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.
Thanks for your wishes for my software company. Sure hope it will do well. We have to wait and see. Yes, I can still lead a comfortable life even if this business folds because I was a serial entrepreneur.
There is a big difference between “being employees” and “being an entrepreneur”. If you are an employee, it is difficult for the person to grasp the concept of how main street works. It is also difficult for them to be “aware” of the predicament. I am not surprised that many of us here on OFW are business owners. I am not surprised that a large portion of normies are wage earners. Only a fraction of the super politically correct normies are business owners (small/medium sized). Your business will not even get off if you are so politically correct.
I find an interesting pattern, perhaps you have already noticed them. In the Kubbler-Ross Grief Cycle. It applies to countries and general public as well.
Denial-Anger-Depression-Bargaining-Acceptance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
Jan/Feb 2020 – Denial (only Asians get it, not me)
Mar/Apr – Lockdown (pause)
May/June – Anger (Trade War, China is a problem, etc)
Coming next – Depression?
Can we even get pass depression?
FE – more things coming your way – No international flights in Thailand extended until late June (in a country where tourism is so important). India extends for another 2 weeks. What else coming?
The world is in a lockdown state of mind. Even the few places that have slightly loosened….
Depression- later this Summer or into Autumn, the tens of millions who will realize that their jobs are not coming back… or those who can’t go back to college… or their favorite activities are gone because the companies went under…
Bargaining- well, at least there is one full-time worker in my (extended) family, so even though there is mass starvation in other countries, maybe there’s hope to survive through Winter…
Acceptance- okay, made it through Winter alive, and there’s usually some food every day, so that’s not so bad…
No university in California until 2021.
The point about the Limits to Growth prediction is that what happens after the turning point is different than predicted in many aspects:
– pollution does not go away (think about the radiation)
– births do not rise (the fertility of the human species is declining)
– food becomes junk because of the depleted soil, pollution and the compromised hygiene
– services per capita do not go down because the self-repair and maintenance needs and the care for the disabled and the elderly keep growing
– industrial output per capita is no longer dependent on the number of the working humans, as it is carried out by robots and human production workers are eliminated
– the resources stop to be present when there is no energy to process them, which in turn means the population decline, i.e. you hit the wall that you can not break through as you do not have energy for it
When energy declines, all goes downhill, as it is the energy that allows us to go uphill.
yes, all must go downhill…
so the economy will reset…
there will be much less economic activity in subsystems that are not essential…
even essentials like food, as you say, the quality could get worse for the average person…
and/or not enough food and mass starvation and population decline…
but population is still going up about 200,000 per day…
that could change this year or 2021… time will tell…
My money is on a big economic stepdown, but not a full blown collapse. That said, it will be variable between countries. Fingers crossed that my home aka the “lucky country” (Australia) stays lucky.
The very scary pandemic has killed a monstrous 99 people here so far, vs. a normal death rate of ~3,050 per week.
We still have 3 working refineries, shit loads of farmland in OK-ish condition, which isn’t yet all owned by the Chinese and probably the world’s most draconian anti-refugee policy.
So we can cheerfully say, you lot can all get f–d, we’re OK . . . for now at least.
Thanks to immigration, the population of Sydney increased by one million over the last ten years. I wonder if they will maintain that rate. Going to be hard to run a real estate-based economy without it.
“My money is on a big economic stepdown, but not a full blown collapse. That said, it will be variable between countries.”
I agree… all govs/CBs/billionaires/elites will be fightting like crazzzy to keep IC from collapsing 100%… it’s clearly in their selfish interests to keep some bAU going…
variable between countries? yes, definitely…
the peripheral countries (smaller weaker), fair or unfair, will be dropping sooner and deeper… the “lucky” Core probably will remain in a bAU phase for a while longer…
the big question… is Australia peripheral or core?
I hope you’re feeling “lucky”…
😉
Hmm, peripheral export-based economy with greatly deteriorated agricultural land and unsustainable cities about to get truly screwed over by climate-change and very poor forest management? Oh, but they are ‘lucky’, so that must be wrong.
Australia has a big area, but it doesn’t really make everything it needs. I know vehicles are one thing is doesn’t make. https://www.globalfleet.com/en/manufacturers/asia-pacific/analysis/end-car-manufacturing-australia
Australia’s population is much smaller than a person might expect, given the big area on the map. Australia’s population is only about 25 million. In comparison, the population of Texas is about 29 million; the population of California is about 40 million. Yemen’s population is about 29 million. The Island of Madagascar has a population of about 28 million. The population of UK is about 67 million.
“10 Numbers That Show The U.S. Has Fallen Into A Horrifying Economic Depression”
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-numbers-that-show-the-u-s-has-fallen-into-a-horrifying-economic-depression
Wow! The first on the list is,
“The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now projecting that U.S. GDP will shrink by 42.8 percent during the second quarter.”
My goodness gracious! This is incredible.
It is … and I am astounded that we are still alive….
I need to get my mind around the situation — pretty much every industry is into massive contraction — huge numbers of people are out of work… I would have thought this would result in instant collapse
However the CBs prop it all up — and pay people not to work — how long can they levitate?
Does it all go back to cheap to produce oil? So long as there is enough of it to keep essential industries alive — we stagger on?
Fellow Doomers, Followers of His High Almighty Der Fast Fuerher Eddy, and other such Misguided Lost Souls….we were wrong AGAIN!
Stock market live Monday: Dow up 900, Moderna positive vaccine data, Powell says ‘no limit
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/stock-market-today-live.html
He thought the coronavirus was ‘a fake crisis.’ Then he contracted it.
Janelle Griffith
May 18, 2020, 12:32 PM EDT
Florida man who thought the coronavirus was “a fake crisis” has changed his mind after he and his wife contracted COVID-19.
Brian Hitchens, a rideshare driver who lives in Jupiter, downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus in Facebook posts in March and April.
“I’m honoring what our government says to do during this epidemic but I do not fear this virus because I know that my God is bigger than this Virus will ever be,” he wrote in a post on April 2. “Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
In mid-April, Hitchens, 46, began documenting his and his wife’s health on Facebook.
“Been home sick for over a week. Both my wife and I home sick,” he wrote in a post on April 18. “I’ve got no energy and all I want to do is sleep.”
https://news.yahoo.com/thought-coronavirus-fake-crisis-then-163213420.html
Oil is back
China’s Oil Demand Rebounds To Pre-Coronavirus Levels
By Tsvetana Paraskova – May 18, 2020, 11:00 AM CDT
Oil demand in the world’s top oil importer, China, has rebounded to pre-coronavirus levels, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing sources with inside knowledge of China’s energy sector.
China was the first to go into lockdown after the COVID-19 virus emerged in Wuhan, but it was also the first country to exit lockdown. Demand for oil and fuels has been rising over the past month as people return to commuting to work, preferring their own vehicles to public transportation.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, China’s gasoline and diesel consumption are already back to the pre-virus levels—a bullish sign for the oil market, which is looking at China for clues about when demand in the rest of the world could return to some form of normality.
Now what my Doomers gloomers!?
“Fellow Doomers, Followers of His High Almighty Der Fast Fuerrrher Eddy, and other such Misguided Lost Souls….we were wrong AGAIN!”
yes, AGAIN!
“Now what my Doomers gloomers!?”
yes, China was/is ahead of the curve on every stage of this… they were first to get the (mild) epidemic, first to lockdown, and first to try to reopen…
they are also the first to see that even when production begins to ramp up, there is almost no ramping up of demand…
now what?
massive drop in economic activity in Q2, followed by tiny growth in Q3 forward…
We shall see, we shall see, said the blind man in uncharted waters
We’ll all be richer than Croesus soon, and no one will need to work, or make stuff.
https://youtu.be/O1hCLBTD5RM
https://static.businessinsider.com/image/56cf1a676e97c686008b98b0-1200/image.jpg
Good one…I lvs Paper…the more the better….keep it rolling and rolling…
BAU forever…whatever it takes until I stop breathing that is and goes to the Spirit in the Sky
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-cXrEPNvRO8
Best riff ever!
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/florida-man-who-downplayed-coronavirus-as-fake-crisis-gets-infected-warns-others-after-ending-up-in-icu-with-wife/
‘Florida man who downplayed coronavirus as ‘fake crisis’ gets infected, warns others after ending up in ICU with wife’
“Many people still think that the Coronavirus is a fake crisis which at one time I did too and not that I thought it wasn’t a real virus going around but at one time I felt that it was blown out of proportion and it wasn’t that serious,” Brian Hitchens wrote in a lengthy Facebook post last Tuesday. Hitchens said he continued to downplay the pandemic until he began feeling sick and couldn’t work anymore, KTLA sister station KRON reported Monday. Just days after he became sick, Hitchens said his wife also started feeling sick, went to a hospital and was told to self-quarantine.
Their conditions worsened, and they were admitted into a local medical center.
“They admitted us right away, and we both went to ICU. I started feeling better within a few days, but my wife got worse to the point where they sedated her and put her on the ventilator,” he said.
1. Viruses exist. The flu exists. Sometimes people get sick. This is news?
2. How do we know that any media story is true? So may of them are proven to be outright lies.
From his online photos, Brian looks well on the way to being morbidly obese. In so doing, he is playing Russian Roulette with his health. I know it can be tough to keep slim when you work as a taxi driver. But becoming well overweight and middle aged is a recipe for getting sick with diabetes, hypertension, cancer, heart disease, all the usual lifestyle diseases, in fact.
