapse in demand, and so on. But the question of “how much, over time, does the production of this commodity resemble a manufacturing process?” seems like a useful lens on understanding the dynamics of commodity prices…

“Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz.

* Karl Marx

###

As we brush up on the basics, we might recall that this date in the anniversary of two events that spurred commodity consumption.

Alexander Graham Bell spurred a boom on copper consumption when, on this date in 1915, he placed the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco, where the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations were underway and his assistant, his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson stood by. Bell repeated his famous first telephonic words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,” to which Watson this time replied “It will take me five days to get there now!” Bell’s call officially initiated AT&T’s transcontinental service.

And, on this date 45 years later, in 1959, the aluminum market got a boost when the first non-stop transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York. The sleek silver plane made the flight in airline official time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, half the usual scheduled time for the prop-driven DC- 7Cs then in regular use on that route.

source

“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing”*…

Prices are on everyone’s minds these days. Brian Potter looks underneath the costs of the finished products and services that we typically track to examine the costs of the commodities that go into them…

This American Enterprise Institute chart [above], which breaks down price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has by now become very widely known. A high-level takeaway from this chart is that labor-intensive services (education, healthcare) get more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms over time, while manufactured goods (TVs, toys, clothing) get less expensive over time.

But there are many types of goods that aren’t shown on this chart. One example is commodities: raw (or near-raw) materials mined or harvested from the earth. Commodities have many similarities with manufactured goods: they’re physical things that are produced (or extracted) using some sort of production technology (mining equipment, oil drilling equipment), and many of them will go through factory-like processing steps (oil refineries, blast furnaces). But commodities also seem distinct from manufactured goods. For one, because they’re often extracted from the earth, commodities can be subject to depletion dynamics: you run out of them at one location, and have to go find more somewhere else. In my book I talk about how iron ore used to be mined from places like Minnesota, but as the best deposits were mined out steel companies increasingly had to source their ore from overseas. And the idea of “Peak Oil” is based on the idea that society will use up the easily accessible oil, and be forced to obtain it from increasingly marginal, expensive-to-access locations.

(Some commodities, particularly agricultural commodities that can be repeatedly grown on a plot of land, don’t have the same sort of depletion dynamics, though bad farming practices can degrade a plot of land over time. Other commodities get naturally replenished over time, but can still get used up if the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment; non-farmed timber harvesting and non-farmed commercial fishing come to mind as examples.)

Going into this topic, I didn’t have a great sense of what price trends look like for commodities in general. Julian Simon famously won a 1980 bet with Paul Ehrlich that several raw materials — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten — would be cheaper (in inflation-adjusted terms) after 10 years, not more expensive. But folks have pointed out that if the bet had been over a different 10-year window, Ehrlich would have won the bet.

To better understand how price tends to change for different commodities and raw materials, I looked at historical prices for over a hundred different commodities. Broadly, agricultural commodities tend to get cheaper over time, while fossil fuels have a slight tendency to get more expensive. Minerals (chemicals, metals, etc.) have a slight tendency towards getting cheaper, with a lot of variation — 15 minerals more than doubled in price over their respective time series. But this has shifted over the last few decades, and recently there’s been a greater tendency for commodities to rise in price…

[Potter offers a thorough– and fascinating– analysis, concluding…]

… historically commodities have generally fallen in price over time, but recently this trend has increasingly shifted towards rising prices. Natural gas and oil got cheaper until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, and since then have gotten more expensive. Beef and pork both got cheaper from 1970 until the 1990s, and since then have risen in price. Agricultural products were almost uniformly falling in price until around 2000, and have almost uniformly risen in price since then.

