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Moving industrialization offshore can look like a good idea at first. But as fossil fuel energy supplies deplete, this strategy works less well. Countries doing the mining and manufacturing may be less interested in trading. Also, the broken supply lines of 2020 and 2021 showed that transferring major industries offshore could lead to empty shelves in stores, plus unhappy customers.
The United States started moving industry offshore in 1974 (Figure 1) in response to spiking oil prices in 1973-1974 (Figure 2).
Industry is based on the use of fossil fuels. Electricity also plays a role, but it is more like the icing on the cake than the basis of industrial production. Industry is polluting in many ways, so it was an “easy sell” to move industry offshore. But now the United States is realizing that it needs to re-industrialize. At the same time, we are being told about the need to transition the entire economy to electricity to prevent climate change.
In this post, I will try to explain the situation–how fossil fuel prices have spiked many times, including 1973-1974 (oil) and more recently (coal in 2022). I will also discuss the key role fossil fuels play. Because of the key role of fossil fuels, a reduction in per-capita fossil fuel consumption likely leads to a transition to fewer goods and services, on average, per person. A transition to all electricity does not seem to be feasible. Instead, we seem to be headed for increased geopolitical conflict and the possibility of a financial crash seems greater.
[1] When fossil fuel supplies become constrained, prices tend to spike to high levels, and then fall back again.
Economists and energy analysts have tended to assume that fossil fuel prices would rise to very high levels, allowing extraction of huge amounts of difficult-to-extract fossil fuels. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in the past has shown forecasts of future oil production assuming that inflation-adjusted oil prices will rise to $300 per barrel.
Instead of rising to a very high level, fossil fuel prices tend to spike because there is a two-way contest between the price the consumers can afford and the price the sellers need to keep reinvesting in new fields to keep fossil fuel supplies increasing. Prices oscillate back and forth, with neither buyers nor sellers finding themselves very happy with the situation. The current price of the benchmark, Brent oil, is $81.
[2] Historical data shows spiking oil and coal prices.
When world oil prices started to spike in the 1973-1974 period, the US started to move its industrial production offshore (Figure 1). The very low inflation-adjusted prices that prevailed up until 1972 no longer held. Manufacturing costs climbed higher. Consumers wanted smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, and such cars were already being manufactured both in Europe and in Japan. Importing these cars made sense.
More recently, coal prices have begun to spike. Coal prices vary by location, but the general patterns are similar for the types of coal shown.
Before China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, coal prices tended to be below $50 per ton (figure 3). At that price, coal was a very inexpensive fuel for making steel and concrete, and for many other industrial uses.
After China joined the WTO, China’s coal consumption soared (Figure 4), allowing it to industrialize. Figure 3 shows that the extra demand initially pushed coal prices up a little. By 2022, coal prices had soared. At present, coal prices are part-way back down, perhaps partly because higher interest rates are dampening world demand for coal.
Natural gas prices also soared in 2022, at the same time as coal prices. Both coal and natural gas are fuels that are burned to produce electricity. When the coal supply is constrained, utilities will try to purchase more electricity produced by burning natural gas. However, it is difficult to store much natural gas for future use. Thus, a shortage of internationally traded coal can simultaneously lead to a shortage of internationally traded natural gas.
Having oil, coal, and natural gas prices spiking at the same time leads to inflation and to many unhappy citizens.
[3] The 1997 Kyoto Protocol encouraged the trend toward moving industry to lower-cost countries.
In Figure 1, I show a dotted line at 1997. At that time, an international treaty stating that the participating countries would limit their own CO2 emissions attracted a lot of attention. An easy way to limit CO2 emissions was by moving industry overseas. Even though the US did not sign the treaty until later, the treaty gave the US a reason to move industry overseas. We can see from Figure 1 that US industrialization, as measured by the energy per capita required to industrialize, began to fall even more rapidly after 1997.
[4] There were many reasons besides the Kyoto Protocol why Advanced Economies would want to move industry overseas.
There were many reasons to move industry overseas besides spiking oil prices and concern over CO2 levels. With such a change, customers in the US (and European countries making a similar change) gained access to lower-cost goods and services. With the money the customers could save, they were able to buy more discretionary goods and services, which helped to ramp up local economies.
Also, industry tends to be polluting. Smog tends to be problem if coal is burned, or if diesel with high sulfur content is burned. Mining tends to produce a lot of toxic waste. Moving this pollution offshore to poorer countries would solve the pollution problem without the high cost of attempting to capture this pollution and properly store it.
Furthermore, business-owners in the United States could sense the opportunity to grow to be truly international in size if they moved much of their industry overseas.
[5] All the globalization and moving of industry overseas had a downside: more wage and wealth disparity.
In a matter of a few years, the economy changed to provide fewer high-paying factory jobs in the United States. Increasingly, those without advanced education found it difficult to provide an adequate living for their families. The high incomes were disproportionately going to highly educated workers and the owners of capital goods (Figure 5).
[6] Part of what caused the growing wage and wealth disparities in Figure 5 was the growing industrialization of China (Figure 6).
China, with its growing industrialization, could outcompete whole industries, such as furniture-making and garment-making, leaving US workers to find lower-paid jobs in the service sector. Similar outcomes unfolded in the EU and Japan, as industrialization started moving to different parts of the world.
[7] The indirect impact of the Kyoto Protocol was to move CO2 emissions slightly away from the Advanced Nations. Overall, CO2 emissions rose.
Anyone who expected that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol would reduce world CO2 emissions would have been disappointed.
[8] The direct use of fossil fuels plays a far more important role in the economy than we have ever been taught.
Thanks to the direct use of fossil fuels, the world can have paved roads, bridges made of steel, and electricity transmission lines. It can have concrete. It can have pharmaceutical products, herbicides, and insecticides. Many of these benefits come from the chemical properties of fossil fuels. Electricity, by itself, could never provide these products since it has been stripped of the chemical benefits of fossil fuels. Electricity is also difficult to store.
With the benefit of fossil fuels, the world can also have high-quality steel, with precisely the composition desired by those making it. With only electricity, it is possible to use electric arc furnaces to recycle used steel, but such steel is limited both in quantity and quality. US production of steel amounts to 5% of world supply (primarily using electric arc furnaces), while China’s production (mostly using coal) amounts to 50% of world supply.
I highly recommend reading the article, Trapped in the Iron Age, by Kris De Decker. He explains that the world uses an enormous amount of steel, but most of it is hidden in places we can’t see. Today, with the US’s limited steel-making capability, the US needs to import most of its steel, including steel pipes from China to drill its oil wells. We cannot see how dependent we have become on other countries for our basic steel needs.
China and India have both based their recent growth primarily on rising coal consumption. This is what has kept world CO2 emissions high. The US is now exporting coal to these countries.
[9] Citizens of Advanced Economies are easily confused about the importance of fossil fuel use because they have never been taught about the subject and because their worldview is distorted by the narrow view they see from within their homes and offices.
Figure 8 shows that the sector with the highest share of electricity use is the commercial sector. This includes uses such as stores, offices, and hospitals. The most visible energy use is lighting and operating computers, which gives the perception that electricity is the greatest energy use. But these businesses also need to be heated, and heat is often produced by burning natural gas directly. Businesses also need back-up for their electrical systems. Such back-up is typically provided by diesel-powered generators.
Residential usage is similar. It is easy to see the use of electricity, but heat is generally needed during winter. This is often provided by natural gas or propane. Natural gas is also often used in hot water heaters, stoves, and clothes dryers. Occasionally, wood is used to heat homes; this would go into the non-electricity portion, as well.
The thing that most people do not realize is that industrial use and transportation use are extremely large sectors of the economy (Figure 9), and these sectors are very low consumers of electricity (Figure 8). Also, if the US and Europe were to re-industrialize to produce more of our manufactured goods, our industrial sectors would need to be much larger than they are today.
In recent years, electrical consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption for the industrial sector has averaged about 13% of the total (Figure 9). Industries typically need high heat levels; such heat can usually be achieved at lowest cost by burning fossil fuels directly. Wikipedia claims, “Electric arc steelmaking is only economical where there is plentiful, reliable electricity, with a well-developed electrical grid.” An electric grid, powered only by intermittent electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, would not qualify.
In Figure 8, electricity consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption for the US transportation sector rounds to 0%, for every year. Even the amount of biomass (ethanol and biodiesel) used by the transportation sector doesn’t have much of an impact, as shown in Figure 10.
A major issue is that transportation is a broad sector, including trucks, trains, planes, and boats, in addition to private passenger autos. Also, I expect that the only electricity that would be considered in the transportation energy calculation would be electricity purchased from an away-from-home charging facility. Electricity used when charging at home would likely be part of residential electricity consumption.
[9] The narrative saying that we can transition to an electricity-only economy, powered by intermittent wind and solar electricity, has major holes in it.
One major issue is that the pricing of wind and solar tends to drive out other electricity providers, particularly nuclear. Intermittent wind and solar are given “priority” when they are available. This leads to very low or negative prices for other electricity providers. Nuclear is particularly affected because it cannot ramp up and down, in response to prices that are far below its cost of production.
Nuclear is a far more stable source of electricity than either wind or solar, and it is also a low-carbon source. As a result, economies end up worse off, in terms of electricity supply per capita, and in stability of available supply, when wind and solar are added.
Another issue is that wind turbines and solar panels are made with fossil fuels and repaired using fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, we cannot maintain electricity transmission lines and roads. Thus, wind turbines and solar panels are as much a part of the fossil fuel system as hydroelectric electricity and electricity made from coal or natural gas.
Also, as discussed above, only a small share of the economy is today operated using electricity. The IEA says that 20% of 2023 world energy supply comes from electricity. The amounts I calculated as “Overall” in Figure 8 indicate an electricity share of 18%, which is a bit less than the IEA is indicating for the world. Figure 8 shows an early upward trend in this ratio, but no upward trend since 2012. Fossil fuels are being used today because they have chemical characteristics that are needed or because they provide the energy services required in a less expensive manner than electricity.
Even in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, wind and waterpower provided only a small portion of the total energy supply. Coal provided the heat energy that both industry and residences needed, inexpensively. Wind and waterpower were not well adapted to providing heat energy when needed.
If we are short of inexpensive-to-extract fossil fuels, relative to today’s large population, we certainly could use some new inexpensive source of stable electricity supply. But this would not solve all our energy problems–we would still need a substantial amount of fossil fuel supplies to grow our food and keep our roads repaired. But if a new type of electricity production could reduce the demand for fossil fuels, it would make a larger quantity of fossil fuels available for other purposes.
[10] Practically everyone would like a happily-ever-after ending, so it is easy for politicians, educators, and the news media to put together overly optimistic versions of the future.
The narrative that CO2 is the world’s biggest enemy, so we need to move quickly away from fossil fuels, has received a great deal of publicity recently, but it is problematic from two different points of view:
(a) The feasibility of moving away from fossil fuels without killing off a very major portion of the world’s population seems to be virtually zero. The world economy is a dissipative structure in physics terms. It needs energy of the right kinds to “dissipate,” just as humans are dissipative structures and need food to dissipate (digest). Humans cannot live on lettuce alone, or practically any other foodstuff by itself. We need a “portfolio” of foods, adapted to our bodies’ needs. The economy is similar. It cannot operate only on electricity, any more than humans can live only on high-priced icing for cakes.
(b) The narrative about the importance of CO2 emissions with respect to climate change is quite possibly exaggerated. There are many other things that would seem to be at least as likely to cause short-term shifts in temperatures:
- Lack of global dimming caused by less coal dust and reduced sulfur compounds in the atmosphere; in other words, reducing smog tends to raise temperatures.
- Small changes in the Earth’s orbit
- Changes in solar activity
- Changes related to volcanic eruptions
- Changes related to shifts in the magnetic north and south poles
Politicians, educators, and the news media would all like a narrative that can explain the need for moving away from fossil fuels, rather than admit that “our easy to extract fossil fuel supply is running out.” The climate change narrative has been an easy approach to highlight, since clearly the climate is changing. It also provides the view that somehow we will be able to fix the problem if we take it seriously enough.
[11] Today, we are in a period of conflict among nations, indirectly related to not having access to enough fossil fuels for a world population of 8 billion. There is also a significant chance of financial collapse.
In my opinion, today’s world is a little like the “Roaring 20s” that came shortly before a major stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the Great Depression, the world entered World War II. There is huge wage and wealth disparity; energy supplies per capita are stretched.
Today, NATO and Russia are fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. Russia is a major fossil fuel producer; it would like to be paid more for the energy products it sells. Russia could perhaps get better prices by selling oil and other energy products to Asian customers instead of its current customer mix. At the same time, the US claims primary leadership (hegemony) in the world but, in fact, it needs to import many goods from overseas. It even needs supply lines from around the world for weapons being sent to Ukraine. The Ukraine conflict is not going well for the US.
I do not know how this will work out. I am hoping that there will not be a World War III, in the same way that there was a World War II. All countries are terribly dependent on each other, even though there are not enough fossil fuels to go around. Perhaps countries will try to sabotage one another, using modern techniques, such as cyber warfare.
I think that there is a substantial chance of a major financial collapse in the next few years. The level of debt is very high now. A major recession, with lots of collapsing debt, seems to be a strong possibility.
[12] A presentation I recently gave to a group of actuaries that touches on several of these issues, plus others.
My presentation can be found at this link: Beware: The Economy Is Beginning to Shrink
A World bank says Russia 4th largest economy now surpassing Japan and Germany. Germany is of course shrinking with lowcost energy removed. Massive layoffs. German people are WTF as their government goes “damn the torpedoes”.