Perhaps getting Covid-19 will be a life-saver for Brian, if he uses this shock to kickstart his way to a slimmer, healthier future.
https://i0.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/comp-1589895844.png?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=644%2C362&ssl=1
Gail,
Thanks for this. I also think that the whole chain reaction that has been started by the pandemic and by the response to the pandemic of governments around the world could well tip the world over the edge and right into a downhill trajectory. I have also just written about this same topic here:
The coronavirus and the fate of industrial civilization
https://paularbair.wordpress.com/2020/05/16/the-coronavirus-and-the-fate-of-industrial-civilization/
Civilizations come and go. All of them run through a cycle of birth, development, growth, plateau, decline and then fall – and that’s basically what human history is about. It is somewhat unfortunate for all of us to be living right when our own civilization – the largest, most complex, most successful yet most unsustainable one that ever was – seems to be entering its decline phase. Yet it’s probably better to enter and navigate the tunnel ahead of us with eyes wide open than with erroneous beliefs and expectations – and your work over the years has definitely been eye-opening for many of us. So thank you again and please keep it up!
“It is somewhat unfortunate for all of us to be living right when our own civilization – the largest, most complex, most successful yet most unsustainable one that ever was – seems to be entering its decline phase.”
to me, 60+ years old, it’s been a great ride, and now we are in an exciting new phase…
we get to see if IC really will collapse under the weight of an extreme crisis… not the virus, but the irrrrational-lockdown-crisis…
as I have said elsewhere, it’s The Big Test…
I’m looking forward to a slight recovery from the massive economic decline in Q2… yes, we’re in that “decline phase”, but most of the story still remains unwritten…
Or, to paraphrase from the article, kick the can one more, and probably last, time?
I couldn’t imagine what that world would look like, after a while. Is it realistic that U.S. stocks, for example, are now more “valuable” than they were this time last year?
When something like the U.S. retail sector looks like this?
https://static.businessinsider.sg/2020/04/04/5e97170ab3b0925f515c6966.png
Thanks for the link to your article. One thing you say is,
“I don’t think that any advanced society will ever choose to decomplexify voluntarily.”
Yet that is precisely what economies seem to be doing, during lockdowns. They are using less resources. The goods and services available are much more limited. Debt, which has been put into place, is pushed toward the direction of default.
It is an extraordinarily strange phenomena, pushed along believe that we can be safe from COVID-19 if we only hide inside.
Someone has said that COVID-19 is a marathon, not a sprint. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. We now have a huge number of countries with rapidly rising infection rates. (You can make charts using this site http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ ) These are the poorer countries. Many of them are trying lockdowns as well, with a disastrous impact on affordability of food supply for the poorer members of their economies. I wonder if this will this really be where the biggest impact of the virus will be felt.
10 years of openly manipulating bat corona viruses at the bSl4 lab. Do you think they might have done some work on a vaccine? Now it becomes a vaccine beauty contest with western big pharma. Theres only one way to be sure. Mandatory vaccines foe everyone from all manufacturers. We can all breath a sigh of relief as we get injected in each arm and buttock.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/world/2020/05/18/china-will-make-virus-vaccine-available-public-good-xi-says/111794782/
I am sure that China is very interested in everyone’s welfare!
My plan is to tell them to stuff their vaccine . . . .
Not sure what it will mean for my future employment, travel.
Hint:
Or health
Or my health if you are not protected.
But if you want to be a selfish (—), what can I do?
People say this all the time. If you have taken the vaccine, and you have, and assuming it works, how could him not taking it affect you?
Kim as usual hits the nail on the head. If you allow the vaccine to be injected into your body supposedly you are safe. If so how can anyone who has not allowed the vaccine to be injected into their body make you unsafe? So why mandatory vaccination? Its clear to me that the vaccination is something else other than medicine.
vaccination as it is presented represents a commonality involved in the human condition. It is clear that we need to embrace our commonality yet to make it mandatory perverts that act. The medium is the message. The message is that all that our species is is tyranny and force not one of community. The message works against the basic change of community that is much needed. If community is forced it destroys community. Those that force community do it from a arrogant position. Their arrogance demonstrates separation not communion.
“If you allow the vaccine to be injected into your body supposedly you are safe. If so how can anyone who has not allowed the vaccine to be injected into their body make you unsafe?”
Vaccines do not make 100% of people 100% immune. The flu shot, for example, is first of all a best guess of the most likely strains and variants of the virus to be spreading this season. If they guess right, about 60% of the people who get the shot will be immune for a few months. 40% of the people will have some lower level of increased resistance, down to 5 or 10% who may get no benefit at all.
Duncan as always sets the tone of our neo left friends. Do not question. Sorry submitting my body for virus rape is not “protection”. Duncan are you still submitting that article authored by someone that worked hand and hand with Shi as proof the virus is absolutely not a product of the lab? Oh thats right mere mortals could possibly comprehend the brilliance of the our neo left friends therefore must obey whatever horse poop they spout unconditionally. Thank you Duncan for always demonstrating that the neo left is completely disrespectful of civil liberties and condescending to the “people” that they pretend to represent.
There’s no vaccination against neo-leftism unfortunately. And if you happen to catch this malady, chances are it will fry, boil or scramble your brain. Fortunately though, most people will build up immunity simply by interacting with neo-leftists. As they lecture you—it’s the only form of verbal intercourse they are capable of—most listeners eventually notice the breaks in their chains of logic, their lack of compassion and humanity, and their smug self-satisfaction at always being right, the combination of which is usually enough to keep the infection of neo-leftism from spreading very far. Like other childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and chickenpox, a mild form of neo-leftism tends to emerge in a mild form in youngsters, commonly affecting teenagers, but in most cases it burns itself out within a few years. Adults are rarely affected unless they work in college liberal arts departments, which are pools of contagion where it festers like untreated malaria, with similar effects on the brain.
This is the obfuscation. The vaccinated person says that you are a threat to their health if you do not get vaccinated. Well, if they are vaccinated and if the vaccine is truly effective, then they should be perfectly fine and safe, even if you are unvaccinated and running around them with a supposed bug.
It is clearly a monkey do, so you must do also campaign. Try to psycologically condition everyone to do so.
Not everyone gets immunity from a vaccine, and not everyone keeps the immunity long term. So let’s say 50-50 you become immune and 50-50 whether it wears off after a few months or last for a lifetime. Now, you need around 60% of the population immune at any given time to keep the r0 of the virus below 1.
Nobody knows whether a particular vaccine will give them immunity to a disease or not, or whether it will make them sick or give them a disabling chronic disease down the line.
What’s the upside of vaccination that balances the downsides? Are you proposing that the individual’s fundamental human right to be sovereign over their own mind and body should be swept aside on the basis of some statistical trade off between various probabilities that can only be guessed at?
Let’s say this and let’s say that? Is that the best you can do as an argument for hypodermic rape—the injection of chemically and biologically active substances into people’s bodies that neither the recipient nor the person giving the injection knows the precise contents of?
The recipient has to trust the doctor or nurse, who have to trust the vaccine maker that the particular mix of stuff in the particular syringe being used for the particular jab is harmless and wholesome? That’s quite a leap of faith there, isn’t it?
First, I am not arguing for or against vaccines, I’m just trying to explain the reasoning as best as I can see it why mandatory vaccines are a policy that some people believe in.
You are arguing as an individualist. If you are arguing against a collectivist who holds utilitarian beliefs and is certain that mandatory vaccines are for the greater good, your argument is completely irrelevant. They don’t care about your supposed individual rights and freedoms.
This already happens all the time. The doctors and nurses have such faith in the vaccines and other shots that many have never even read the inserts that come with the shot that explains the risks and side effects. They have no idea what to do when a rare but known side effect occurs after injecting someone, even though it is all clearly explained in the instruction manual.
You can run to the front of the line for an untested, rushed vaccine. As others have said, since you’re vaccinated you’ll be fine…
You can’t do it unless you have a critical mass of public opinion on your side. Otherwise, you just don’t say no to the boots and the guns.
How can an individual say no to state power?
Just by saying no. Its that simple. They want willing slaves. If it is forced the mark is not accepted voluntarily. No bargain has been made. they will deny the benefits of what they control to those that refuse. If those that refuse take the mark for those benefits than they have sold their soul. If they physically force the mark then it no longer demonstrates submission, no bargain has been made.
Every vaccine story in the MSM…. has been crafted by the CDP PR team… and it is a big team with an enormous budget
Interestingly, in Portugal, homicide attempts increased between March 2 and April 26, compared to the same period last year.
Crowding and confinement, in rats as in people, increases violence.
“Statistics collected by the Judiciary Police, a criminal police body responsible for investigating this type of crime, show that while in 2019 there were 30 homicide attempts in the period in question, this year there were 48 – which means an increase of 60 %. The number of homicides actually consumed also increased, but by a percentage of only 20%, from 15 to 18 deaths.”
https://www.publico.pt/2020/04/29/sociedade/noticia/tentativas-homicidio-disparam-durante-confinamento-1914492
I read that the number of divorce filings in China went up after the lockdown ended. I am not sure that there is really good data behind this, though. oo much togetherness and too much tension.
#CoronaDivorce is trending in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25yJFzx8JA
“If kindness and comfort are, as I suspect, the results of an energy surplus, then, as the supply contracts, we could be expected to start fighting once again like cats in a sack.”
—George Monbiot
I know that homicide rates have historically been a whole lot higher than they are now. There are studies of this. I believe they include deaths from war.
If we include babies killed intentionally because the parents couldn’t afford to raise the extra children (often girls), it would rise further.
Didn’t convents in the middle ages take care of unwanted children? As I recall they were placed on a shelf set into a wall, when the parents left, the shelf was rotated and the child disappeared into the convent, hence I suppose the name “foundlings.”
There is a link below into what appears to be a history of this practice. It is difficult to know what happened behind the walls. When I was young in my home town there were two convents that I remember, both enclosed by walls. It was in the early fifties a privacy respected by all concerned and I suspect many who passed by didn’t even know what was behind the walls. Those within had separated themselves from the secular world, some here given the vows of piety and poverty might even say they had collapsed, but from what I gather, none were eating popcorn.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0035.001/–lost-but-not-yet-found-medieval-foundlings-and-their-care?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Dennis L.
Nuns in Spain are famous for making delicious cakes, derived from Arab recipes: honey, almonds, eggs are the base. I’m sure they get a few themselves.