My general sense looking at historical commodity price data is that the more that production of some commodity looks like manufacturing — produced by a repetitive process that can be steadily improved and automated, from a supply that can be scaled up in a relatively straightforward fashion, without being subject to severe depletion dynamics — the more you’ll tend to see prices fall over time. The biggest decline in price of any commodity I looked at is industrial diamonds, which fell in price by 99.9% between 1900 and 2021d ue to advances in lab-grown diamonds production. This effectively replaced mined diamonds with manufactured ones for industrial uses; roughly 99% of industrial diamonds today are synthetic. Many other commodities had major price declines that were the result of production process improvements — aluminum got cheaper thanks to the invention (and subsequent improvements) of the Hall-Heroult smelting process, titanium’s price declined following the introduction of the Kroll process, and so on. (Steel also got much cheaper following the introduction of the Bessemer process, but that predates USGS price data.) And of course agriculture, which has evolved from crops being harvested manually to being harvested with highly automated, continuous process machinery, closely mirrors the sorts of process improvements we see in manufacturing.

Of course, this trend alone can’t explain changes in commodity prices over time, and there are plenty of commodities — steel, cement, silicon — that are produced in a manufacturing-type operation but which haven’t seen substantially declining prices over their history. And even commodities which resemble manufactured goods have risen in price recently. More generally, there are plenty of things that can shift supply and demand curves to the right or left: cartels, national policies, a spike or collapse in demand, and so on. But the question of “how much, over time, does the production of this commodity resemble a manufacturing process?” seems like a useful lens on understanding the dynamics of commodity prices…

“Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz.

* Karl Marx

###

As we brush up on the basics, we might recall that this date in the anniversary of two events that spurred commodity consumption.

Alexander Graham Bell spurred a boom on copper consumption when, on this date in 1915, he placed the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco, where the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations were underway and his assistant, his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson stood by. Bell repeated his famous first telephonic words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,” to which Watson this time replied “It will take me five days to get there now!” Bell’s call officially initiated AT&T’s transcontinental service.

And, on this date 45 years later, in 1959, the aluminum market got a boost when the first non-stop transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York. The sleek silver plane made the flight in airline official time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, half the usual scheduled time for the prop-driven DC- 7Cs then in regular use on that route.

source

“A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing”*…

Prices are on everyone’s minds these days. Brian Potter looks underneath the costs of the finished products and services that we typically track to examine the costs of the commodities that go into them…

This American Enterprise Institute chart [above], which breaks down price changes for different types of goods and services in the consumer price index, has by now become very widely known. A high-level takeaway from this chart is that labor-intensive services (education, healthcare) get more expensive in inflation-adjusted terms over time, while manufactured goods (TVs, toys, clothing) get less expensive over time.

But there are many types of goods that aren’t shown on this chart. One example is commodities: raw (or near-raw) materials mined or harvested from the earth. Commodities have many similarities with manufactured goods: they’re physical things that are produced (or extracted) using some sort of production technology (mining equipment, oil drilling equipment), and many of them will go through factory-like processing steps (oil refineries, blast furnaces). But commodities also seem distinct from manufactured goods. For one, because they’re often extracted from the earth, commodities can be subject to depletion dynamics: you run out of them at one location, and have to go find more somewhere else. In my book I talk about how iron ore used to be mined from places like Minnesota, but as the best deposits were mined out steel companies increasingly had to source their ore from overseas. And the idea of “Peak Oil” is based on the idea that society will use up the easily accessible oil, and be forced to obtain it from increasingly marginal, expensive-to-access locations.

(Some commodities, particularly agricultural commodities that can be repeatedly grown on a plot of land, don’t have the same sort of depletion dynamics, though bad farming practices can degrade a plot of land over time. Other commodities get naturally replenished over time, but can still get used up if the rate of extraction exceeds the rate of replenishment; non-farmed timber harvesting and non-farmed commercial fishing come to mind as examples.)

Going into this topic, I didn’t have a great sense of what price trends look like for commodities in general. Julian Simon famously won a 1980 bet with Paul Ehrlich that several raw materials — copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten — would be cheaper (in inflation-adjusted terms) after 10 years, not more expensive. But folks have pointed out that if the bet had been over a different 10-year window, Ehrlich would have won the bet.