There are reasons to believe that Russias economy is actually more on par with number three India than in Japan Germany class. One really has to question sanctions effectiveness. It’s as if Russia is growing faster with the sanctions than without. Effect of reducing portion of currencies based on synthetic economies?
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/major-russia-officially-becomes-worlds
From the WSJ Opinion page:
How Many Trillions Will You Pay for Electric Vehicles?
Political fantasies keep crashing into automotive reality.
Okay, so what?
If there is no petroleum, what are the sunk costs of all the fueling equipment and associated costs to safely dispose of all the equipment once removed?
This is fantasy, of course petroleum is cheaper today, but what will the cost be when it is gone, how will we remove the equipment when the petroleum supply declines tomorrow as everyone, well almost everyone here, predicts it will?
Yes, it is a problem, no batteries don’t work very well. Try walking, try bicycling with electricity in the snow and ice.
I am thought to be delusional here, everything is negative, this won’t work, that won’t work.
H is safe, it in environmentally friendly, all it needs is a cubic mile of Pt. We have a better chance of that than hanging on to gasoline engines.
Perhaps banning further ic is a way for the powers that be to hasten change while it still can be done.
Your Hopium poster here encouraging a cubic mile of Pt. It is known engineering.
Dennis L.
(2 news from Al Arabya)
The following 2 news let us understand how mandatory vaccinations are useful means to reduce the number of any kind of turnout, when other means of number reduction are not viable.
The first news is the preliminary base to understand the second one.
“Hajj 2024: Saudi Arabia clears Mecca of over 300,000 unregistered pilgrims.
Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that security forces had cleared hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca ahead of the Hajj which begins next week.
Crowd management is a major concern during the annual pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam which drew more than 1.8 million Muslims last year, according to official figures.”
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/saudi-arabia/2024/06/09/hajj-2024-saudi-arabia-clears-mecca-of-over-300-000-unregistered-pilgrims-
“Hajj ministry urges pilgrims to get required vaccines or risk permit cancelation.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj and Umrah on Sunday urged pilgrims to get their required vaccinations to avoid the cancellation of their Hajj permits.
According to the ministry, pilgrims must ensure they get the meningococcal vaccine to prevent the spread of infections that are common in crowded conditions.”
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/saudi-arabia/2024/06/10/hajj-ministry-urges-pilgrims-to-get-required-vaccines-or-risk-permit-cancelation
Interesting. I was there last week, the plane in was full of Russian muslims going to the Haji, but no requirements for me (I did not go to Mecca of course).
The self-organizing system certainly works in strange ways. Any excuse is a good excuse, if a country really cannot handle as many tourists as might otherwise come.
There may be some real issues with illnesses that pushes this kind of thing along. The US CDC says:
There seems to be a “Meningitis Belt” across central Africa where this disease is fairly common. A map is shown on this page.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2024/infections-diseases/meningococcal-disease
It also says:
A few bad cases in the past can be used as an excuse, it seems.
About those grids, money, and net zero
https://travisfisher.substack.com/p/fercs-order-no-1920-a-costly-shell?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
According to this author:
Also:
And
Hide the huge cost of renewables, and force the common workers to pay for it. What a great scheme!
I am not a climate alarmist, what is the cost of climate change secondary to exogenous heat?
Farming is becoming a bitch, too damn much water here. Damn dirt keeps moving. Old west song comes to mine, “Moving, moving, keep them doggies movin.” Eastwood from the sixties I think, “Rawhide?”
Dennis L.
Another injectable bioweapons shill dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and I am not particularly sad. After all the stories of vax victims I’ve seen and heard and read about, I don’t have any tears left to shed for people like Mosely, who used his TV and newspaper pulpit to urge everyone who could to get jabbed and shamed those who resisted. Dying now and avoiding being swept up in future genocide trials or suffering revenge attacks from irate victims may have been a smart move for him.
We can of course argue whether he died from the effects of the jabs he pushed, or from the effects of the low carb diets he pushed (yes, he was an early and enthusiastic advocate of keto), or from the effects of climate change (it was hot on the day of his stroll), or because he ignored Noel Cowerd’s lifesaving advice: “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”
2022
DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: Why vaccine immunity is better than natural immunity (and why unjabbed Novak Djokovic is so wrong to claim he’s protected by antibodies after a recent bout of Covid)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10404159/DR-MICHAEL-MOSLEY-vaccine-immunity-better-natural-immunity.html
2024
British TV presenter Michael Mosley almost made it to safety before collapsing where his body was found on rocky terrain in the Greek Island of Symi, according to UK media reports.
Mosely, 67, was on holiday and taking a popular walk from Saint Nikolas Beach to Symi town when he went missing last week.
Mosley’s wife, Dr Clare Bailey Mosley, said in a statement her husband took the wrong route on the hike and collapsed in a place where his body couldn’t easily be seen.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/tv-doctor-michael-mosely-almost-made-it-to-safety-before-collapsing/f01e29db-a082-4d01-b6bb-1750997dbeea
The world needs a cubic mile of karma.
Yes, you are getting it, keep it up!
Dennis L.
There are a lot of 67-year-olds dying in the US every day. Eating a keto diet would likely push the problem along.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, former member of OpenAI’s Superalignment team, recently released a whitepaper on his view of the next decade in AI.
https://situational-awareness.ai/
It’s well argued, and the his points regarding the growth rate in capabilities with respect to growth in effective compute are compelling, but he seems to assume that the necessary energy supplies to fuel the growth of effective compute will materialize simply based on demand for it. He doesn’t appear to give much thought to hard physical constraints on energy supply.
I’m trying to work out in my head, if markets and governments–out of desperation for financial returns and economic growth–attempted to pursue his predicted development track (tantamount to growing US electricity production by 20% and dedicating that entirely to compute by 2028 (pg. 80)) what would that look like? And by all accounts, big tech do appear to be pursuing this. Check the capex figures on pg. 81.
Assuming the industrial and labor capacity to build out that much power production, what are the downstream effects of something like this going to be? Rapidly building out that amount of infrastructure will create some jobs in some places. Increased energy demand should increase prices across the board, which should in turn increase the feasibility of ramped up extraction.
As a downstream effect of AI development, he also predicts a real world industrial explosion via autonomous factories. Again, this is another giant energy expenditure. And it’s not at all clear, with the degree to which advanced AI systems should be capable of automating all white collar work away, who would be consuming the goods produced by this industrial explosion. There aren’t many good ways of making a living as things are now. Would this be fueled by helicopter money? If so, what’s that supposed to look like, long term?
Yes, it is a scam.
“If AI is so great, why doesn’t it do all this stupidly burdensome “shadow work” for us? When yet another corporate monopoly’s products and/or services fails miserably, then why can’t AI get on the phone with a tech-support person halfway around the world and get it sorted?!
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun24/AI-spam6-24.html
With programming, maybe not voice, but incredible written support, very fast, anytime, any place with a connection.
This old man uses it daily, and when needed, uses it for this blog.
Dennis L.
what we need is AI with opposable thumbs.
At this stage of the US economy, it is not clear that the country we can take on any major project that requires a a lot of imported supporting goods from China and a lot of fossil fuel use. It likely would require a lot more debt as well. The debt system is getting overloaded, as is importing steel and other goods from China.
Gail,
All any project needs is a positive NPV. Somethings still work.
Dennis L.
Envelope calculation:
Assume zero China imports to US. How much stranded capital in China? Isn’t is liquidity? As long as money changes hands, all is well.
Dennis L.
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/teton-pass-collapse-landslide-could-spark-worker-shortage-jackson-hole
The collapse doesn’t make sense. I think it’s aliens. All the dirt that supported the road has just disappeared … it’s not visible below where it should have washed out. That part is visible in both the photo and the video. Secondly, there’s a giant area of fallen trees directly downhill which looks like a giant flying saucer took them out.
This landslide doesn’t look easy to fix. The support for the highway has fallen away. It will take lots of fossil fuels to come up with something like a bridge over this area, I would expect. Over the long run, these types of collapses won’t be fixed–just too expensive relative to resources available.
well there is near zero chance that aliens even exist in close enough proximity to Earth.
so there surely must be another probable cause with a greater chance of being the actual cause.
where did the dirt go? it’s not at the base of the collapse. the entire dirt ramp is missing. AI generated images?
given the choice between 1: aliens and 2: that the missing dirt is just an illusion due to camera angles or whatever, I will go with that the dirt is there but not easy to see fully where it has come to rest.
I am going with aliens are responsible. Or “the jews”. 🙂
I blame the democrats
Okay, I figured it out … took me a little while. The original mudslide happened earlier and accounts for the downed trees across a wide area far below and over a wide area. The second minor slide happened later and accounts for the smaller visible dirt pile.
Still hoping it’s aliens.
I vote genuine. Of course they have vastly improved from their shoddy performance in 2001, but this is a whole lot of AI to generate.
Gravity, always that damn gravity. Hope it will be repaired quickly, your hopium source at your service.
Dennis L.
This article by Kris DeDecker examines how wind turbines can be made sustainable again.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/how-to-make-wind-power-sustainable-again/
His suggestion: build them out of recyclable, low embodied energy materials, especially wood. I think there could be some merit to using wind power for entirely mechanical applications, rather than generating electricity. No complex parts like generators, are needed. Gearing and line shafts can be used to transmit mechanical power to machines that use it. But this only really works if the end use is flexible enough to adjust to different wind speeds.
You say, ” this only really works if the end use is flexible enough to adjust to different wind speeds.”
I think that the problem is much bigger than this. Workers are especially affected. Workers somehow have to come and go, to match their availability to the availability of wind. They need some very flexibly part time jobs to do at the same time. In the past, this was farming. If they could farm next to the wind turbine they were charged with operating, they could put together a reasonable living (in Netherlands, in wind turbines I visited there).
In general, hiring workers for full time, when you don’t really need them except when the wind is blowing, is a very costly way of running a business, especially if you need to pay them a living wage.
This sort of sounds like the problem companies have with operating the backup generation for wind. The people involved with operating the backup generation need to be employed year-around, if they are to feed their families. They need the same degrees as any other person in the field. Somehow, the system has to pay for the many underutilized workers when wind is added to the system.
This is still a problem in farming.
“In general, hiring workers for full time, when you don’t really need them except when the wind is blowing, is a very costly way of running a business, especially if you need to pay them a living wage”
Farming is seasonal and the huge capital costs are only used at most six months a year except CA and similar.
Dennis L.
Dennis , ridiculous argument . By that measure we must disband the fire services and the army . Fires and wars don’t happen every day . Do you buy insurance ? Can cost be the only factor in every decision ? Think .
ravi,
The sums you mention are costs, they are not income. Income generally happens on a regular basis on businesses which are not subject to seasons.
Farming uses capital at the beginning of the season and receives none until harvest. It is a very low margin business.
If you have a building and the cost of the fire insurance is greater than the building, it is torn down, Generally this happens secondary to property taxes when the property is fully depreciated.
Dennis L., your hopium source.
For once I agree with Peter. The way to use wind is not just direct mechanical power as he suggests, but also a large gear box to switch gears according to wind speed. because the power goes like wind speed to the cube, the gear ratio should also vary by a factor of 1000. On my bicycle I think I can change gear ratio by about a factor 7 I estimate. Three tasks which could be done are pumping lowlands like in Holland, grinding grains for flour, and storing thermal energy for freezing foods (this still needs a rotating magnet).
Being extremely cruel to the weak, seizing everything from the non-elites, (like the ‘Great Taking’), exploiting weaker segment of pop, etc, are all, in a utilitarian way, justifiable.
Embezzling people’s money is justifiable since the money was transferred from less smart people to more smart hands.
Paying manual workers almost nothing, with no worker’s comp, was justifiable since it cut costs and led to efficient management, and when companies in the West could not do that at home anymore, the jobs simply moved to poorer countries.
Advancing civ is not an easy thing. With the shortages striking civilization here and there, a massive selection pressure exists indeed, and I think this is our grand filtering. If the top echelon of society can become extremely cruel, with the peasants, such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and others not exactly running the narrative of today’s world, completely silenced, maybe then the movement to the next level of civ could begin in earnest.
I’m guessing your childhood was somewhat lacking.
😉
Hopefully, things aren’t this bad.
We do know, however, that an awfully lot of people were slaves in the past. They worked for virtually no wages–just food, lodging, and clothing. With limited resources per capita, this may be all the economy could afford for part of the population.
Given a choice between being a slave and starving, a lot of people would accept being a slave.
I have often wondered what the difference is between a slave and someone with few skills working for minimum wage.
Have cited the Cambodian couple, he a janitor, she a housekeeper, Mayo, 30+ years. They were part of a very good group, they made a wise choice, good schools, eight children one of whom I know did very well, no idea of the others.
One must be lucky and chose a group wisely.
Dennis L.
Kulm, my man, I know you think of yourself as like a deep edgy philosophical genius or whatever but really you’re playing 4d checkees on the chess board of political economy. A five year old understands that lowering wages cuts costs, and only a five y.o or the mental equivalent of one would deduce therefrom the key to running a made up fantasy world where doing so would work out fine and any problems along the way caused by meanies who don’t follow the rules. The combination of sadism and puerile/autistic naivety in everything you write is quite funny if nothing else.
It is not so easy as you suggest. The Eastern Roman Empire found out when the Moslems talked to the Egyptians and told them we will levy no taxes if you switch (presumably those tributes to Costantinople were used to advance civilization). Soon after that Egypt was lost to the Empire for good, and the Arabs proceeded to conquer everything west of Egypt. You have good insights but your type ends up guillotined often. it is all evolution in action of course.