An aunt of mine is a magician with that sort of thing. Few things in life more delicious than an almond olive-oil torta glazed with honey, and I’m using lock-down time to learn toke them.
we owe them for pretzels, as well.
Ah, tonka cakes. A sweet memory of Dar al-Islam
Twins and other multiple births are difficult for a mother to raise. I know that in Madagascar, the tradition was for the mother to pick out only the strongest baby in a multiple birth, and nurse that one. Having nuns raise the other twin would serve a useful purpose, if they could figure out formula for the baby.
The first thing I have read from Monbid.iot that makes sense (I have to admit .. I don’t generally read him … only what gets regurgitated on OFW)
The situation we are in, is collapsed demand, not supply. If demand is cut in half, it could take 40 years to grow back to 2019 levels of consumption.
“China has imposed an extraordinary tariff on Australian barley exports as apparent punishment for Scott Morrison’s push for a coronavirus inquiry…
“After weeks of threatening to boycott the meat and barley industries and restrict travel and foreign education opportunities, China on Monday announced a 80.5 per cent levy on barley exports starting May 19.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8331081/China-imposes-80-cent-tariff-Australia-amid-coronavirus-probe-demands.html
“Despite CPI growth, China’s greater risk remains low demand and deflation as the government seeks to speed up production before foreign markets recover and supply chains are restored.
“Figures released Friday suggest that production is picking up speed while consumption continues to lag behind… the spikes in pork prices and CPI numbers have tended to mask weaker demand as a result of the epidemic.”
https://www.eurasiareview.com/18052020-chinas-economic-recovery-faces-deflation-risk-analysis/
China must have a massive budget for it’s PR…. but they have a tough job with this lie… they better repeat it a thousand times to get people to buy into the recovery bs
Who will be the second country to opt out of this game? Sweden never opted in so they are number one. Number two?
I am not certain that Japan ever really opted into the game.
One week average reported deaths are way down, in many, many countries. It becomes clear that the stories about the deaths would grow by a factor of 1.35 per week, indefinitely, were greatly exaggerated.
This is a chart of one week average reported COVID-19 Death counts for Belgium, United Kingdom, Sweden, United States, and Japan. All of the average counts are down. Japan never got high enough to make it over the level of the x-axis.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/sweden-belgium-uk-united-states-one-week-new-deaths-may-17.png
Japan declared a state of emergency, but the government did not force anybody to close. The results are pretty much identical though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzIAFRuoDxM
Several times during the past two months, we in Japan have been “strongly requested” to cooperate with various forms of “self-restraint” in the interest of reducing instances of close contact with others by 70 to 80% to slow the spread of the virus.
An English neologism that has made it into the Japanese language this year is “social distance”. When queuing up at the supermarket, customers stand a meter apart as indicated by the lines on the floor. And nobody ever tries to cut in. Masks are not mandatory, but almost everyone now wears one in public.
When the Japanese people receive a strong request from the authorities, couched in tones of appreciation and gratitude, they find it very difficult to resist complying. The culture of bloody mindedness never really set up shop here.
“For Lease”: The Commercial Real Estate Apocalypse In Photos (USA)
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/shocking-photo-reveals-coming-collapse-commercial-real-estate
“The latest TREPP remittance data compiled by Morgan Stanley showed a quarter of all commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) could be on the verge of default.”
A coalition of 116 nations want to probe into Sars-Cov-2 origins.
What on earth will they find?
A bat virus collected in Yunnan in 2013, brought to the Wuhan lab, today found with an added sequence?
https://amp.sbs.com.au/v1/article/coalition-of-62-countries-back-australia-s-push-for-covid-19-pandemic-probe/8ba9681a-2b09-4ef8-bfde-8756e8fb0779?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true
Do you think the MSM is ever going to tell you the truth about how Covid started?
Talking is to humans, is what sh*tting is to ducks.
Just asked a courier what sort of stuff he’s delivering these days, as he said he was fully booked and looked exhausted.
Quite a lot of food and drink -maybe side-stepping the supermarket restrictions in place here? – lots of gardening stuff and – to my surprise – clothes!
Mrs Fast clearly has some soul-mates shopping away for fashion in Britain, even when there is nowhere to go and no-one new to impress.
I’m sure this will have been observed among imprisoned animals in some experiment, the senseless repetition of learned behaviour……..
“both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy”
When you mention dissipative structures, … The concept resonates in me as a core concept.
Fun fact, I’ve read that red giants provide enough energy, have a large enough entropy gradient,
and enough raw material to potentially out-compute a billion Earth-like planets spinning around suns. Arguably, we must reckon our little blue marble part and parcel, as an eddy with local potentials.
Our clever dissipation of potentials entails further a downstream distributions.
There our accretions are building new potentials wherever they settle by constraint. Given sufficient time and numbers any congregation will emerge a force that will not be denied. Whatever the constraints may be, in time they will yield to the growing pressure, allowing for the further dissipation, organized, wily and thirsty structures, wanting for nothing but to combine and recombine locally, unwinding potentials, exploring the space of things to become whenever and wherever possible. Our sciences and humanities are but extended expressions of this universal evolution. I imagine we humans are unwitting conduits, propagating the sun’s unwinding potentials. In all our days we are inventing ways to integrate and order the dissipation of more and more energy faster and faster. Why? That’s another good puzzle.
To my point if economies are dissipative constructs, In this light , our economies are about engineering the external constraints that our actions can influence. I beg our leaders reconsider the constraints that we integrate with the freedoms we explore. If our goal is survival here on Earth, I am not alone in my belief that our future depends on a healthy ecosphere. I am thinking we will need to extricate and reintegrate those economic trappings and dross that now litter the landscape growing in ways contrary to biospheres natural systems tendencies. Our practical freedoms and constraints did yield our turning away from natural ecology towards an expanding synthetic culture with our techno-bits and baubles that down stream we discard, potent accretions that eventually we must learn to live with. I hope we will soon reassess our strategy for attaining the stated goal of human “flourishing”, aiming instead to organize so that the goal-stated contributes to the maintenance of the system disposed to attain that goal stated, not merely some arbitrary physical state of things just because we can. We can realign this restless flux of opposing forces, of our freedoms and constraints, our rights and responsibilities, and guide our actions to yield potentials in support of our ecosphere, our foundational systems ecologies.
a human neuron contemplating the thoughts of its brain
…or a human brain contemplating the purposes of Nature. O insanae et vanae curae.
The irony is that the “destruction of habitat” has in fact created the future we are now living, where both princes and paupers are able to partake in philosophical discussion about our existence. If it weren’t for all the exploitations of the natural world, most people would live in dire conditions by todays standards.
You sound like you’ve read Prigogine, Bertalanffey, Schrodinger, Swenson, etc.
As we know, it is the job of any self organizing system to maximize global entropy, and our continual progress towards increasing “standard of living” is the increase of the per capita entropy production by a system. The issue, as gail has pointed out is that with complex systems, the relationship between source decay and the evolution wrt time of the dissipative structure and all of its constituent parts are not easy to understand, and even harder to map out over large temporal and spatial domains. Our goal is ultimately to act in such a way as to maintain the structure at an ever-growing clip, with increasing rates of per capita entropy production via continually parlaying our growth into finding bigger and better sources. This is where Swenson comes in. He speaks of autocatakinetic systems, which fundamentally are pathfinding mechanisms. We needed to focus our civilization’s efforts towards mapping out the optimal path for continuing the game of maximizing entropy production over the global domain (i.e. the whole universe). We failed. I cant say when or who exactly is at fault, but there are a few key points in the past few hundred years that–had they gone the other way– we would be in a very different position. I’m not of the mind that the cycle of growth and collapse is inevitable. By definition, it’s only inveitable when the system chooses the wrong path as we have time and time again. We are like a dumb forest fire quickly burning itself out even despite the presence of an abundance of dry fuel right over the hill. We hoped assjmed that an errant wind might carry us over the hill instead of trying to intelligently get there ourselves. The only difference is that oil probably doesn’t grow as quickly as trees, so the chances of us ever getting another shot are pretty slim.
I think you’ll like these:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1238/Physica.Regular.070a00212/meta
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960077908003548
A system that maximises entropy is certain to collapse. The only way to avoid collapse is to employ techniques that do productive work without increasing entropy. A mediaeval windmill, for example, did exactly that: it harnessed wind power to do useful work, but without the windmill the same wind would have been dissipated shaking trees.
And yes, it was indeed Prigogine that introduced me to what I now call “zero entropy technology”. Its basis is the recognition that our environment is an open system, within which entropy is a flow, not a store. The rest follows.
I think I’ve failed to adequately communicate my thoughts… The universe is effectively a closed system and as such all systems contained inside, and especially a system like the earth, will always produce entropy. And entropy producing systems will always collapse…EVENTUALLY. Our mandate is to keep the game running in such a way that we can keep it running so that we can… you get the point. Hurricanes, forest fires, and whirlpools are born, live, and die according to the same rules. When they can no longer produce entropy they die. Or more specifically when the rate of entropy production falls below the lower bound of allowed efficiency the thermodynamic process stops. The reason a hurricane forms or a forest fire starts is because the processes are the most efficient way to reduce the underlying gradients. We are different from hurricanes and forest fires in that we have the ability to follow much more circuitous paths in the process of gradient reduction. I.e. we can search for maxima over a much broader domain. A hurricane or forest fire will only ever move towards the local maxima. It can’t conceive of a “better place to be” i.e. the fresh fuel over the hill. We or our rulers have forsaken our divine faculties and the world that could be for the flames of passion. We have chosen to invest much time and energy into endless frivolity. The optimal future that many in my generation imagine is a VR simulation world with all of the best feelings on tap with no real consideration of how it would even be possible to harness the energy to do so or that it makes no sense at all to suggest that your POV could ever be situated in silica.
