The world’s number one problem today is that the world’s population is too large for its resource base. Some people have called this situation overshoot. The world economy is ripe for a major change, such as the current pandemic, to bring the situation into balance. The change doesn’t necessarily come from the coronavirus itself. Instead, it is likely to come from the whole chain reaction that has been started by the coronavirus and the response of governments around the world to the coronavirus.
Let me explain more about what is happening.
[1] The world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as described in the book with a similar title.
One way of seeing the predicament we are in is the modeling of resource consumption and population growth described in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al. Its base scenario seems to suggest that the world will reach limits about now. Chart 1 shows the base forecast from that book, together with a line I added giving my impression of where the economy really was in 2019, relative to resource availability.
Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where the world economy seems to be in 2019.
In 2019, the world economy seemed to be very close to starting a downhill trajectory. Now, it appears to me that we have reached the turning point and are on our way down. The pandemic is the catalyst for this change to a downward trend. It certainly is not the whole cause of the change. If the underlying dynamics had not been in place, the impact of the virus would likely have been much less.
The 1972 model leaves out two important parts of the economy that probably make the downhill trajectory steeper than shown in Figure 1. First, the model leaves out debt and, in fact, the whole financial system. After the 2008 crisis, many people strongly suspected that the financial system would play an important role as we reach the limits of a finite world because debt defaults are likely to disturb the worldwide financial system.
The model also leaves out humans’ continual battle with pathogens. The problem with pathogens becomes greater as world population becomes denser, facilitating transmission. The problem also becomes greater as a larger share of the population becomes more susceptible, either because they are elderly or because they have underlying health conditions that have been hidden by an increasingly complex and expensive medical system.
As a result, we cannot really believe the part of Figure 1 that is after 2020. The future downslopes of population, industrial production per capita, and food per capita all seem likely to be steeper than shown on the chart because both the debt and pathogen problems are likely to increase the speed at which the economy declines.
[2] It is far more than the population that has overshot limits.
The issue isn’t simply that there are too many people relative to resources. The world seems to have
- Too many shopping malls and stores
- Too many businesses of all kinds, with many not very profitable for their owners
- Governments with too extensive programs, which taxpayers cannot really afford
- Too much debt
- An unaffordable amount of pension promises
- Too low interest rates
- Too many people with low wages or no wages at all
- Too expensive a healthcare system
- Too expensive an educational system
The world economy needs to shrink back in many ways at once, simultaneously, to manage within its resource limits. It is not clear how much of an economy (or multiple smaller economies) will be left after this shrinkage occurs.
[3] The economy is in many ways like the human body. In physics terms, both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy (food for humans; a mixture of energy products including oil, coal, natural gas, burned biomass and electricity for the economy).
The human body will try to fix minor problems. For example, if someone’s hand is cut, blood will tend to clot to prevent too much blood loss, and skin will tend to grow to substitute for the missing skin. Similarly, if businesses in an area disappear because of a tornado, the prior owners will either tend to rebuild them or new businesses will tend to come in to replace them, as long as adequate resources are available.
In both systems, there is a point beyond which problems cannot be fixed, however. We know that many people die in car accidents if injuries are too serious, for example. Similarly, the world economy may “collapse” if conditions deviate too far from what is necessary for economic growth to continue. In fact, at this point, the world economy may be so close to the edge with respect to resources, particularly energy resources, that even a minor pandemic could push the world economy into a permanent cycle of contraction.
[4] World governments are in a poor position to fix the current resource and pandemic crisis.
In our networked economy, too low a resource base relative to population manifests itself in a strange way: It appears as an affordability crisis that leads to very low prices for oil. It also appears as terribly low prices for many other commodities, including copper, lithium, coal and even wholesale electricity. These low prices occur because too large a share of the population cannot afford finished goods, such as cars and homes, made with these commodities. Recent shutdowns have suddenly increased the number of people with low income or no income, pushing commodity prices even lower.
If resources were more plentiful and very inexpensive to produce, as they were 50 or 70 years ago, wages of workers could be much higher, relative to the cost of resources. Factory workers would be able to afford to buy vehicles, for example, and thus help keep the demand for automobiles up. If we look more deeply into this, we find that energy resources of many kinds (fossil fuel energy, nuclear energy, burned biomass and other renewable energy) must be extraordinarily cheap and abundant to keep the system growing. Without “surplus energy” from many sources, which grows with population, the whole system tends to collapse.
World governments cannot print resources. What they can print is debt. Debt can be viewed as a promise of future goods and services, whether or not it is reasonable to believe that these future goods and services will actually materialize, given resource constraints.
We are finding that using shutdowns to solve COVID-19 problems causes a huge amount of economic damage. The cost of mitigating this damage seems to be unreasonably high. For example, in the United States, antibody studies suggest that roughly 5% of the population has been infected with COVID-19. The total number of deaths associated with this 5% infection level is perhaps 100,000, assuming that reported deaths to date (about 80,000) need to be increased somewhat, to match the approximately 5% of the population that has, knowingly or unknowingly, already experienced the infection.
If we estimate that the mean number of years of life lost is 13 years per person, then the total years of life lost would be about 1,300,000. If we estimate that the US treasury needed to borrow $3 trillion dollars to mitigate this damage, the cost per year of life lost is $3 trillion divided by 1.3 million, or $2.3 million per year of life lost. This amount is utterly absurd.
This approach is clearly not something the United States can scale up, as the share of the population affected by COVID-19 relentlessly rises from 5% to something like 70% or 80%, in the absence of a vaccine. We have no choice but to use a different approach.
[5] COVID-19 would have the least impact on the world economy if people could pay little attention to the pandemic and just “let it run.” Of course, even without mitigation attempts, COVID-19 might bring the world economy down, given the distressed level of today’s economy and the shutdowns experienced to date.
Shutting down an economy has a huge adverse impact on that economy because quite a few workers who are in good health are no longer able to make goods and services. As a result, they have no wages, so their “demand” goes way down. If the economy was already having an affordability crisis for goods made with commodities, shutting down the economy tends to greatly add to the affordability crisis. Prices of commodities tend to fall even lower than they were before the crisis.
Back in 1957-1958, the Asian pandemic, which also started in China, hit the world. The number of deaths was up in the range of the current pandemic, relative to population. The estimated worldwide death rate was 0.67%. This is not too dissimilar from a death rate of 0.61% for COVID-19, which can be calculated using my estimate above (100,000 deaths relative to 5% of the US population of 33o million).
Virtually nothing was shut down in the US for the 1957-58 pandemic. When doctors or nurses became sick themselves, wards were simply closed. Would-be patients were told to stay at home and take aspirin, unless a severe case developed. With this approach, the US still faced a short recession, but the economy was soon growing again. Populations seemed to reach herd immunity quite quickly.
If the world could somehow have adopted a similar approach this time, there still would have been some adverse impact on the economy. A small percentage of the population would have died. Some businesses might have needed to be closed for a short time when too many workers were out sick. But the huge burden of job loss by a substantial share of the economy could have been avoided. The economy would have had at least a small chance of rebounding quickly.
[6] The virus that causes COVID-19 looks a great deal like a laboratory cross between SARS and HIV, making the likelihood of a quick vaccine low.
In fact, Professor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine, claims that the new coronavirus is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus. He believes that the accidental release of this virus is what is causing today’s pandemic.
If COVID-19 were simply another influenza virus, similar to many we have seen, then getting a vaccine that would work passably well would be a relatively easy exercise. At least one of the vaccine trials that have been started could be reasonably expected to work, and a solution would not be far away.
Unfortunately, SARS and HIV are fairly different from influenza viruses. We have never found a vaccine for either one. If a person has had SARS once, and is later exposed to a slightly mutated version of SARS, the symptoms of the second infection seem to be worse than the first. This characteristic interferes with finding a suitable vaccine. We don’t know whether the virus causing COVID-19 will have a similar characteristic.
We know that scientists from a number of countries have been working on so-called “gain of function” experiments with viruses. These very risky experiments are aimed at making viruses either more virulent, or more transmissible, or both. In fact, experiments were going on in Wuhan, in two different laboratories, with viruses that seem to be not too different from the virus causing COVID-19.
We don’t know for certain whether there was an accident that caused the release of one of these gain of function viruses in Wuhan. We do know, however, that China has been doing a lot of cover-up activity to deter others from finding out what actually happened in Wuhan.
We also know that Dr. Fauci, a well-known COVID-19 advisor, had his hand in this Chinese research activity. Fauci’s organization, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided partial funding for the gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. While the intent of the experiments seems to have been for the good of mankind, it would seem that Dr. Fauci’s judgment erred in the direction of allowing too much risk for the world’s population.
[7] We are probably kidding ourselves about ever being able to contain the virus that causes COVID-19.
We are gradually learning that the virus causing COVID-19 is easily spread, even by people who do not show any symptoms of the disease. The virus can spread long distances through the air. Tests to see if people are ill tend to produce a lot of false negatives; because of this, it is close to impossible to know whether a particular person has the illness or not.
China is finding that it cannot really contain the virus that causes COVID-19. A recent South China Morning Post article indicates that roughly 14 million people are to be tested in the Wuhan area in the next ten days to try to control a new outbreak of the virus.
It is becoming clear, as well, that even within China, the lockdowns have had a very negative impact on the economy. The Wall Street Journal reports, China Economic Data Indicate V-Shaped Recovery Is Unlikely. Supply chains were broken; wholesale commodity prices (excluding food) have tended to fall. Joblessness is increasingly a problem.
[8] If we look at deaths per million by country, it is difficult to see that lockdowns are very helpful in reducing the spread of disease. Masks seem to be more beneficial.
If we compare death rates for mask-wearing East Asian countries to death rates elsewhere, we see that death rates in mask-wearing East Asian countries are dramatically lower.
Figure 2. Death rates per million population of selected countries with long-term exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, based on Johns Hopkins death data as of May 11, 2020.
Looking at the chart, a person almost wonders whether lockdowns are a response to requests from citizens to “do something” in response to an already evident surge in cases. The countries known for their severe lockdowns are at the top of the chart, not the bottom.
In fact, a preprint academic paper by Thomas Meunier is titled, “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.” The abstract says, “Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, or reproduction number trends. . . We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”
It appears to me that lockdowns have been popular with governments around the world for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with the spread of COVID-19:
- Lockdowns give an excuse for closing borders to visitors and goods from outside. This was a direction in which many countries were already headed, in an attempt to raise the wages of local workers.
- Lockdowns can be used to hide the fact that factories need to be closed because of breaks in supply lines elsewhere in the world.
- Many countries have been faced with governmental protests because of low wages compared to the prices of basic services. Lockdowns tend to keep protesters inside.
- Lockdowns give the appearance of protecting the elderly. Since there are many elderly voters, politicians need to court these voters.
[9] A person wonders whether Dr. Fauci and members of the World Health Organization are influenced by the wishes of vaccine and big pharmaceutical companies.
The recommendation to try to “flatten the curve” is, in part, an attempt to give vaccine and pharmaceutical makers more time to work on their products. Is this really the best recommendation? Perhaps I am being overly suspicious, but we recently have been dealing with an opioid epidemic which was encouraged by manufacturers of Oxycontin and other opioids. We don’t need another similar experience, this time sponsored by vaccine and other pharmaceutical makers.
The temptation of researchers is to choose solutions that would be best from the point of their own business interests. If a researcher gets much of his funding from vaccine and big pharmaceutical interests, the temptation will be to “push” solutions that are beneficial to these interests. In some cases, researchers are able to patent approaches, even when the research is paid for by governmental grants. In this case they can directly benefit from a new vaccine or drug.
When potential solutions are discussed by Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization, no one brings up improving people’s immunity so that they can better fight off the novel coronavirus. Few bring up masks. Instead, we keep being warned about “opening up too soon.” In a way, this sounds like, “Please leave us lots of customers who might be willing to pay a high price for our vaccine.”
[10] One way the combination of (a) the activity of the virus and (b) our responses to the virus may play out is as a slow-motion, controlled demolition of the world economy.
I think of what we are experiencing as being somewhat similar to a toggle bolt going around and around, moving down a screw. As the toggle bolt moves around, I picture it as being similar to the virus and our responses to the viruses hitting different parts of the world economy.
Figure 3. Image of how the author sees COVID-19 as being able to hit the economy multiple times, in multiple ways, as its impact keeps impacting different parts of the world.
If we look back, the virus and reactions to the virus first hit China. China’s recovery is moving slowly, in part because of reduced demand from outside of China now that the virus is hitting other parts of the world. In fact, additional layoffs occurred after Chinese shutdowns ended, because it then became clear that some employers needed to permanently scale back operations to meet the new lower demand for their product.
Commodity prices, including oil prices, are now depressed because of low demand around the world. These low prices can be expected to gradually lead to closures of wells and mines extracting these commodities. Processing centers will also close, making these commodities less available even if demand temporarily rises.
As one country is hit by illnesses and/or shutdowns, we can expect supply lines for manufacturing around the world to be disrupted. This will lead to yet more business closures, some of them permanent. Debt defaults tend to happen as businesses close and layoffs occur.
With all of the layoffs, governments will find that their tax collections are lower. The resulting governmental funding issues can be expected to lead to new rounds of layoffs.
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and forest fires can be expected to continue to happen. Social distancing requirements, inadequate tax revenue and broken supply lines will make mitigation of all of these disasters more difficult. Electrical lines that fall down may stay down permanently; bridges that are damaged may never be repaired.
Initially, rich countries can be expected to try to help as many laid-off workers as possible with loans and temporary stipends. But, after a few months, even with this approach, many individual citizens and businesses will likely not be able to pay their rent. Default rates on home mortgages and auto loans can be expected to rise for a similar reason.
We can expect to see round after round of business failures and layoffs of employees. Financial systems will become more and more stressed. Pensions are likely to default. Death rates will rise, in part from epidemics of various kinds and in part from growing problems with starvation. In fact, in some poor countries, lower-income citizens are already having difficulty being able to afford adequate food. Eventually we can expect collapsing governments (similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union) and overthrown governments.
Longer-term, after this demolition ends, there may be some surviving pieces of economies. These new economies will be much smaller and less dependent upon each other, however. Currencies are likely to be less interchangeable. The remaining people will need to learn to make do with many fewer goods than are available today. It will be a very different world.
While wealth concentration, Covid, lockdowns, unemployment, inequality and riots destroy the USA, the stockmarket goes up. It is looking a lot like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Funny how history doesn’t quite repeat, but it does rhyme.
You gotta hand it to the people of Minneapolis. They really know how to end a lockdown in style.
all protestors are required to wear fireproof masks…
and to stay 6 feet away from any fire…
Oh, the sacsdm. 😉
You’ll be sent to prison for subversion.
Ha – that was meant to be sarcasm.
https://twitter.com/neetpolice/status/1266222612641992704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1266222612641992704&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailystormer.su%2Fundercover-cop-breaking-out-windows-in-minneapolis%2F
On twitter you can find the undercover cop breaking windows with a hammer in Minneapolis and being confronted over it. The dummy is wearing a police-issue breathing apparatus and is identified on Twitter by his ex-wife. The police of course deny it is him but if you look at the pics it is undeniably him, clear as can be.