Today’s winners, the kind of people who would enter the Next Level of Civilization, are very efficient, very inimical and very merciless.
They are super smart, they do NOT leave a single crumb for anyone else, and they exploit those who are lesser than them to the last drop of blood.
That is the trait necessary for advancing civilization to the next level.
One does not enter Type I Civ by being nice.
Crossing the barrier to enter the next level of civilization requires a general awakening of the spirit. Nothing for those who are not today’s winners, and no bullshit like ‘ethical’ or ‘humanitarian’. One does not enter Type I civ like that.
It is necessary to be extremely cruel, extremely inimical and extremely merciless to those who are not today’s winners to push Civilization to the Next Level.
Kulm this is how I interpret your remarks.
The next level of civilization is your representation of what it would feel.like to be loved and to love.
All the pain and sadistic images is what you are experiencing now in the absence of love.
The good news. Theres a lot of upside should you choose.
People don’t do well with this much pain.
Merely expressing it here in the abstract will not change things.
I say this out of concern for you.
You truly need to seek help. generally a crisis will manifest in situations with this sort of pain. The abstract expression merges with reality. Various risks are associated and it is significant.
On the topic of platinum group metals mined from asteroids for use on Earth. Could it be done?
Earth mines produce some 457 tonnes of platinum group metals per year.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-one-visualization/
Asteroids contain a natural form of stainless steel. It is iron alloyed with nickel, chromium, and cobalt, with about 20ppm platinum group metals (by weight). One tonne of that material contains 20 grams of platinum. That is better than Earth based ores, but it still implies processing a lot of metal to refine the platinum group metals. To get one tonne of pt-group, we need to go through 50,000 tonnes of asteroid metal.
Platinum is one of the densest metals at 21,452kg per cubic metre, making it denser even than uranium. A cubic mile of platinum would be 4,165,509,529 cubic metres and would weigh 89.36 billion tonnes. To get that much platinum from asteroids, we would need to process 4.47E+15 tonnes of asteroid metal, or 558,491 cubic kilometres. That is a cube of iron alloy some 51 miles aside. In fairness, this is only a fraction of the metal in the asteroid belt. But it is far more metal than manmind has processed since the beginning of metal smithing in 4000BC. At present, the world refines about 2 billion tonnes, or 0.25 cubic kilometres of iron per year. To get 1 cubic mile of platinum group metals, we would need to process a mass of iron equivelant to 2.4 million years of present day human iron production.
In short, it is possible that asteroid mining could be bringing platinum to Earth at some point in the future. But don’t go expecting a cubic mile of platinum any time soon. Could we bring back to Earth as much pt as we are presently mining? To produce 457 tonnes of platinum group metals each year, we would need to process some 22,850,000 tonnes of natural stainless steel mined from asteroids. That is 2.86 million cubic metres. A significant industrial effort, in a difficult environment. It could be done. But it would mean shipping a lot of heavy mining and ore processing equipment out of Earth’s gravity well to the target asteroid. Even with Starship, that will be costly and full of risks that may be difficult to foresee ahead of time.
Platinum has a current market price of $36,000/kg. So 457 tonnes of platinum group metals mined from asteroids, would be worth $16.5bn if you could get it back to Earth. Unfortunately, if that metal is brought back to Earth, it would crash the market price for platinum group metals.
Peter,
Thanks for the calculations. I put the problem backwards.
Perhaps if we calculate how much hydrogen we need to make from say water and then how much we lose in storage/transmission and then how much kinetic energy we need from fuel cells it would make more sense to calculate the size of the cube.
I threw out the 1 mile as it is easy to remember.
Someone has a good idea on how to extend nuclear fuel, that if it works cuts the need for Pt down to fuel cells.
I am a believer, petroleum is history, soon, time to move on while we can.
We can do it in steps as everything is always done.
Dennis L.
no prob Dennis. We understand those rich in hopium and poor in quantitatium are prone to this.
Peter, some polymetalic ore bodies (on earth) containing the nickel, iron, cobalt elements are almost impossibly complex (and costly) to refine because of the properties of the “alloyed” constituents.
One cannot begin to imagine how much easier this would be up there.
Dennis?
That is interesting. I wonder if those deposits are in impact craters?
Polymetal alloys are exactly what we will find on asteroids. If they are difficult to process here on Earth, it doesn’t bode well for asteroid mining.
I put “alloyed” in quotes because they’re not actually in the form of a metallic alloy but as mixed complex sulphide minerals
When the metals were formed, they were not ores. Earth is a giant mixer, plate tectonics, volcanic activity and sulfur which is apparently one of the main elements.
Per copilot, Pt is formed in collapsar a rare type of supernova.
Very useful metal with its own hx.
It is either present in sufficient amounts in our solar system or we are most likely toast as many here suggest.
Sort of the pits. We can anticipate getting to space at a reasonable cost, we can anticipate increasing our abilities to learn, but if Pt isn’t there, then it would seem we have a problem.
As we still have some time, it looks like we have the means to explore our solar system with robots in the near future; we won’t know until we look. All other conclusions are narratives as far as I can see.
I don’t think we can go backwards.
Dennis L.
Not a mining engineer nor a metallurgical engineer.
Transportation should be very low, inertial starts and stops only.
Pollution in space is not an issue, waste is not an issue, one rock is the same as another.
Energy probably is not a problem.
This potentially can grow, start with one pound, then ten, etc. This is what we have done on earth, we don’t use picks and shovels anymore.
Let me make it simpler. If I can carry away some “waste” Pt which has zero value, put it in my backyard, mix in sunlight with no exogenous heat gain and have no electrical bill, what is the problem?
Man is not going to work in space, robots, self replicating robots hitching a ride on Starship.
Copilot:
The lifespan of a fuel cell can vary greatly depending on its type and the conditions under which it operates. Here are some general guidelines:
For light-duty vehicles, the U.S. Department of Energy has set a target for fuel cell system lifetime of 8,000 hours under realistic operating conditions1.
For heavy-duty trucks, the target increases to 30,000 hours1.
For distributed power systems, the target is 80,000 hours1.
Some fuel cell vehicles are designed with fuel cell stacks that last the lifetime of the vehicle, about 150,000–200,000 miles2.
However, the environment can greatly affect a fuel cell’s longevity. The typical lifespan of a fuel cell is between 8 and 10 years, although all sanctioning bodies limit use to 5 years from the date of manufacture3.
Of course it is a reach. Is there an alternative with current engineering or near term engineering?
Hopium is looking for a magical solution when time is running short. There is no downside, petroleum is a short term solution. We are the end of evolution of a universe which is 27B years. That universe has worked very well indeed, my guess is it is a safe bet it will continue to do so.
If you think H and Pt are great, wait until you see Dark Energy. It will blow your mind! Lighten up, a joke.
Dennis L.
This is a very interesting development.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_confinement_fusion
Fusion is difficult to achieve on Earth. In order to fuse, two light nuclei must have enough energy to overcome their repulsive positive charges. If they get close enough, strong nuclear force will cause them to fuse, releasing a lot of energy. Usually for this to happen, the fuel must be extremely hot – millions of degrees hot.
Back in 2020, NASA researchers found a cheat, that allows fusion to take place in metals at room temperature. The positive charge of deuterium atoms that are trapped within metal lattices, are shielded from one another by the electron shells of the metal atoms. If they absorb a relatively small amount of energy from a colliding x-ray, gamma ray or a neutron, they can overcome the reduced coulomb barrier and undergo nuclear fusion.
Unfortunately, one cannot build a fusion reactor in this way, because the energy released by fusion is unlikely to approach the energy needed to drive an x-ray laser or particle accelerator.
So why is this a big deal? If metals soaked in deuterium or Li-6 deuteride are loaded into a nuclear fission reactor, fission neutrons and gamma rays from decaying fission products, will bombard the deuterium atoms causing fusion. Fusion will produce only a small amount of additional energy compared to the fission taking place. But a large part of the energy released by fusion is carried away by fast neutrons. In a fission reactor, neutrons cause fission. They can also breed fissile plutonium or uranium-233 from 238U and 232Th. Lattice confinement fusion therefore allows construction of entirely new types of nuclear reactor, with fuel cycles that weren’t possible before.
We could for example build travelling wave fast reactors, that don’t require any input plutonium fuel, aside from a starter core. We load depleted uranium into the outer core of these reactors. As the reactor operates, the fusion in the fuel releases enough extra neutrons to breed plutonium within the DU fuel. We gradually shuffle fuel inwards, removing it from the centre of the core when about 10% of atoms have fissioned. Such a reactor would not need fuel enrichment or reprocessing to operate. The only fuel it wouod need is natural or depleted uranium. It will extract roughly 30x more energy from uranium than a conentional light water reactor.
The spent fuel from this type of reactor could be reprocessed. It woukd contain enough plutonium for 3 – 4 light water reactors of similar power output. This completely obviates any concerns over future nuclear reactors running out of fuel. This is how nuclear power can replace the energy provided by fossil fuels.
Replied above, this gets Pt down to fuel cells only, helpful.
Dennis L.
it’s the last full day.
this is comment # 2000.
quantity is down, quality up.
ha ha.
who has their own substack?
Insurance, always insurance:
Shipping rates are going up and they are going up in large part to technology allowing relatively cheap weapons to change the balance of power.
Houthis again :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm2vgcWZp_M
A British ship is burning in that area.
We need to get along.
Dennis L.
“we” were not able to “get along” with the Neanderthals.
nothing has changed since then.
war is natural.
If war is so natural, the why is so much propaganda necessary, in order to push it?
Why is conscription necessary?
Most people just want to get on with their own lives.
Governments see an opportunity to add more debt and hire more unemployed workers. War is a way of stimulating the economy, if a country in a war can avoid having the war fought on its own territory.
Not sarcastic: Perhaps down to mating pairs, or corollary, it is always a woman.
Dennis L.
“If war is so natural, the why is so much propaganda necessary, in order to push it?
Why is conscription necessary?”
because propaganda and conscription are natural also.
So, war dies not arise naturally then, but requires ‘anthropogenic’ precursors.
Your God will make much more money creating his own insurance company, to insure only the cars from his company and also space stuff, which might be why he is not listening to your idea.
It is much easier to make money from insurance than doing actual stuff
Another good video by Kevin Walmsley of Inside China. The NATO forces, including those of the US, can no longer keep the Red Sea Shipping Lane free. This means a longer routes for shipping (around Africa) and difficulty getting the unloaded shipping containers back to their original Asian destinations. The rates for ships goes up (and adds to inflation). Insurance rates go up, because of the greater dangers to ships.
What is interesting is cheap weapons are able to disable/sink a multi billion dollar ship and cause 5,000 or so sailors to go swimming. Have read somewhere that taking those men/women aboard support ships would be problematic, not sufficient room.
Any way you cut it, the China Russia settlement system is a patch. China Benefits. China welcomes its new friend. The reality is that China dominates Russia now. The patchwork of local networks that have been put in place to allow settlement are far from any sort of real international trade settlement. Russia is single sourced through China; it has no alternatives. Any port in a storm, but China holds all the leverage. While hugs may be exchanged the reality on the ground in regard to business reflects the reality of Russia single sourced with China while China frolics with the world. China assures Russia “you’re special” as it frolics. Damn right it’s special. It’s single sourced and China owns it now. Far from the establishment of a new fairer settlement system, what is occurring may well give countries hee-by jeebys about trading the USA boss for the China boss. A new multipolar world is a nice idea. Just like space mining, the reality is different.
Yes teaming with China saved Russia. Just like joining a prison gang, the cost is very high. If China was to be contained the west needed Russia too. Russia knew this. Why do you think Russia put up with the west? Now Russia joins the only prison gang it can to survive. China welcomes its new little friend. It just closed the deal on world dominance. Russia gets some top ramen packs. The rest of the world looks on fully understanding the new boss could be worse than the old boss. The old boss is a pain but the new boss might be a monster.
A lot of people think China can be fair not a bully. Right now everyone is just seeking shelter from the storm coming and hedging their bets. BAU. Western financial settlements..
Next level of civilization is not coming. What is coming is next level of conflict as function of escalation and total lack of diplomacy.
If the world ever gets ready to use a new financial system there will be a million signs. They wont be able to be ignored. A new financial system is like a new Lexus. Of course it’s desirable but the world has $27 in the bank and its cards are maxxed. Glossy brochures are nice though. Right now most of the world is paycheck to paycheck and hoping a nuke doesn’t get tossed their way or a gang move in on the block.
Entropy.
Glossy brochures of all types popular.
You make a good point. A union of unequals doesn’t work the way a person would expect, if a person assumes that all unions are equivalent. The part with nearly all of the power will retain this power.
My understanding is in a union complements are better, balance out weaknesses. On the other hand, apparently between a man and women similar is better than dissimilar.
Anyway one works it, hard to get groups to work together.
Dennis L.
Yes thanks for that! A lot of the comments on here are written through childish eyes. This is fair and that is not fair etc…. this country is good and this country is bad. It has unfortunately become the constant meme on here. Not all is as it seems. All the countries are suspicious of each other as they should be and as they have been in the past.
might makes right, it’s not fair, who cares?
mature Russia took back their historical Crimean property.
the immature US went half crazy when that happened.
mighty Russia will take back whatever it wants of so-called Ukrainian property.
the still half crazy psychowoketard US can’t stop it.
Psychos need love too.