To better understand how price tends to change for different commodities and raw materials, I looked at historical prices for over a hundred different commodities. Broadly, agricultural commodities tend to get cheaper over time, while fossil fuels have a slight tendency to get more expensive. Minerals (chemicals, metals, etc.) have a slight tendency towards getting cheaper, with a lot of variation — 15 minerals more than doubled in price over their respective time series. But this has shifted over the last few decades, and recently there’s been a greater tendency for commodities to rise in price…

[Potter offers a thorough– and fascinating– analysis, concluding…]

… historically commodities have generally fallen in price over time, but recently this trend has increasingly shifted towards rising prices. Natural gas and oil got cheaper until the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, and since then have gotten more expensive. Beef and pork both got cheaper from 1970 until the 1990s, and since then have risen in price. Agricultural products were almost uniformly falling in price until around 2000, and have almost uniformly risen in price since then.

My general sense looking at historical commodity price data is that the more that production of some commodity looks like manufacturing — produced by a repetitive process that can be steadily improved and automated, from a supply that can be scaled up in a relatively straightforward fashion, without being subject to severe depletion dynamics — the more you’ll tend to see prices fall over time. The biggest decline in price of any commodity I looked at is industrial diamonds, which fell in price by 99.9% between 1900 and 2021d ue to advances in lab-grown diamonds production. This effectively replaced mined diamonds with manufactured ones for industrial uses; roughly 99% of industrial diamonds today are synthetic. Many other commodities had major price declines that were the result of production process improvements — aluminum got cheaper thanks to the invention (and subsequent improvements) of the Hall-Heroult smelting process, titanium’s price declined following the introduction of the Kroll process, and so on. (Steel also got much cheaper following the introduction of the Bessemer process, but that predates USGS price data.) And of course agriculture, which has evolved from crops being harvested manually to being harvested with highly automated, continuous process machinery, closely mirrors the sorts of process improvements we see in manufacturing.

Of course, this trend alone can’t explain changes in commodity prices over time, and there are plenty of commodities — steel, cement, silicon — that are produced in a manufacturing-type operation but which haven’t seen substantially declining prices over their history. And even commodities which resemble manufactured goods have risen in price recently. More generally, there are plenty of things that can shift supply and demand curves to the right or left: cartels, national policies, a spike or collapse in demand, and so on. But the question of “how much, over time, does the production of this commodity resemble a manufacturing process?” seems like a useful lens on understanding the dynamics of commodity prices…

“Do Commodities Get Cheaper Over Time?” from @constructionphysics.skystack.xyz.

* Karl Marx

###

As we brush up on the basics, we might recall that this date in the anniversary of two events that spurred commodity consumption.

Alexander Graham Bell spurred a boom on copper consumption when, on this date in 1915, he placed the first transcontinental phone call, from New York to San Francisco, where the Panama–Pacific International Exposition celebrations were underway and his assistant, his assistant Thomas Augustus Watson stood by. Bell repeated his famous first telephonic words, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you,” to which Watson this time replied “It will take me five days to get there now!” Bell’s call officially initiated AT&T’s transcontinental service.

And, on this date 45 years later, in 1959, the aluminum market got a boost when the first non-stop transcontinental commercial jet trip was made by an American Airlines Boeing 707, from Los Angeles to New York. The sleek silver plane made the flight in airline official time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, half the usual scheduled time for the prop-driven DC- 7Cs then in regular use on that route.

source

stihackova duha nebo chemtrail 🌈

#jetplane #redarrows #vaporware #prague #czechia #photo

Aermacchi MB 326 A7-081 in the markings of the RAAF aerobatics team the Roulettes. RAAF Base East Sale #AeromacchiMB326 #Macchi #trainingaircraft #aircraft #aeroplane #jet #jetplane #aviation #RAAF #RoyalAustralianAirForce #EastSale https://www.destinationsjourney.com/aviation/aircraft-photographs/aermacchi-mb-326/