If the link is no good, you can get to it through Andrew Anglin’s site.
https://dailystormer.su/undercover-cop-breaking-out-windows-in-minneapolis/
The black umbrella he is carrying is a nice touch. Is it supposed to be alink the the Umbrella prtests in Hong Kong? The color revolutions are notorious for repeating what has worked in their previous shows.
Also bear in mind that the Hong Kong police and Chinese agents provocateurs were also discovered breaking windows and lighting fires in Hong Kong.
The beauty of a lot of this stuff is that it is counter-intuitive. Why do the authorities want to make things worse? The average person finds it hard to explain. Why destroy? Why say one thing and do another?
First, because you have to smash things apart before you can rebuild them. Second because, as the bolsheviks say, “Worse is better”. Make it worse so that people demand change. Third, because people living in fear and confusion will always seek securiy. We are being conditioned. This is what is always being done to us. Constant conditioning to make us fearful, anxious, obedient, infantile, confused, and suggestible.
When I talk about riots, I do not bother about ethnicity. It is totally irrelevant from the perspective of biology.and anthropology.
Diversity is mother nature’s way to ensure resilience of species surviving on the vastly different different geology and climate. Birds of the tropics cannot be the same as the birds of the temperate climate and vice versa. This balance has been in placed for millions of years until the last 30 years where homo sapiens decide to play God, a role which is totally unsuited for this species.
Because fossil fuel took away the heavy burden of “working for food”, people have idle minds and began to think about equal rights for all. That is not nature intended. As an analogy, homo sapiens brings the Indian Sun Bear for north to the Alaskan Peninsular and began to proclaim that the Indian Sun Bear should be treated equal to the Polar Bear and Grizzly Bear. They are still bears of course. Will the Indian Sun Bear out compete the other more suited bears? Even if there is assistance from fossil fuel, Indian Sun Bears are not biologically and anthropologically suited for that kind of climate. Indian Sun Bear has access to plenty of food in the tropics and take its time to wander around and just pluck what they need from the tree or suck the honey from the hives. This is not the life style of the Polar Bear of Grizzly Bear, where are harsh winter will bring starvation. Indian Sun Bear does not even bother with starvation, only worried about Cobra or Tigers.
Nature never intend to let Indian Sun Bear to live in the temperate climate. If she does, it will not be called the Indian Sun Bear but Grizzly Bear.
As the top predator of the food chain, homo sapiens must have a way to control population, like what the tigers and lions do. They will fight till death for mates. Over population lead to starvation, survival of the fittest are some of the key things that happen so that the population is in harmony with the environment. Homo sapiens are adapt at doing that. Killing each other, famines. disease and war are all part of this anthropological culture of homo sapiens. If one tribe does not like the black shorty tribe of the next village, they will just go over, kill all of them and took away the women and children as slaves. All these came to an end when we harness trees, coal and then oil as our external energies and labelled all the actions as “cruel and barbaric” even though it has been like this for millennia and will continue this way if not for the discovery of fossil fuel.
Are we smart to defy what mother nature wanted us to do? Definately not. That is why I say we are not smarter than yeast.
Political correctness is the manifestation of sedentary lifestyle and the use of fossil fuel. The use of fossil fuel freed our minds and made it the devil’s workshop. The mind came out with stupid ideas like equality. How come we never stop the lions and tigers from eating gazelles? It is so cruel and barbaric for us to kill chickens and eat them. They have the rights too, you know?
Political correctness and “equal rights” for all has gone from “in the background late 1990s to the forefront of everything in 2020. In just 20 years, equality and diversity has taken over so much and make it so prominent that it will make mother nature so sad.
100 years ago or 200 years ago, life was hard. Very hard as you can die from disease and starvation. War was present but not so common. Quality of life was not good but “quality mental life” was much superior than today. You don’t have to worry of “offending people of colour” (what nonsense is this word “people of colour”. There is no such thing as litigation. You don’t have to worry about politicians promising you something and never deliver. You don’t have to worry about what will happen to the stock markets, retirement plans, political correctness, etc. Life is short, hard, tough but mentally more pleasant. When people enjoy their idle time, they really do enjoy it thoroughly. When darkness falls, everyone goes to bed and when dawn comes, everyone wakes up. No alarm clocks, no artificial lights, no constant news, no BS political correctness, etc.
Mother nature wins. All the time. Don’t play God.
I really enjoy your writing CTG. They didn’t have to worry about paying the mortgage, car troubles, making sales quotas or saving for pensions back then. Though I’m sure they had their share of troubles to worry about 200 years ago as well. They probably dreamed of an age where they would sit in a comfortable chair all day and get food delivered on their doorstep!
We are lucky to have lived in this age of surplus, so we know that there is no salvation in filling our bellies and lounging in chairs. Either we suffer physically or we suffer mentally. Some solace can be found in understanding why we feel and behave the way we do.
These current protests in the USA remind me of the Rodney King riots in 1992. However, I did read (because I didn’t remember) that those back in 1992 were confined to LA only. The current ones are not. They are probably the US variation on the Yellow Vests of France.
It is hard to see the parallel with the Yellow Vests, which were non-racial, focused largely on economic issues, involved very little protester violence, were heavily policed (rubber bullets and eyes lost) and fiercely opposed by governments with very few concessions made and no sympathetic mass media, including a strict under-reporting of the protests to the point of an apparent global media ban.
Contrast what we are seeing in the Unites States:
1. Explicitly race-based
2. No clear-stated issues. Police violence can’t be the true reason because statistics make clear that many more whites than blacks die from police violence each year.
3. Massive protester violence (including deaths as rioters kill each other) and property damage
4. Little to (in some places) no policing of rioters
5. Goverrnment and offcial political encouragement. Governments calling off the police, the involvement of government agents provocateurs (FBI and Antifa) shown on video breaking shop and office windows to encourage more destruction and to ensure enough oxygen for fires that are lit, delivery of pallets of bricks to rioters, and so on. Bail and fines paid for by political groups such as the Biden campaign. Masintream media concealment ofthese easily-demnstrated facts.
This massive national perfomance is 100% a show that has been long-planned, approved and mounted by the powers-that-be and their agencies. Purpose? Removing Trump may be the goal. National hysteria by itself? A continuation and extension of the fracturing and weakening of the social strength of the USA? In any case, it is just one more in a long line of shows that tptb have used their media to put on since 2016: Russiagate, the Kavanaugh smears, the Covington kid smears, the Wuhan Flu hysteria and hoax, and now these riots – and note that riots are very rarely spontaneous. Humans don’t work like this. These riots have been instigated by trained provocateurs.
These riots are not at all like the Yellow Vests.
This is an interesting article, from a South-Korean journalist via CNN:
The LA riots were a rude awakening for Korean-Americans
“The nearly weeklong, widespread rioting killed more than 50 people, injured more than 1,000 people and caused approximately $1 billion in damage, about half of which was sustained by Korean-owned businesses. Long-simmering cultural clashes between immigrant Korean business owners and predominately African-American customers spilled over with the acquittals.”
Yet the orange-man-bad article then states, “Latinos, African-Americans and Korean-Americans have “a lot more in common than differences,” Ahn said. “In the midst of this Washington chaos and uncertainty, I see an opportunity to coalition build and really improve the district.”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/us/la-riots-korean-americans/index.html
Yes, it is just campaigning for the Democratic candidate in November organized by the Chinese and their bought politicians the democrats.
https://apnews.com/da66485df4d82c055ce9d6b84a20e450
“Back in the game’: SpaceX ship blasts off with 2 astronauts”
“… NASA outsourced the job of designing and building its next generation of spaceships to SpaceX and Boeing, awarding them $7 billion in contracts in a public-private partnership aimed at driving down costs and spurring innovation. Boeing’s spaceship, the Starliner capsule, is not expected to fly astronauts until early 2021.”
$7 billion = 2 astronauts… okay, whatever…
“NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago.”
oh, look:
“… from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago.”
It’s all lies! Stanley Kubrick directed the original launches, and now these new ones are being directed by Michael Bay. Watch for his signature lens flare!
Saturn V cost per launch in 2019 USD: $1.23 Billion
Falcon 9 cost per launch in 2019 USD: $57 million
Less than 1/20th the cost per launch with the new SpaceX rockets. Pretty significant improvement in economics. Looks like only 1/6th the payload capacity, though. I guess lighter loads is part of the innovation.
I calculate the Falcon 9 cost per launch at $7 billion each…
where is my math off?
It looks like its not your math, but your reading comprehension that’s off.
The $7 Billion is the government funding for development costs for SpaceX and Boeing who are each developing their own manned spacecraft. SpaceX Falcon 9 costs $62 million for a new launch in 2020, or ~$50 million for a reused rocket: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9
Interesting article from Peter Turchin from 2016.
«Increasing inequality leads not only to the growth of top fortunes; it also results in greater numbers of wealth-holders. The “1 percent” becomes “2 percent.” Or even more. … from 1983 to 2010 the number of American households worth at least $10 million grew to 350,000 from 66,000. Rich Americans tend to be more politically active than the rest of the population. … In technical terms, such a situation is known as “elite overproduction.” … Elite overproduction generally leads to more intra-elite competition that gradually undermines the spirit of cooperation, which is followed by ideological polarization and fragmentation of the political class. This happens because the more contenders there are, the more of them end up on the losing side. A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often well-educated and highly capable, has been denied access to elite positions.»
https://evonomics.com/science-predicting-rise-fall-societies-turchin/
Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates are clearly in elite positions. Lots of others as well. Donald Trump and some of his staff. Many physicians with very high annual incomes.
With very low interest rates, the value of paper assets tends to grow far too high, relative to their value to society. The very rich tend to be disproportionate owners of paper assets.
I watch and read a lot of economic blogs and a lot of them are titled ECONMIC DESTRUCTION!! Capitalism failing etc… and they talk about the failing economic system and then on an aside they start talking about investing in real estate! So the disconnect is all around not just with the elites. George Gammon is a prime example of that; yes you may move up to first class but you are still on a sinking ship..
The recent college admissions scandal is a fine example of said intra-elite competition from elite overproduction. This seems to have infected much of the upper middle class also, given their increasing obsession with getting their kids into a top college.
One of the best interviews I’ve read on current affairs in recent months.
The interviewee is a professor of psychology at the University of Kiel in northern Germany.
Very clear-sighted. Very critical.
It is worth using the google translator.
https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/der-autoritare-planet
Democracy needs to be understood as a high-energy from of government. As energy supplies diminish, it becomes less and less possible, unfortunately. A king or dictator ruling over all requires much energy. Think about the energy required for the election and the meetings to decide what laws should be passed. Also, the time taken from other (more productive) work to handle campaigning and the meetings of the organization. In modern democracies, there are whole support staffs as well.
If I understand you correctly, you assume that as a result of the lack of energy, all current political and possibly and most social structures will break.
What is left then? Just a few small, manageable groups that are struggling to survive?
No form of civilisation can function beyond the level of surplus energy available to it. Civilisations live to the maximum that energy availability allows
those laws are immutable and apply universally
it explains why the world’s first great civilsations arose around the tropical/sub tropical equatorial circle—(check it out) lots of sunshine=cheap food=cheap surplus energy
they also explain why the great ‘northern’ powers didn’t come into full function until the industrial revolution replaced ‘free’ sun heat.
remove fossil fuels, and we revert to a pre 1700s economic system
The center of the economy again moves to reasonably warm, wet areas, to the extent that it exists at all.
(Cheers erupt from Taiwan)
until tens of millions of immigrants swarm into Taiwan…
“Remove fossil fuels, and we revert to a pre 1700s economic system”
Which might not be the worst.
Back then, like us, people certainly enjoyed living. Well, they had a life that was different, very different from ours today. Was it a lousy life?
And thank you for your post.
Helped me understand why I was irritated by Gail’s post and thought I had to ask.
How is she supposed to know that I have been a silent reader of her blog for years and that the topic of the finite world and the declining energy was already familiar to me before.
For a long time I was only concerned with the question of how very personally and practically to deal with the situation of the future lack of energy. I have my answers.
Now I’m going outside. I have ideas for the big picture. Ideas that still have to pass OFW.
I think it will be exciting.
there’s always more lurkers than posters in here—but we know where you live
as to pre 1700s economic system, it supported only one seventh of our current population.
yes it was a lousy life unless you happened to be an aristo, and even then you were open to diseases almost as much as the lower orders. (who came after you with pitchforks every so often.) —check Minneapolis right now.
the difference then was that they didn’t know diseases could be cured so they accepted them
now we do know cures are possible, but without ff energy they will not be available
There is a prevailing fantasy that we will somehow ‘revert’ to a pre 1700s period, with the comforts we enjoy now. It just doesn’t work like that.
Here in uk, people love living in 18th c houses, but only with modern amenities–heating lighting plumbing and a decent roof. and usually 3 houses knocked into one—-those things are supplied courtesy of 21st c economics
I clearly remember my grandfather’s cottage, which hadn’t changed since it was built in 1830—an awful place, looking back. That cottage was knocked into the one next door to make something of a decent size and is now a desirable residence
395/5000
to Norman Pagett
“…- but we know where you live”
Ha-ha, my decision. Amazon and google know it anyway and probably also the NSA.
“Yes it was a lousy live …”
This is a first world view. I’m not sure if a 3rd world slum dweller sees it the same way.
“Here in uk people love living …”
Then why the trend towards tiny houses? Not that I wanted one.
““Here in uk people love living …”
Then why the trend towards tiny houses? Not that I wanted one.”
Poverty. If people could afford much bigger houses, they would. Or for those who can, maybe they think their green virtue will save them from the wrath of the mobs.
It may have been about a year ago when I got the opportunity to speak to a still young architect who designs tiny houses for Third World residents. The idea that less is more connected us directly.
So he told me about his fellow campaigners, whose project wanted to enable people there to buy such a house.
They are humanists – in the best sense of the word – people who want to improve the world. And I took the humanist and world improver from him. Also that he has no particular financial interest in it.
He also had planned to build a rolling tiny house for himself in the next few months.
So much for that all people always strive to want more and more.
As I found out in the conversation, it is neither his image of man, and I add, nor is it mine.
And he didn’t seem to be afraid of other people, in the sense of having to protect himself from them.
Flat-rate judgments are simple, but usually do not do justice to reality.
here in uk 000s of people live in rolling tiny houses, they call them caravans
they are famous for the way they keep them—shiny, spotless inside and out, they really a sight to behold for pride of ownership and care
then they roll on and leave behind all the crap that the rest of us have to pay to clear up. If we dared to pile all that stuff up outside our ordinary houses, the neighbours would form a lynch mob.
As for the other ‘tiny house’ minority, I don’t doubt they mean well, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that they are merely a very short term ‘fix’ of some kind. It’s not possible to live in a space 6ft x 12 ft without leaving dross outside. You can’t spend a lifetime in a tiny house sleeping with your feet in the sink and your head in the toilet unless you’re a mass murderer.