USA to world
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ixwBD_LYSFI&pp=ygUcc2ltb24gYW5kIGdhcmZ1bmtlbCBiYWQgbmV3cw%3D%3D
In retrospect it was a bad call.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v59yQPlU3QU&pp=ygUPUmlwbGV5IGJhZCBjYWxs
Is it possible the narrative moved on? The elites have a self reinforcing narrative, even a tenured professor wants to be supported, invited to the right forums. Much of the elite narrative is not working, it is obvious to all and yet it is repeated on media with a straight face.
My guess is too much individualism is essentially 1=1<2. That is simplified as a metaphor. Individual rights are now the politically correct.
It would be hell to be boss of a group now.
Dennis L.
1+1 not 1=1
Dennis L.
what is single sourced exactly? cell phones?
“The reality is that China dominates Russia now.”
a strong opinion, but merely an opinion.
Russia dominates China in surplus energy production.
what’s more important than that?
the two are working together for mutual benefit.
I suppose it is dominating electronics. I don’t know of anything else that comes predominantly from China.
https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/tea
I would not want all those electronics for all the tea in China.
I bought Iranian tea last time. Also right now drinking ivanchai, which is russian.
Temple of Heaven (Green tea) is my brew of choice. Chinese of course.
If Russia is autonomous why do they export at all? A export economy means a import economy. There is no other reason to export.
So when Xi and Putin talk about how big the trade is they are lieing?
Your autonomous? Like the guys here that tell me USA is energy independent?
DRB. No need to defend every single point. There are worse dates than being a vassal. Bulgaria didn’t have it so bad.
It’s real simple. On the ground this life boat trading going on between Russia and China China is setting the terms and doing what China does. Saying there is no trade you dont need China is lame.
After the USA is confirmed no longer Alpha the world will disintegrate. Sunni vs Shia can barely wait just to name one. Russia China alliance will be good to get through. After the west falls there are no more sanctions.
Right now there is no equivilant to the western financial system. Nor is there interest in creating one. What’s the point until it can be determined what’living? What’s going on in between China and Russia is pathetic on comparison. Theres not even MIR union integration on that limited basis. If their were Union would get cut off from the west and that’s value lost. The networks being used are as podunk as it gets.
Average of 18 days till settlement on average Terms set by China. Lifeboat made out pallets and duct tape.
As world trade stops in the chaos so will Chinas leverage and it will become more of a equal to Russia.
All of those nonsense about BRICS is rubbish. When the alpha falls a new alpha emerges through competition. If a new system of cooperation is desired or has to happen now. You can’t kill off the alpha and then say let’s cooperate while the pack is in blood lust.
Just like we saw in Iraq, Libya, and Syria when Alpha authority is removed religious and ethnic boundaries take precedent. Russia has a big advantage here
Jeez chill out. It’s just the apocalypse.
This BRICS settlement thing is just another things-are-going-to-be-ok fairly tale. Russia and China are smart to practice diplomacy. Very smart. Just know China don’t sing koombyah. That’s how they are.
Have ideas why US hates Russia, won’t write them.
US and Russia would make good partners in some respects. US is ahead in rockets and AI, Russia has resources and damn smart people.
Elites in US would not like that, they might find themselves with sunk assets.
Dennis L.
Does it begin with a capital J?
It is telling to me that the other country most rabidly anti-Russian is the UK. The UK took in a lot of emigres fleeing Adolph in WW2. Those emigres have a strong influence over media and politics in the UK.
I think that a particular tribe of people (politely called ‘Globalisists, privately called something else beggining with J) are ticked off that Putin stopped them from owning Russia and its resources lock, stock and barrel.
So now they are chipping away at Russia any way they can, hoping they can bring it to collapse. They launched a coup in Ukraine and put their people into its government. They then harrassed Russians living in the east of the country, hoping to provoke Russia into a war that would drain its resources. Am I getting warm?
>> If Russia is autonomous why do they export at all?
In Putin’s grand plan, his PhD thesis IIRC, Russia’s economy was to be heavily based on resource exports through the 2040’s. Those exports were supposed to fund internal development.
Maybe he really thinks this is necessary, or maybe it was just that he and his coterie were skimming exports to pad foreign accounts and by the time point mentioned, they would all be dead.
Anyway, his plan doesn’t really make sense … you can’t exactly import technology and a skilled workforce necessary to develop it further in the same way you can import raw materials and goods. Hence, raw materials exports don’t really make a ton of sense; it’s better just to use the raw materials at home.
I really have no idea what Russia needs from China except electronics. China has a trade balance deficit with Russia now, and will have it in the future. Just list me some goods that Russia depends on. I suspect that also electronics will at one point disappear. The sapphire substrates for chips are after all a Russian monopoly.
Gold is already a currency and the Russians are using it as payment in international trade. In fact, any commodity will do. Grain, oil, copper, timber, high quality steels, uranium, noble metals, fertiliser, noble gases. Maybe plutonium if you really want to tick the global elites off.
If you are a bulk exporter of commodities, then you have no shortage of money. Because those commodities are money. People will accept them as payment. And that does happen.
There is a myth that the US enjoys a special position because it owns the reserve currency. But the dollar is only one of the reserve currencies, albeit the biggest. All currencies are used as reserve currencies. But a few tend to dominate. The dollar is still used for over half of all global trade transactions. But the Euro is also extensively used, as is the yen, the UK pound and the Canadian and Australian dollars.
Some nations have toyed with the idea of using the Chinese yuan as reserve currency. The problem is that China’s population structure forces it to function as an export dominated economy, with an artificially weak currency. That makes the yuan a weak contender for reserve currency. A gold backed currency is possible. But for it to maintain its value, the gold supply must expand as currency volume expands. That may be tricky. A commodity backed currency may work better, with value defined in terms of a standard basket of storable commodities. Gold, silver, copper, semiconductor grade silicon, tin, uranium, etc.
If the amount of goods and services the world can produce shrinks over time [a likely future scenario, at some point], even a gold-based currency will lead to a situation with inflation, because it will take a greater and greater share of the gold supply to buy a given quantity of goods.
This would tend to happen if resources, including energy products, are becoming severely constrained.
Our world has more help now: I asked Copilot if it could help me with a autonomous mower for my farm, GetHub. It is ambitious, impossible ten years ago, now maybe. MY CC is incredible. Here is the answer when I asked Copilot if it would/could help.
Copilot:
“Absolutely, I’d be happy to assist you with that! Building a GPS/RTK mower for your farm is a fascinating project. Here are some resources that might help:
OpenMower: This is an open-source project that allows you to build your own RTK GPS-based lawn mowing robot1. The project provides a comprehensive guide on how to assemble the hardware and install the necessary software1. You can find the source code for this project on GitHub2.
RTK GPS Driven Mower: This is a step-by-step guide on Instructables that shows you how to build an RTK GPS-driven mower3. It provides detailed instructions on the hardware and software setup3.
rtklawnmower: This is another open-source project on GitHub that provides software for a ROS and GPS RTK-based lawn mower4.
Lawn-mower-robot: This GitHub repository provides another example of a lawn mower robot project5.
Before you start, please make sure you have a good understanding of the safety considerations involved in building and operating a GPS/RTK mower. If you’re not 100% sure about something, don’t hesitate to ask for help or advice.
Remember, these are complex projects that require a good understanding of hardware and software. If you’re new to this, I recommend starting with a simpler project and gradually working your way up. Good luck with your project! 😊”
At your side is now an advanced level EE, ME and what ever other E you want.
I linked a video to ChatGPT above, far out.
Our world is changing rapidly.
Dennis L.
AI.. the absolute and final destroyer of “trust”. It might get it right sometimes, but at the end of the day… you will never know what is true ever again.
AI explained .
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/forums/topic/debt-rattle-june-9-2024/#post-160865
Unfortunately, we also have the unscrupulous figuring out how to cheat people using AI. And we have job candidates figuring out how to deluge job placement websites with applications. And people who don’t want to pay a model figuring out how to use AI to provide “blended” people images in advertisements.
We don’t have a good way of getting rid of the unwanted part of AI, I am afraid.
Et tu Turkey ?
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/turkey-impose-40-additional-tariff-vehicle-imports-china-2024-06-08/
“Turkey will impose a 40% additional tariff on imports of vehicles from China to halt a possible deterioration of its current account balance and protect domestic automakers, the trade ministry said on Saturday. . .
The additional Turkish tariff will be set at a minimum of $7,000 per vehicle, with effect from July 7, a presidential decision published in the country’s Official Gazette showed.”
So the tariff is really more than 40% per vehicle, on low-cost vehicles. Protect local car makers from low-priced competition.
No surprise here..
US National Debt Hits All-Time High of $34,667,000,000,000 As CBO Warns Rising Debt Will Reduce Americans’ Income
That’s a $677 billion increase from the start of 2024, when the nation’s debt stood at $33.990 trillion.
The new record high comes amid a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warning that the greater the nation’s debt, the less money Americans will earn.
“The current law debt trajectory will reduce income growth by 12% over the next three decades and 13% annually by Fiscal Year (FY) 2049.
Rapidly rising debt could reduce income growth by 33% over the next three decades and 42% annually by FY 2049.
In the movie MARGIN CALL, Jeremy Irons plays the head of an Investment Firm and says the only reason he has the job is to know when the music stops.
Seems the music is slowing down now…
It all seems to go together–rising debt, rising inflation, higher interest rates, falling standards of living, unhappiness among citizens. Even higher property insurance premiums.
It is related to an inadequate supply of cheap-to-extract oil and coal. Also, basically too many people for resources, such as fresh water.
One of the things that has not happened since 2008 is a recession. When you take out a recession you get constant inflation. Until you don’t then you get walloped with a depression which is on its way. In fact it is already here in the United States of America but because of the manipulation of information you can’t see it yet.
Disagree . The world never recovered from the GFC 2008 . Moving the goalposts and creating debt , artificial financial bubbles is not real organic growth . While I disagree , I am also very glad that they did what they did . 16 years of bonus BAU . Who am I to complain ? However I do not live in a world of delusion and always keep my eye on the ball . As David says ” BAU tonight ” . 😊
three cheers for bonus BAU!
Sam you are on target:
“One of the things that has not happened since 2008 is a recession. When you take out a recession you get constant inflation. Until you don’t then you get walloped with a depression which is on its way.”
but for now it is “constant inflation”, seems to have settled in at about 4%.
three cheers for 4%!
it’s necessary to avoid depression, as you seem to know.
and since degrowth of the economy must happen sooner or later, then a gradual degrowth through moderate inflation is the best path for the degrowth process.
declining surplus energy is the reason why degrowth must happen, and moderate inflation is the least disastrous way for degrowth to proceed.
I think if we had a recession it would have kept BAU going much longer. Not having it has created a Great Depression opportunity and you will have a lot of angry young people. Look out below…..
Have mentioned this elsewhere, BRICs is going blockchain. That is a problem for a central bank.
Dennis L..
CBDC is not going to happen . Not enough electricity production or grid capacity . Charge your EV , run data centres, mine bitcoins , build AI . Can’t have your cake and eat it too .
Yesterday my local Starbucks… had a “Cash Only” sign. I was delighted.
I think you are probably right.
Electricity was the last type of energy product to be added. It is very difficult to keep the whole system going–generation, transmission, and storage. It likely will be the first part of the energy system to fail.
It only looks like it is something that can be easily ramped up and kept operating. The devil is in the details.
If every transaction needs to be recorded, how long would it take for a take down by generating quadrillions of trades every hour?
+ 1
So what will the BOJ choose ? CBDC or this app to save Japan ? 😂
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tokyo-app-helps-residents-get-laid-avoid-population-collapse
Question: Do we not already have digital currencies? Whenever you buy something with a debit card or electronic transfer, you are using an electronic currency. The electronic tally in your account is reduced and the tally in the receiving account increases. Not that different to the score on a computer game. If you have a bank account, it means that there is a computer core somewhere with some ones and zeros recorded under your name.
It has been that way for about 50 years now.
Is that not digital currency? If not, how does digital currency differ from the electronic currency that we have been using for as long as I’ve been alive?
Klummie, pulling your chain..
Mr Hart has been walking 4,500 kilometres to Cape York in Far North Queensland to raise awareness of what he says is a need for a universal basic income (UBI).
Hoping to provide income to all
The goal of Mr Hart’s walk is to encourage people to consider a basic income for all Australians.
He described it as regular, unconditional payments of about $500 per week to cover an individual’s basic needs.
It is something he believes could be possible by “taxing corporations correctly”.
“Right now, they’re taxed legally, but not ethically, in my opinion,” he said.
He says he hopes by hearing his story, people will seek out more information, find out what it is, and make up their own minds about it.
“We’re a super ADVANCED civilisation — we can afford to keep people alive, whether or not they provide economic value.”
https://amp.abc.net.au/article/103880424
Like Gail points out repeatedly here, having different points of view is healthy…
Needless to say, people like Hart are the reason civilization is stalling.
Is it? Suppose the Eagles soar because of your opinion!
Paying able-bodied people, even if they are not working, never seems to work out well. The people who are working soon see no point in working.
Maybe we were wealthy enough to do this at some point in the past, but all this leads to now is increasing amounts of government debt.
Repeating myself . What good is a UBI if the shelves are empty ?
“Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism is Wrong | Brett Christophers talks to Aaron Bastani”?
Brett Christophers says:
“Renewable energy isn’t that profitable” (even with all of its subsidies).
IPCC moving away from idea that can have really hit zero. Just “net zero.”
Don’t really have the kinds of systems we need to scale up. Instead, he thinks we will work toward geo-engineering.
They are “grooming” us for another pandemic.
the “great wave” is on the way!
Australia’s second largest grocery chain puts “Limits” on egg purchases.