Aermacchi MB 326 A7-081 in the markings of the RAAF aerobatics team the Roulettes. RAAF Base East Sale #AeromacchiMB326 #Macchi #trainingaircraft #aircraft #aeroplane #jet #jetplane #aviation #RAAF #RoyalAustralianAirForce #EastSale https://www.destinationsjourney.com/aviation/aircraft-photographs/aermacchi-mb-326/

Aermacchi MB 326 A7-081 in the markings of the RAAF aerobatics team the Roulettes. RAAF Base East Sale #AeromacchiMB326 #Macchi #trainingaircraft #aircraft #aeroplane #jet #jetplane #aviation #RAAF #RoyalAustralianAirForce #EastSale https://www.destinationsjourney.com/aviation/aircraft-photographs/aermacchi-mb-326/

Aermacchi MB 326 A7-081 in the markings of the RAAF aerobatics team the Roulettes. RAAF Base East Sale #AeromacchiMB326 #Macchi #trainingaircraft #aircraft #aeroplane #jet #jetplane #aviation #RAAF #RoyalAustralianAirForce #EastSale https://www.destinationsjourney.com/aviation/aircraft-photographs/aermacchi-mb-326/

"At Hamburg Airport", #throwback2009
(Hamburg Airport series post 2 of 3 / containing 3 pictures)

1) "Coming Home"

(Look at the fuckn grain of that very expired FujiC100!😎)

2) "The Tower"

(The old radar tower of HAM flight safety, built in 1950s by 'TeleFunKen')

Camera: #CanonT70
Film: #Fujicolor100 very #expired #135film
Scanner: #EpsonPerfectionV370Photo
Scanned w/ #VueScanPro & #epkowa drivers on #Kubuntu #Linux

3) "Rotor", 2nd negative, cropped to detail, no filters

@fotografie
#HamburgAirport #FlughafenHamburg #HAM #Airport #Radarturm #RadioTower #Antenna #Antenne #Radarantenne #plane #JetPlane #Flugzeug #Düsenflugzeug #Landeanflug #Approach #Landung #expiredfilm #believeinfilm #Fujfilm #C100 #Canon #T70 #filmphotography #oldroll #Analogfotografie #35mm #grainisgood #IShootFilm #InFilmWeTrust #Flughafen #filmisnotdead #BuyFilmNotMegapixels #shotonfilm #filmisalive #shootfilmbenice #VueScanLinux #VueScan #Ubuntu #BildVerarbeitungUnterLinux #NoFilters

"The Old Weather Station", #throwback2009
(Hamburg Airport series post 2 of 3 / containing 2 pictures)

Die alte Wetterstation an den ehemaligen Rieselfeldern auf der Niendorfer Seite des Flughafens Fuhlsbüttel, heute 'Helmut Schmidt Airport' (Old weather radio towers at east-side of Hamburg Airport at the former 'Rieselfelder', a wastewater field in the 1960s. Today it is used as a park/recriation area).

Camera: #CanonT70
Film: #Fujicolor100 very #expired #135film
Scanner: #EpsonPerfectionV370Photo
Scanned w/ #VueScanPro & #epkowa drivers on #Kubuntu #Linux

Einer der ehemaligen Schmutzwasserteiche (one of the former wastewater ponds).

@fotografie
#HamburgAirport #FlughafenHamburg #HAM #Airport #Rieselfelder #WastewaterField #Wetterstation #FunkStation #Flugsicherheit #expiredfilm #believeinfilm #Fujfilm #C100 #Canon #T70 #filmphotography #oldroll #Analogfotografie #35mm #grainisgood #IShootFilm #InFilmWeTrust #Flugzeug #Plane #jetplane #Flughafen #Landing #Landung #Arrival #filmisnotdead #BuyFilmNotMegapixels #HamburgNiendorf #Niendorf #FilmIsBetter #recriation #NaturUndTechnik #shotonfilm #filmisalive #shootfilmbenice #aWalkInThePark #VueScanLinux #VueScan #Ubuntu #BildVerarbeitungUnterLinux #NoFilters

"The Old Weather Station", #throwback2009
(Hamburg Airport series post 2 of 3 / containing 2 pictures)

Die alte Wetterstation an den ehemaligen Rieselfeldern auf der Niendorfer Seite des Flughafens Fuhlsbüttel, heute 'Helmut Schmidt Airport' (Old weather radio towers at east-side of Hamburg Airport at the former 'Rieselfelder', a wastewater field in the 1960s. Today it is used as a park/recriation area).