I first came across the idea of human beings as evolved to reduce gradients in this paper by the late Dr. Price, Energy and Human Evolution. Human beings are seen as having evolved in the service of entropy:
Extract: Within an evolutionary wink, petroleum and natural gas were also being exploited, and Homo sapiens had begun to dissipate the rich deposits of organic energy that had been accumulating since the beginning of life. If the slow accretion of these deposits in the face of universal entropy can be likened to the buildup of water behind a dam, then with the appearance of a species capable of dissipating that energy, the dam burst.
Just imagine how much more gradient we can exploit if we can get breeder reactors -> neutronic fusion -> aneutronic fusion -> matter/antimatter annihilation or black hole farming.
Or unicorn farts?
https://www.quotemaster.org/images/s_94/944e48ea12bd1406c3cb13cf8267c76c.jpg
What energy harnessing are you worried about? VR compared to flying across the planet on a jet and then spending two weeks on a cruise ship is practically negligible. Compared to driving 30 minutes each way to and from a job driving a 1-tonne gasoline car or 2-tonne electric car with one person in it at 65 mph, its a drop in the bucket.
Matthew,
Technical infeasabilities aside, I am not actually worried about the energy consumption per capita of a VR utopia. That’s all well and good. The issue is that in choosing to take the route wherein most of the population is confined to a virtual existence, we are assuming our current energy source is sufficient to last indefinitely. We decide to give up on the perpetual parlaying to the next bigger and better source. It means choosing a degeberate path of certain extinction for temporary feelies.
If we want the system to keep on keeping on, we have to continuallu parlay the source we have into either discovering/developing or traveling to a better source. Any other decision is to choose extinction with a probability of 1.
Why do we need 90 to 99% of the population to unlock new energy supplies? Does it matter what distribution of energy consumption we have? Like, why not have 1 percent of the population have control and consumption of 99% of the energy, and leave the masses to be cyber serfs that produce a bit of useful production, all their own food and heat needs, their own housing, and spend their free time in cyberspace?
I think it would be better than using so much energy on cruise ships, travel, tourism, commuting to work, having several thousand square foot mcmansions.
Basically, the reason your scenario doesn’t work is because electricity is one of the first things to go. Cyberspace is dependent on electricity. Electricity is now failing because of wholesale prices that are too low. This is the same problem as oil has. Too many people thought that we were “running out of oil.” Instead, society was becoming too complex, and this is leading to too much wage and wealth disparity. The economy has depended too much on high tech solutions, and indirectly, this leads to wage disparity that brings commodity prices (including electricity prices) too low.
Wind and solar, plus the adaptions that are needed to make wind and solar actually work in the grid, are among the highest tech adaptations we have. As more and more wind and solar are added, and other forms of electricity (nuclear, coal, and natural gas) are pushed out by low prices, the whole system tends toward failure.
The only reason wind and solar are doing anything, is government subsidies. If this crisis is serious enough to smash those subsidies, we’ll probably see coal make a comeback. This is a political problem, not a physics issue. It was created for ideological reasons, and/or to line some pockets with other people’s money.
Just hauled down Black Mirror – check out S1 S2…. it’s a pretty fkkkkedup… people peddle to create electricity to power gadgets… the goal is to get your break in an American Idol thingy… or get chosen to be a por n star….
It will make you happy that we are on the verge of extinction….
The thing is, the lefties would probably buy into it and it could be a useful means of controlling up to a third of the population. Look at how salty they got about Planet of the Humans. Lots of true believers out there. Just run a coal plant outside, hide the smog and cooling tower, and let the lefties think the peddle power is running their whole city.
Hello eddy. I’m familiar. 15 million merits hits a little too close to home: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606
The sequence added to the spike protein to make a bat virus infectious to humans.
No other “mutations” can be seen.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYS2L23VAAInkGI?format=jpg&name=medium
Sars-Cov-2 and the bat virus are otherwise identical.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYRC9MHU8AEfKGl?format=jpg&name=medium
The above is work done by Horace R. Drew who did research on DNA in Cambridge.
Today is has gone “nuts” and is now into UFO and Crop Circle “research”.
https://wiki.naturalphilosophy.org/index.php?title=Horace_R_Drew
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We’re in the first depression of our lifetimes: Eurasia Group’s Bremmer
CNBC’s Kelly Evans discusses the world economy amid the global coronavirus pandemic with Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group.
Italy etc are yesterdays news, MSM have moved on and are now shouting “Wolf!” about Brazil. 16000 dead – the health service is collapsing!
How many people in Brazil? 212 000 00. Mortality? 0.65 %. On average, how many dead in a year? In a day?
I’m sick and tired of this hype, what can one do to keep afloat in this sea of garbage info?
Look for the humour in the ocean of crap.
For instance, today The Guardian envisages a ‘Green Recovery’ and the ‘Greening of the world’s airline industry’.
You can weep, or you can laugh – the latter is the better option in times like these.
“Look for the humour in the ocean of crap”
Such as the Stock Market is up over 800pts, well on it’s way to 24,500 on the Dow
The Guardian’s role is to appeal to the environmental crowd… nothing more.
The purpose of headlines like that is to convince that herd of cattle that there is hope…. that the future is green.
Once one realizes that … this is all like water off a duck’s back…. or white noise….
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/18/11/28513406-8330355-The_red_pill_and_blue_pill_is_a_popular_meme_representing_a_choi-a-12_1589797847703.jpg
Herakleitos of Ephesus was called “the weeping philosopher” because he wept at the follies of mankind. Demokritos of Abdera was called “the laughing philosopher”, because he laughed at the follies of mankind.
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
(William Johnson Cory, 1823 to 1892)
thank you for that verse Robert, it reminded me so much of a dear friend who died before his time
And my all-time favourite…as some of us watch as the El d er s attempt to prevent the anarchy and blood-dimmed tide being loosed on the world…. interesting that Yeats was commenting on the same atrocities that lead to Freud’s thesis on the true nature of man (a species he despised)
The Second Coming
W. B. Yeats – 1865-1939
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I’m not a huge fan of Yeats, but the “The Second Comig” is easily one of the greatest poems of XX century.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.”
It was lines like this that made me fall in love with that elusive and synthetical way of communicating called poetry.
it’s the Doomsday Anthem.
Someone needs to put some metal to that … like this
‘Collapse’ has got to be one of the most overused and misused words at the moment. BBC on the same topic:
Coronavirus: Hospitals in Brazil’s São Paulo ‘near collapse’
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/05/13/understanding-our-pandemic-economy-predicament/
‘Collapse’ to me implies something along the lines of cease-to-exist. I doubt the Brazilian health system is about to cease to exist. But it makes for eye-catching headlines.
Collapse can also mean a “sharp decline”. Collapse in world trade, collapse in the stock market, collapse in auto sales, collapse in durable good sales. None of that implies cease to exist.
Exactly. And, in civilizational terms, ‘the removal of a layer of complexity’.
The other MSM abuse of the language that annoys is ‘deadly’. Frightening, but vague.
You have a point. For years the mainstream media (in the UK) have referred to a ‘collapse’ in oil prices, when they fell by a dollar or two (say from $60/barrel to $58.5/barrel). So in fact, collapse can mean any sort of decline, small as you like.
Then there is Zero Hedge… a 1% drop in any index… is a Collapse 🙂
I’ve noticed they are more prone to alliteration: stocks either surge and soar, or they slump and stumble.
I cannot recommend this highly enough … wasn’t there a teevee show where the guy exposed the magician’s tricks?
This is similar https://www.audible.com/pd/Propaganda-Audiobook/B0741R8RD8
Words like collapse – mutation etc… are used to inspire fear…. on purpose
This is a book from 1928. The blurb says, “His 1928 bombshell, Propaganda, lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science, and education.”
He did understand what works
Imagine how the control mechanisms have evolved and improved since then….
I need to watch Madmen again — it would be the third time through….
Over 100 Million in China’s Northeast Face Renewed Lockdown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/over-100-million-in-china-s-northeast-thrown-back-under-lockdown?srnd=premium-asia
Indonesia Rules Out Easing Lockdowns Anytime Soon as Cases Spike
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/indonesia-rules-out-easing-lockdowns-anytime-soon-as-cases-spike?srnd=premium-asia
I was in town today. All of the shops ate choked with people. They are shopping for the Hari Raya festival (the end of Ramadan and a time of gift-exchanges). It is almost like there is no lockdown at all.
“A study led by Flinders University vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky in Australia reveals that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, is optimized for penetration into human cells vs. animal cells – undermining the theory that it naturally evolved in animals before jumping to humans, according to LifeSiteNews’ Matthew Cullinan Hoffman. Petrovsky says that the results, which are not peer-reviewed, suggest “a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention.” The authors of the study, led by vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University in Australia, used a version of the novel coronavirus collected in the earliest days of the outbreak and applied computer models to test its capacity to bind to certain cell receptor enzymes, called “ACE2,” that allow the virus to infect human and animal cells to varying degrees of efficacy. They tested the propensity of the COVID-19 virus’s spike protein, which it uses to enter cells, to bind to the human type of ACE2 as well as to many different animal versions of ACE2, and found that the novel coronavirus most powerfully binds with human ACE2, and with variously lesser degrees of effectiveness with animal versions of the receptor. According to the study’s authors, this implies that the virus that causes COVID-19 did not come from an animal intermediary, but became specialized for human cell penetration by living previously in human cells, quite possibly in a laboratory. -LifeSiteNews”
Quite possibly in an E.T laboratory.
“A study led by Flinders University vaccine researcher Nikolai Petrovsky in Australia reveals that SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, is optimized for penetration into human cells vs. animal cells …”
Gee, what a surprise! It infects us because it evolved the ability to infect us. Since we are the largest biomass of potential prey on the planet, why is this even a research project? Next week: why are our legs optimised so that they reach exactly to the ground?
How would a thing that had never infected a human before, optimize its evolution for infecting humans?