Coles imposes nationwide purchase limit on eggs
Coles supermarkets have imposed a nationwide purchase limit on eggs.
https://www.9news.com.au/videos/national/coles-imposes-nationwide-purchase-limit-on-eggs/clx79v55l00020isciijufm62
Two carton limit on eggs at Coles because of bird flu.
It seems like such a limit would affect mostly those buying for commercial use.
How do we solve the immigration problems?
Micro-chip people. Then you could easily identify everyone…
IDAHO SHUTS DOWN FARMERS “We’re all going to fail”
This is BAD…REAL BAD
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yD1yTqzj1Y4
Idaho shuts down 500,000 acres of farm land with water curtailment. Video sourced from @oneatatime8677
0:00 Water curtailment impacts Idaho farmers, risking crop investments and livelihoods.
03:19 Challenges faced by farmers in Idaho due to water curtailment impacting economy and investments.
06:03 Water shortage impacts Southern Idaho farmers, leading to reduced deliveries and irrigation restrictions.
09:11 Controversy over groundwater usage in Idaho leading to curtailment and economic losses for farmers.
12:50 Implementing regenerative range management
We are setting up for another dust bowl and great depression…how nice folks
And we worry about silly things like starships…
They need a cubic mile of water. Fortunately comets are made of water, and Elon is thinking of ways. Too bad his team is short on coffee and impaired in its ability to save the world.
Eastern Idaho desperately needs water for irrigation, if its farming business is to continue. Other businesses in the area will fail as well. It is a very large area that is facing curtailment.
More natural gas output. . . this time from Saudi Arabia
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Sinopec-to-Build-Gas-Pipelines-for-Saudi-Aramco-in-1-Billion-Deal.html
China’s Sinopec To Build Gas Pipelines For Saudi Aramco In $1-Billion Deal
A subsidiary of China’s energy giant Sinopec has signed a $1.3-billion deal with Saudi Aramco to procure and build pipelines for an expansion of the Kingdom’s natural gas distribution network, the Chinese firm said on Thursday. . .
After scrapping oil capacity expansion plans earlier this year, the Saudi state oil giant Aramco is now poised to boost natural gas output by 60% by 2030, executives said earlier this year.
In the third quarter of last year, Saudi Arabia made two significant natural gas discoveries in two fields in the Empty Quarter, along with the discovery of five reservoirs in previously discovered fields.
Demand for gas is seen increasing significantly amid a global energy transition, which has prompted Saudi Arabia to move more quickly to open up the development of unconventional natural gas fields. Global LNG demand is expected to grow by 50% by 2030.
It is not clear from the article where the pipeline will go. Pipeline gas tends to be much less expensive than LNG. But maybe the pipeline only goes to the coast, where it is hoped the natural gas will be shipped as LNG.
It will probably be used for domestic consumption . Electricity production needed for desalination and a growing population . Currently they import gas from Qatar for injection in their fields to maintain pressure .
I am not a Buddhist or anything, since I don’t really like to be tied into one single school of beliefs. I take whatever is around if is good.
That aside, the notion that there can only be one single earth is not shared by the Buddhists. Some schools are like Christians, emphasizing material wealth on earth and not giving a shit about the universe, but some schools of Buddhism does follow the universe as a way to reduce human suffering
https://www.forbes.com/sites/fernandezelizabeth/2020/01/12/the-multiverse-and-eastern-philosophy/
A book of Buddhism written in Western language is rampant with its Sanskrit terms, putting off most people. I think this is a good introduction to the multiverse theory.
Basically Humans have to abandon the notion that they are the only advanced race on the universe. There would be others. So the Thumb or whatever it is does not give a crap about whether humanity decides to off itself or not.
Whether there are other intelligent life forms in the universe or not is irrelevant, as not only are we separated by distance, but everyone forgets about the separation created by time. Assuming the 13.6 billion year old universe created galaxies with solar-planetary habital zones that formed 6-8 billion years ago, the chances that we would cross paths at the same time would be infinitesimally remote.
It would be a race against time where even if intelligent life were to gain a foothold and technology to travel, could it do so before asteroids and climate changes snuffed out their civilization? And that’s assuming it didn’t run out of energy, raw matrerials or poison itself from pollution or kill itself from war.
Just as finding true love on earth seems impossible as the poets, philosophers, musicians and now in modern times , dating apps will attest, finding intelligent life, even though statistically is, has been, and will be probable, it will be another of the unsearchables and unknowables, at least in our lifetimes, so what does it matter?
It may not matter to the earthlings but it might matter to the supposed Being who is in charge of the humanity, according to the belief of some people in this blog.
I write these stuff to try to refute them, showing that humanity is not that special and no one will give a shit if humanity disappears, although I know they are true believers and nothing will convince them.
“It would be a race against time where even if intelligent life were to gain a foothold and technology to travel, could it do so before asteroids and climate changes snuffed out their civilization? And that’s assuming it didn’t run out of energy, raw materials or poison itself from pollution or kill itself from war.”
but wait!
first of all, this assumes that the intelligent life inhabits a planet that has produced fossil fuels abundant enough for highly developed technologies to be invented.
I don’t think it’s at all certain that many inhabitable planets would have abundant fossil fuels.
lack of FF would most probably prevent much of any tech advancement.
FF are a transition, how do I know? They are running out at a cost to be economical. Conclusion: they were never meant to be permanent.
There are no coal generating plants in space. There is fusion and something which defies gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate.
It is for humans to gain understanding of the universe and as we do our narrative of religion will change to reflect the increase in understanding.
The Greeks were pretty sharp, their gods were on Mount Olympus. Now, that is pretty well scoffed at, but at the time with the knowledge the narrative worked.
My thesis: God did not die, some religions did as our understanding increased; but, there is much more to learn and understand. A flexible religion adapts and keeps the priests in a job.
Dennis L.
Guys, look up Drake equation. Refers only to the Galaxy because other galaxies are way too far, and also it is pretty clear that elliptical galaxies ( a majority of luminous matter in the universe) contain no life whatsoever. Current consensus is that evidence on the balance for plentiful elementary life in the Galaxy, perhaps even in solar system, previously on Mars and currently under the ice in Europa (Jupiter moon). Complex life rare, and we could indeed be alone in this galaxy (though there are many spiral galaxies). Complex life with plentiful hydrocarbons requires also an atmospheric evolution from a CO2 rich, oxygen poor world to the current one, so you may be asking for too much.
“Secret Knowledge: Probably one of the most important videos of our time; On Wednesday, May 9th, 2001, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena.”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb8-FGdPQzc
Or not?
https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/topic/785477-debunking-the-disclosure-project/
Dollar system is failing. Need a distraction: project blue beam.
BRICS and blockchain.
Dennis L.
It looks like a teaser for a ridiculous Marvel movie.
This article perfectly illustrates that science often seeks to prove the theologies in vogue at the time. The day when researchers (or those who pay them) are rid of their mystical ideas, perhaps science will come up with something genuinely new and useful, rather than pure speculation supported by dubious models.
Playing with such philosophical concepts requires special training and a sharp mind to avoid getting lost; I am afraid that the spread of these ideas in the West to under educated minds is a decoy to create further confusion.
As for the title, reducing “Eastern philosophy” to Hinduism and Buddhism is reductive and insulting to Asians.
And the irony is both Hinduism and Buddhism were created by whites.
The very reason multiverse became popular is because there are some phenomena which cannot be explained with what they teach in school.
Hinduism, Copilot.
“Most scholars believe Hinduism started somewhere between 2300 B.C. and 1500 B.C. in the Indus Valley, near modern-day Pakistan2. But many Hindus argue that their faith is timeless and has always existed2. So, in essence, Hinduism is a complex and diverse tradition that evolved over a long period of time, rather than being created by a single individual or at a specific point in history.”
Buddhism, Copilot,
“Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who is also known as “the Buddha”1. He lived during the 5th century B.C. in what is now modern-day Nepal23”
I have more or less given up on color. Had a very dark skinned uncle, curly hair. When did a genetic search had relatives in N. Africa as well as Russia, think St. Petersburg.
My old relatives rowed boats and met people easily especially with a battle axe in hand.
Dennis L.
Energy that fulfills all our needs naturally falls on the earth without effort.
Humans: the fossil fuels are ending see. That falling effortlessly is dead!
We gots to go to space! It’s a safari! This effortlessly falling stuff is for the birds. That’s for wimps. Were going to capture space! Were making our preparations for the operation now. Fearless leader check. Powerful phallus check. Sharp stick check. Space cage check.This is a proven formula. Yaaaaaaaa. Here we come.
humans keep on trying to conquer Space.
Space keeps on winning.
David there are some new pivotal technologies such as shown here that might make it happen. A timeline is also proposed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhs0KaFex3k&pp=ygURcmVudCBzdHVtcHkgc29hY2U%3D
Kulm I have good news for you!
No matter who persevered in this epic battle hordes vs huns vs hoes the next level of civilization was not going to happen. Not enough energy and that’s not going to change regardless of whether chucky and Woodrow hit the hopium pipe or rode unicorns. You dont have to have regrets you can be happy!
Energy is the edge…
Entropy weilds the sword
Blast, I am afraid you are right.
Disagree:
As for entropy, universe is expanding, at an accelerating rate. That would seem to raise questions regarding entropy. Perhaps entropy is a local phenomenon.
Dennis L.
Sounds like a sales pitch for perpetual machine, whose very premise is negated by the laws of thermodynamics.
But I just saw two astronauts go to the space station on the Boeing thingy…..all the astronauts were hugging and everything….seemed like they must have conquered space.
You know the space station where they have been able to grow 5th grader plant science study projects and all…and to make movies about….
Not sure but one of the astronauts might have been a DEI hire…
Example please where space wins.
Musk makes money with satellites in space which run on fusion.
Dennis L.
he is 100% failing on his plans to colonize Mars.
Space isn’t even willing to allow humans to colonize the Moon.
blast,
Life has never been easy, would prefer attempting space to living in a cave and being hunted by hungry animals.
If you want a really tough job, we have just remembered D Day. Try walking off the front of a boat to greet a German with a machine gun. Lousy job.
Dennis L.
Were not going to space.
Soon ocean shipping will cease.
E
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T
R
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P
Y
Everything starting to look like wilkes barre rust.
Yay were going to space!
Pony based economy.
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, is in the rust belt. At one time, coal was mined there, but now the mines are now depleted. It is a depressed area where old buildings tend not to get fixed up.
Respectfully:
Super Nova, all gone except metals. Now, is that entropy? I assume the metals become part of the universe and are expanded at an accelerating rate. Entropy?
Not sure, entropy is thermodynamic, order may be quantum mechanical.
Wolfram has a new book on entropy, on my list.
Dennis L.
have you ever thought of gravity as anti entropy?
certainly gravity increases order.
when gravity “creates” a star, mass and energy have become more concentrated locally.
simplistically, gravity has created a general order on this planet where more dense substances are closer to the center.
gravity also likely enhanced evolution because preorganic and organic matter would stay close together because of their densities.
Don’t know dave. Any comments on my part are narrative, or as I often begin, “A guess.”
Very challenging time to make good decisions.
Dennis L.
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“Many of these benefits come from the chemical properties of fossil fuels.”
True, but those uses aren’t problematic, since they don’t burn the fossil fuels. It’s only burning fossil fuels that causes climate change.
“An electric grid, powered only by intermittent electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, would not qualify.”
If the grid had enough hydro, pneumatic storage and gravity storage, it would.
“The economy is similar. It cannot operate only on electricity, any more than humans can live only on high-priced icing for cakes.”
Nobody is saying operate only on electricity. The economy would operate on electricity, concentrated solar heating, some amount of biomass, and raw materials (including fossil fuels as raw materials, but not used for burning).
“There are many other things that would seem to be at least as likely to cause short-term shifts in temperatures.”
Greenhouse gas levels are the main cause of temperature changes, this is well established and the result of 19th-century calculations.
“It also provides the view that somehow we will be able to fix the problem if we take it seriously enough.”
You haven’t made a good enough argument that the problem is unfixable, and in any case, I don’t see how presenting it as only climate change makes it look more fixable. Climate change only seems rather intractable, while pointing out that oil is running out first eliminates a number of possible pathways, so people can concentrate on the remaining possible pathways instead of wasting time on things that don’t solve the real problems.
We are dealing with whole systems that builds up over time. The whole system, or a replacement system, has to work, in order to keep the overall economy operating.
At a minimum we need food (now for 8 billion+ people) and fresh water. Today, diesel is heavily used (burned) in growing this food and transporting it to markets. Some is also used for herbicides and insecticides. Both herbicides and insecticides come from oil. Very likely, heating is needed in the processes to make herbicides and insectides. We also need a way to cook at least part of our food, because humans cannot live only on raw food, without using a blender to chop everything finely, so we need some metal pans and a way of heating the food. We need a way to transport the food to people. We need roads and trucks for transporting the food from farmers to stores. We need steel pipes to drill oil wells. And somehow, the whole system needs to be affordable to citizens.
Unfortunately, we cannot just pick out some pieces we like, and have them function on their own.
We have built out as much hydroelectric as we likely will ever have. We can’t add much to this, so it can’t be much more than the tiny share of the system that it is today. Furthermore, hydroelectric is old technology. It needs to be maintained, with steel replacement parts and the use of large earth moving equipment. This type of equipment operates by burning diesel fuel. We don’t have a way of making an electric version. Even if we did, we would need a lot of steel for to make the replacements.
Most steel, especially the better quality steel, is made in China using a process that involves burning coal. The US makes a much smaller amount of lower-quality steel, by recycling “used steel.” There is a limit to the amount of used steel available for recycling.