Camera: #CanonT70
Film: #Fujicolor100 very #expired #135film
Scanner: #EpsonPerfectionV370Photo
Scanned w/ #VueScanPro & #epkowa drivers on #Kubuntu #Linux

Einer der ehemaligen Schmutzwasserteiche (one of the former wastewater ponds).

@fotografie
#HamburgAirport #FlughafenHamburg #HAM #Airport #Rieselfelder #WastewaterField #Wetterstation #FunkStation #Flugsicherheit #expiredfilm #believeinfilm #Fujfilm #C100 #Canon #T70 #filmphotography #oldroll #Analogfotografie #35mm #grainisgood #IShootFilm #InFilmWeTrust #Flugzeug #Plane #jetplane #Flughafen #Landing #Landung #Arrival #filmisnotdead #BuyFilmNotMegapixels #HamburgNiendorf #Niendorf #FilmIsBetter #recriation #NaturUndTechnik #shotonfilm #filmisalive #shootfilmbenice #aWalkInThePark #VueScanLinux #VueScan #Ubuntu #BildVerarbeitungUnterLinux #NoFilters

"Hamburg Airport Series" #throwback2009
Ich weiß, #ThrowBackThursday war gestern, aber da ich die Filmstreifen gerade scanne, kommt an diesem Wochenende ein bischen was von einer Rolle damals schon lange abgelaufenen Fujicolor 100 Kleinbildfilms... 😉

Camera: #CanonT70
Film: #Fujicolor100 very #expired #135film
Scanner: #EpsonPerfectionV370Photo
Scanned w/ #VueScanPro & #epkowa drivers on #Kubuntu #Linux

@fotografie
#HamburgAirport #FlughafenHamburg #HAM #Airport #expiredfilm #believeinfilm #Fujfilm #C100 #Canon #T70 #filmphotography #oldroll #Analogfotografie #35mm #grainisgood #IShootFilm #InFilmWeTrust #Flugzeug #Plane #jetplane #Flughafen #Landing #Landung #Arrival #filmisnotdead #BuyFilmNotMegapixels #Hamburg #FlughafenHamburg #Fuhlsbüttel #FlughafenFuhlsbüttel #VueScanLinux #VueScan #Ubuntu #BildVerarbeitungUnterLinux #NoFilters

"Hamburg Airport Series" #throwback2009
Ich weiß, #ThrowBackThursday war gestern, aber da ich die Filmstreifen gerade scanne, kommt an diesem Wochenende ein bischen was von einer Rolle damals schon lange abgelaufenen Fujicolor 100 Kleinbildfilms... 😉

Camera: #CanonT70
Film: #Fujicolor100 very #expired #135film
Scanner: #EpsonPerfectionV370Photo
Scanned w/ #VueScanPro & #epkowa drivers on #Kubuntu #Linux

@fotografie
#HamburgAirport #FlughafenHamburg #HAM #Airport #expiredfilm #believeinfilm #Fujfilm #C100 #Canon #T70 #filmphotography #oldroll #Analogfotografie #35mm #grainisgood #IShootFilm #InFilmWeTrust #Flugzeug #Plane #jetplane #Flughafen #Landing #Landung #Arrival #filmisnotdead #BuyFilmNotMegapixels #Hamburg #FlughafenHamburg #Fuhlsbüttel #FlughafenFuhlsbüttel #VueScanLinux #VueScan #Ubuntu #BildVerarbeitungUnterLinux #NoFilters

