Why are we seeing so much violence recently? One explanation is that people are sympathizing with those in the Minneapolis area who are upset at the death of George Floyd. They believe that a white cop used excessive force in subduing Floyd, leading to his death.
I believe that there is a much deeper story involved. As I wrote in my recent post, Understanding Our Pandemic – Economy Predicament, the problem we are facing is too many people relative to resources, particularly energy resources. This leads to a condition sometimes referred to as “overshoot and collapse.” The economy grows for a while, may stabilize for a time, and then heads in a downward direction, essentially because energy consumption per capita falls too low.
Strangely enough, this energy crisis looks like a crisis of affordability. The young and the poor, especially, cannot afford to buy goods and services that they need, such as a home in which to raise their children and a vehicle to drive. Trying to do so leaves them with excessive debt. If the affordability problem changes for the worse, the young and the poor are likely to protest. In fact, these protests may become violent.
The pandemic tends to make the affordability problem worse for minorities and young people because they are disproportionately affected by job losses associated with lockdowns. In many cases, the poor catch COVID-19 more frequently because they live and/or work in crowded conditions where the disease spreads easily. In the US, blacks seem to be especially hard hit, both by COVID-19 and through the loss of jobs. These issues, plus the availability of guns, makes the situation particularly explosive in the US.
Let me explain these issues further.
[1] Energy is required for all aspects of the economy.
Energy is required by governments. Energy is required to operate police cars. Energy is required to build schools and to operate their heating and lighting. Energy is needed to build and maintain roads. Tax revenue represents available funds to buy energy products and goods and services made with energy products.
Energy is needed for any type of business. Operating a computer requires electricity, which is a form of energy. Heating or cooling a building requires energy. Growing food requires solar energy from the sun; liquid fuel is used to operate farm machinery and trucks that transport food to the locations where it is sold. Human energy is used for some of these processes. For example, human energy is used to operate computers and farm machinery. Human energy is sometimes used to pick the crops, as well.
Wages paid by governments and businesses indirectly go to buy energy products of many kinds. Food is, of course, an energy product. The heat to cook or bake the food is also an energy product. Metals of all kinds are made using energy products, and lumber is cut and transported using energy products. With sufficient wages, it is possible to buy or rent a home, and to purchase or lease an automobile.
Interest rates indirectly reflect the portion of goods and services produced by energy products that can be transferred to parts of the system that depend on interest earnings. For example, banks, insurance companies and those on pensions depend on interest earnings. If interest rates are high, benefits to pensioners can easily be paid and insurance companies can charge low rates for their products, because their interest earnings will help offset claim costs.
Interest rates are now about as low as they can go, indicating a likely shortage of energy for funding these interest rates. The last time interest rates were close to current levels was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Figure 1. Ten-year and three-month US Treasury interest rates, in chart made by FRED.
[2] When there is not enough energy to go around, the result can be low commodity prices, low wages and layoffs.
This is not an intuitive result. Most people assume (low energy = high prices), but this is the opposite of what actually happens. The problem is that the amount workers can afford to pay for finished goods and services needs to be high enough to make production of the commodities used in making the finished products profitable. When affordability falls too low, the system tends to collapse.
We are really dealing with a two-sided problem. The prices of commodities such as oil, wholesale electricity, steel, copper and food tend to fluctuate widely. Consumers need these prices to be low, in order for the price of finished goods made with these commodities to be affordable; producers need the prices of these commodities to rise ever-higher, to cover the cost of deeper wells and more batteries, to try to partially offset the intermittency of solar and wind electricity.
Most people assume that the situation will be resolved in the direction of commodity prices rising ever higher. In fact, commodity prices did rise higher, until mid 2008. Then, something snapped; commodity prices have been falling ever-lower since mid 2008. In fact, ever-lower commodity prices have been a world-wide problem, causing huge problems for countries trying to support their economies with export revenues based on commodity production.
Figure 2. CRB Commodity Price Index from 1995 to June 2, 2020. Chart prepared by Trading Economics. Composition is 39% energy, 41% agriculture, 7% precious metals and 13% industrial metals.
Even before the lockdowns, low commodity prices were leading to low wages of those working in commodity industries around the world. These low prices also led to low tax revenue, and this low tax revenue led to an inability of governments to afford the services that citizens expect, such as bus service and subsidized prices for certain essential goods/services. For example, South Africa (an exporter of coal and minerals) was experiencing public protests in September 2019, for reasons such as these. Chile is a major exporter of copper and lithium. Low prices of those commodities led to violent protests in 2019 for similar reasons.
Now, in 2020, lockdowns have led to even lower commodity prices. At times, farmers have been plowing their crops under. Oil companies are laying off workers. The trend toward lower commodity prices had been occurring for a long time; the recent drop in prices was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” If prices stay this low, there is a danger of falling production of commodities that we depend on, including food, metals, electricity, and oil. Businesses producing these items will fail, and governments with falling tax revenue will be unable to support them.