Simple answer: it didn’t, and that word “optimise” is Petrovsky’s, not mine. The mutations were random, but the subsequent selection was not. And it happened that one of those mutations was favourable to the virus. They may have been millions that weren’t; but one was enough. But that one mutation succeeded because we had made ourselves a near ideal prey.
https://harvardtothebighouse.com/2020/01/31/logistical-and-technical-analysis-of-the-origins-of-the-wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov/
It has apparently been a common practice to—essentially—”farm” viruses via “serial passage” through generations of ferrets to hone in on ones with the characteristics they like. That’s why some virologists like the one on Joe Rogan’s show are able say with a straight face that the Wuhan virus was “not man-made”.
Why is this a research project? Why is *anything* a research project? Gotta break down them gradients!
To Matthew Krajcik: in the above blog post, it’s mentioned how ferrets are chosen because they reproduce quickly but also have the types of receptors in the lungs which are very similar to those in humans. So if it affects a ferret, chances are it will affect a human. That’s how they have “optimized its evolution”.
I agree that Covid-19 might be a tipping point. Seems as if Peakoil could finally happen officially, despite all measuring and calculating tricks.
It took the Roman Reich 300 years to fall, though. I doubt that their ‘energy resource’ – slaves – were more durable.
The Austrian President van der Bellen has said recently, he hopes ‘liberal democracy’ could survive the challenges. That puts the European feeling to a point.
Assumptions get ground here, that the virus is less dangerous than thought and an isolation of risk patients and ‘clusters’ would be more efficient from a medical standpoint than a lockdown. There is little scientific data that masks and social distancing have any effect at all. The tests are considered insufficient (as they are not validated) and the virus more a problem of institutional care. The latest German numbers show neither any dramatic rise in respiratory illnesses nor deaths, also not before lockdown. Death rate seems to rise as an effect of the lockdown though. It seems as if testing ‘re-labelled’ deaths that otherwise would happen too, related to illness or age, and at least some of the Covid-19 death were the consequence of false medical treatment (‘off-label use’ of medicaments, ventilation, institutional failure).
People are afraid of ‘palliative teams’ (more or less active euthanasia forced upon people with symptoms), forced vaccination, obligatory tracking apps with side purposes, breakdown of law and justice as much as democracy. The governments are doing all they can to fuel these fears. I am afraid, Bill Gates lost his reputation in large parts of the population.
I guess we are all victims of our educations, some might for religious reasons expect the apocalypse, some think of finite resources, some of global warming, some of 1929.
My friends say, productive means and infrastructure still exist, it is just a slump of delayed demand, MMT (modern monetary theory) will do it. I argue energy related, they believe it is possible to have state investments into oil and alternative, if not private.
My friends underestimate a possible end of the ‘free’ oil markets. They underestimate energy completely, believing a squaremeter of solarpanels in Germany brings 10 kW and not 20W and the rest will be invented in future. They have not realized there is voltage drop in transmission lines and other physical restrictions. They have never understood that world population depends on oil in their food supply.
What can we expect?
Loss of trust into public institutions, politics, democracy and state of justice
(Even further) decline of public education and culture
Less shared values and perceptions, desintegration of society
Loss of importance of central institutions, probably EU and Euro
Fights for territory and resources (regional wars)
As the future seems unsecure raise of saving quota and less consumption
As layoffs grow even less consumption
A significant decline of businesses, products and services
A breakdown of the car industry including suppliers and financial services
Strong national fights about the distribution of wealth
A shift towards more durable and easy-to-repair products as supply chains get under threat
I guess more people buy an axe instead of a new car
Growth of regional warlords and religious sects
More migration
People move to the countryside
A drop in housing prices, growth of slums
Less medical care
Less food production, the end of the ‘free’ wheat market and famine
Less resilience against additional natural threats like droughts and earthquakes
Less clothing, shoes and adequate weather protection
Drop of sqm per capita, qualitiy of housing, less heating (=stay in bed)
Overuse of forests and water
Drop in world population, drop in life expectations
To me it seems that hard times are in front of us! Me mustn’t loose our good mood and some rational strength.
Jan
Very good summary post.
Yes, the MMT-will-cure-everything crowd sense that their moment has come, As also the UBI-believers,and planned-economy loonies.
Time will prove them wrong – and perhaps not much time at that!
Whilst I am undoubtedly a loonie, I would not relate that to my ideas re planned economies. Things are going downhill so fast economically, everywhere, I just think If we are to make it through to next year (I am not saying we will, just ‘if’), it will be as a result of governments going fascist big time and taking over the economy, as in planned-economy. I cannot see banks surviving unless they are taken over by governments.
I bought recently the first axe of my life, and my car is a clunker mercedes made in the belle epoque of the 90’s.
“A large proportion of companies in Asia Pacific have been facing issues of unpaid receivables and late payments over the last three years, an industry survey found…
“Nearly 36% of respondents said they minimized exposure to less creditworthy customers, the most common method employed by companies to mitigate risks associated with trading at a time of heightened economic uncertainty, the survey found…
““Simply put, we consider this is the worst recession since WWII (World War 2),” Euler Hermes said in its report.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/asia-pacific-companies-face-unpaid-receivables-and-delayed-payments.html
It’s also time to be cautious about buying online: previously reliable companies will suddenly go into receivership having grabbed one’s money.
“”The blanket coverage by the Fed is broad, and that is driving the market. And expectations are that we’re going to have this nice V-shaped recovery and life is going to return to normal as we knew it before the pandemic.
“”And my own view is that neither of those are likely to be true. The recovery is unlikely to be V-shaped, and we’re unlikely to return to the pre-pandemic world. “”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/harvard-s-financial-crisis-experts-this-time-really-is-different
“The crash in international crude prices has not only burnt small Chinese investors who bought wealth management products from one of China’s largest banks but also a listed oil and gas firm that announced last week that it would default on a US$248 million bond.”
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/chinese-oil-firm-mie-defaults-102504803.html
“Ambulance workers are threatening to go on hunger strike in Russia, saying they have not received bonuses that President Putin promised for fighting coronavirus.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-russian-ambulance-crews-threaten-putin-with-hunger-strike-nhwgpfqsz
“Saudi Arabia is facing an unprecedented budget crunch because of the collapse of the oil markets and the global economic turmoil caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has reduced oil demand for the foreseeable future.
““I have no doubt, this is the end of an era. The era of the Persian Gulf having all this money is over,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings in Washington…”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/the-end-of-an-era-oil-price-collapse-may-force-saudis-to-rein-in-arms-spending
Can we hope it’s also the end of the era where the Brookings Institute “has all this money”?
The predicament of ours started in the Neolithic when we abandoned the Paleolithic human community model which was sociobiologically composed of 100 to 120 individuals (see Dunbar’s number). Paleolithic communities were egalitarian; there was no hierarchy (which is translated as „holy reign“), no domination, no rulers, no chiefs and no warfare violence, as archeology revealed and social science explains. WIth the invention of gods in the Neolithic, humans came up with the concept of hierarchy which over the course of time led to the emergence of societies,governments and economies which were no longer sustainable in itself.
Most likely, archaic humans followed a variety of types of social organization. Archaic “religions” would probably have reflected the lifestyle and social organization of each group. For example, hunting cultures might worship animal totems, etc.
We have cave paintings from the Upper Palaeolithic (45,000 years ago) which show dancers in ritual masks. So religion was already around back then. And if those dancers are shamans, as most suspect, there was already hierarchy. But the myth of the “noble savage” lives on. (No, not Rousseau; the phrase was coined by John Dryden in 1670)
Right, but Paleolithics did not produce a single Rembrandt, a Newton, a Koch, not even a Tolstoy. Let alone a Gail Tverberg! Bunch of loosers! 🙂
Industrial civilization can also be seen as a flash in a world of darkness (ignorance) that lasted two hunderd years and allowed us, among other things, to deepen the knowledge that a human being can have of the world. Any teenager today knows more about the world than the greatest geniuses of the 18th century. If this flash of IC cost us the destruction of our habitat and our extintion, is it fair to say the price of knowledge is destruction. I suppose learning is a very efficient way to dissipate energy.
JMS, the flash in the world of darkness lasted three hundred years, from 334 BC to 31 BC. It was the greatest civilisation the world has ever seen: the Hellenistic Age.
I remember how, during my tour of Egypt, we were advised to drink only bottled water. One day, while the tour bus was being refuelled, our guide went into a small store, and returned with more water. The bottles had the word “Siva” on them, in Arabic script on one side, and Roman script on the other. As he passed me, I said “Ah, Siva”. “You know of it?” “It is an oasis in the Western desert,” I replied, “Alexander the Great went there.”
An immediate meeting of minds. We came not from two countries, but from two continents; we observed different religions, spoke different native languages, and were of different “ethnicities”. And yet we were kinfolk from afar, heirs of a great and enduring legacy. One of the most significant moments in my life.
It was an age of great minds, i agree, but call it the greatest civilization the world has ever seen is a bit exagerate. Mind that they didn’t even have bikes or decent pens!
No, I believe our finest moment as a species was the second half of XIX century, between the discovery of hygiene and the invention of the internal combustion engine. The wheel of history should have stopped dead in 1890, since from then on it was always going down. But unfortunately the wheel of history has no built-in brakes…
JMS, let us agree to differ on civilisations. By the way, the Minoans knew about hygiene in 1500 BC, and the Egyptians had workable pens in 600BC. But I agree that our current “wheel of history” started its downturn at the end of XIX. And for me, our civilisation fell off a cliff on 15 April 1912, and has still not reached bottom.
Hans-Magnus Enzensberger: The Sinking of the Titanic (Twelfth Canto)
(Translated by Peter Lach-Newinsky)
From this point on everything goes according to plan.
The steel hull is no longer throbbing,
the engines lie still, the fires have long been put out.
What’s the matter? Why aren’t we making headway? Everyone
is listening. Outside in the gangways rosaries are being mumbled.
The sea is smooth, black, glassy. The night moonless.
Oh, it’s nothing really. Nothing has been broken on board,
not a vase, not a single champagne glass. People are waiting
in small groups, wordless, walk up and down,
in furs, dressing gowns, overalls. Obedient.