Make Art Not War! Handcarved rubber stamps and acrylic colours on DIN-A3 paper:
#kunst #contemporaryart #handcarvedstamp #savebiodiversity #climateactionnow #systemchange #fckfdp #endfossilfuels #fckptn #standforukraine #jetfighter #jetplane #supersonic #highspeed #emblematy #festinalente #makehasteslowly #slowdown #slowly

#MarkFelton - #Lightning vs #U2 and #Concorde

"The extraordinary story of the fastest English Electric Lightning in the #RAF that managed to intercept the world's highest-flying spy plane, the U-2, and overtake the world's fastest #Airliner, the Concorde."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdUwIhI-ZA&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions

#JetPlane #JetPlanes #Supersonic #Jets #Fighter #FighterJet #FighterJets #EnglishElectric #EnglishElectricFighter #U2SpyPlane #JetEngine #JetEngines #HighAltitude #Engineering #Aerospace

#MarkFelton - #Lightning vs #U2 and #Concorde

"The extraordinary story of the fastest English Electric Lightning in the #RAF that managed to intercept the world's highest-flying spy plane, the U-2, and overtake the world's fastest #Airliner, the Concorde."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdUwIhI-ZA&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions

#JetPlane #JetPlanes #Supersonic #Jets #Fighter #FighterJet #FighterJets #EnglishElectric #EnglishElectricFighter #U2SpyPlane #JetEngine #JetEngines #HighAltitude #Engineering #Aerospace

#MarkFelton - #Lightning vs #U2 and #Concorde

"The extraordinary story of the fastest English Electric Lightning in the #RAF that managed to intercept the world's highest-flying spy plane, the U-2, and overtake the world's fastest #Airliner, the Concorde."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdUwIhI-ZA&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions

#JetPlane #JetPlanes #Supersonic #Jets #Fighter #FighterJet #FighterJets #EnglishElectric #EnglishElectricFighter #U2SpyPlane #JetEngine #JetEngines #HighAltitude #Engineering #Aerospace

#MarkFelton - #Lightning vs #U2 and #Concorde

"The extraordinary story of the fastest English Electric Lightning in the #RAF that managed to intercept the world's highest-flying spy plane, the U-2, and overtake the world's fastest #Airliner, the Concorde."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdUwIhI-ZA&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions

#JetPlane #JetPlanes #Supersonic #Jets #Fighter #FighterJet #FighterJets #EnglishElectric #EnglishElectricFighter #U2SpyPlane #JetEngine #JetEngines #HighAltitude #Engineering #Aerospace

#MarkFelton - #Lightning vs #U2 and #Concorde

"The extraordinary story of the fastest English Electric Lightning in the #RAF that managed to intercept the world's highest-flying spy plane, the U-2, and overtake the world's fastest #Airliner, the Concorde."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DdUwIhI-ZA&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions

#JetPlane #JetPlanes #Supersonic #Jets #Fighter #FighterJet #FighterJets #EnglishElectric #EnglishElectricFighter #U2SpyPlane #JetEngine #JetEngines #HighAltitude #Engineering #Aerospace

Today was a good day! It wasn't productive, but it was needed! Getting out on the motorbike, is my time to be free and forget about work.

Today's little trip totaled 186 miles. I certainly look forward to being able to take this bike on a much longer multi-day tour!

Also, came across this random plane fuselage at the side of the road no idea why!

#motorcycling #motorcycle #motorbiking #motorbike #p2t #jetplane

August 2002 USS Kennedy, sailing near Spain
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #AvgeeksofMastodon
#usnavy #planespotting #aircraftcarrier

August 2021 Polish Mig-29 at Malbork AB (PL)

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #AvgeeksofMastodon #planespotting

August 2021 Polish Mig-21 at Malbork AB (PL)

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair

August 2021 Polish Mig-21 at Malbork AB (PL)

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair

August 2021 Polish Mig-21 at Malbork AB (PL)

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair

August 2021 Polish Mig-21 at Malbork AB (PL)