In Germany, there was a children’s program on TV: dandelions. The moderator Peter Lustig.
https://www.filmpark-babelsberg.de/park/loewenzahn-bauwagen/
Translation of the subtitle:
Visiting Peter Lustig
The original construction trailer from the cult series awakens childhood dreams and memories.
Dungarees, nickel glasses and a melody that you can’t get out of your head anytime soon. This is dandelion. The program ran for 25 years, in which Peter Lustig explained the world to millions of children.
With us you can admire the historic original vehicle with a staircase, roof terrace and bathtub in the middle of our weed garden.
In addition, a three-minute clip of the program to get an insight.
https://www.zdf.de/kinder/loewenzahn/best-of-peter-lustig-100.html
To the motorhomes and caravans:
I see them every day. They are often in my way (sightseeing).
Some are now so large that you need a truck driver’s license, so they are no longer tiny houses.
The presence of most of them will, I assume we agree, resolve itself in the wake of the lack of energy.
I would also like to write something about avoiding rubbish and dross. But that would now go beyond the scope. More on that on occasion.
I wonder what the energy needed to run this rolling micro home would be? How much energy to move it around, and how much to heat or cool it? I am sure this dissipates a lot more energy than having a conventional cottage fixed to a piece of land. If he travels frequently by air to help this people in third world countries make their houses, how much more does he consume? You see, size alone does not reflect the amount of energy wealth.
Read The five stages of collapse by Dmitry Orlov
“Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost”
The first stages of collapse may occur sooner or later, the order is not set in stone.
You can view the election of Trump and the yellow vests in France as a partial collapse of the political system.
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/p/the-five-stages-of-collapse.html
The election of Trump was clearly a sign that many people felt a major change was needed. This has been very upsetting for the group that assumes that BAU can continue forever. All we need is a few more wind turbines and solar panels, and everything will be fine.
What do you think about Tesla using the batteries in electric cars to help stabilize the grid and provide solar power during the night? The new “million mile” solid state batteries are supposed to be a big step forward in life expectancy and capacity. I assume million miles means total life cycle, not single charge. Their autobidder technology is supposed to sell power to the grid when price is high and buy when low to recharge the batteries. Might this finally be the game changer solar needs?
Regarding Matthew’s question about whether electric car batteries might stabilize the grid and provide solar power during the night, the answer is “No” for several reasons:
(1) The number of electric cars with batteries would be tiny, relative to the need for storage.
(2) The big electricity storage needs are seasonal, not time of day. We need to save electricity from summer to winter. There tends to be huge overproduction on sunny weekends in the spring and fall.
(3) The wholesale rates paid to electricity producers now are terribly low. They need higher prices, if the grid is to be stabilized. A scheme to “sell electricity to the grid when the price is high and buy when low to recharge the batteries” is counterproductive.
(4) It is not at all clear that the need for electrical storage would match up well with storage space on workers’ batteries. The overproduction of solar tends to come in the morning. So charging of batteries would need to come while workers are at work, assuming that there are recharging stations at work. The underproduction/high electricity prices tend to come at the end of the day, when workers are arriving home from work. Batteries would already be depleted at that time, from driving home. It is not clear that there would be enough charge in the batteries to provide the electricity needed. Somehow, later that night, the batteries would need to be recharged, so that workers could get to work. Making all of this work is iffy at best.
(5) The scheme would wear out the batteries of the car owners. They would expect to be compensated for this service.
I think it is the scale, rather than the form, of government that requires such vast energy. Athens had democracy thousands of years ago. The Forbidden City is a massive complex for administering a vast pre-fossil fuel empire.
dunno why i have to keep repeating it, but Athens did not have a democracy
Athens was a slave owning society (their energy source,) and women did not have the vote.
Only men voted for their own self interest, and set up a ‘government’ in that respect.
I don’t think China has ever been an egalitarian society.
The Romans had a vast pre fossil fuel empire, but day to day function could not be faster than the speed of hoof and sail, so much of it was autonomous
So only a perfect democracy is a democracy? If so, show me one.
no democracy can be perfect
but a political system based on slave labour and selective suffrage is in no sense one
I think you may find that, by your definition, there has never been a democracy.
you may be right on those terms
but to define a poltical system as democratic when it depends on slave labour most definitely is not democratic in any form
it may also be that democratic systems are unworkable anyway. They have only been in existence for less than a century..
before that autocracies were ‘normality’
Gail, I think there will be bigger social shifts involved. We’ve seen a sort of tyranny of the marginalized lately, in the US and in Europe, which has only been possible due to FF surplus. Some of that marginalization is because of actual defects. There simply won’t be the possibility for a complex society to be run by people with low IQ, or by anyone needing safe spaces, hormones, pronoun police, psych. meds, and so forth. Extinction notwithstanding, it will be touch-and-go whether we might maintain some form of viable society *without* all that stuff, much less with it.
One commenter I came across said not to bother to challenge pro-lock-downers: “their fear is their virtue.” You cannot ever “win” by taking away that “virtue”, but a society in which fear has become a virtue cannot survive no matter what.
—
Kings and dictators still need a lot less energy than democracies.. though we might see a regression to a lot of tiny kingdoms (Brunei, Lichtenstein, San Marino ?). Those might persist at least conceptually for a bit longer than other political structures.
I don’t believe tribal societies are truly egalitarian: they seem to implement forms of royalty/big men (the former term is probably just a modern euphemism for the latter). Whether a prominent local warlord or “big man” gets the name of “king” may be only a matter of whether he can aggregate more symbiotic cronies and sycophants than potential rivals, whether he can out-compete rivals for wives in order to out-procreate them, whether he can command enough resources to have a gold crown crafted, paintings painted, and statues sculpted.. etc.
Hey! The Latin Kings are all kings.. (and queens)!
Celtic and German tribes by the time of Julius Caesar had often grown to some 50-100,000 people -hence a huge threat to Rome when they got in the move – and were strictly hierarchical. That didn’t exclude consultation, though.
Even in the simplest farming communities there are usually hierarchies,and for a good reason – hierarchies help to get things done.
Lindia, The Latin Kings and Queens look out for the community. Do you think a small Vermont town will be able to look out for the interests of the community in the coming low energy world?
More available energy doesn’t necessarily correlate with more democracy or with warmer, sunnier weather. Here are three examples taken from Wikipedia.
Tynwald, on the Isle of Man, claims to be one of the oldest continuous parliaments in the world, with roots back to the late 9th or 10th century.
The Althing, the parliament of the Icelandic Commonwealth, founded in 930. It consisted of the 39, later 55, goðar; each owner of a goðarð; and each hereditary goði kept a tight hold on his membership, which could in principle be lent or sold. Thus, for example, when Burnt Njal’s stepson wanted to enter it, Njal had to persuade the Althing to enlarge itself so a seat would become available. But as each independent farmer in the country could choose what goði represented him, the system could be claimed as an early form of democracy. The Alþing has run nearly continuously to the present day. The Althing was preceded by less elaborate “things” (assemblies) all over Northern Europe.
The Thing of all Swedes, which took place annually at Uppsala at the end of February or in early March. As in Iceland, the lawspeaker presided over the assemblies, but the Swedish king functioned as a judge. A famous incident took place circa 1018, when King Olof Skötkonung wanted to pursue the war against Norway against the will of the people. Þorgnýr the Lawspeaker reminded the king in a long speech that the power resided with the Swedish people and not with the king. When the king heard the din of swords beating the shields in support of Þorgnýr’s speech, he gave in. Adam of Bremen wrote that the people used to obey the king only when they thought his suggestions seemed better, although in war his power was absolute.
“Adam of Bremen wrote that the people used to obey the king only when they thought his suggestions seemed better, although in war his power was absolute.”
I like that idea or governance as well as, if not better than, any other.. To hold assemblies has a cost, though, and northern societies had to know how to harbor resources (surplus energy) over long winters. It’s not just a matter of having the surplus energy lying around, but also of reserving and marshalling it, I think.
No matter where you are on earth, if you don’t hold back enough communal resources in reserve to host a regional conclave, you won’t host one.
There was also a Dark Age law in either Denmark or Norway which only permitted the kings to wage full-scale war every 8 yrs (subject to consultation): a wise way to avert bleeding the tribes dry of warriors through endless fighting – losses in war were very high, maybe over 30% in serious campaigns.
At the same time, I suppose that a war every 8 years or so would help keep population down, and keep one’s neighbours in their place, too.
Older warriors were perhaps less likely to survive fighting, being a bit slower and stiffer, so that would have been another beneficial effect, shedding them in a decent way before they became a burden and opening up opportunities for the young.
And again, every 8 yrs an influx of gold, silver, cattle, slaves, and above all nubile females for genetic renewal.
Pretty smart, on the whole.
If you have a small enough group, travel isn’t such a huge cost item.
I suspect that these early democracies did not have a pension programs for the elderly, an unemployment program for those who couldn’t find work, universities, public libraries, and regulation to try to ensure that food met certain standards. It is the additional programs, and the people who need to be hired, that make them expensive.
“… emancipation movements etc etc etc…”
he concludes:
“So it will probably have to get worse before there is reasonable hope that it can get better. But maybe that’s too pessimistic, because of course everything ultimately depends on our will and our determination – because if we really wanted, we could too.”
if we really wanted to free ourselves from The Power, we could do it! (which is a gross misunderstanding of human nature)…
he’s a professor at a large university because of the abundance of net (surplus) energy made available by many capitalists…
he has no clue how this power issue will get worse as net (surplus) energy declines…
and perhaps he never will…
Yes, there is a huge human energy sink in these circumstances. Maybe Marco Bruciati will be reminded of the common Italian phrase, with its vague Pol-Pot overtones, to scorn such individuals: “braccia rubata all’agricoltura”—”manpower stolen from agriculture”.
Correction:
But his popularity is declining recently.
Christian Drosten speaks polished. Every word sits. No uh, no hesitation.
Undoubtedly: he has charisma. But he pretends that none of this concerns him. He claims to be a scientist. Not a politician.
Nevertheless, a German newspaper recently opened the headline as to whether Drosten could be Chancellor.
But its popularity is declining recently.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/virologist-christian-drosten-we-managed-to-stop-a-pandemic-wave-with-relatively-mild-measures-a-39a8ea77-ec87-4b34-9996-c94ff07c5659
TWiV 601: Das coronavirus with Christian Drosten
https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-601/
Interesting, but a background in virology is needed.
Interesting, but a background in virology is needed.
No. That’s the strange thing about Drosten’s success. Every day he reached hundreds of thousands of people with the initially daily podcast who have no medical or virological training. Has brought them statistics, methods of virology and the reasons for the medical procedure in his inimitable way. Daily between 30-40 minutes.
People felt and feel taken seriously by him (I felt the same way) because the next day he answered questions from the audience. It distinguishes him and makes him unique.
The questions for him were, of course, selected by the editors of the NDR (one of the multi-channel association called ARD, the public service broadcaster in Germany).
A lot of critical things about his approach were probably not allowed on the table.
I would like to know how he would comment on Andreas Kalcker’s video, which was linked here before.
https://lbry.tv/@Kalcker:7/100-Recovered-Aememi-1:7
Obama is the king maker in the Democratic party today. Joe Biden was Obama’s choice for presidential candidate and Kamal Harris is his choice for vice president (will be announced soon).
The protests in the US are not organic, they are organised and planed years ago.
This is election year.
All above according to Albert (Live Monitor).
https://mobile.twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1266717680322711553
The second part of the tweet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/amlivemon/status/1266717684475011074
I don’t know much above is true, or who is organising the protests. But if even partly true, then they playing with fire.
But if there’s not enough for everyone to go around, then they will have to fight over what’s left?
Someone left a pallet of bricks in front of the Dallas Courthouse: https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1266699326832640001
These riots have nothing to do with perceived racial injustice or relative poverty. Certainly the Democrats have fermented racial hatred for decades for their own political gains. However the are now losing control to the communists and anarchists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa who are the ones rioting.
These riots have nothing to do with perceived racial injustice or relative poverty.
Want to buy a bridge?
I agree with your observation, Duncan. Perhaps if he’d left out the word “perceived”, he would have had a stronger case.
Andy Ngo seems to think that this Communist revolution.
It’s hard to imagine a Communist revolution in the US…but we live in strange times.
https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1266582447195488258
Kamala Harris:
a woman… check…
black… check…
that checks all the boxes…
Likes to boss people around: Check.
Loves banging up disadvantaged petty felons and locking them up for decades: Check
How about a third box: competent? no check. Now twitter can delete my account for telling the truth.
There is little question that the “blacks” you mention are very far from having risen up organically from the US population. Kamala Harris seemed pretty loathed by black Dems due to her prosecutorial bkgd. (smoking pot ok for me, but not for thee).
But, as Biden is wont to say, she is “bright and clean and a nice-looking [gal].. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
I’m waiting patiently for Joe to say of Kamela something along the lines of:
“You ain’t black if your dad’s from India and your mum’s from Jamaica; you’re tan.”
Mind you, I expect I’ll have a long wait.
What, Jamaicans aren’t black enough for ya?
cool runnin’, mon…
Jah rule
Plus, Yoshua.. Obama is not a kingmaker. He is the errand-boy of king-makers, as I think you well know.
Country most fucked. Usa. Italia. Brazil. South Africa. India. Russia. Argentina. Ecuador. . Only fucked all the rest
and your English is improving… 😉
good job…
(I don’t know any other language, so you beat me there…)
Right,, just keep using the word “fuck” a lot! To use a phrase of my dear, departed mother: “it covers a multitude of sins”.
My mother wouldn’t let the f word into the house. And the other f word—fornicate—doesn’t have anything like the same punch or the same all purpose versatility, so we were verbally restricted in our family.
Oh, no, sorry, that comment wasn’t clear… it wasn’t the “F” word my mom was talking about.. it was more a saying she had bout something like a loose sweater that would hide flab. I heard it from her repeatedly, and somehow it came to mind when someone said Marco’s English had improved, coincident with his colorful language.
I remember my mom scolding me my first summer coming home from college, when I talked about there being “crud” in the kitchen sink. “Crud” was not an acceptable word in our house!
I should think so. Crud should be banned to regions beyond the U-bend.
Certainly going to be rough, Marco. India’s daily new cases keeps ratcheting up with India working its way up the list of countries with the most cases. That is a country that may end up near or at the top of the list given enough time, as the virus particularly likes congested, high population cities. Not much chance to social distance when so many live in close quarters in most homes.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
In fact, click on that link and scroll down to the bar graph showing the daily new cases for India. Just keeps moving up with no sign of slowing down. Another country doing the same is Bangladesh where people also have numerous people living in each structure.
Part of this virus is the math of it. A lot of people discount the virus because the numbers don’t seem all that high compared to other ways people can die, however, this is still early in the development of this as a pandemic, just a few months into it. Time, pressure, infections and math will determine how much of a problem this becomes. Also, we don’t know how the virus will respond to attempts to treat or vaccinate against it. Once challenged it could alter in a way that makes it even more difficult.
Yes, people are talking as if it is done and dusted and we can judge which countries have done well (Germany, Taiwan, S Korea) and which have failed (US, UK, Spain) etc.