Ropes are being rolled up, tarpaulins pulled back
from the boats, davits swung out. It is as if
the passengers had swallowed pills. This man for example
dragging his cello behind him over the endless deck,
you can hear the endpin scraping away at the planks,
scraping, scraping, and yet you think: how
is that possible? – Ah, look! An emergency flare! –
But it’s only a feeble hiss, already fizzling out
in the sky, and in its reflection faces, bluish and blank.
Silently a line of lift boys, masseuses and bakers stands to attention.
Aboard the California, an old tramp twelve miles away,
the radio operator turns in his bunk and falls asleep.
Attention attention! Women and children first! – Actually, why?
Answer: We are prepared to go down like gentlemen.
Roger. – Sixteen hundred are left behind. The calm on board
is incredible. – This is the captain speaking. It is now exactly
two o’clock and my order is: every man for himself! – Music!
The bandleader raises his baton for the last number.
‘Obedient.’
“It is as if the passengers had swallowed pills.”
The poet forgot to say the pills were the blue ones. 🙂
The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy (1840 to 1928)
I In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” …
VI Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII Prepared a sinister mate
For her — so gaily great —
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
(And a reminder that poetry is indeed something capable of infinite growth in a finite world)
This analysis is misguided. All social animals have some sort of a social hierarchy which deal in the fundamental currencies of sex, food and physical work. Those higher on the hierarchy have preferential access to some form of these currencies. This goes all the way from chimpanzees and lions to ants. In some species the hierarchy is strictly genetic. A worker ant will under no circumstances attain the rank of queen and vice versa. But in dueling species like Yaks, or even humans, a competitor can hone his skills or even get lucky to attain a higher ranking.
Thank you, gabe, and I agree. Why else would people 45,000 years ago paint food animals on the walls of their sacred caves, if not as sympathetic magic for the hunters?
Robert, isn’t it obvious? Those sacred caves were paleolithic supermarkets. We’ve only discovered the meat sections so far, but no doubt there were also caves decorated with fruit ‘n’ veg and others with kitchen utensils and household cleaning products.
Advertising billboards?
“Japan’s economy slipped into recession for the first time in 4-1/2 years, GDP data showed on Monday, putting the nation on course for its deepest postwar slump as the coronavirus crisis takes a heavy toll on businesses and consumers.
“The world’s third-largest economy shrank for the second consecutive quarter in the three months to March.” [In other words, Japan’s economy was contracting pre-coronavirus, although this was partly attributable to the somewhat puzzling introduction of a sales tax].
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/japan-slips-into-recession-worst-yet-to-come-as-pandemic-wreaks-havoc/article31611770.ece
“Profit at Japan’s regional banks may fall even more than forecast this fiscal year because the lenders haven’t fully accounted for the impact of the coronavirus-fueled economic slump on loan quality, according to Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/japan-s-regional-banks-may-be-underestimating-profit-decline
“Carmakers are negotiating with the EU and UK for subsidies to help boost demand for new vehicles, but campaigners are concerned that the stimulus could end up paying for pollution unless emissions restrictions are imposed.
“The carmakers argue that subsidies would help kickstart demand as lockdown measures ease and factories reopen, preventing tens of thousands of job losses amid a global slump in car orders.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/17/carmakers-press-for-eu-and-uk-subsidies-after-slump-in-demand
“…in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, German carmakers damaged by the “Dieselgate” emissions scandal are finding it hard to convince Angela Merkel’s government to pull the same economic lever again.
“Despite urgent pleas from the once-mighty car lobby — the VDA — a much-anticipated teleconference between the chancellor, her top ministers, and the bosses of Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW on May 5 ended without resolution.”
https://www.ft.com/content/2935b9f5-b00f-4f65-afa8-3542dff1ce60
“Sixty one per cent Indians are experiencing mental health related issues because of the uncertainty and looming financial crisis during the lockdown, said a survey.”
“Hyderabad – a man attempted to commit suicide by pouring petrol on himself near Pragathi Bhavan, the camp office-cum-official residence of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.”
http://www.uniindia.com/economic-crisis-man-attempts-suicide-near-telangana-cm-s-camp-office/south/news/2000046.html
“Indian shares tumbled on Monday, with banks leading the fall, as investors were disappointed by government measures to aid an economic recovery…
““People generally were expecting immediate spends to revive the economy, which is not happening,” said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research at HDFC Securities in Mumbai. “Our (economic) recovery will be very slow and laboured.””
https://uk.reuters.com/article/india-stocks/indian-shares-tumble-as-economic-package-disappoints-banks-fall-idUKL4N2D018V
“India’s trade basket plummeted to a record low in April as countries sealed their borders to arrest the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Merchandise exports plunged 60.3% and imports fell 58.7%…”
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/lockdown-effect-india-s-exports-in-april-contract-by-60-to-10-3-bn-11589547724713.html
“Goldman Sachs expects India will experience its deepest recession ever after a poor run of data underscored the damaging economic impact of lockdowns in the world’s second-most populous nation.
“Gross domestic product will contract by an annualized 45% in the second quarter from the prior three months…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-17/goldman-sees-worst-india-recession-with-45-second-quarter-slump
Ya gotta love the Banksters explain this away as a “DEEP RECESSION”. Maybe they were reading FE’s pics of Edward Bernays.
I hope my photos of First Class …and Cattle Class were approved by the censor — with the accompanying explanation …
Because they can help people visualize why the ultra elites who run the show (or are part of the show) say nothing… it’s nice to ride up front.
India is busy going the way of Easter Island, but on a vastly larger scale. The only thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history.
Been to India a few times… one life regret will be not making it to Ladekh 🙁
https://devilonwheels.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/6-Leh-Ladakh-pictures.jpeg
http://image3.mouthshut.com/images/imagesp/925003697s.jpg
M Fast and I had a Plan B for the end of days… if business imploded in HK (due to the protests)… we were going to head to South America and spend a few months checking out the ruins of ancient civilizations (I got a hankering for this when I was in Mexico on my own last January)….
Then we would have wandered around Japan…
Then off to Ladekh for the end game
Wow – this is incredible!!! How long till we collapse completely????
Helplessness? https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/11/lockdown-learned-helplessness/
Excellent!
HONG KONG/BEIJING — Challenged by the arrival of Tesla Inc. in China last year, domestic electric vehicle start-ups were struggling even before the economic shock wrought by the coronavirus, but now for some it has become a battle for survival.
New energy vehicle sales fell for a tenth straight month in April, plummeting 43 percent from a year earlier in a market that has now got 50-or-so established start-ups competing with domestic giants like Geely, state-owned FAW Group , and foreign brands such as Tesla and Volkswagen Group.
“The difficulties that EV start-ups have encountered, such as the auto sales decline, harsh fundraising environment and subsidies reduction, all started last year,” said Brian Gu, president of Alibaba-backed Xpeng Motors.
“The outbreak will aggravate these issues that already had existed,” said Gu, whose firm delivered 16,000 vehicles in 2019.
https://www.autonews.com/china/ev-makers-risk-running-out-road-virus-stricken-times
You gotta wonder why the opposition is not attacking Ardern on her anti-mask policy — why are they not trotting stuff like this out https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3084779/coronavirus-hamster-research-proof-effectiveness as well as comparisons with places that have not locked down yet have fewer infections that NZ (e.g. HK – Australia)…
Maybe it’s because they are aware that there will not be an election in 4 months time… because we’ll all be dead?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/ardern-surges-to-big-poll-lead-four-months-from-n-z-election?srnd=premium-asia
Looks as though Great Mother Ardern now has something akin to Sacred Cow status -touch not a hair on her holy carcass.
Indeed, why vote against anyone who only has such god intentions?
Like Uncle Joe Stalin, who only cared about his people and protected them -the affable uncle with the big moustaches and pipe.
This article will amuse you, FE. I was not aware that “ms” magazine still existed. As for the article, it was confused and I couldn’t make sense of it. But the headlne may be a clue to PM Adern’s thinking.
https://msmagazine.com/2020/05/16/economic-growth-who-needs-it/
I mean growth – it’s so 20th century, so patriarchal, so Capitalist!
No growth, no wars for fossil fuels, no imperialism, no inequality, no American Century, etc.
If so, why have Greenies been talking about ‘Green Growth’ all these years?
Who needs growth when the best it gets is scratching in the dirt for bugs for lunch…
A no economic growth world doesn’t sound so bad after reading that … that is if one were an SDDR…. or a follower of herr Geeettta.
But then that is the point of the article…. it provides comfort to the SDDR community since this (brief) new normal is one without growth.
A new look? What does this convey? To me it looks like a r e t ar ded horse face…. but to SDDRs I am sure it’s interpreted as hopeful…. or something like that
https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ardern.jpg
New Zealand Population Reaches 5 Million as Immigration Surges
“International migration played a significant role in reaching the five million milestone,” population insights senior manager Brooke Theyers said in the statement. “About half of the population growth from four to five million was due to natural increase, and about half from net migration.”
More than one m
More than one million people born overseas now live in New Zealand
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-17/new-zealand-population-reaches-5-million-as-immigration-surges?srnd=premium-asia
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FANTASTIC!!! It’s all going according to Plan!!!! This will crush hope and inspire FEAR.
I think I will laugh now — and have a cold beer!!!!!
Hundreds of villages in China’s northeastern Jilin province have been placed under lockdown after a cluster of new coronavirus cases were reported in the region, local government officials said Saturday.
Over 1,000 residential buildings have also been quarantined in Shulan, a small city in the center of the province, after cases were also reported there, the officials said.
Most transport has also been halted to 1,205 villages and their surrounding areas in a bid to control a fresh outbreak of the deadly disease, they added.