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair

August 2021. Turkish F-16s at Malbork AB (PL) for the NATO Enhanced Baltic Air Policing mission.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #AvgeeksofMastodon
#natoalliedaircommand #balticairpolicing #planespotting

August 2021. Turkish F-16s at Malbork AB (PL) for the NATO Enhanced Baltic Air Policing mission.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #natoalliedaircommand #balticairpolicing

August 2021. Turkish F-16s at Malbork AB (PL) for the NATO Enhanced Baltic Air Policing mission.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #natoalliedaircommand #balticairpolicing

August 2021. Turkish F-16s at Malbork AB (PL) for the NATO Enhanced Baltic Air Policing mission.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #natoalliedaircommand #balticairpolicing

August 2021. Turkish F-16s at Malbork AB (PL) for the NATO Enhanced Baltic Air Policing mission.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #natoalliedaircommand #balticairpolicing

2006 onboard of the USS Roosevelt moored at Souda Bay, during the Last Cat Standing cruise

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #usnavy #AvgeeksofMastodon #planespotting #aircraftcarrier

20160701 BA Salon de Provence with the Ramex Delta Mirage 2000N demo team

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #AvgeeksofMastodon

20150909 Air to air with a Belgian C-130 overhead Belgium.

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #milair #AvgeeksofMastodon

1982 Prowler landing at Volkel AB (NL)
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #usnavy

1982 Prowler landing at Volkel AB (NL)
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #usnavy

1982 Prowler landing at Volkel AB (NL)
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #usnavy

1982 Prowler landing at Volkel AB (NL)
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato #usnavy

20230115 Italian KC-767 departing Eindhoven AB (NL) . #ItalianAirForce #EATC #aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato

20230115 Italian KC-767 departing Eindhoven AB (NL) . #ItalianAirForce #EATC #aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato

20230115 Italian KC-767 departing Eindhoven AB (NL) . #ItalianAirForce #EATC #aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato

20230115 Italian KC-767 departing Eindhoven AB (NL) . #ItalianAirForce #EATC #aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #nato

2022 2 different tankers at Eindhoven AB (NL) Italian KC-767 and Dutch A330 MRTT

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #airbus #boeing

2022 2 different tankers at Eindhoven AB (NL) Italian KC-767 and Dutch A330 MRTT

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #airbus #boeing

2022 2 different tankers at Eindhoven AB (NL) Italian KC-767 and Dutch A330 MRTT

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #airbus #boeing

2022 2 different tankers at Eindhoven AB (NL) Italian KC-767 and Dutch A330 MRTT

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #airbus #boeing

20060221 USS Roosevelt, F-14 Tomcat flight preparations for the afternoon flight. Any time baby!
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #usnavy #tomcat

20060221 USS Roosevelt, F-14 Tomcat flight preparations for the afternoon flight. Any time baby!
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #usnavy #tomcat

20060221 USS Roosevelt, F-14 Tomcat flight preparations for the afternoon flight. Any time baby!
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #usnavy #tomcat

20060221 USS Roosevelt, F-14 Tomcat flight preparations for the afternoon flight. Any time baby!
#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily #usnavy #tomcat

1987 Swiss Flugmeisterschaften at Dubendorf AB (CH). Those were the days.
These small scans of prints of slides, need to be rescanned one day.....

Thanks @mancavgeek for reminding me of the Swiss Hunters!

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily

1987 Swiss Flugmeisterschaften at Dubendorf AB (CH). Those were the days.
These small scans of prints of slides, need to be rescanned one day.....

Thanks @mancavgeek for reminding me of the Swiss Hunters!

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily

1987 Swiss Flugmeisterschaften at Dubendorf AB (CH). Those were the days.
These small scans of prints of slides, need to be rescanned one day.....

Thanks @mancavgeek for reminding me of the Swiss Hunters!

#aviationphoto #aviation #aviationphotography #avgeek #aviationgeek #MilitaryAviation #militaryaircraft #aircraft #jetplane #AviationDaily