The more a person looks at this, the clearer it becomes that if it really were possible to pick out tiny pieces and make them function on their own, someone would have done it long ago.
Vaclav Smil has written some very good books about energy. One I would recommend is his book, Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects, published in 2010. The book blurb says,
Respectfully disagree:
Fossil fuels were necessary as a bridge, they are dirty and my guess is the main issue is the speed of release of pollutants which were collected over millions of years.
Starlink currently has 6006 satellites operational. Per musk protypes are easy, production is hard. Starlink has mastered production, my envelope calculation suggests it has a $86B/year energy savings over terrestrial and when it gets to replacement level, that excess production can build robots to explore the solar system, prospectors.
Yes, large distances, but think of a chain, continuous delivery to near earth orbit. There is no shortage of stuff in the solar system. We are going to mine, refine , and manufacture it on the trip from raw material to delivery.
Finance will be a serious problem for the US, BRICS is apparently going blockchain. This one is real for me, SS recipient.
Education in MN is free, free I tell you. Do two years at a CC and effectively halve the tuition cost for the last two years. Yes, I am thinking engineering. Don’t do poetry worth a damn.
OpenAI is doing some incredible and scary things
I have no idea if this is accurate or not but may be worth a view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om5KAKSSpNg
AI is progressing at OOM – orders of magnitude. The “experts” sneered at Altman when he started. They are tenured, a grant of a million dollars makes them a hero, administration gets half or more.
I am taking C# this fall, I learn to be fluent, have projects in mind. Copilot will be a problem, my code will be too good, variable names too good, comments too good.
I see one huge social problem. Find a video of the recent celebrations in the control center of SpaceX, you should see the problem immediately.
It is going to be interesting. Oh, and as for God, our sun has a short future, in a billion years or less earth will have a real heat problem. He is working on it, we can deal with the rest ourselves. God has a different time scale, generally likes tens of billions, has to hurry on this one.
I love this site, but it is looking backwards, the future is forwards. It is going to be fossil fuel free, climate change is so yesterday.
Dennis L.
Human nature stays the same and it is going to repeat what the past had demonstrated.
No amount of self denial will change that.
Except you have the cart before the horse; temp change leads change in CO2 levels by 800 years.
On the up, and on the down.
Small detail.
Fail.
Change is the natural order of things.
“BRICS Officially Announces Independent Payment System
” … Since 2022, the economic alliance has continually sought ways to de-dollarize global finance. With its own independent payment system, the bloc takes a tremendous stride toward that reality. Additionally, the impending BRICS 2024 summit should provide insight into even more ways that those hopes can be met with action.”
https://watcher.guru/news/brics-officially-announces-independent-payment-system
There is no system and there is no launch date.
We are working on it gets transformed into launch.
Right. The text really says
“BRICS is working on our own independent payment system, free from political pressure, abuse and external interference.”
It could be a very long time.
Meanwhile another major fuel hits limits. How are we going to take down that mile of platinum if the geniuses working for Musk can not concentrate?
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/soaring-coffee-prices-force-folgers-owner-increase-supermarket-prices
I see your point, we now have a problem.
Dennis L.
My understanding of this article is that they announced they are working on a non-SWIFT payment mechanism. Please correct me if it’s already done, but this is very much in line with the Russian style of political messaging: keep saying you’re going to do something, but take no action or drag your feet. The Chinese style is to say little and just do what needs doing quickly. On RT for the last 10 years I’ve seen alternating articles saying they are de-dollarizing, and then that have de-dollarized, and then I’ll see an article later showing the fraction of dollars they’re still using! It’s ridiculous.
If you are in Egypt for a vacation or a short stay , leave .
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240607-a-loaf-of-bread-and-the-moaning-of-the-egyptians/
Ravi don’t trust that publication, but do look at their financing, which is hopefully better than their publications maths.
“From the beginning of this month, Egypt witnessed an increase in the price of a loaf of bread, rising from five piasters to twenty piasters, suddenly tripling the price”
Tripling, so 5 x 3 = 20?
I couldn’t be bothered to go past that first sentence.
Sorry ravi, should have added that there will be no repeat Arab Spring(enforced shortages) in Egypt unless they play the wests game(El Sisi will lose his head if he goes along). Despite all the talk about IMF money, the real money going into Egypt(3 or 4 times as much) comes from other areas(Saudi & UAE mainly) and bread is no problem at all to the powers behind/backing that money.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wheat-production-by-country
FF , in an extremely poor society the difference of 5 piastras or 5 paisa ( India & Pakistan ) is the difference of going to bed on a full stomach or empty . The same is for Egypt . We have seen the first Arab spring because of the bread price but I have seen govt loose elections in India thrice , once the price of onions , second the price of tomatoes and then the price of cooking gas . It can happen very fast . Here is a very recent example .
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/approval-ratings-of-world-leaders-in-2024/
Modi in March 2024 .
Today June 2024
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/4/modis-bjp-loses-majority-in-india-election-shock-needs-allies-for
He barely won his seat . The issue was unemployment(80% youth) and inflation . 2 months what a difference make .
80 % comes from Ukraine and Russia . The grain scenario is deteriorating with lower quantities available for exports . I had earlier posted that a new major buyer has entered the market– India and in line for Russian wheat . Egypt will get the Fx and that was illustrated by the method it got the $ 8 billion IMF bailout . While bread is an issue a new addition is the Gaza war . The general public’s mood is anger as it wants the army to assist but Sisi can’t move without a nod from Washington . There is in the army a section of officers loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood who are also unhappy . Volatile situation .
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/2/519423/Egypt/Society/Egypt-raises-wheat-procurement-price-by–in-new-ha.aspx
https://medium.com/visionarye-talks/president-sisi-is-in-china-asking-for-help-and-to-avoid-a-coup-against-him-69319406612f
Thanks ravi. I’m not disagreeing, I just look at it from a different angle.
Some thoughts, from my perspective.
The Ukrainian grain that they are attempting to dump at low prices. Who is stopping that going to Egypt?
Egypt finds itself in the middle of someone else’s fight and with some tough choices to make. They joined BRICS, are now being pressurised by others and just like the last fraudulent Arab Spring, a bad situation is deliberately being made worse. Why doesn’t Europe give them all that grain they stole from Russia.
El Sisi is a weak and fear filled man, but going to China is a start. Now he needs to go to St Petersburg and give some guarantees to Vladimir Vladimirovich, just like when Erdoğan was facing rising prices and an agitated population(he was saved for a second time and given an election win to boot). He could then invade Rafah and become a hero to his people(ok, that’s a bit beyond the realms of reality at the moment).
Starving people is a common western tool of coercion. The original Arab Spring being one, or we go back to Bob Geldof, when we all gave ourselves a pat on the back for sending all that grain to starving Ethiopia, without ever asking where said grain came from(yes, Ethiopia. A country that was 99% self sufficient until our corporations and their hired guns stole it all).
There are some nasty European descendants starving the people of Gaza as we talk.
You certainly are correct about the volatility of the situation and a country of 113m starving people will disintegrate fast if the situation is not resolved. Thankfully that might be happening right now and no thanks to Europeans or their scattered descendants.
“Egypt is ready to buy more Russian wheat, Agriculture Minister Oksana Lut told reporters on the sidelines of the SPIEF.
“There was a meeting with Egypt today, Egypt is ready to buy more wheat, because for them it is a key product, one of the key products, and their population is actively growing for various reasons. Therefore, we don’t see any difficulties here. Temporary measures, no questions asked, we are reorienting. We will continue to look at trade with Turkey, which in any case remains our strategic partner, ” the minister said.”
https://mkegypt.ru/news-of-egypts/557/
Middle East Monitor(London based) is too the Arab world, as the Moscow Times(Amsterdam based) is too Russia. I don’t trust them, but they can be useful for understanding the narrative being pushed by their pay masters.
>> El Sisi is a weak and fear filled man
What do you expect from a man named “el sissy” (el = the) (sissy = weakling/coward)
The Ukrainian grain that they are attempting to dump at low prices. Who is stopping that going to Egypt?
Answer ; The breakdown of the Black sea grain deal . Russia caught the Ukies smuggling weapons on the incoming ships which were to be outgoing ships to carry grains .
Why doesn’t Europe give them all that grain they stole from Russia.
Answer ; The quality of the grain deteriorated because of various delays . It is now not fit for human consumption , only animal feed .
The problem is Ukraine does not have wheat and Russia being in a controlling situation will decide who to sell to .
https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/the-china-russia-grain-entente-what-is-at-stake-for-canada-and-its-allies-sergey-sukhankin-for-inside-policy/
Ravi, the dumping is now and the EU have said that they have no problem with it being transported through the EU, as long as it’s not sold in the EU, so why not sell it to Egypt. Maybe they want the situation to get so bad that they can have another live aid, so everyone can feel good about themselves, whilst being directed to put all the blame on Russia(who else).
Simply put, there’s grain available at a cheap price. Why have none of them realised that there’s a not only a willing, but also desperate buyer. If only they read their own propaganda outlets, they could solve multiple issues in the blink of an eye, but instead of doing that it looks like Russia will fill the gap.
As for the claim that Ukraine doesn’t have wheat
“Ukraine was expected to produce 21 million metric tons of wheat in the marketing year 2024/25.”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379509/ukraine-wheat-production/
Is this incorrect?
Could be, given the situation and I don’t know what percentage is now under Russian control, so hard to find a true figure. Although from what I’ve read, a fraction of the above number would be enough and we know without doubt that they want to export an amount large enough to scare EU farmers.
No problem with what you say about the deteriorating old stock.
The article, reads like a propaganda piece(because that’s what it is) and as such I didn’t get very far into it. Sorry, but it follows the same old script as all Russia bad propaganda(at least they’re not just a gas station anymore, now they are an evil gas station). The repetition and misuse of language is tedious, although hardly surprising coming from Canada.
So much contradiction, I’m wondering if the intent is confusion and so an inability to understand(from them, not you).
The price of bread has risen a lot in Egypt, even if the author is not good at math. The government cannot keep up its subsidies. This will make citizens very unhappy.
I can see why you say, “If you are in Egypt for a vacation or a short stay , leave.” This kind of rise in food prices tends to lead to riots. It is very bad for keeping the economy together.
Update .
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-declares-federal-state-emergency-10-agricultural-regions-2024-06-07/
https://situational-awareness.ai/
Super Intelligence by 2035.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om5KAKSSpNg
Narrated video covering the paper.
One line summary – Gimme $1 billion so I develop such tech.
It is a long job application/company statement..
Ben Goertzel, who sells Superintelligence, said Superintelligence 2025 some time ago. He now says it is 2027.
https://futurism.com/artificial-superintelligence-agi-2027-goertzel
I followed such messages with a religious fervor back in 2015-17. Until I realized all these wild claims were to sell their books/services/whatnot.
I will believe it when I see it.
TM has a new post:
“If we’re to make sense of economic trends, we need to start by recognizing that there are two economies, not one. These are the “real economy” of material products and services, and the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions and credit.”
I think he misses biology and its apex, sentience. Without it, oil, coal is simply stored solar energy in/on the ground. American Indians are a good example.
We are sentient, we are aiming for the stars, we came from the stars, our atoms were forged in stars.
I return to the mousetrap metaphor. Take it apart, place components in a bag, shake and only parts. Give to a chimp and lose parts, no mousetrap. Give to a young child, say five and most likely still parts, give to a 12 year old and most likely a mousetrap.
My thesis is our universe is this way, we are the apex, we grow into understanding with time and with time our universe continues to grow and yes, blow up parts in spectacular fashion.
God is not done with us yet, we have man-made narratives called religion, they mostly work. Religion is not god, it is written by man in an attempt to give a narrative to describe life and how to live it.
Our future is before us, it is up to us to take the parts of the metaphorical mousetrap and make a working mousetrap. It is good mice are not sentient, they would be busy taking apart the traps.
This universe is impossible without underlying direction, it is not old enough for random chance to have produced our spaceship earth and man.
There will be no pushing of the button, too much work has been done for that.
We will leave fossil fuels behind just before they leave us behind. We are on this site because we know NRR are indeed finite, on earth. We are moving on.
Dennis L.
I have refuted your points many times before so I won’t repeat it.
Not too much work has been done by whoever is running this. They gave a playground and humans did that.
Who can say that if there is a Thumb, there might be other universes and other experiments going on, with better or worse results?
The 3 Body Problem, from a Chinese novel, was an attempt to answer this question. The conclusion of that trilogy is like this
>One of Wade’s former associates awakens Cheng and AA and urges them to fly on one of their corporation’s private spacecraft to Pluto, where they meet the now 200-year-old Luo Ji, who gives them a number of artifacts from the Museum of Humanity. They watch from Pluto as the sun and the rest of the planets are pulled into the second dimension and flattened. As the collapse approaches Pluto, Luo Ji then reveals that their ship is equipped with humanity’s only lightspeed drive, built in secret by Wade’s associates after his death. He instructs them to escape the solar system while he stays behind. They set a course for DX3906 and escape ahead of the collapse wave, which pulls in Pluto and all the remaining human ships that were attempting to flee at sublight speeds, ending human civilization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End
In the end everything comes to naught.
The author, upon the insistence of Ken Liu, who introduced this book to USA, added a couple contrived passages to give a pretense of hope to the readers (the main couple in that part of story survive and migrate to some other universe), but basically what the author was trying to say is that the earth is one of many worlds, like Buddha’s 3 million worlds and 3 billion Buddhas. (Buddhism, incidentally, is kinda open to modern physics and astronomy since it is one of the few religions which acknowledge that there can be Buddhas in other worlds, like alien worlds and parallel worlds).