Jin Hua, the mayor of Shulan city, said at a news conference on Saturday that all prevention and control measures had been “strictly implemented in accordance with the central government’s decision-making and the requirements of provinces and cities,” since the outbreak began.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hundreds-villages-locked-down-northeastern-china-after-fresh-coronavirus-outbreak-n1208526?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
…we face months of continuing idiocy, as the wealth of centuries is frittered away for nothing and we sink into a grim penury, made worse by the increasing lack of freedom and the insolence of authority.
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/05/peter-hitchens-were-destroying-the-nations-wealth-and-the-health-of-millions.html
One man’s id iocy is another’s genius … the CDP so far has been conceived in and executed brilliantly…
https://democriticreviews.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/bravo.gif
Raise a glass to Bernays and the CBs…
https://beerhunter365.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/panhead_7503.jpg
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Powell “60 Minutes” Preview: Full Recovery Could Take Until End Of 2021, Will Require A Coronavirus Vaccine
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerome-powell-federal-reserve-economic-crisis-coronavirus-pandemic-60-minutes-2020-05-17/
Not to worry — we will not make it to the end of 2021
Masks work in lowering Covid-19 transmission rates: Hong Kong researchers
Hamsters placed in adjoining cages with infected subjects were infected at a 66.7 per cent rate; the introduction of a barrier saw the percentage drop to 16.7.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3084779/coronavirus-hamster-research-proof-effectiveness
G3T ‘masks are harmful’
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Let’s observe the ghost of Bernays in action.. two headlines off of Bloomberg….
None of this is real — as in nobody is really upset with China because China the US and the rest of the Inner Circle people organized this Final Party — there was consensus on Covid and the response…. this is just typical MSM white noise to fill space on the home page and give the cattle something to talk about while they chew their cuds….
I bet you a billion dollars if you met up with normies they’d be regurgitating this stuff endlessly… ‘did you hear that China is trying to infect everyone by seeding tourists!’
China Faces Angry World Seeking Virus Answers at Key WHO Meeting
Trump Aide Accuses China of Using Air Travelers to ‘Seed’ Virus
Wait–Xi Jinping is Jewish?! That’s funny, he doesn’t look Jewish…
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Here is a tinfoil hat theory for the OFW crowd to ponder about.
Imagine someone hacks into a lab in, let’s say, Wuhan, and there proceeds by doing some “tweaks” in a database which holds information about which test tube contains what.
Let’s say, switches between two test tubes containing rhinovirus (normal cold virus) and some new type of tweaked SARS virus?
🤔
Here is another:
A minor technician in the Wuhan lab is working to transfer old virus cultures to new dishes. She slips, and a glove is cut. She leaves the secure area in a panic, washes up, and since there is no one around, she goes home. She doesn’t get sick, because she is young and strong. Three weeks later, her grandfather dies of “pneumonia” …
Not likely understanding how modern labs and equipment works. It’s not the Alexander Fleming days of lab work anymore.
https://youtu.be/RTJsBxMK4LE
On the other hand, here is a picture from inside the Wuhan lab of a person handling the samples:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11429828/photo-wuhan-lab-broken-seal-unit-virus-store-leak/
The person inside the lab does not look like she has much protective equipment on, either. Her mask looks like one that is handed our free as a person enters COSTCO, for example. Any problems, and she will be infected.
Yup, that’s exactly what I mean.
Imagine the more fancy SARS viruses ending up in that freezer for the rhinoviruses due to a hack in the database for virus identification EAN/Data Matrix codes.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/oil-markets-crude-output-coronavirus-in-focus.html
no sign of negative oil prices at this month’s oil contract expiration date:
“The June WTI contract expires on Tuesday, but there was little sign of WTI repeating the historic plunge below zero seen last month on the eve of the May contract’s expiry amid signs that demand for crude and derived fuels is recovering from its nadir.”
perhaps demand is “recovering from its nadir”…
but that recovery will be very weak, and traders may be pricing oil for a V shape recovery which is not coming…
WTI $30.70 right now…
might seem overpriced but the 2020 high is $64
Another rigged market.
But nature is not fooled. Decline continues, remorselessly.
https://oneperfectshot.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/high-diving-hair.jpg
I agree… (nice graphic too!)
WTI tripled in just 20 days. It’s a perfect bull market.
It’s bull alright.
All that is needed to move crude prices higher is a twerk from the PR boys stating that a V recovering is imminent …. it’s all automated so the algos kick in to bid the price higher based on the headlines they are monitoring….
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I have no disagreement with anyone here because it is simple not important anymore. It does not matter if there is a person who is controlling it from behind the scene like what FE is saying or just a bunch on unorganized politicians. It does feel to me that we are in a game or simulation and the “higher power” just want to unleash some fury on the simulated homo sapiens. Perhaps all these are not real.
The more I think about it, the more that it points to the fact that 2020 is the end game and yes Tim, no more 2021 Olympics. Yes FE, the economy is already going down the drain and suddenly this virus comes in. The lies from politicians are not important now because many of these are terminal.
Robert Firth, in a pure form if Keynesian “government spending” is executed perfectly only during economic downturns, then it will help a lot. Unfortunately, we are not living in a perfect world. Like the physics questions we did in high school – “assume there is no friction”. So, no, I am not a fan of Keynesian ideas although in a perfect world, it is good.
The best form of market is a market that is not interfered with like what it was thousands of years ago. The government has to be small and only takes care of security and law and order. No interference to markets or whatsoever. If you are not smart and lost your money, then too bad, learn from it. Grow up.
Small government means small overhead and smaller energy footprint. Policing political correctness is totally B.S in terms of energy usage. If you don’t like what I say, then leave. Why should I accommodate everyone and spend insane amount of precious energy on this nonsense.
FE, no, I am not suggesting that there will be changes to this. This is terminal and I am not arguing if you are correct or I am. We will be no different from the rest if I were to argue with you on this. It is picking up coins in front of a steam roller or suggesting which cabin we should be sheltering in Titanic when the iceberg made the gash hours ago and the ship is now listing.
No government is interested in improving the velocity of money. Just heard that Thailand extended the flight ban until end of June. In a country where tourists are flocking in, the citizens are poor, India extended it s lockdown too. it sure felt that FE is right on this (CDT). “Does it really make a difference now?”
Spending at groceries DOES NOT make up for the loss of other sectors. When you eat at a restaurant, you are adding value to the economy. When you are eat a nice steak at a nice restaurant, you are adding value to the economy. The steak that you eat is probably 4-10 times the cost of the raw materials (beef, garlic, condiments, etc) This extra money that you spend is used to support the staff, the janitors, the software company that makes the point of sale, the construction crew who renovated the restaurant, etc. If everyone is doing that (actually a large majority are doing it now) then we have set back the clock 1000 years when we are only concerned on survival and our primary concern is getting the next meal. In this modern world, what happen to the computer programmers, the early childhood specialist and all other jobs that the mirage of high EROEI is supporting? These people are not related to the primary survival of people – food, water and the basic necessity of survive. They have to go. Unfortunately, there are so many of them.
The paragraph above complements my earlier essay (sorry for the long post) on velocity of money. If everyone goes for the most basic and non-value added stuff, then the economy is not going forward. Velocity of money will be dead. We are way too much into the overshoot now and the expectation that the energy, fiat, debt can sustain us through this economy unscathed for a U recovery (not V anymore) is totally insane. This is exactly what Gail has written – analogy frostbite. The periphery (computer programmer, beauty, grooming, airline, leisure, restaurants) will go first and the core (grocery) will go last.
The steps down (staircase) started stepping down 100 years ago and small steps at a time. This is the last step. There are no more steps because the 99% of the people don’t have the skills, knowledge and the resource to sustain a primitive lifestyle)……. not to mention the 4000+ glowing blue warm swimming pools that FE likes.
p.s. anyone here going out to buy any unnecessary or luxury stuff? I know many here have the financial means. If you have the money and are not buying, then those who have just enough money will spend like crazy? Those who do not have the financial means are not on this website because they are too busy making ends meet and have no time for such “nonsense”
I haven’t bought a guitar in six years. Lying on the couch the past three months with a banged-up knee has allowed me to reap stellar profits in the forex market.
I particularly like this one:
https://shop.r10s.jp/guitarplanet/cabinet/05904878/mim_mg_pf_shp_side.jpg
Fender Mustang. Shell Pink.
buy! the end is near! hurry up!
Just checked, shipment delayed!
https://media.giphy.com/media/LPRxnliEiUz4s/giphy.gif
One previous owner—Little Richard?
Prince
FB just bought giphy for $400M…. it has ZERO revenue. From what I understand it’s a library of animated images. That’s what counts as genius these days.
What a silly world we live in — fortunately it’s about to end soon
The founders of giphy need to thank their lucky stars and start spending that cash quickly.
hey…. you said it will last until 2030? Bad boy… Don’t spend that money
“The steps down (staircase) started stepping down 100 years ago and small steps at a time. This is the last step.”
I don’t think that this is the last step. It certainly is a doozie, but I don’t think it is the last. The goal of the steps down are to degrow/crash in such a way that those who are on top now ultimately remain on top. They can achieve this only if the process is gradual enough (no widepsread chaos – no fighting, because fighting can provoke group organization and potential resistance). They must always maintain control of the monopoly of violence. That is why they want citizen disarmament (so-called “gun control”).
So they need a few more steps I think, to really get the ignorant and apathetic popuulation to a stage where they are actually too phyically weak (think Biafra late 1960s) and too concentrated on day-to-day survival to resist.
The police and armed foces will continue to be fed.
We will always have this issue of “The elites” will be the last group and they will have an earth where only 1m people will survive. This is very delusional.
1. Like bacteria in the body, the body needs the invisible bacteria to survive. We need the invisible (those at the bottom) to survive.
2. Economies of scale when margins are too thin. Without economies of scale, we would not have the smartphones, cars ,etc. Nobody is going to do any research or manufacturing when you are only going to sell 1m units.
3. Mining of rare earth, farming, etc. Who is going to do it? Don’t mention robots or AI. This is the most ridiculous thing one can say. Robots and AI need a fully functional society
4. Right now, if you work in a large office, if the janitors are on strike. No one cleans the both rooms and after 2 weeks, let me guess, the smell will be so bad that the office workers have to vacate the office. There is no such thing as the elites will survive.