That it is only the very beginning – or a Churchillian ‘end of the beginning’ – seems to escape them.
The best thing to do now is to take a pause, relax a bit, and think hard about how to face all the dangers likely to come after this summer.
They seem to be growing in number and severity, and deaths form COVID will probably be the smallest part of it.
Relative to population, India and Bangladesh have very few reported COVID-19 cases compared to the US. They are somewhat above Japan. I expect that underreporting is a major issue, however.
Also they’re suffering from other, related problems like starvation.
Uh oh, where’s FE? Did he get bored with this place?
“Fast Eddy says:
May 29, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Read comments re the ryots in the US on ZH — seems like we have the same people commenting on OFW.
I don’t generally read the ZH comments because it makes me sick — and it also frustrates me because this extinction is taking far too long to play out.
We’re done with comments here for the time being”
so what do you think?
I think by “frustrates me” that he is saying his seeeecret plan (that seemed to often change) has failed to be supported by the actual events of the past few months…
I, on the other hand, have no problem facing the actual reality that has been unfolding this year…
I wish the mass starvation wasn’t coming, but it was going to happen someday due to overshoot… the C19 catalyst, which spurred the illlogical lockdown overreactions, just accelerated the scenario…
but mass starvation is not the end of the world…
Q2 depression… perhaps slightly better by Q3 or Q4…
I’m patient… time will tell…
I like the back&forth here between the patient and the impatient. My husband was just giving me grief because, six years ago, I told an old friend and colleague that I saw collapse happening “within ten years”. Husband looks around and everything seems to be working, as far as he is concerned.
Patience, grasshopper.
I think we are really beyond the event horizon. Certain things cannot be done or said. The damage will be permanent. Not sure why people cannot understand that (CDP, FE?)
Imagine when you date a girl and you are going to give her a good French kiss and in the midst, you say that your ex-girlfriend kissed better. The damage is this current girlfriend is going to be permanent. No matter how sincere or expensive is your apology, it will not help. That sentence should not be said even if it is true.
The economic damage and the crashing velocity of money is similar to the kissing scene. If the virus were to disappear now, the trajectory has been set. Jobs are not coming back, people have no money to go restaurants or buy expensive items (you need a lot of people to buy a lot of things for the economy to go round, not just a bunch of people). If the number of patrons or customers is not sufficient, the business will still close down. This is a viscous cycle. I am not even sure how to break this cycle (I am thinking hard but still cannot find a way).
Habits have changed, a big change in my country. People prefer to eat at home (for health, convenience, saves money and lazy to go out and lastly to prevent getting the virus). Travel channels is not appealing anymore since you cannot travel. Beauty is not really good now because you are going to wear a mask. Nails – do it at home. Hair – looks disheveled but so is everyone else. Clothes? people are still working from home in their pajamas. The number of people now, actually going out to buy office wear is non existence. Seriously, at this point in my country,looking beautiful is not even in the list of “to do”.
It looks to me that this habit, which is causing big havoc economically is going to be permanent or least for the 6-12 months. Our economy, unfortunately, cannot wait 6-12 months for the change in habits.
I cannot confirm your assessment at the moment.
Was in the neighboring town at lunchtime. It is a tourist town in Germany on the Moselle.
An almost normal weekend operation in late May, as in previous years.
Hardly anyone wears a mask outdoors.
The restaurants are occupied. At least the seats that still exist. (Because of the distance, less than before)
Good. The hotel ships are missing. The bus travelers too.
But probably more day and weekend travelers.
All of this may change in the next few months.
At the moment it seems that people in Germany believe that they have it behind them. The worst anyway.
Who wants to convince himself. a link to the Moselle webcam.
https://www.mosel-webcams.de/bernkastel-webcam/
Also, the idea that we must reduce energy consumption by “reduce, reuse, recycle” goes away. Disposables are seen as what prevents transmission of COVID-19. Recycled air in offices, ships, airplanes and elsewhere appeared to be energy efficient in the past, but now seems to be a way of transmitting viruses around. Public transport was all the rage; now bicycles seem to be the in thing.
So true about the biking thing Gail, I don’t have to look further than my city, Montreal.
Montreal’s summer plans: An extra 327 km of bike paths, pedestrian lanes:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreals-summer-plans-an-extra-327-km-of-bike-paths-pedestrian-lanes
Lots of British girls out today with tons of make-up and fairly dressed up: but of course masks aren’t compulsory here.
Curiously, those I dd see with masks were all under 30, and mostly female. But only about 5% of people, probably less.
So many men have shaven heads that the lack of professional hair care doesn’t notice much – learnt to cut mine pretty well over the last few months. Goodbye barber!
I would agree that changes have been set in motion that even a total disappearance of the virus and restrictions cannot avert.
From all the news in all forms (video or text) and from all sources (MSM, alternative, forums, etc), there might be a smidgen of chance that these kind of riots, be it provocated or not spreads far and wide all across USA. Partly due to economic issues and partly due to “nothing to do – unemployment” and partly due to “the fun of it”. The army, National Guard and police can come in with force to quell them but a few things to take note. I am not a USA citizen. Correct me if I am wrong
1. There are just too many cities and it can even happen in smaller sized cities as well. Law enforcement may be stretched thin.
2. Mass shooting by law enforcement, unlike in many countries, may cause a lot of political and social backlash. Dissent may be hidden but it is still boiling.
3. I feel, unlike many years ago, the pot is now very close to boiling point (employment, economic depravity, social, etc) if not, even at boiling point a few months down when any recovery is not showing.
4. Police high handedness and brutality is already raging below the surface all these years and all it needs is just a spark to cause the bonfire. Those who have been a victim of police injustice or brutality will surely join in and hit at the law enforcement. To them revenge is great to be serve “hot”
5. I heard from my friends in USA that anger is running deep and high among citizens. If you are at the upper crust, then you will never know. If you are middle or middle lower, I would imagine the anger. I am not surprised at all if it happens in high end areas, they will smash or destroy icons of wealth like branded stores.
All these will cause a lot more economic pain and will lower the velocity of money even more. Velocity money cannot go negative (as far as I know). It s effect is non-linear. As it approaches zero, it is like the speed of light, the effects will be very horrible. If there are riots in your city, are you in any mood to spend any money at all. The most you will be spending is groceries. You will also spend the most minimum of groceries and think twice if you want to indulge a little. You will be so hard pressed for time to leave the grocery store or you may not even leave your home. Deliveries or online groceries? It might not be delivered if the situation is turning from bad to worse.
It is already very bad with the shutdown and loss of jobs. Add this riots in, it is another extra straw (perhaps a large bundle of straws) to the camel’s back. The camel is already so weak and half dead…….
Any comments from those in USA? Just giving my points of view.
Americans are cowards they will do nothing. There is no organized opposition and never will be. Any person or group that appears to be forming an effective opposition will be killed by the TPTB. As to people of color they are segregated by geographic area it will be “as easy as shooting fish in a barrel”. I expect zero change other than massive unemployment and starvation.
There is no right or wrong. It is like a game that God play. Will this round be “cowards” or starvation? No one knows.
The issue is the extent of sharing, when there is not enough to go around. I agree; there are no right or wrong answers.
Religions seem to represent interpretations of god’s will in a particular time and place. In a time when resources are very plentiful (increased trade, more resources than in the past), sharing makes sense. If starvation looks like it might be a possible outcome, sharing doesn’t make sense.
Violence is related to falling energy consumption per capita and which segments of the world economy will be affected disproportionately. Those being shut out tend to become violent.
CTG, are you asking seriously? A year ago, five years ago, ten years ago… there were as many videos of blacks “randomly” attacking whites and rampaging in stores as YouTube had hours in the day to censor them. You didn’t like your nail job? Smash all the nail-polish displays to the ground. Your child was shoplifting? Get into a fistfight with the shop-owner who protests. You think your chicken sandwich was served too cold? Shoot the fast-food worker.
All groups do not exhibit similar behavior under similar conditions.
Was it you who wrote that it was wise not to mention that a girlfriend was inferior at kissing? That’s what we are up against in the US, but we can’t say so out loud. Some folks are inferior at civilization, which (from a biological standpoint) is neither good nor bad, since civilization will be going away. So let the MENAs burn up all the catholic churches and all the cars in France.. all the cars and churches in Europe.. they are only fulfilling our collective thermodynamic destiny.
Asia seems to be less burdened by political correctness in this regard. I have a great deal of respect for Gail, but race riots have been a fixture in the US for many decades: plenty of poor whites, Asians, and Latinos live in the US but they don’t tend to burn down their own neighborhoods when they have a grievance, real or perceived. These are just facts which are swept under the rug in order “not to make the black kids angry”.
And the behaviour of groups can worsen over time: in 1970’s and 80’s London the Jamaicans used to mug people a lot and occasionally stab them; but now the stabbings are very common, the savage multiple-type, and guns are widely used.
In the 70’s there weren’t any ‘Mothers against Gun Crime’ posters -just not needed.
Did the ‘oppression’ get worse? If you are ‘marginalised’ and unemployed in 1975 it must be much the same in 2020…..
Black looters are not “smashing icons of branded wealth”.. That’s privileged-white/antifa/Marxist rhetoric (and they may be assisting as provocateurs in some cases, as with the black bloc in Europe). Black looters just want the stuff that’s in the store! These events are not intellectually-motivated if not to the degree that they are instrumentalized politically by people who have very little in common with the actors on the ground.
Did he actually say this without breaking into giggles?😜
Washington(CNN)President Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on Beijing Friday, naming misdeeds that range from espionage to the violation of Hong Kong’s freedoms, and announced a slew of retaliatory measures that will plunge US-China relations deeper into crisis.
“They’ve ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before,” Trump said of China, as he decried the way Beijing has “raided our factories” and “gutted” American industry, casting Beijing as a central foil he will run against in the remaining months of his re-election campaign.
Trump appeared in the Rose Garden at the end of a week when the US hit 100,000 deaths in the coronavirus pandemic and as massive protests roiled Minneapolis after the death in police custody an African American man, but mentioned neither, focusing instead on casting Beijing as an existential geopolitical threat.
China “ripping us off”, “gutting our factories”!? Please now, Mister Trump, suppose you are up for reelection …this will only hasten the decline of the US Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency.
The Digital Yuan will be tested ASAP and expanded to bypass the Funny Money of Uncle Sammie
When there is not enough energy to go around, there is increased competition in getting what is available. Cooperation goes downhill. People elect a president who will divide rather than unite; one who will break with old ways which are no longer working.
There quickly become two sides: (1) The side who believe that BAU can exist indefinitely, if only people would make the proper choices, and (2) The side that reflect the reality of the situation. Some group needs to become a loser. You seem to side with (1)
COVID-19 creates a similar problem. Some group is shut out of future consumption of goods and services by COVID-19. Clearly those who die are in this category. Those who lose their jobs may see greatly reduced consumption of future goods and services. Those who are treated receive a disproportionate share of present goods and services, leaving less goods and services created by energy resources for others.
Shutdowns greatly reduce total goods and services produced, adding to the problem of falling goods and services per capita. As people are cut out of what they perceive as their fair share of goods and services, they tend to riot. Resentment of minorities (including the disabled) grows, because homogenous populations require far less energy to operate than heterogenous populations. Back before energy supplies per capita grew in the 1950 and 1960s, US blacks attended schools in their communities that were lower quality than whites attended in their communities. Those with disabilities mostly stayed home. The norm was two parent households. Divorces were difficult to obtain. Elderly relatives mostly lived with their families. Elderly and disabled without relatives moved to “poor farms” where they contributed whatever labor they could to growing food. It was inexpensive to operate schools in this situation, because classes were homogeneous. Health care was not fancy, so every community could have its own hospital. Beds could be used almost interchangeably for longer term care or more intensive care. Doctors could look for interactions between the relatively few drugs prescribed.
Now our complex system is failing. We don’t have the old system to go back to. Violence seems to be the result.
A very well put, impartial, analysis.
Remember a while back in a comment post by Gail, if it weren’t for China, the USA would have collapse a long while ago…😳🚀so much for ripping us off..and stealing our jobs.
And one can observe that when emerging problems are discussed, experts and interest groups invariably now call for remedies which simply involve more expense and adding extra layers of complexity, exacerbating the situation….
Before video camera phones, how many of such police abuses occurred?
Well, this office that committed this death had 19 offense complaints in his 19 years on the force, with 2 discipline “actions”. Believe the other officer had 5 or 6 with no “Actions” taken in his 6 years on the force. Looks like common practice, at least in Minneapolis, of lax oversight on general. Do worker told me the Police Union there is very powerful and it’s reputation is known for harassment.
Here in South Florida, so far all is calm and my coworkers of color are not acting out in any way.
Was here during the Liberty City riots back in 1980, not pretty
The 1980 Miami riots were race riots that occurred in Miami, Florida, starting in earnest on May 18, 1980,[1] following the acquittal of four Dade County Public Safety Department officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie (December 3, 1946 – December 21, 1979). McDuffie, a black salesman and former Marine, died from injuries sustained at the hands of four officers trying to arrest him after a high-speed chase. Wilkapedia
But. AP James LaCorte.. As unrest spread across dozens of American cities on Friday, the Pentagon took the rare step of ordering the Army to put several active-duty U.S. military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis, where the police killing of George Floyd sparked the widespread protests.
Soldiers from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York have been ordered to be ready to deploy within four hours if called, according to three people with direct knowledge of the orders. Soldiers in Fort Carson, in Colorado, and Fort Riley in Kansas have been told to be ready within 24 hours. The people did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the preparations.
The get-ready orders were sent verbally on Friday, after President Donald Trump asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper for military options to help quell the unrest in Minneapolis after protests descended into looting and arson in some parts of the city.
Trump made the request on a phone call from the Oval Office on Thursday night that included Esper, National Security Advisor Robert O’ Brien and several others. The president asked Esper for rapid deployment options if the Minneapolis protests continued to spiral out of control, according to one of the people, a senior Pentagon official who was on the call.
”When the White House asks for options, someone opens the drawer and pulls them out so to speak.” the official said..
With Unemployment at Depression levels and no recovery in sight this is a powderkeg.
Might see at least another Stimulus cheque and later a UBI coming.
Don’t know how they will pay for it, but regardless there will be stagflation…😜👍
Too little affordable energy per capita is the problem.
I have no doubt that it is all the fulfillment of the Bible because all together Arctic economy virus collapsed all together in the same peak oil year. What were the chances of it all happening together is there any mathematician in the room? And waiting earth quakes
I don’t understand quite what you mean when you say “Arctic economy virus collapsed all together in the same peak oil year. Could you explain?
I read this as “the Arctic, the economy, and the virus collapsed all together”
You are no doubt right. Energy consumption (or lack thereof) is involved with each of these. The peak in oil production was perhaps in November 2018. Total fossil fuel production will likely be down in 2020, because of low prices related to the coronavirus response. Thus, the response to the virus helped bring down the economy. The loss of particulate matter (because of the response to COVID-19), no doubt contributed to the Arctic’s problems this year, because the sun could warm the area more without the small particles.