Copilot is impressive. It finds syntax errors and if one is lazy, it will code routines.
Copilot seems like an entry level AI.
Sams now has robotic floor scrubbers working the aisles and at the same time taking inventory. It is polite, of course I have blocked it with a cart, it moves, I move. Enquiring minds wanted to know.
Want to design and build my own GPS and RTK mower for farmland, ambitious. The machines are on YouTube software appears opensource, GetHub? Film at eleven.
YouTube again: kid made a automatic firing pellet gun(round pellets, maybe 3/8″ dia) which can track nerf balls shot from another gun. I am thinking weeds, a laser blasting weeds, very organic and throw in H as a power source so very, very green. Yes guys, I am twisting your tail a bit.
So guess, an old man can use GetHub and Copilot and can stitch together code. Ten years ago this was impossible. Fall schedule at CC has C# and more electronics.. Kids can go to this CC for free, they can go through software, electronics, math thru diff. eq. and a damn good physics course, for free. Simple electronics diploma is $100K job at Mayo with overtime and of course, health benefits. Pair up with a hairdresser and 1+1=3, or maybe 4, pick a number. Earlier I posted a Cambodian man and woman, he a janitor, she housekeeping, had 8 children, one a researcher married to a nurse. $200k/year.
Honda and Toyota are serious companies, they are making H cars. With a cubic mile of Pt Elon could convert his battery cars to fuel cells trivially. I know, he is not at the asteroid belt yet, but he is almost out of the gravity well and is working hard on robots. Thinking R2D2 on top of a small space exploring ship, thousands of them, exploring with a full charge for the robot who finds the most Pt. Electrifying I tell you.
Dennis L.
Earth has around 1.5ppb of platinum throughout the crust, which means 1000 tonnes of ‘rock’ would yield 1.5gm of platinum, so 666,000 tonnes of rock for 1kg and 666, million tonnes of rock for 1 tonne of platinum. Assuming the recovery is average, I’m rounding that up to 1 Billion tonnes, This means you would need around 21.45 billion tonnes of earth rock to make a cubic metre of platinum, given the density of platinum.
As there are 1609 metres in a mile, a cubic mile would need approximately 89, million trillion tonnes of Earth rock, mantle and core to gain your cubic mile of platinum (or space rock).
It doesn’t matter if it’s here on Earth or out in space, you would still need around 260 Billion cubic miles of rock to gain your cubic mile of platinum
As it takes around 120Kwh/tonne to mine, crush and grind rock into small enough fractions for floatation to work.
As it would take around 2,750Twh to mine, crush and grind a cubic mile of rock, it would take around 715 Million Twh for the work index alone, or around 4,386 times the total energy used by humanity in 2023..
So you would need a space rock of 7,382 miles in diameter to mine for your platinum, assuming the same density as on Earth…
You would need some large equipment that is not in the above numbers and might add to the energy requirements…
All sounds very doable with the fossil fuels we have left… then again maybe not….
Yes, yes, very challenging indeed. But Elon will think of something – Dennis L.
Okay, nice numbers. I assume the entire 1 cu mile is done in one year.
Lazy man’s way, per Copilot need 891,300 sq miles of solar panels for that amount of energy in one year. That is roughly 1000 miles per side. Energy from the sun. The inverse square law applies so for more power, move closer.
Perhaps chose somewhat smaller rocks, take ten years and then due to volumetric rule of a sphere the radius decreases dramatically. Less momentum, less energy needed to move the rock. Same amount of kinetic energy overall, but the rate is less.
The nice thing about Pt is recycling, should be easy. In ten years one has a heck of a pile of Pt which can be recycled.
I am open to other suggestions, I believe the general ideas on this site.
Except: There is dark energy, now that may well violate entropy. Don’t have a clue on that one except. When we need it, God will allow us to understand it. We already have the power of lesser gods before us, managing that is challenge enough.
Dennis L.
Asteroid stainless steel is about 20ppm pt group metals. That is ~13,000x the abundance you assume above. This why a lot of people have suggested asteroid pt mining. Most of what is in Earth sank to the core. The asteroids are far richer than any Earth ore.
Not that I really buy the whole cubic mile of platinum thing. That is just silly. But if space mining can bring back 450te (22 cubic metres) of pt metals per year, then it can essentially double the availability of those metals for Earth based customers.
But even that much more limited goal is no mean feat to achieve in real life. It would mean processing over 20 million tonnes of asteroid metal each year. That would be a significant ore processing operation anywhere. Doing it in space in very little gravity is unprecedented, though by no means impossible. Space launch needs to be very cheap to pull this off, because we would need to send kilotonnes of equipment to the asteroid.
Why these all knowing neo-cons did NOT launch a Russian Civil War in 1990s, intervening and supporting different factions like 1920, something not too many people know about, and end Russia as a unified country once for all?
Same mistake Napoleon made at Austrelitz and Tilsit (now called Sovetsk, in RUSSIA), trusting the Tatars.
kul,
Serious reply: Because the master of the universe did want that.
Religions are possibly the narrative of man visualizing God.
You are a narrative, in it things are never done correctly.
Perhaps the master does not agree with your narrative.
Does not make you a bad person, simply means the master has other things in mind and his own way of doing things.
Old saying, “Go with the flow.”
Dennis L.
I find it hard for the Master of Universe to kill off the Western Europeans, which bred for excellence for 4 centuries, from about 1500 till 1914, in favor of peoples who have shown much less potential to advance civilization.
Russia was, is and will be irrelevant as far as civilization is concerned. It did produce some interesting people, such as Mendeleev (although Henry Moseley’s work was more important – Mendeleev, who was born in Tobolsk just designed a table while Moseley gave justification for it, and for this alone the nation of Turkey should NOT exist now) and some famous authors, but a lot of its talents, like Sergei Korolev, were from Ukraine, the Baltics and other peoples not considered to be Russian. Tsiolkovsky, who proposed the first rockets, was Polish; the name Ciolkowski is found among priests and other educated people.
And Mendeleev was an Asian, born at Tobolsk, in Siberia.
Ezekiel 38: 2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
Meshech is Moscow, and Tubal is Tobolsk.
Not only his birthplace was in Asia, but his mother’s father was said to be a Teleut, a tribe in Siberia who look like this
https://youtu.be/Yvsm__LedbM?si=UpW6LJcSDmT3Tl7d
Which is why people ignored him during his lifetime.
Like Rosalind Franklin, whom some kind of people now cry that she was cheated but she was just a good photographer, Mendeleev was a good chart maker but that was it.
In any case he died before 1917. After 1917 USSR was no longer a Western country.
And, if the first humans just ‘went with the flow’, they would still be living in caves.
“I find it hard for the Master of Universe to kill off the Western Europeans, which bred for excellence for 4 centuries, from about 1500 till 1914, in favor of peoples who have shown much less potential to advance civilization.”
There is no “Master of the Universe”. There is no God. The Universe isn’t made for Human Civilization. The Universe is at least 13 billion years old, maybe older. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Modern Humans are around 300,000 yrs. old. Agricultural civilization around 12,000 yrs. old. Industial civilization is maybe 300 yrs. old depending on when you put the start date.
When you look at these dates, you see humans were hunter gatherers for most of our history as a species, human civilization in and of itself is a newer artificial construct.
Over the short term, industrial civilization is unsustainable, most likely ending by the middle of this century. Over the longer term, agriculture civilization is also unsustainable, due to soil erosion and desertification. We humans are probably going back to the caves sort of speak.
I don’t think Western Europeans bred for excellence for 4 centuries. I think they just screwed like everyone else. There is NO master race. There are no chosen people. There is no God.
Maybe not a God in the sense that most people think, but a God who created the Universe and continues to have a hand in everything that happens today. The way selection of the best adapted works is miraculous in its effects. The way that the physics works is miraculous. The way that the financial system (with its need for increasing debt) works is bizarre, but in a way is miraculous, too. The Maximum Power Principle is another miraculous way the system works.
You had me until you said the way the financial system works…..I don’t see this working I see it failing very soon!
I expect that the overall system will keep whatever parts of the economy are most efficient at producing useful output operating longest, if there is not enough to go around. Today’s Advanced Economies are not very efficient. Significant parts of our current system are in danger of being squeezed out by the failure of our current financial system, among other things.
At the same time, as long as there are people making goods, there will always be some way of trading for goods and services. Barter, or some fancy way of working around barter, will be available to allow trade in goods and services. Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, talks about trade in ancient temples taking place, by translating each item brought for sale into bushels of the grain of the day (whatever that was). To smooth trade, those bringing goods to the market would be given credit based on the goods they brought, to purchase other goods or services, even before their goods were sold. So, even then, there was some form of credit available.
What is likely to get squeezed out is the extensive debt system we have now, and all of the financial services that are based on debt. Also, the huge layer of governmental services that are made possible by the surpluses of the current system.
The part of the system that seems likely to be favored over the very long term is the part that flourished before the current fossil fuel based system came into play.
The extensive financial services we have now are needed to allow high-priced capital goods (like today’s factories) and also air conditioned homes, and modern farms. These seem likely to be squeezed out of the system, unless there is some part of the system (say, Russia+ China+India+Iran) that can keep enough fossil fuels operating to keep these systems going.
It seems like economic contraction may operate in sort of the reverse direction of the history of growth. What is added last (electricity) is likely to disappear first. People first came out of Africa. Africa may ultimately be the area last to host humans.
What I think we miss about Russian people is that their name origins from ‘Rus’, which means ‘rowing man’, as they came from the Viking migrations to the East (from Scandinavian peninsula). While migrations of the West were the ones who went to central Europe (that is ourselves). The east side mixed with other populations, like the Slavs, yes, but I think that they have never lost their indomitable and combative spirit.
While in the West side, Vikings mixed with a big portion of population which was already present, having a result that was a complete mix. Additionally, the East side became Christian Orthodox, which is a sector of the Christian Church which inherited the last ‘grandeur’ of the Roman Empire, which is the Bizantine side.
The Bizantine side went on being, feeling and acting like ‘Romans’ till the conquest of Costantinopoli, so very late.
The Bizantine side didn’t became ‘sad’ and ‘poor’ like the ‘Italian side’ after the decadence of the Italian peninsula, which happened earlier.
Although Russia now is a mix of various Religions and ethnicities, the ‘core’ of the population or at least ‘the core’ of the culture is like that. And the other internal ethnicities are solidal with the core. See, for instance, general Ramzan Kadyrov and the Chechens fighters, who are Muslims, but loyal to the core.
I think that all the Russians now are ready to fight hard, because they feel they are in danger as a population and culture.
Ukrianians were misled by us and I think that they have realized, but they still hang on a false hope to become ‘rich Europeans’.
US and Europe didn’t understand that they should have exploited the cultural link of the Russians with Central Europe, a link which originated especially in XVII, XVIII and XIX century. That link would have been useful to have Russia on their side against China.
But now is too late, we have lost Russia on the East side.
Additionally we preffered to help the Jewish culture to obtain their goals.
Nothing against them, but the problem is (my impression is) that they have self-destructive goals…
So, now we can just watch our decadence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people
https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_ortodossa_russa
Blame it to Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and all this people willing to kiss Lenin’s ass.
After the Russian Revolution, and the infamous Georgian, USSR became a lot much less western than before, and the 1990s led to a new identity, which was promoted by folks like Alexander Dugin but few Westerners paid attention since their knowledge on Russian culture ended in 1917.
Even now they do not study Ivan Ilyin, who gave the ideological basis for Putin’s gang, or various Russian theories which floated around 1990s such as the Golden Billion, which has not really been translated into western languages but a common knowledge in Russia.
Turgenev (ironically the name Turgen is the name of some Tatar chief) and other Russian emigres in Europe gave a false impression that Russia is a Western country. That was , to some degree, a true statement before 1917 since the Russian royalty, which was no longer really Russian after Pyotr II was poisoned in 1730, and its cohorts were mostly German with some other Europeans thrown in here and there.
However, after 1917 it was a different story, yet since no one really updated the West about the realities of Russia, and USSR tended to send more European looking people as diplomats to Western countries, a tradition which came from the days of Potemkin who was the master of hiding the ugly with fake pictures, the West did not receive the news that Russia had returned into the days of the Tatars.
Thanks Kulm for your consideration.
Putin doesn’t speak in a negative way of Bolsheviks, but from how he talks about them one anyway can understand that he doesn’t like them.
In his interview with Tucker Carlson he said that “we (current Russian government) don’t know why the Bolsheviks, after the revolution, started to build the concept of Ukraine as a separate identity and to build the Ukranian nationalism” (maybe not exactly same words, but concept).
In my view, I think we made a mistake to let/make Russians embrace China.
The two points you mention that I admit I don’t know well.
1) Golden Billion:
“According to Kara-Murza, the majority of all resources on the planet are consumed by the top billion people, referred to as the ‘Golden Billion’.[7] Kara-Murza posits that if at least half of the global population began to consume resources to the same extent as the ‘Golden Billion’, resources would be insufficient.[8] In the article which popularized the term, “Концепция “золотого миллиарда” и Новый мировой порядок”,[note 1] Kara-Murza calls on the concept of a New World Order, a conspiracy theory associated with antisemitic tropes. Additionally, the term “мировой элиты” is used, which translates to “world elite” and has associations with other antisemitic conspiracies.[7][2][1]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_billion
2) Ivan Ilyin:
Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin (Russian: Иван Александрович Ильин, romanized: Ivan Aleksandrovich Il’in; 9 April [O.S. 28 March] 1883 – 21 December 1954) was a Russian jurist, religious and political philosopher, publicist, orator, and conservative monarchist. While he saw Russia’s 1917 February Revolution as a “temporary disorder”, the October Revolution, in his view, marked a “national catastrophe”. This conviction led him to oppose the Bolshevik regime.[1] He became a white émigré journalist, aligning himself with Slavophile beliefs and emerging as a key ideologue of the Russian All-Military Union. This organization firmly believed that force stood as the sole means through which the Soviet regime could be toppled.[2]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ilyin
Last point. I didn’t enter about your comments about Asian people.