Elites are totally clueless on how to survive without money. Forget about the protection detail they have. When there is nothing to lose, the body guards will turn on their. It happens so many times in history.
The number of people on earth who really knows how to survive in the wild without any help from technology is negligible and all of them are in the third world countries. In developed countries like USA, only a handful can really survive degrowth. Who knows how to make candles? who has knowledge, skills and resource (seeds, organic fertilizer) to do the necessary farming? Who can wait for months on end for the fruits and farms to produce the food? Most of the land in USA is already damaged by technology. Does anyone know how to make shoes? slippers? clothes when it is worn out?
It is not possible to slowly glide down on a path of controlled demolition until it is left with very less people. There will be a point of time where fights will happen over the last scraps of food. It happens in all animal colonies in any experiment or real life situation. We have been a gliding downward trajectory since 1970s. We are now at the end game.
Those who survive, assuming no radiation and they survive the angry horde, will be far and apart. Their numbers are negligible and insignificant. It is almost impossible to find any partners for producing children, assuming that the same people who survived knows how to do childbirth and raising children without technology. Without deluding yourself, it is unlikely that you can find these people in developed world. Probably in Africa or Papua New Guinea.
There will be people here who said that thousands or millions of years ago, there was a bottleneck in humans where there is only 10,000 of them on earth and yet they thrive. Those humans are not the same as the humans now. The environment at then was so much better than now. Forget about the office chap or the pseudo-prepper who thinks he can survive in the wild (but needs his gun and chainsaw).
If you our worldview is very narrow, you will believe that this can happen. Unfortunately, that kind of thoughts of people surviving and thriving in de-growth environment is just as delusional as those who believe that windmills and turbines will save us.
Very true. We are all dependent on some sort of BAU, even billionaires and doomsday preppers. No matter how much you prepare you can be sideswiped by natural disasters, zombie hordes, crop failures, nuclear radiation, pandemics or just plain old stabbed in the back by a trusted companion.
Our only reasonable choice is to live life to the fullest now, no need to prepare for doomsday, except mentally.
https://democriticreviews.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/bravo.gif
The elites definitely understand that there is no surviving this … they could in theory build mega doomsday bunkers … but that would just be like living in a luxury prison…. some may opt for that…
If given that option I’d choose Fentys…. surely the Sackers would willing to send over a few cases to connected mates…
‘The best form of market is a market that is not interfered with like what it was thousands of years ago.’
100%!!! If we had remained in a primitive state, and faced the same population controls as do other animals (disease, limits to food), Mother would not be evicting us.
And I suspect life under those conditions would be a whole lot more satisfying, meaningful and exciting than anything that came after.
As for buying stuff…. I never bought a whole lot of ‘stuff’ … but in the habit of buying nothing and trying to stay in that habit. I need to encourage M Fast to do the same!!!!
I have been watching Century of Self with her and using my DIY propaganda explaining how she is being played with respect to buying clothes etc…. My latest was — do we really need more than two sweaters? We need one to wear while the other is in the wash … that’s about it… and do they really need to be different colours? When she resists I throw in a bit about who cares if you look fashionable — you already have me and I don’t care — you can wear potato sacking and I’d be fine with that….
This journey will be a long one…. Bernays has made one hell of a mess for me to clean up…
‘You already have me’ is a rather dangerous line to take.
Female reflects, takes a hard look, thinks about just how long it has been, wonders what the first attraction was, observes signs of ageing., notes that he obviously doesn’t care what she wears anymore, has perhaps stopped even looking…….
Haha… M Fast knows that I know she is irreplaceable… (and that I jest…)
thanks, C T G…
“The more I think about it, the more that it points to the fact that 2020 is the end game and yes Tim, no more 2021 Olympics. Yes FE, the economy is already going down the drain and suddenly this virus comes in.”
no one knows if 2020 is the end game… on 12/31/2019, the preview for this year was for a severe global recession… the world economy is slowly slowly slowly slowly slowly going down the drain due to decreasing net (surplus) energy… the laws of physics are primary…
“Spending at groceries DOES NOT make up for the loss of other sectors.”
true! so there will be losses in other sectors… (again, decreasing energy guarantees this)…
loss in “other sectors” is not the end of the world…
“The periphery (computer programmer, beauty, grooming, airline, leisure, restaurants) will go first and the core (grocery) will go last.”
true! less essential subsystems will go earlier, and the most basic essentials will go last…
this probably will proceed for many more years…
in my opinion, many of us will still be commenting here about these topics in 2021…
in my opinion, many of us will still be commenting here about these topics in 2021…
That is my dream. I love your optimism. My software company is fighting for its survival. If I cannot make it, then I have to lay off all my staff. That is why I have written on cash flow and velocity of money. I am in the center of this.
Sorry to hear this.
We are slashing expenses wherever possible but not to the point of laying off any staff.
Millions of businesses are in the same situation so even if we fold I reckon BAU will not be far behind.
Yes, CTG, best of luck to you and your employees.
Excellent points, CTG.
It’s notable that when kings in Europe started to re-establish towns after the fall of Rome, sometime in the 10th century, they made a point of encouraging craftsmen, merchants and innkeepers to settle. Al superfluous and non-essential from the utilitarian point of view.
They (or more probably their advisers) understood what constitutes the life-blood of an advancing economy.
People concentrating as much as possible on home production and basic needs are not adequate.
And that is what the idiot politicians and epidemiologists have suddenly transformed our towns and cities into with the lock-downs!
As the saying goes, “in the town you breathe free air”. And after a year and a day of gainful employment, you were a citizen. Yes, this was one of the larger factors in the rebirth of civilisation. But what else was needed? The hinterland. The people who came into town to buy what the craftsmen produced, and what the merchants had imported. Who came to stay in the inns, ready to celebrate one of the many annual festivals. And your analysis is correct: this lockdown is taking us back to the Dark Ages. Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us.
All very true.
Governments, far from guiding society according to some ‘De-growth’plan, a deliberate ‘de-layering’ or a ‘great simplification’ as Tim Morgan likes to put it, have little understanding that in attempting to ‘pause’ economic activity for half a year (March to November seems to be the schedule in most places now) they have done probably irreparable harm to commerce and services, above all to the smaller businesses, and destroying some sectors utterly and overnight.
And, ultimately, medical services themselves and the vast numbers of dependent elderly, who were supposed to be the main beneficiaries of the lock-downs will be victims.
Sitting here ordering essential supplies and equipment online (I literally cannot buy one useful thing in a actual shop in town now!) I see it all grinding to a halt: inventories running down, many once-thriving businesses shut-down perhaps never to re-open, and courier deliveries hopelessly disrupted.
Politicians and planners will be aware of none of this, it’s all at far too low a level, and still at too early a stage, to show up in the stats they rely on.
Anyone who believes there is a global or even a national master plan behind this mess is deluded: yes, corporations and top politicians still think they can come out on top after all of this and big money is being ladled out in bucketfuls to all the usual suspects in finance, etc as they line up, but that does not amount to anything pre-planned.
But they will all be sorely disabused of their confidence that economies in general can be re-opened when the real damage that has been done becomes apparent in true mass unemployment, collapsed tax revenues, the failure of vital services and essential infrastructure.
thanks Xabier for confirming my thinking–that there is no pre planned ‘master plot’.
People taking advantages of circumstances that arise because of the mess we find ourselves in, does not configure into those same people ‘plotting’ all this 5–10 or 20 years ago, which is what some would have us believe.
People who find themselves in elected office, and faced with a totally new and unique crisis (which is what this is) will behave in totally unpredictable ways, (just like the rest of us).
It’s a bit like saying that because I come across a banknote in the street and put it in my pocket before anyone else spots it, I somehow put it there in the first place and it’s one step in my scheme of world domination. …..
“Anyone who believes there is a global or even a national master plan behind this mess is deluded: yes, corporations and top politicians still think they can come out on top after all of this and big money is being ladled out in bucketfuls to all the usual suspects in finance, etc as they line up, but that does not amount to anything pre-planned.”
Absolutely, how exactly would a few be able to execute operations on such a scale, just not possible, period.
How exactly? Not so difficult. These videos have already been posted.
Investigative Journalist Harry Vox: State Population Control, Lock Downs and Depopulation projects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLfQ7X3MC5E
Global Health Mafia Protection Racket
This comment is a perfect example as to why those in control of the show (and those in the show)… say nothing…
Even if one were to expose what they know to someone like you – you’d brand him as a heretic.
Enjoy!
http://7summitsproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/crowded-plane.jpg
Somehow, it strikes me that we can have two-sided situation, before and after collapse:
(1) Before the crash, whatever energy, wealth and power exists will tend to head toward the top of the pyramid. Governments may have great plans to control their populations. In fact, China already exerts this control, and other countries are coming close. The lower the resources per capita, the greater the temptation to try to control the population. Thus, it is the highly urban areas and densely populated areas that have exceptional problems with COVID-19. This is where the desire to control the population is greatest and lockdowns are most enforced.
(2) After some point, the whole interconnected system cannot work anymore. The free trade system cannot work the way it has in the past. There will be a discontinuity of some sort. I have called it a financial system collapse. I expect that it becomes a governmental collapse as well. All of the governmental debt, and for that matter, all of the other debt will become clearly unpayable. Governments will disappear. Current currencies will disappear.
If there are new currencies, they will be different. They will be issued at more of a local level, and they will act more like a barter substitute than a way for running up a lot of debt. Goods and services will be locally made of local materials. At that point, COVID-19 will become just another disease in a much less populated world. Governments will again have very few functions.
‘Thus, it is the highly urban areas and densely populated areas that have exceptional problems with COVID-19. This is where the desire to control the population is greatest and lockdowns are most enforced.’
https://exactly.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/16_1762_EXACTLY-LOGO_REVERSE-ON-NAVY.png
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