According to NOAA, the Arctic ice maximum in March was boringly normal for the time of year and is “nowhere near the bottom of the pack,” much to Guy Mc P and Prof. Waddhams’s chagrin.
Arctic sea ice extent—the area where ice concentration is at least 15 percent—reached its apparent annual maximum on March 5, 2020. On March 24, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that the 2019–2020 growth season had an unexceptional finish: 5.81 million square miles (15.05 million square kilometers). It was the 11th-lowest maximum in the 42-year satellite record.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/unexceptional-arctic-sea-ice-maximum-2020
The biggest current issue is that polar bears are being attacked by a deranged graffiti artist. Police are not sure if it’s Banksy or David Attenborough.
https://static.euronews.com/articles/4344510/1280x720_nbc-191204-polar-bear-t-34-spray-paint-se-215p_c2d39342c378a118847500d3bc6ff83c.jpg
Marco, yep.. it’s a kind of ‘perfect storm’. The melting of the Arctic, economic collapse, peak oil (I think the virus is being used as a screen for these issues)..
From my point of view as a determinist, the chances of all this happening were 100%. The “Limits to Growth” chart shows a confluence of bad trends for life on the planet as well as for industrial civilization happening right about now. We don’t need supernatural explanations.
If I am not mistaken, the Jesus character in the Bible said that (implying the end of times) he would return within his disciples’ lifetime. Either he didn’t, or he did and nobody noticed.
Those writing the Bible were definitely confused about timing.
Jesus said, “Lo, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20.
“Confused?”
I would not be so sure about that.
Perhaps there is more to the Buddhist and Hindu model of soul migration than the average Westerner thinks.
And if there should be the wheel of life, then what we see as time is probably an illusion.
Modern physics is much closer than is generally believed.
Sadly only in German
https://www.focus.de/wissen/bild-der-wissenschaft/tid-8332/physik_aid_229939.html
My take is that he must have came back during the Siege of Jerusalem. Whoever got raptured, got raptured and everyone else in the city was killed so no living witnesses.
Re: US riots: Gail has pointed out before that populations tend to go nuts when economic hard times hit. There’s often a trigger event to set things off e.g. George Ford, but the underlying driver is economic deprivation. There’s plenty of that due to the virus and the inevitable consequences of the lockdown.
The Yellow Vests are out in France again too.
Who reckons this is part of ‘the plan’?
“The underlying driver is economic deprivation”
There is no evidence for this view. Different “communities” may be (and are) equally economically deprived yet their behaviors can be (are) very, very different.
I, a white man, can walk alone through the poorest slums of Jakarta at 2a.m. and not a hand will be laid on me. Some other much wealthier (but always complaining) parts of the usa and such a stroll would be certain suicide.
What are the distinguishing factors?
the US is fuched.
Kim, different countries have different values, mindset and culture. You can walk across Tokyo in the middle of the night without any issues. Same goes to Singapore or many of the Asian countries. Economic deprivation affects people differently in different countries.
The threshold of “people laying hands on you” is different for each society. It will be lower in USA but higher in Germany perhaps. In Jakarta if you are in 1997, you will be dead even if you are in your own house. Time is also important (as in 1997). If it is in Italy 20 or 30 years ago, probably not so much on an issue. There is wealth all around and people are not desperate. If it is Italy in July 2020 when there is no enough money go around, they all hands will be on you as a tourist.
There is a point where people had enough and have nothing to lose. There will always be an agent provocateur in these “riots” and people will join in.
Bottom line is threhold of economic pain, culture and tolerance towards anarchy. Different ethnic groups have different threshold level.
According to authorities in Minnesota, up to 80% of those arrested are from out of state–apparently outside forces –on both the left and right, but from early reports, there have been a lot of “calls to action” to join these protests from on-line white supremacy groups.
This report strongly contradicts this claim:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/they-are-outsiders-minneapolis-officials-blame-white-supremacist-terror-cells-rioting
Fast Eddy and others have worried about how could everyone be fed without BAU? Well, if people were to choose to go out and commit felonies, suddenly we might find we have millions of workers for plantations such as Angola Prison.
If the surveillance state is operating efficiently, we can always come harvest these people years after the fact and quietly send them off to plant, weed and harvest the vegetables. No fossil fuels needed!
The actual deprivation and the PERCEPTION of wealth inequality, especially if elites gain it through non-productive work (financialization and favorable taxes and other laws.)
A team of star college basketball players went to China. Despite their privilege, they decided to shoplift some costly items from high-fashion outlets. Trump had to negotiate to get them returned to the US without adjudication or punishment for the thefts. They were not from deprived homes. either. It’s a matter of attitude. The millionaire father of one errant “boy” remained belligerent:
https://nypost.com/2017/12/05/liangelo-balls-shoplifting-excuse-my-teammates-did-it-first/
“Now we over here — we gotta serve some more punishment? He apologized. What is the long process for? We only went to UCLA — one and done — to play basketball.”
When there are not enough goods and services to go around, changes that act to increase wage disparity or increase the number of jobless are very much resented. Shutdowns keep these problems bottled up for a time, but they ultimately lead to more job loss and wage disparity.
In fact, changes in general are difficult. Back before the late 1960s, energy consumption per capita in the US was fairly low. Segregation was an accepted way of life. Once more energy consumption became available, resentment grew that blacks could not participate as much as they would like in the benefits of greater energy consumption. At the same time, more energy consumption by blacks might indirectly lead to less energy consumption by poor whites (and others). Busing students from one part of town to another would by itself use more energy. Mixing students with poorer educational background with those with higher education background would make classes harder to teach. Home values where busing took place were feared likely to fall. The extra energy required to fix all of these problems was not really there. So resentment over the plans grew. People moved to the suburbs, abandoning the cities, so that they would not have to deal with these problems.
“When there are not enough goods and services to go around, changes that act to increase wage disparity or increase the number of jobless are very much resented. Shutdowns keep these problems bottled up for a time, but they ultimately lead to more job loss and wage disparity.”
One of my Gerald Celente quotes: “When people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they LOSE IT”
Right!
That’s a nice quote of Gerald’s. To which I would add one of Bob Dylan’s.
When you think that you’ve lost everything
you find out you can always lose a little more…
Gail,
Jobs still exist around here, maybe not as many, but jobs. An issue in manufacturing seems to be the skill level required for advancement, mechatronics is big but that is one of the more difficult mental areas. Modern machining is more design and as of yet from what I can see 5 axis machining is an art requiring substantial mental agility or both the part and machine are ruined.
There are probably more policy wonks than needed, there is probably enough policy all ready done such that review of past policies, evaluation of their effectiveness would result in simplification.
Some here think the advanced technology will disappear, there are people on YouTube making integrated circuits in their basements or garages, very simple, but much more complicated than transistor circuits of the 1960’s. The equipment is not that expensive, the knowledge to use that equipment is difficult to attain.
There is a fellow on YouTube, Applied Science, who has made an electron microscope and other interesting devices as well as exploring esoteric areas of physics. From what I gather, he is a Google engineer of some sort for his day job. His shop is relatively simple, the results are incredible.
We all see what is happening around us, I suspect we are not a very diverse group, we seem to have little difficult discussing very sensitive ideas and still maintaining civility – thanks in great part to your example.
If America does not make it, based on past history, no one will make it. We will make it and if history is a guide, we share well, not perfectly, but well.
Dennis L.
I think that Minnesota is doing relatively better than some other states. This link gives one view of the increase in unemployment by state between March 14 and May 23.
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/FcMAuHz3Vekr92hL9EcVDg–~A/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAw/https://media-mbst-pub-ue1.s3.amazonaws.com/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-05/40b2a9a0-a0ef-11ea-bfff-81a140433a36
Georgia and Florida are shown to be hit hard by unemployment. This map seems to miss the high unemployment of states like California and Washington that shut down before March 14.
Dennis, then why didn’t smart people make electron microscopes in their basements in the early 1900s? This is an anomaly allowed for by cheap energy and a plentiful supply chain and readily available knowledge. All can and will ultimately disappear.
Jesus what did the Hindies do to suffer the wrath of almighty God? Lord have mercy upon us.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/05/virus-heat-wave-and-locusts-form-perfect-storm-in-india/
Behavior in previous lives, as I understand it.
Inherited karma can be a bitch.
It appears as if the United States is about to fall apart. The recent death of G. F. is probably what may blow the whole place sky-high. CV-19 was the fuse. Bubblezilla, and 40 years of neoliberal b.s. the powderkeg. Rioting is breaking out all over the country.
Apart from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, there are reports and footage of disturbances breaking out in, Houston TX, Louisville KY, Atlanta GA, San Jose CA, Fort Wayne IN, Washington DC, Chicago IL, Des Moines IA, New York NY, Oakland CA, and Richmond VA.
If you have Twitter here’s a link to an account, which is providing great coverage of the numerous incidents that are happening there right now.
Police, paramilitary, the National Guard, and Army are all being deployed and prepared for what may soon result in martial law.
https://freewestmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/minn-race-riots.jpg
the Don didn’t plan this, but he sure must be rubbing his hands with glee at what it’s doing for him
all he has to do is make sure this runs on through the summer, till about September, then be ‘forced’ to declare martial law.
That will put the country into a state of even more violent chaos.
The POTUS is commander in chief of the army, he tells the generals (all are now yes-men) to use military force.
The ordinary soldier will fall in behind whoever pays his wages, particularly when he sees the country going down the pan.
The Don suspends the Nov election ‘temporarily’. Congress starts screaming, so he marches troops in and puts an end to the constitution.
He’s been making ‘jokes’ about that for years.
Don’t think it can’t happen. It’s been common throughout history. Our modern era is no different
Indeed. Things are moving swiftly, and accordingly. Another Twitter account, more maninstream, with a good feed of the “protests” erupting all over the U.S.
Welcome back, Norman.
I’m sure he and his advisors are rubbing their hands at all of this, a nice diversion from the economy: but if Trump hadn’t won, the US would have been ruled by Hilary Clinton.
Personally, I find her rather more sinister: I’ve been told – by people who were there – that her masked really slipped once at a private dinner party,and the atmosphere in the room chilled suddenly.
I see Trump as a crude, although rather canny, narcissist: but Hilary? Pure love of power and psychopathy.
Well, what fun for the Yanks, what a choice you had in the last days of your empire!
The general buffoonery of the UK government is a kind of comic turn in comparison, but so boring and without the belly-laughs of Monty Python.
Tell us more about what Hillary said or did after her mask slipped off.
There’s plenty of that out there on the intertubes. Just check out ” we came, we saw, he died”! Cackling about Ghadaafi being anal-raped to death by bayonet. She has always been like this..
Laughing about getting a rapist off who had attacked a 12-y.o. girl to the point she couldn’t have children:
I don’t see anything amiss here. Sounds like she did her job. Lawyers, journalists, and other cynical folk often speak with this tough, gritty style.
thank you Xabier—always nice to be missed–just took a rest from posting to make time to sharpen my quill.
I’m interested in this ‘other side’ of Clinton too?
doesn’t seem very apparent, whereas Trump reveals every unpleasantness imaginable through his own utterances
And how, pray tell, would you handle the situation if you were POTUS?
It’s a difficult decision, isn’t it Norman?
Maybe you’d let Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore and Philly burn to the ground?
After all, it would be race-ist not to, wouldn’t it?
Or maybe you’d take a leaf out of Barack Obama’s book and let the police lob a little tear gas at the arsonists and rock throwers?
if i ruled the world–every day would be the first day of spring”
another lyric from another piece of (harmless) make believe
I don’t think I’ve ever written : If I were…..I’d do so and so. Might have, but I don’t think so. Mainly because the concept is fatuous. Not immune from writing fatuosity—but at least I try not to.
Every political leader is carried on the tide of circumstance. Obama wanted to change the gun laws, circumstances prevented it.
In Roosevelt’s time, company guards were shooting strikers. Ford was the rising fascist and admired Hitler.
We can be reasonably sure he didn’t want that. You may disagree
In any event ww2 resolved the problem, temporariliy.
Kennedy tried to do something about the race problem. He had his faults too.
All on that tide of circumstance.
This time things are looking different. After burning enough fuel to win WW2, Western nations congratulated themselves for being clever, and that delusion sustained us for the next 30/40 years.
Then the tide of prosperity began to ebb, because there wasn’t enough fuel to keep it rising. But Joe Average refuses to accept that
Joe Average thinks he’s Canute acting in reverse, commanding the tide to keep rising. Politicians suffer from the same problem.
Trump on the other hand, is, if nothing else, an opportunist.
He sees November approaching, a collapsing economic system, 40+ m unemployed, who are not going to vote him back into office.
He needs civil unrest. As things worsen and if he can keep this going until Autumn, he has a very good chance of introducing martial law, and declaring a ‘postponement’ to the election.
If congress objects, with the army already mobilised to ‘keep order’ he will be in a position the shut it down.
Seeing the country going down the pan, generals will do as they are told, and soldiers will fall in behind whoever pays their wages,
they always do.
After that, we are in civil war territory, which many have forecast, not just me.
That will involve the jesusfreaks, who want nothing better than to inflict thier version of righteousness on all of us. Pence is waiting in the wings as god’s chosen one, read up on his political record.
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/trump-is-there-because-america-wanted-and-needed-him-there-ebac7edea779
What a long-winded sidestep of the question that was…
it simply detailed one possible future outcome in answer to a question
a perfectly valid exercise in logic, though it left jesus out of the equation—but he never wanted me for a sunbeam anyway
but can’t win em all though
As for Trump, he’s a pussy cat. He can’t even control Twitter or Facebook.
Now when His Excellency Xi Jinping tells Twitter or Facebook to jump, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg shout back in unison, “How high, sir?” That’s power. That’s dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Even Mark Zuckerberg Thinks Jack Dorsey “Fact Checking” Trumps Twitter is Nuts.
“Twitter has begun to occasionally ‘fact check’ Trump’s tweets with regard to election material and Jack Dorsey sees this a a virtuous thing because he went off to Burma—the human rights abusing country—and he went into a meditation seminar for a few months and he felt enlightened because he dropped acid a couple of times.”
Norman, you’d probably hate the above video. But Eddy, you are going to love it.
just self opinionated rambling
nothing to hate
nothing to like
means nothing
i daresay I’ missing a deeper hidden meaning
just self opinionated rambling
How very courteous of you to lower yourself to watching the video and venturing an opinion on its content, Norman.
It’s another one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?—I provide enlightening insights; you air your views, he engages in self opinionated rambling.
Are you at all familiar with the Freudian notion of projection?
folk are always ready with opinions on the stuff i write—good, bad or ugly—- I accept everything as their entitlement to do so, and not take umbrage at any of it. Nobody is more aware of my pontificating writing style than myself. Nobody takes me less seriously than me, I assure you.
I never insult anyone by name. I paint a wordpicture. If anyone chooses the fit themselves in the frame, that is their choice
Maybe respond with a little humour at some of the more nonsensical stuff, (koalas spring to mind) because it isn’t usually worth more than that. Particularly when we get onto plots conspiracies and hoaxes—the very life-force of some commenters.
for them i must reserve the right of the deflationary pin
Surely by the same token then, I can be allowed the same freedom to offer an opinion on other people’s ramblings.? No doubt the gentleman in question was certain that his verbal offerings made sense.