I agree with Gail, but I also can say that I have some Japan and South Korean friends, they are very intelligent, cultured and wonderful persons.
A courtesy and friendship difficult for me to match at the same level.
I think you are too negative about them.
All the best
It is not that they are bad. They are simply incapable of advancing civilization, that’s all.
“What I think we miss about Russian people is that their name origins from ‘Rus’, which means ‘rowing man’, as they came from the Viking migrations to the East (from Scandinavian peninsula).”
Well that explains it, we Norwegians spread peace and prosperity wherever we go even if our techniques needed refinement.
Dennis L.
There seem to be many elements about Russian identity creation, some I tried to understand together with some other contributes, I don’t think we can reduce the discussion about Norwegians or Swedish or Danish…
We can only imagine how far a more-or-less United Europe would have advanced, if Great Britain didn’t believe the ‘balance of power’ shit.
We do know how far the United States of America went.
It is true that the so-called Founding Fathers were of superior stock. They were at par with what Europe could offer at that time. So the Europeans were fooled that USA was at par with Europe.
Few, other than Alexis de Tocqueville, bothered to travel around the hinterlands where the ‘real’ Americans lived.
The peoples who spoke the language of the lower-class Elizabethan English were not really seen by outsiders since few bothered to venture to the regions where these kind of people resided.
around 1950, a decisive change took place in the ruling class of USA. The old upper class faded, and the ‘base’ Americans began to replace the upper ranks of power.
Peoples who had no stake in USA now became the bosses of the country and now they began to plunder, and. after 1963, other races began to jump into the rampage.
In retrospect, it was wrong to give USA, the post-1963 USA at least, the keys for the future since we are now seeing how it has botched it.
A United Europe could not have worked for a number of reasons. First off Europe has multiple languages and cultures, the United States were 13 British colonies therefore had a unifying English culture and language. Europe also has a higher population, with very little petroleum reserves (the reason Hitler invaded Soviet Union).
What do you mean by “Superior Stock”, do you believe that wealthy are inherently more intelligent than the poor. The wealthy, before public education, were the only ones with enough money to send their children to school, the poor children had to work. Why do you think that the current leadership of the country have no stake in the USA any less or more than before 1950.
Why do you have such a distain for the proletariat, do you think that they are genetically inferior? The problem in the world today is NOT caused by the proletariat masses and God forbid other than Anglo-Saxon white people having a sliver of token political power in the West. The problems of today are caused by a physical shortage of resources, particularly Oil. Your ideas I find very dangerous, I am afraid that people will blame the poor or ethnic minorities for the problems the world is going to face with oil depletion, instead of realizing and being properly taught what we are facing in regards to our resource problem.
I think you are not aware that the German Empire was trying to build the Berlin-Byzantium-Baghdad railway to bring the oil of Iraq to Germany, while there was a big circus going around Persia between Russia and UK and near the end of the Great War the Turks did occupy Baku, the chief oil producing zone of the Caspians. So Europe did have its oil
United Kingdom propped up the desert tribes to strike some trouble in the Middle East. It was a good idea for a century until it stopped working last year.
The upper class were not only having better opportunities, but also had better ‘selective breeding’. Ron Unz and Gregory Clark have written a lot about that. And animal breeders do that all the time to find a better stock. Yes, the rich are better than others
Giving power to the general populace basically messed things up . It is a huge topic which I won’t even get started.
The physical shortage of resources were created because everyone in Timbuktu and Bhutan and Papua New Guinea had to sped resources to ride in cars and watch smartphones and the like. If their lifestyles were limited to what they had for centuries there would be less people, much less resource consumption and a chance for the future.
The peoples I prop up did contribute to civilization, while the peoples I have no respect of contributed nothing to civilization while consuming resources.
According to Peter Medawar, who knew the subject inside out, it is difficult to selectively breed favorable characteristics without also breeding unfavorable characteristics.
He observed that breeders, when attempting to selectively breed for a specific desirable trait, would often inadvertently select for other correlated traits as well, due to the complex and interconnected nature of an organism’s genome and phenotype.
Hence, centuries of selective breeding of the very best human genes created an American elite that faded into obscurity, while in Europe it has led to such triumphs of eugenic excellence as King Charles III, the current British monarch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Medawar
Medawar’s family history tells everyone we have to know about him.
The very fact that a Middle Eastern became a Knight shows the decline of britain after its best were killed at Flanders and Somme.
It seems he was the Nassim Taleb of the day.
That aside, what happened is the more brave got killed in wars, while the less brave and more crafty survived.
Medawar had a British mum and a Lebanese father, which makes him more British than most of our current Royal Family. Not that this is anything to write home about it.
But if we don’t count him as British or Western European due to family history, that kinda invalidates your hypothesis that nobody born east of the Elbe or south of the Alps contributes to civilization, doesn’t it?
I mean, his work on skin grafting and transplantation was epoch-making, doing more for civilization and improving the human condition than an entire stadium full of football hooligans have done—including the Liverpool ones, who at least can sing in tune.
For the sake of your racial/class supremacy theories, better include him as an honorary Brit.
“The upper class were not only having better opportunities, but also had better ‘selective breeding’. Ron Unz and Gregory Clark have written a lot about that. And animal breeders do that all the time to find a better stock. Yes, the rich are better than others”
Selective breeding only leads to race degeneration. Anyone having dogs knows it. My two dogs are crossbred and far superior in health and intelligence to most selected purebreds.
All the good men perished in 1914-18.
kulm
by an accident of geology….the usa was sitting on the biggest concentration of the worlds usable resources in the 20th c
coal, oil and iron ore.
they were the keys to the future
everything else became window dressing
they were not ”given” keys to the future—they were there for the taking
From a post in Unz.com, I learned that John Adams prohibited a naval force sent by Napoleon to try to suppress the rebellion in Haiti. In other words, USA was supposedly helping the rebels there in order to make France give up ‘Louisiana’.
USA later attacked Mexico and took 1/3 of the latter’s territories.
So it is not exactly true that they just ‘happened to be’ sitting on these resources, they did take it.
Until the Vietnam War , everything USA did was a success, whether you like it or not.
So, if there was something watching the earthlings, it can be argued that USA was given the keys to the future.
However, the watcher did not expect USA to degrade this quickly, within a space of less than 25 years.
if by some gigantic stretch of the imagination there is a ”watcher”—whoever/whatever it is will be fully aware of the results of exponential growth
Like John Calhoun, the rat experimenter . He did not wait till the rats all died off. He just disposed them after getting the result he wanted.
Calhoun’s research was financed by the Rockefellers.
In an earlier blog post. FoolishFitz had said that United Kingdom acted like a harsh matron to the various European countries, using Russia as the arm to discipline them.
Well, as Malcolm Little has said, the chicken is coming home to roost.
The Chinese has a saying, Tu si gou peng. After the rabbit hunt is done, the hound (has no more use but could attack the owner) is disposed off. (the actual word, ‘peng’, means ‘to cook’).
That term came to use after Liu Bang founded the Han Dynasty in 206 BCE, and unified China with the general Han Xin contributing the most. However, Xin’s military skills were great and he insisted his contribution to the foundation of dynasty everywhere, so Bang disposed Xin off with a trumped-up charge, since Xin would be better off dead for the Empire than alive.
With Europe completely laying prostate, it was time to dispose off Russia once for all.
It is true that initially Putin was a good WEF toady, following orders and not acting too rashly. However, sometimes good toadies change their colors, and by the time the gerontocracy at Davos found out, it was too late.
I say again that Russia should have been allowed to collapse back in 1990s, with nukes flying all over Russian cities, with no one outside there really giving a shit about. Then humanity’s journey to the Next Level of Civ would have sailed without issues.
I don’t remember writing that Russia was used by Britain, just that it stepped in when the enfant terrible needed to be put firmly in it’s place. My apologies if I miss remember.
Europe’s problems are wholly self inflicted and there is no hope for maturity until Europe faces up to that. As with all emotionally stunted, it struggles to accept that. The garden and the jungle statement shows how hopelessly far away they are from that realisation.
I don’t want to start an argument about the detrimental effect of the no-longer-Great Britain did to Western Civilization.
It is the garden and the jungle, where no civilization can grow. And whether Uk likes or not, it has put itself into the garden this time, and will share the fate of the garden if that falls into the hands of the Hordes.
Look, look, over here, it’s the ‘wicked’ ‘J”s or the W.E.F..
Don’t look over there at the plutocrats and the M.I.C., there’s nothing to see?
EXPERTS FEAR HORRIFYING HEAT WAVES THAT COULD KILL TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE AT ONCE
WE COULD HAVE “THE HURRICANE KATRINA OF EXTREME HEAT” ON OUR HANDS.
But the uptick in extreme weather attributed to climate change, plain old heat included, has continually put many cities’ energy grids under threat.
So what happens when all those AC units suddenly lose power?
from a study published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, which explored what would happen if a major, two-day blackout took place during a heat wave in Phoenix, Detroit, and Atlanta.
Some 99 percent of buildings in Phoenix have AC, according to the study, which makes its power grid most likely to fail. Atlanta is just behind at 94 percent, and Detroit, the coolest city, ranked at 53 percent.
In Phoenix — which last year went an entire month with temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher — the death toll could be monumental. The study found that a whopping 800,000 people — half the Arizona capital’s population — would need emergency medical care, and more than 13,000 would die.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/heat-waves-could-kill-tens-thousands-at-once
This is climate change “porn” in my view. Designed to put fear into the hearts of everyone. Sort of like fear of Covid.
Atlanta tends not to get nearly as hot as Phoenix. It is an unusual year when the temperature in Atlanta gets above 100 degrees. This is a schedule of highest temperatures in Atlanta by year, since 2010. https://www.currentresults.com/Yearly-Weather/USA/GA/Atlanta/extreme-annual-atlanta-high-temperature.php
In only one year (2012) did the high temperature exceed 100 degrees. In two years, it exactly hit 100 degrees. Other years, the high temperature was in the 90s.
Grids have varying levels of problems. None of Atlanta, Phoenix and Detroit are high problem grid areas, to my knowledge. The Northeast tends to have a lot of problems with grid electricity. California does too, as does Texas. Anywhere that nuclear is pushed out by wind and solar has problems. Intermittent wind and solar damages grids.
“Anywhere that nuclear is pushed out by wind and solar has problems. Intermittent wind and solar damages grids.”
Nice summary, it is why I am here. We don’t know what will work, but we have a good idea of what will not work and why.
Narrows the choices considerably.
Dennis L.
I do not consider praying for mythic starships which go to nowhere as a valid choice.
kul,
You and others look at a problem and assume it cannot be solved. I look for solutions and where possible apply them.
That is personally threatening, one runs into limits in ability and in my case time.
Dennis L.
If that bothers you, research the overall warming our sun. Posted a reference to that, God will be busy.
Copilot:
“The Sun becoming a red giant is a process that will take billions of years. Here’s what we know about this process and its impact on Earth:
Our solar system is just over 4.5 billion years old, so the Sun is slightly more than halfway through its stable lifetime1.
In about one billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher, causing the atmosphere to become a “moist greenhouse”, resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans2.
After about a billion years the Sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans1
.
The Sun has been increasing its brightness by about 10% every billion years it spends burning hydrogen1.
In a few billion years, the Sun will become a red giant so large that it will engulf our planet1.”
Now, given He had to invent/develop the universe, given it has taken 27B years to get humans to work as well as we do, He has less than a billion years to do something about the sun. Time is short on this one.
I suggest global climate change is manageable. Even Musk’s idea of moving to Mars won’t solve this one.
“History is just one damn thing after another.” Toynbee.
Dennis L.
The Sun’s energy output increases by 10% every billion years. Even in 100 million years, this is enough to start causing problems for life on Earth.
Advanced multicellular life is a relatively recent development for Earth. Complex animals have only been around for about 10% of Earth’s existance. A breathable atmosphere for only about half its history. In another few hundred million years, the Earth will be too hot for land animals. The Earth can be only a temporary abode for complex life, or indeed lufe of any kind. As old as the Earth is, it has not existed forever. Nor will it exist forever. In cosmic terms, its time as a comfortable oasis for life is almost up.
This underlines the importance of becoming a spacefaring civilisation. Without that development, human society faces near term collapse due to lack of resources. In the longer term, neither humanity nor any other life can survive the growing luminosity of the sun.
Even as night draws in on industrial civilisation, the high frontier offers its promise. Humanity has developed the technology to reach other worlds. But the challenges of moving to another world are daunting. The Earth is perfect for human life because we evolved under its conditions.
Yet the future of all Earth life depends upon us taking that step. It is our duty to colonise the other worlds and to take the other species of Earth with us. The Earth has never before spawned a species that could spread its wings into space and colonise other worlds and it never will again. The moment humanity started reducing metals in camp fires, we started on a road that would end either in becoming space faring or becoming extinct. The first is infinitely more appealing than the second. If there is a long term meaning or purpose to human existance, this is it.