But that is a problem we all have to live with.
Don’t we?
Absolutely, Norman. I quite agree with you. If you, me or anyone else offers our ramblings up as a public performance, it’s only fair that the public has the right to cheer or boo or even pelt us with rotten fruit and veg.
I don’t agree that Don has that as an agenda but I do think that it is a well thought out possibility Norm. Hope you are wrong and Don is just another president that lowered the US standard along with most of the others.
All the Don has ever done is bring people back to reality; we talk about the massive economic bubble we’ve been living in all these years without considering the consequent ‘social bubble’, where everyone is so cloistered they’re willing to accept almost any social outcome with little regard for long-term implications.
As a President, Trump started to push back against this idea of being permissive of everything and he inevitably got the flak; but this system is mechanistic. He was ‘supposed’ to be there to push back because the economic system could no longer support those highly permissive, open policies. Now is the time for contraction and consolidation- and he’s in the right place at the right time. There will be greater conflict for sure, but that’s because there always would have been, for the same reason Trump was elected in the first place. The decline was baked in.
Trump might have pushed back against ‘perrnissive of everything’
as long as it doesn’t apply to him.
and you can literally put that in any context you like
I think it would be true to say the don didn’t have an agenda before COVID
but now circumstances have changed, even he can see the possibilities
Norman, “The Don” absolutely had an agenda before COVID—a slogan that was put on hats and such which you may have seen! : MAGA. Whether you think the agenda of “Making America Great Again” was a good thing or a bad thing, an achievable thing or an unachievable thing or an embarrassing thing or a stupid thing.. it certainly did distinguish him from the BushClintons and the BidenObamas who were happy to pocket millions, if not billions, selling off US technology and other assets to the highest foreign bidder and undermining the country’s security and stability. In what other country would those sorts of activities have been countenanced and even celebrated? Where else in the world would such activities not have been considered treason?
Trump’s current opponent got $1.5 billion handed to his family from the CCP personally to manage. Hmmm. Diane Feinstein had a Chinese spy working for her for decades. McConnell has a Chinese wife and lots of conflicting business interests there.
Michelle Obama thinks America was never that great. Fine. She’s hardly alone. But a person running to head [whatever] organization would be well-advised to at least pretend to believe in the organization’s mission. It’s bizarre to me to see people attacking a person for trying to fulfill their job description.
The pre-Trump mission of America has been to have no borders and to allow as much looting and foreign acquisition of resources as possible, from the highest (eg., Hillary’s sale of US uranium to Russia) to the lowest (illegal immigrants get less-than-mandatory sentencing for crimes because it might trigger deportation, and now they get to vote, apparently, and get free covid-stimulus money), with a secondary directive to spasmodically engage in chaos abroad that enriches bankers and the MIC. The Trump-era mission may verywell end up being along similar destructive lines, but at least we can feel safe to poke our heads out and protest, a little bit, on alternate Tuesdays.
It’s clear that the vast bloviational expansion of the intellectual class (which seem to be socialist in the main)—more recently joined by the pseudo-intellectual castes of online journalists and “influencers”, diversity counselors and video-game-programmers from whom no one ever would have previously heard—is materially supported by all the farmers and working stiffs who will no longer be able to maintain all these folks in the manner to which they are accustomed, should they want to or not.
Trump has a great deal of faults, but I think he really does love America. Loving the country one lives in, and advocating for it, has recently and inexplicably become deeply unfashionable in many places. It may be “sad” that Trump is the best advocate the US currently has, but a deeper question is why there aren’t better advocates for any of us, wherever we live, for any of our nations or peoples?? Why is the best France can come up with the craven Macron? Germany’s “best” is the destructive Merkel? Etc.
If Trump’s main policy attribute is anti-globalism, that surely cannot be regarded as particularly reprehensible by a group that already takes the death of globalism for granted, no?
Vultures will descend on a fat and inviting corpse. A jackal may try to defend the corpse for his own reasons. Are you on the side of the jackals or the vultures? We never know who will make out the best, but all of us here are probably kidding ourselves if we think we have not taken political sides based on how we think the pie might end up being sliced—favorably or unfavorably for ourselves. We cannot feel or act otherwise. We might be pro-looting or anti-looting based on what side we might think our bread is buttered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnc4WvuVs9o
This lady and other people like her are not going to just “learn to code”. The modest jobs they might have been engaged in are gone, gone, gone, down the flusher accompanied by Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound”.
If China’s coal supply was clearly failing (actually, starting as early as 2012-2013), it made a great deal of sense for the US to start separating itself from China. The rest of the world could no longer depend on China. MAGA was a way of expressing this need. There really weren’t other countries that the US could depend on either. Exports and imports would need to be rolled back.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/china-energy-production-by-fuel-to-2018-bp.png
Killer cop and victim worked as security staff at the same nightclub for 17 years?
Was this piece of savagery the result of something personal between ’em?
https://kstp.com/news/george-floyd-fired-officer-overlapped-security-shifts-at-south-minneapolis-club-may-28-2020/5743990/
“Killer cop”? Hmm, we will see. It definitely wasn’t murder as they can’t show intent. That is for sure. But perhaps not even manslaughter as the autopsy has shown the gent in question died of neither strangulation nor choking. He had pre-existing conditions and may have had a heart attack. What a show.
i would like to hear your opinion about this case after you have spent 8 minutes with a knee on your neck. Till then you’re just sputering nonsense. Pre existing conditions! LOL Give me a foocking break!
The autopsy came back with a report saying, Autopsy Shows George Floyd Did Not Die of Traumatic Asphyxiation or Strangulation
I don’t know if this will make any difference.
The trial, if there is one, will be quite a ways away anyways. If the charges are dropped or he is found not guilty, there will likely be a second wave of riots.
Hillary Clinton: “what difference, at this point, does it make?”
That’s the beauty of it all.
9/11: Make It Happen or Let It Happen?
Covid: accidental release or planned release?
What difference does it make who cast the die, or whether he/she had their fingers crossed behind his/her back?
The pitfalls of tourism in the Covid-19 era:
“A flight with at least 140 people on board was quarantined today after a passenger received a positive coronavirus test result while in the air.
“The plane, which arrived in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands from Madrid this afternoon, was immediately zoned off by health and security officials at Cesar Manrique airport, with the police also attending.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8370409/Spanish-flight-quarantined-passenger-gets-positive-coronavirus-test-result-air.html
So amusing: Spain is desperate to re-open to tourists, but they seem to fail to understand that this is incompatible with insta-quarantine for tourists as soon as they land there.
It would be better to let everyone come, get all the money in for the season, try to fiddle the COVID stats, and then lock-down again in the winter.
Who on earth is going to fly to Spain hearing about the fate of that plane-load of merry holidaymakers?
“An Air India’s Delhi-Moscow Airbus A-320 Neo (VT-EXR) flight was forced to return midway after ground team realised that the pilot was coronavirus positive.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/air-india-s-delhi-moscow-flight-returns-midway-as-team-realises-pilot-is-covid-19-positive-report/story-m436NV0AkR1rijRxRLjnoI_amp.html
Perfect for families with young children /sarc.
“Holidaymakers arriving in Mallorca and Ibiza could face coronavirus tests at the airport and then a six-hour wait in hotels for results.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8371943/Tourists-tested-isolated-six-hours-Mallorca-Ibiza.html
Compared to 14 days, six hours isn’t too bad.
Right. Unless one of you comes up positive, I suppose.
Good point!
“When Europe was struggling to contain coronavirus, Argentina reacted by locking down early… But it’s come at a huge economic cost.
“”It was already pretty bad for us but with this, it’s just got worse,” says 21-year-old Omar, who is standing in the queue for the soup kitchen. “The economy has collapsed as far as I’m concerned.””
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-52846939
Can’t imagine this will help the unrest:
“Chile’s unemployment rate rose to the highest in a decade… Chile’s labor force fell 5.7% in the 12 months through April as more than half a million people gave up on looking for work…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/chile-jobless-rate-hits-highest-in-a-decade-retail-sales-slump
“Colombia cut its key interest rate to a record low on Friday to combat a slump that the finance ministry forecasts will be the deepest in the nation’s history.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/colombia-cuts-key-rate-to-record-low-to-soften-worst-ever-slump
Why in the world shut down early? In fact, why shut down at all?
It is really interesting that the coronavirus is active in the densely populated areas and the areas where the coal mining is present.
I can see this on the example of not only the densely populated areas of Silesia in Poland and the Czech Republic but also a quite small central coal mining region in Slovakia that still adds the new cases together with the two major cities and the Roma people enclaves, although there are other bigger urbanized areas than this coal mining center.
https://mapa.covid.chat/
I would say that it is the deteriorating hygiene in the declining coal mining regions hat is responsible for the favourable conditions for the virus spread.
I would think that anything that damages the lungs would work as a co-factor for a virus that damages the lungs. Working in coal mines and living downwind of older coal burning power stations and living in urban areas where there are or used to be lots of coal fired homes would all tend to damage the lungs.
The human costs of extracting and using coal have been immense. But how well we would be able to live without it is a big question.
American folk singer Kate MacLeod wrote a song called Angels on My Mind.
Interview from 2000:
Kate: This is based on a mining disaster that happened in Utah in the mid 1980’s. It was a big fire and it burned for weeks before they could get in there and find out what really happened. One of my friends is a coal miner. He always worked in that shaft that caught fire, but he was sick on that day and didn’t go to work. Being sick is what saved his life. I wrote a song about it and this is how it goes.
Angela: Powerful topic. I should do two hours of mining tunes.
Kate: There are plenty of them.
Angela: That would be so easy. My mom grew in Yorkshire, England. Her dad was a minor in fact the foreman so she’d hate it when the whistle blew because her dad would have to go find out if anyone was dead or not, pull them up. He was the head guy.
Kate: Terrible thing to do for a living.
Angela: She just thought constantly about what he was going to, and is he coming back. And all the kids that died! There were many disasters with kids.
Kate: It still goes on. We still are using coal, and we don’t need to be I don’t think. There is an entire industry around it.
Angela: Where are they mostly using coal still? I know in Yorkshire they are, the air can be thick with it.
Kate: Well out west. There are a lot of coal mines out there. I’m not sure what they use it all for now. I know that some people, when they moved out west, there was so little forestry that they would use coal to heat their homes. In fact, all the fire places are very small, because they were designed for burning coal. I lived in a house for 5 years with no central heating. We had a wood stove and we used 50% coal, because there is not a lot of wood out there. They don’t have the accessibility to it.
This performance by Kate has only had 11 views in almost three years.
Come on lads and lassies, if we try hard, we can surely get it to 12!
This lungs damaging explanation sounds reasonable.
Very nice performance by Kate.
“Canada’s economy shrank the most since the 2008-09 financial crisis, marking the beginning of what’s expected to be the deepest contraction of the post-war era.
“Gross domestic product dropped at an annualized 8.2 per cent in the first three months of the year, Statistics Canada said Friday in Ottawa.”
https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/newsalert-statistics-canada-says-q1-gdp-worst-showing-since-2009
““We would describe the current environment … as going where no one has gone before,” said Louis Vachon, chief executive of Montreal-based National Bank of Canada, during a conference call Tuesday evening. “So this is Star Trek finance.”
“…Comparisons to Star Trek are unusual on big-bank analyst calls, but uncertainty has become a common theme in recent years, given the U.S.-China tariff battles and the North American free-trade talks.
“But COVID-19 is different.”
https://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/this-is-star-trek-finance-covid-19-forces-canadas-banks-into-a-strange-new-world
Most of the first quarter took place before the COVID-19 crisis even started in North America.
“Eurozone inflation dropped to a four-year low of just 0.1 per cent in May, data has shown, as the coronavirus pandemic put the single-currency bloc perilously close to deflationary territory.”
https://www.cityam.com/eurozone-on-brink-of-deflation-as-price-growth-slows-to-0-1-per-cent/
“The European Union said its trade with the rest of the world would slump this year by as much as 868 billion euros ($963 billion), or more than 10%, in a gloomier updated forecast that offers fresh evidence of the global economic damage caused by the coronavirus.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/europe-issues-gloomier-projections-of-its-trade-slump-with-world
“French automaker Renault will slash 15,000 jobs worldwide, in a bid to save billions of dollars. Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler reports from a Renault factory near Paris.”
Video:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/renault-job-losses-french-automaker-suffers-slump-demand-200530074237801.html
“Italy’s central bank governor issued a stern warning to the country that it can’t accept aid money from the rest of Europe without also undertaking a serious overhaul of its economy.
“Less than an hour after data showed the economy is in an even deeper slump than initially estimated, Ignazio Visco said at the central bank’s annual meeting in Rome that European Union help to counter the recession induced by the coronavirus lockdown can’t be “free of charge.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/italy-shouldn-t-expect-free-help-from-europe-visco-says
“Switzerland is in a sharp recession, the KOF Economic Institute said on Friday, as the coronavirus crisis brought many businesses to a halt, plunging KOF’s forward-looking economic barometer to its lowest-ever level.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/swiss-economy-kof/coronavirus-pushes-swiss-economic-indicator-to-record-low-idUKL8N2DB20S
No country in Europe seems to be doing well.
“Economic Fallout From Coronavirus Begins Across Developing World:”
“Brazil’s economy shrank during the first three months of this year. Turkey’s economy slowed, and India’s yearly output posted its slowest growth in 11 years.
“…growth in India and Turkey during the first months of this year shouldn’t be mistaken for resilience in the face of the pandemic, economists said. Since lockdown measures only came in the last week of March, the impact of the pandemic won’t turn up until the second quarter figures are released.
“For the first time ever, all the world’s economies are going through a completely synchronized contraction, says Dilip Ratha, lead economist at the World Bank’s migration and remittances unit.
“The crisis propagated rapidly, coming from lockdowns all over the world, cities big and small, factories, agricultural farms. The extent of the crisis is unprecedented,” he said.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/economic-fallout-from-coronavirus-begins-across-developing-world-11590779991
“It is obvious to most that both household and public debt levels are a problem, especially the latter in the Covid-19 era. Yet the flaws in the idea of wholesale cancellation make it more academic grandstanding than a real possibility.
“If you cancel your country’s sovereign debt, even if the government only owes it to the central bank, you risk debauching your currency…”
https://www.ft.com/content/fb2c1718-a193-11ea-94c2-0526869b56b0
“Much the same way COVID-19 hits people with pre-existing health conditions more strongly, so is the pandemic-triggered economic crisis exposing and worsening financial vulnerabilities that have built up during a decade of extremely low rates and volatility…
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, emerging markets saw capital outflows of over $100 billion, nearly twice as big (relative to GDP) as those experienced during the Global Financial Crisis.
“While outflows have since subsided, this dramatic swing underscores the challenges in managing volatile portfolio flows and the risks this may pose to financial stability.”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/covid-19-existing-financial-vulnerabilities-economics-coronavirus/
A person wonders whether the whole system of international trade can even continue. If it does, it will need to be on a much smaller scale. The value of one currency, relative to another, means less and less and QE and other manipulations are used.
At least the WSJ says, “The crisis propagated rapidly, coming from lockdowns all over the world.”
It is the lockdowns that cause the economic fallout, not the virus itself.
Global response actions
• Safeguard development gains by expanding liquidity in the global economy and maintaining financial stability.
• Save lives and livelihoods of people worldwide by addressing debt vulnerabilities for developing countries.
• Create a space for private sector creditors to engage in timely solutions.
• Enhance external finance for inclusive growth and job creation.
• Prevent illicit financial flows by expanding fiscal space and fostering domestic resource mobilization.
• Align recovery policies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure a sustainable and inclusive recovery.
this is all of it
the last one is very much absolutely reeediculous…
How dare you! I should be in skool!
In today’s world, it seem that all roads lead to the SDGs .
The second from last one sounds like gibberish, although it might make more sense if translated into English. Illicit financial flows will find their own level, just like water does under the influence of gravity. I don’t speak International-Development-Agency-ese very well, but expanding fiscal space sounds like more taxes and fostering domestic resource mobilization sounds like more tax men.
Didn’t you say the world would collapse or reset in 2018. You had all those detailed papers to reference.
Have you ever considered that everything you believe is wrong? Because your predictions certainly have been. It is not too late to change your mind.
Peak oil seems to have taken place in 2018, based on what we can see now. That might be considered a “reset” in 2018. The impact on the economy will be felt much more in 2020, however.
NikoB, do you think the world economy is not collapsing/resetting?
Show your work.
Yes slowly, just not in the way that Adonis use to give dates of a major collapse or reset happening. I think this will take a longer time to play out than I initially thought. Could happen tomorrow, next week, month, year or decade. I have been surprised how long BAU has been kept going and I think that I will keep being surprised at our resourcefulness to slow the speed of this crash. Nonetheless crash we will.
The authors obviously don’t understand the problem we have today, with too much population relative to energy supplies, and not enough jobs around the world that pay well because of too much specialization and globalization.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/nba-targets-july-31-to-resume-season-source-says.html
NBA to start basketball playoffs by the end of July…
Bundesliga soccer in Germany has already restarted… other top leagues in the UK, Spain and Italy have plans to restart in June…
MLB baseball is having major problems with negotiations about dividing revenues between team owners and their players… with an anticipation of far lower revenues due to no fans in the stadiums…
the highest paid players are being asked to take pay cuts, and of course there is no realization in the baseball world that the economy is going to reset itself at a far lower level…
so MLB is looking like the most interesting test case for how sports will be downsizing to the lower economic level…
it looks less likely every passing day that there will be any MLB in 2020… so the players salaries will be zero for this year… no play, no pay…
then the two sides can spend the next 7 or 8 months negotiating how to operate in 2021, while economic reality becomes ever more clear as those months go by…
since sports are not an essential subsystem, deflation is to be expected… definitely deflating ticket prices if fans are allowed back into stadiums for 2021…
And there are their plans to give mankind a future ,will they work ? personally i don’t think so but its good to know that they cared and went to all this trouble to prepare a doomed plan b to save us.
Global response actions
• Safeguard development gains by expanding liquidity in the global economy and maintaining financial stability.
• Save lives and livelihoods of people worldwide by addressing debt vulnerabilities for developing countries.
• Create a space for private sector creditors to engage in timely solutions.
• Enhance external finance for inclusive growth and job creation.
• Prevent illicit financial flows by expanding fiscal space and fostering domestic resource mobilization.
sure, gov/CBs need to do what they can to try to keep the financial subsystem working…
it is essential…
and keep the other essential subsystems working… food production and distribution, clean water, waste removal, electricity… and industry that supports those subsystems, transportation FF…
essential products will have inflation… especially food…
products and services that are not essential will have deflation…
“… plans to give mankind a future, will they work?”
there are no realistic plans… every country/gov/CB will be making it up as they go… number one: trying to feed their populations… prevent mass starvation…
just watch for the future UN plan for taking on mass starvation…
and remember, mass starvation is not the end of the world…
Despite all the technological and scientific advances of recent decades, we are in an unprecedented human crisis – because of a microscopic virus.
We need to respond with unity and solidarity.https://t.co/ZMFi52q03b
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) May 28, 2020
“We are asking for immediate, collective action in six critically important areas”, Mr. Guterres said at the online event to leverage more funds for sustainable development.
Beginning with the global liquidity crisis, he said that this was where the health and economic crises meet; “a dangerous nexus that could prolong and deepen both”, calling for extending Special Drawing Rights to supplement public spending reserves.
Noting that the economic fallout from the pandemic threatens a wave of defaults in developing countries, stymieing the effort to reach the 2030 SDGs, the UN chief’s second call was for “durable solutions on debt, to create space for investments in recovery and the Sustainable Development Goals”.
And there you have it the motive for the intentional release for covid19 virus and these guys are serious who knows what alternative plan they have next.
“The global response is urgent, and solutions can be found together. We call on all key actors in this process to take decisive action to ensure all countries recover and build back better from this unprecedented crisis.”
innane psuedo happy talk… though they are correct that it is “urgent”…
I doubt any country can “build back better”…
“We need to respond with unity and solidarity.”
ha… there will be less “unity and solidarity”… we are already seeing many/most countries deciding to reduce exports and keep their resources to themselves… very much in the area of food…
the UN itself might not survive the coming economic reset…
somewhat soon, I would expect them to be focusing mainly on the mass starvation that is on the way, starting in third world countries…
my friend N P, did you miss this?
“Fast Eddy says:
May 29, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Read comments re the ryots in the US on ZH — seems like we have the same people commenting on OFW.
I don’t generally read the ZH comments because it makes me sick — and it also frustrates me because this extinction is taking far too long to play out.
We’re done with comments here for the time being”
so…
is it the Royal We?
it must be frustrating to constantly be changing the details of the seeecret plan, and then actual events are constantly showing up as misaligned with such a plan…
Are the spread and intensity of these riots being managed by police and government action? Do some sides of politics and the media think the riots can make Trump look bad in the runup to November?
There is a thread on Twitter (link below) that purports to show a Minneapolis undercover cop walking around with a hammer breaking windows. He is challenged by protesters and tries to make his escape but is pursued. One part of the same thread claims to have revealed the identity of the policeman. Looks persuasive. People have long argued that Antifa are FBI agent provocateurs and there is plenty of history for the FBI and that kind of thing.
https://twitter.com/neetpolice/status/1266222612641992704
Also note in the video that the purported provocateur is carrying an open black umbrella. Is this a reference to Hong Kong umbrella protesters? (Because it is clear, whatever one thinks of the rights and wrongs, that the Hong Kong protests are to some pretty significant degree a CIA-managed “color” project.)
What, otherwise, is the purpose of the open umbrella? Disguise against cameras?
Keeps the glass from falling on your head when you smash a plate glass window?
BTW what makes you think that the people of Hong Kong simply don’t want to get extradited to mainland China which has a 99% conviction rate?
ZH comments are the best! The posters are mostly batshit crazy. Makes for great entertainment.
The trouble with this report is that these same class of people also gave us the Epstein autopsy.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/29/george-floyd-died-police-restraint-combined-health/
By Valerie Richardson – The Washington Times – Friday, May 29, 2020
George Floyd died Monday from a combination of preexisting health conditions exacerbated by being held down by Minneapolis officers, not from strangulation or asphyxiation, based on the medical examiner’s initial report.
Preliminary findings from a Tuesday autopsy conducted by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner found “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxiation or strangulation,” according to the criminal complaint filed Friday against former officer Derek Michael Chauvin.
“Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease,” said the complaint from the Hennepin County Attorney. “The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.”
John Williams at shadowstats.com:
“First-Quarter 2020 GDP Plunged a Revised 5.05% (-5.05%), Worst Drop Since Depths of the Great Recession / Unfolding Second-Quarter 2020 GDP Collapse Will Be Worst Ever – Order of Magnitude Down by 50% (-50%) Annualized Growth / Depending on Some “Reopening” of the Economy, Third-or Fourth-Quarter GDP Could Be Moving Off Bottom”
so he’s estimating Q2 to be down 50%…
then GDP could be “moving off bottom” in Q3 or not until Q4…
in early June, he will be publishing his calculation of the May unemployment rate… that should be an amazingly big number…
No, really, guys, Spacex is blowing up their rockets on purpose.
https://qz.com/1170674/spacexs-latest-advantage-blowing-up-its-own-rocket-automatically/
It’s not because their staff are still learning how to build rockets.
These people are serious professionals and take great offense to calling them unpaid interns.
Had an interesting family conversation tonight. Mrs M found a post on a Russian social network site by a doctor from a Moscow intensive care unit. He is convinced that the virus has been deliberately released but the releasers cocked up. He thinks that although the virus is infectious, it is not very deadly, and maybe it was released ‘early’ accidentally, before it became very deadly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_%281975_TV_series%29).
More interestingly though, the doctor says that the Russian govt pays them 220,000 roubles (about £2,500, $3,100) for every patient that is diagnosed as having Covid-19. Russian doctors are very dedicated, but the hospitals are very under-funded. £2,500 per patient would be a small, irresistible fortune.
Any other countries that pay nice-money-thank-you-very-much for Covid-19 patients?
Why?
USA pays $13,000 for COVID pneumonia and $39,000 if they get ventilated:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
The hospitals were (are?) deserted as everyone stayed away, so with all elective surgeries cancelled and no one going to ER unless it is a real emergency, the hospitals were (are?) losing a lot of money and some risk going bankrupt. Lots of staff laid off. The extra money for COVID patients helps compensate for the longer time and more intensive attendance they need, although it could be abused to help keep the hospitals running.
Staff layoffs have come just recently around here. It may have taken a while to see if things would quickly get better or not.
The first crop circle of the year.
Coronavirus
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZMndKVU8AIisGC?format=jpg&name=large
And where is this crop circle located? The ones in Wiltshire, England, around 30 years ago, were near a military base. Jacques Vallee investigated and found good reason to believe that the military was testing infra-red laser beams from the air via a stealth drone. Google his name and ‘crop circles’. The articles that come up contain a word that would be c-e-n-s ored here.
Wow!
Do Hello Kitty!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/politics/trump-china-announcement/index.html
I suppose these kinds of actions are to be expected, as close as the world seems to be to the limits we are reaching. World trade needs to cut back. History shows that these are the kinds of things that happen. We haven’t encountered all out war; hopefully that won’t happen. The world is too interdependent now.
Gail, The death rate/M pop. graph is not as informative to me as the “new daily infections” for those same countries (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) – regarding the efficacy or lack there of – for too late and ineffective lock downs. The “new daily infections” tells us where the respective country is regarding getting past/recovering from their nCV-19 outbreak. The US of course still being mid-ways (flat lined or increasing since the beginning of May) and a long way from direct impacts of the disease on economic recovery. It also has implications regarding the seeding of a Fall second wave of infections in the US – if our “new daily infections” don’t drop substantially between now and September.
Hint:
A vaccine or herd immunity is when this stops, if ever.
This is the very beginning.
I am afraid I agree with Duncan. We really cannot stop the epidemic with lockdowns, regardless of what we do.
IIRC, David Stockman talked about trying to stop the virus as being similar to trying to repeal the law of gravity. Trying to use lockdowns to stop the virus doesn’t work.
Worldwide, the number of cases continues to grow. This is a chart from May 12.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/covid-19-cases-worldwide-to-may-12_statista.png
“We really cannot stop the epidemic with lockdowns, regardless of what we do.”
For sure, with half lock downs where everyone still goes to the grocery store, rides the subway trains, and thousands of people a day are still flying in from out of the country, it can only “flatten the curve” which means create a permanent slow plateau of spreading.
Here in Canada, we have flattened the curve so well, it looks like in two or three months we may get down to zero community transmission on a national level. It seems possible, but rather expensive. Six months to contain an outbreak seems incredibly sub-optimal.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canada-e2-80-99s-covid-hot-zone-is-deadlier-than-chicago-or-la/ar-BB14LeqI
“The city’s death rate has been staggering: higher than those of almost every U.S. state, higher than in greater Chicago, Los Angeles or Toronto.
The place is Montreal, the business and cultural center of Quebec, where the coronavirus pandemic has struck the elderly with unusual savagery. The struggle to contain the outbreak has forced the provincial government to resort to desperate measures.
Montreal’s virus toll — the city accounts for more than half of Canada’s deaths from Covid-19…
an outbreak that has killed more than 3,900 people in greater Montreal, with dozens more still dying every day.”
familiar pattern in Canada, where it’s the older weaker ones who are the vast majority of the deaths…
I suppose it’s possible to get to “zero community transmission”…
but to stay at zero would require a closed border, if this virus is here forever, like the common cold…
you are correct… the economic cost is too great to try to contain it…
(mostly) older weaker ones will die a few years sooner…
I think we should accept this consequence, and fully reopen now…
I would have thought the high profile death of Helene Duceppe the previous winter from being locked outside her residence in a long term care facility during a blizzard would have led to some inspections and reforms. They had 17 years since SARS to prepare. At this point, no amount of prep time is sufficient.
I don’t get why simply wearing helmets or at least face shields isn’t the easy solution? I should be getting the ones I ordered early April sometime in the next couple weeks. Just some cheap face shields, but better I think than wearing a cloth mask. Pretty soon Costco is going to require shoppers to wear masks, even with zero community transmission in 2 weeks here. Its like the longer this goes on the more hysteria there is, even though the risk is less.
Why not go full biohazard suit? No viruses, no pollen, and no tobacco smoke.
And as an added bonus, they prevent mosquito bites and bee stings.
What’s not to like?
https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/543414c56da811ca458b4567-1200-924/hazmat-scary-invasion-terrorism-drill-conspiracy-3.jpg
Financially impractical. You are supposed to dispose of the suits after each outing so you don’t bring virus into your home. That’s like $300 every day. Maybe if you are super rich trying to escape to your mega yacht to travel to your private island.
Just another conspiracy theory …?
29.05.2020 time 18.16: from the corona virus live ticker of the German news channel ntv.
Study +++ 18:16 Tübingen doctors stop chloroquine study +++ v
The Tübingen Institute for Tropical Medicine is interrupting its study with the drug chloroquine for the treatment of Covid-19 patients. As institute director Peter Kremsner said, she should be suspended for up to two weeks because of reports of serious side effects of the malaria drug. During this time, an independent safety committee should look at the first results on patient safety. A decision should then be made as to whether the study will continue. France had banned treatment with the related hydroxychloroquine this week.
https://www.n-tv.de/
Hydroxychloroquine:
France bans treatment of Covid19 with
Hydroxochloroquine.
https://www.rnd.de/politik/frankreich-verbietet-behandlung-von-covid-19-mit-hydroxychloroquin-6RKHFBUGNL6BJXD7IAPP4WFZPA.html
Chlor-oquine; Hydroxy-chlor-oquinone; and Chlor-ine dioxide solution (CDS), which cannot be prohibited due to all the industrial applications.
What do you think what the average person thinks when someone now suggests CDS as a cure?
It’s not just China using the COVID chaos to make their dastardly move:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-monkey/monkeys-steal-coronavirus-blood-samples-in-india-idUSKBN2351KV
The world has gone apes!
C T G tell Is your name in facebook Twitter and books you writed It is not fair like this))
You are welcome in fb group Summer collaps contest 20 20
Well. CTG happens to be my name
https://www.facebook.com/tohghee.chng/
Communist China spreads a virus.
When the riots begin, only the Communist Antifa are safe.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeAnna4Congress/status/1265474436288954368/photo/1
To think we were all black just a few thousand years ago….this species is out-of-control on so many levels…maybe next time around, in a few hundred million years, a more decent species will evolve consciousness, or better yet, won’t ever gain consciousness, thus keeping that species in check within the laws imposed by nature, which we started circumventing the day we discovered how to control fire and bringing us to this specific disastrous point in time…
https://i.imgur.com/gpp8Qtk.jpg
On the contrary, without fire is inevitable extinction. The sun only has a couple billion more good years left. Some species had to at least try to keep life going beyond that.
Decency as we might imagine it is probably prejudicial to group survival: the most successful human groups – in terms of grabbing resources – have practised war, raiding, piracy, abduction of nubile females, slave-making and breeding, and genocide, from the micro level to the macro.
Agreed Xabier, that’s why it would be best if there is some kind of life after we are gone, that they do not develop consciousness…if it wasn’t for the asteroid, dinosaurs would still be probably roaming the earth living in a similar way they did 65 million years ago…
Wow, this is one of the more ignorant posts on here. We were all black a few thousand years ago? Totally untrue and false.
The monkeys being on here is also incorrect. Humans did not evolve from monkeys. There are similarities between the species but no evolution from one into the other.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/every-single-worker-covid-one-100000688.html a busy morning…
Bloomberg News
The outbreaks underscore the latest coronavirus threat to America’s food supply: Farm workers are getting sick and spreading the illness just as the U.S. heads into the peak of the summer produce season. In all likelihood, the cases will keep climbing as more than half a million seasonal employees crowd onto buses to move among farms across the country and get housed together in cramped bunkhouse-style dormitories.
The early outbreaks are already starting to draw comparisons to the infections that plunged the U.S. meat industry into crisis over the past few months. Analysts and experts are warning that thousands of farm workers are vulnerable to contracting the disease.
Aside from the most immediate concern — the grave danger that farmhands face — the outbreaks could also create labor shortages at the worst possible time. Produce crops such as berries have a short life span, with only a couple of weeks during which they can be harvested. If a farm doesn’t have enough workers to collect crops in that window, they’re done for the season and the fruit will rot. A spike in virus cases among workers may mean shortages of some fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, along with higher prices.
There already is HIGHER prices at the grocery stores!? Think this is part of the plan…inflate and reset
I expect that the housing for these workers puts many workers in the same room. This ensures that if one person has the virus, it will spread to the others. Masks while out in the field will likely not make much difference.
Even before COVID there was something leading me to think of separate housing as preferable to group housing. Based on personal taste perhaps–let me try to make available to all who wish it the same thing I want for myself.alTHOUGH IT’S SOMEWHAT BEYOND MY CAPACITY–SLOW, INEFFICIENT WORKER IN A SMALL SPACE–to build, I’ve been designing skinny row houses out of unbelievably cheap materials. A big roadblock is fire safety. (And I’m wondering if sprinlers can’t be made cheaply at scale. Or if cheap sprinklers for fire-questionable structures using sea water could work.
prime requirement for any house is to keep cold, wet and unwanted people out, and warmth in preferably for the lifetime of the occupants
if you’ve cracked that then design can be anything you want it to be
Politically, however, the problem is fire. One can see how fire in one place could immolate a whole town.
fire prevention is a sub set
if the house burns down, the occupants no longer have the protections I outlined previously
Physics is involved in some of what you call primary and what you call secondary. I’m relatively sure I know how to fix the physics challenges of the “primary” more than I know how to deal with the physics but also the psychological and behavioral issues of the “secondary.” (For now I’m discounting issues of community culture and planning that could created a variety of influences on the entire subject.)
Most farm workers will be fine. Probably only one in ten thousand dies. They just have to keep working through being sick, otherwise the food will spoil.
Here is a reply to all
Matthew Krajcik -are you saying that Canada will do “OK” even at -75% GDP as it can still trade with China? If you mean it, then perhaps you need to get reacquainted with debt-based fractional reserve monetary system, supply chain and economies of scale. Our system is based on growth (to service the interest) and even at -5%, it will kill the system within a few quarters.
“At this juncture , what difference does it make?” Quote from a famous female politican
It applies to all. Basically, at this point of time, we are just arranging deck chairs on Titanic. It does not matter to me at all if there will be a police state, surveillance state, martial law, ID2020, vaccination, second wave, third wave, internet censorship, election, joblessness, riots, etc. As what the proverb says “The cake is baked”. All the above and many more are moot.
The first wave of business closure happened during the lockdown because they cannot meet the cash flow requirements and they cannot sustain it through the shutdown. Those who sustained it through the shutdown and hoped that the reopening will bring a V shaped recovery will find out that it is not true. Happened here in Malaysia and many other places all over the world. In the next few months, these business will close. I am seeing many businesses still getting a -50% drop in revenue.
As what FE said, CDP. It is either the incompetence is so great or it is really CDP.
Staircase collapse – The only big step down was 2008. We had good boom times in late 1999 and early 2000 (fueled by debt). Unfortunately, debt did not do what it is suppose to do in 2008. The peak boom happened probably around 2004, which coincides with peak conventional oil. There are charts to show (“what difference does it make now” if we want to know the exact dates?)
Since 2008, it has been spiraling down rapidly, no steps but just going down.
It is a real pleasure to be here sitting around Gail’s fireplace and chat. Our moments like this, based on what I can feel, is not going to be years. Months probably. Let us be sane. To all the old timers here, since OFW started, what we hoped not to happen will eventually happen.
👏👏👏
Yep, everything that is happening right now is just re-arranging chairs on the Titanic…and months to go sounds right….
https://kbrocking.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/1424385_628296033894212_115444142_n.jpg
They called Galileo and Gene Ray crazy, too!
I’ll go with Galileo….Gene Ray (who I had to google) not so much! 😂
You word-murder your children with one-corner day!
Well, he was good a marbles.
I saw that!! 😂
At -75%, the economy can grow at 2% for a long time. The debt based system doesn’t matter. Currencies die every 90 years or so anyways. https://marketcap.com.au/history-world-reserve-currencies/
By Okay, I mean there will still be electricity, Internet access, food production and distribution. This is the step down, that maybe lasts decades, or maybe things drop down another step. I expect if there is no recovery, life expectancy will plunge.
Looks like we might get a dead cat bounce for June through September, then the drop down to the -75% level in the fall. Through the winter, the housing and debt crisis will be the issue of the day, where we either get austerity or hyperinflation started.
As for USA, who knows now. It’s an election year, so everything is even more partisan than normal. Maybe these riots go away, or maybe they spread all over and people just burn down all their businesses and get to Year Zero at top speed. I doubt it; I think other States will be more likely to bring out the National Guard much more quickly. The Red States probably won’t have much in the way of riots, since people are far more likely to get shot. The Blue States and their lip service to caring about human life will result in more death and destruction.
Thanks for your thoughts!
It is easy for people to miss the importance of growth in keeping the economy operating. Economies of scale are important. So is repaying debt with interest (as well as earning an adequate return for shareholders). So is growing population and growing workforce (not just elderly). So is increased productivity. All of the social distancing requirements move the economy in the direction of less productivity, not more.
All it takes is for part of the population to decide that they don’t want to leave their homes any more than absolutely necessary, for fear of catching COVID-19, to reduce spending. This tends to lead to reduced employment and reduced taxes paid to the government.
The whole system tends to unwind.
Is this simply the requirements of a Keynesian economic system? I think we may see an arrangement this winter of a post-Keynesian system that does not require 2% growth to exist. This will likely mean the end of the Great Society, so less or no social safety nets, significantly higher interest rates. Maybe we bring back corporal punishment and indentured servitude.
Or maybe that is the next step down, it may take 5 or 10 years for people to psychologically get to the point of accepting those changes as necessary.
Beutifil comment ctg as Always
Just notice this..Haven’t listen to David Stockman for a long time…after all he does tend to utter the same lines all the time, bit this one is very good on our current crisis. Unfortunately, the audio is not very good and it is difficult to hear.
He does make a good case that this lockdown does not make sense…at least to us peons
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C2r06XwDbyk
The full title of David Stockman’s talk is “Why the lockdown is stupid?”
We are trying to protect the 5% that is vulnerable to severe illness.
He describes trying to stop a virus which is very contagious and already spread widely as being similar to trying to cancel the law of gravity. It can’t be done, no matter what is done.
Ordering businesses to operate in an inefficient way, indefinitely, is a way to guarantee that these businesses cannot operate profitably.
Public health social planners came up with new, untested theories. Stockman thinks that Trump should have ignored Dr. Fauci.
Markets are now propped up by central banks. Stock markets would be much lower without the prop; bond prices would be much lower as well. This has gone into hyperdrive since March 15. Printing money and dropping it from helicopters cannot substitute for workers actually working. Bubbles will eventually come undone.
Now have $75 trillion in US debt; $250 trillion worldwide. Doesn’t know long this can continue. In uncharted water. People need to be in a capital preservation mode, rather than a risk-taking mode.
IMF bailout of world debt is very iffy.
Thanks Gail for the recap write up!😘
Oh, Nissan Motors thinks there may be a second virus wave and lockdown…not good
DETROIT/TOKYO (REUTERS) – Nissan Motor Co’s cash situation is “tough” as the coronavirus has sapped car sales, and the automaker must be vigilant in the coming months as a second wave of infections may add to liquidity issues, CEO Makoto Uchida told Reuters on Thursday…
“With the coronavirus situation, our cash liquidity is quite tough,” Uchida told Reuters in an video interview after the automaker announced its latest recovery plan, while adding that he believed the virus situation would improve from the third quarter.
So, we may have more of the same another Stimulus check coming
Will this Depression result I Was or Cooperation among Nations?
One of my favorite flicks is Warren Beatty’s movie REDS and his master stroke of inserting of the Witnesses cuts to testify of the era in which John Reed lived.
One Lady, sorry, can’t remember her name came out bluntly saying “Of course there was WAR and will be WAR, men enjoy battles and killing”. Perhaps we men get an endorphin high in lizard part of our brain that we can’t help ourselves to prepare for killing and bloodshed?
Recently read an article the reason for the massive beard growth of facial hair for men was to cushion any blunt hits to the face when fighting each other!
Back to the movie REDS…found this clip of Henry Miller and outstanding…described a lot of us here posting day in and day out, especially FAST EDDY!😜👍
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MXZwOQ2zmDE
So, don’t be surprised when the bombs fly…that’s what we invested in and it needs to be utilized
People like John Reed, by aiding the commies, contributed to the present mess since without commies no one would have given a crap about the third world.
Odd, isn’t it, the current United States Government is taking the Commies playbook and following it to the letter as we comment. Can’t wait for another government stimulus package! Sounds very Socialist to me, whatever!😳
REDS is a great flick.
We don’t have people like Reed anymore in the spotlight.
However, these id iots are plentiful:
“Conservative columnist Bret Stephens declared that it was an assault on “free speech” for liberals to criticize the way the New York Times portrays Nazis.”
I, myself, cannot judge John Reed or Commies because their age had a different set of challenges and mindset that were in play. Yes, Reds is a movie of historical significance and a fine production. All I can express is my gratitude of living mostly in trouble free times and probably for future humanity will be termed the Easy Peasy Era of Magical Life!😃
Black Lives Matter are planning protests all accross the US.
Will Antfa join the protests?
Regime Change protests have arrived to the US?
It’s getting crazy out there.
And when that inevitably results in a lot of property destruction and mindless violence, people will quickly lose interest and sentiment will shift back in favour of law and order.
The cycle cycles.
Last time it resulted in the sniper assassinations of five policemen.
The joggers are going ahead and burning down their own neighborhoods again…..and of course they will blame YT when they no longer have any stores to buy things from once these businesses move away and they will of course say it is “YT Supremacy”
More evidence that the joggers should have never been brought to the US and YT should have picked his own cotton.
Wonder if people know the average jogger IQ is 80-85, but yeah lets blame YT Supremacy.
What about the “food deserts”? No one can run a business where shoplifting, strongarming shopkeepers and armed robbery make it impossible.
But somehow Whole Foods should just go ahead and open up in the hood.
It will have to be customer places order. Staff fills order and customer pays. Then staff passes order through air lock type passage. Order placed and paid for o smart phone so no one can destroy the card reader. No glass wall just solid steel wall betwwen customers and staff with the one air lock passage.
“The joggers are going ahead and burning down their own neighborhoods again…”
One of the joys of Gail’s blog is that, because it debunks mainstream assumptions about infinite economic growth so well, it attracts commenters who have a general aversion to groupthink. This can make it a highly stimulating intellectual environment.
However, it can also make it tilt towards paranoia and, apparently, good old-fashioned bigotry.
Humans are tribal and racial discord, and indeed social discord, are only likely to get worse as the resource-constraints Gail writes about tighten. Can we be grown-up enough on OFW not to be the ones fanning the flames?
Examining media and mainstream narratives around race and race-relations is perhaps potentially edifying. Throwing around thinly disguised racial epithets is not.
Is the comment inaccurate? Of course not because the joggers are indeed burning down their own neighborhoods just as they have throughout history in the US.
So many want to deny reality and chalk it up to “bigotry” or “racism”.
You speak of debunking modern economics, yet you cannot even examine the scientific and very obvious differences between racial groups. How sad.
You all call yourselves intelligent, yet deny what is staring all of us in the face.
It is the *denigration* of people based purely on their race and the use of the racial slur, “joggers” to which I am objecting.
There is a huge difference between challenging received wisdom and being mean-spirited, Z.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/could-coronavirus-re-infection-be-possible-within-six-months-629575
‘COVID-19 immunity lasts only six months, reinfection possible – study’
“It was recently suggested that recovered individuals should receive a so‐called ‘immunity passport,’ which would allow them to relax social distancing measures,” the authors explained. “However, as protective immunity may be lost by six months post infection, the prospect of reaching functional herd immunity by natural infection seems very unlikely.”
Did you read that last part? Herd immunity unlikely. Not too much of a surprise as this virus is from the same family of viruses as the common cold.
My immunity is non existent.
Well…I just have to experience the collapse with fever delirium.
It sounds like this was a study of coronaviruses in general, since this one hasn’t been around very long. This one, in theory, might be better. We don’t know yet.
There was another study I saw that seemed to say that antibody levels sometimes didn’t rise very rapidly to a protective level. The study seemed to indicate that it took until 40 days after the symptoms started to get the antibody level to a consistently high level. This would also tend to keep herd immunity down.
If you let the virus rip through, you can get to short term herd immunity, which is what seems to have happened in European states where the new cases have fallen precipitously. However, the virus is likely endemic now, we will probably have COVID season to go along with flu season every year.