[3] Historical energy consumption data shows that violence often accompanies periods when energy production is not growing fast enough to meet the needs of the growing population.
Figure 3 shows average annual growth in world energy consumption, for 10-year periods:
Figure 3. Average growth in energy consumption for 10 year periods, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent.
Economic growth encompasses both population growth and rising standards of living. Figure 4 below takes the same information used in Figure 3 and divides it into (a) the portion underlying population growth, and (b) the portion of the energy supply growth available for improved standards of living. During most periods, increased population absorbs over half of increased energy consumption.
Figure 4. Figure similar to Figure 3, except that energy devoted to population growth and growth in living standards are separated. A circle is also added showing the recent growth in energy is primarily the result of China’s temporary growth in coal supplies.
There are three dips in the Living Standards portion of Figure 4. The first one came in the 10 years ended 1860, just before the US Civil War. Most of us would say that was a period of violence.
The second one occurred in the 10 years ended 1930. This is the period when the Great Depression began. It came between World War I and World War II. This was another violent period of our history.
The third dip came in the 10-year period ended 2000. This was not a particularly violent period; instead, it reflects the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union, leaving the member republics to continue on their own. There was a huge loss of demand (really, affordability) on the part of countries that were part of the Soviet Union or depended on the Soviet Union.
Figure 5. Chart showing the fall in Eastern Europe’s materials production, after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991.
[4] The world is facing a situation in which total energy consumption seems likely to drop by 5% per year, or perhaps more.
If we look back at Figure 3, we see that even in very “bad” times economically, energy consumption was rising. In fact, in one 10-year period, the average increase was more than 5% per year.
If the world economy is reaching a point in which we consumers, in the aggregate, cannot afford the goods and services made with commodities, unless commodity prices are very low, we will likely experience a huge drop in energy consumption. I don’t know exactly how much the annual change will be, but energy consumption growth and GDP growth tend to move together. We might guess that GDP growth is shifting to 5% GDP annual shrinkage, and energy consumption will be shrinking by a similar percentage.
Clearly, shrinkage of 5% per year would be far worse than the world economy has experienced in the last 200 years. In fact, for the 10-year periods shown in Figure 3, there has never been a reduction in energy consumption. Even if I am wrong and the shrinkage in energy consumption is “only” 2% per year, this would be far worse than the experience over any 10-year period. In fact, during the Great Recession, world energy consumption only shrank in one year (2009) and then by 1.4%.
History doesn’t give us much guidance regarding what impact a dramatic reduction in energy consumption would have on the economy, except that population reduction would likely be part of the change that takes place. If half or more of energy consumption growth goes toward rising population (Figure 4), then a shrinkage of energy consumption seems likely to reduce world population.
[5] What the world is really facing is a competition regarding which parts of the economy can stay, and which will need to be eliminated, if there is not enough energy to go around. It should not be surprising if this competition often leads to violence.
As I indicated in Section [1], all parts of the economy depend on energy. If there is not enough, some parts must shrink back. The big question is, “Which parts?”
(a) Do governments, and organizations that bind governments together, collapse? If countries are doing poorly, they will not want to contribute to the World Trade Organization, the United Nations or the European Union. Governments, such as the government of Saudi Arabia, could be overthrown, or may simply stop operating. In fact, any government, when it faces insurmountable problems, could simply stop operating and leave its functions to lower levels of government, such as states, provinces, or cities.
(b) Do pension plans stop operating? Are pensioners left “out in the cold”? How about Social Security recipients?
(c) Can international trade be kept operating? It is a big consumer of energy. Also, competition with low-wage countries tends to keep wages in developed nations low. Without international trade, many imported goods (including imported medicines) become unavailable.
(d) Which companies will collapse, leaving bond holders and stockholders with $0? People who formerly had jobs with these companies will also find themselves without jobs.
(e) If the world economy cannot support as many people as before, which ones will be left out? Is it people in rich countries who find themselves without jobs? Is it people who find themselves without imported medicines? Is it the ones who catch COVID-19? Or is it mostly citizens of very poor countries, whose income will fall so low that starvation becomes a concern?
[6] The violent demonstrations represent an effort to try to push the problems related to the shortfall in energy, and the goods and services that energy can provide, away from the protest groups, toward other segments of the economy.
In an ideal world:
(a) Jobs that pay well would be available to all.
(b) Governments would be able to afford to provide a wide range of services to all, including free health care for all and reimbursement for time off from work for being sick. They would also be able to provide adequate pensions for the elderly and low cost public transit.
(c) Police would treat all citizens well. No group would be so poor that a life of crime would seem to be a solution.
As indicated in Section [2], back in 2019, before COVID-19 hit, protests were already starting because of low commodity prices and the indirect impacts of low commodity prices. One reason why governments were so eager to adopt shutdowns is the fact that when people were required to stay inside because of COVID-19, the problem of protests could be stopped.
It should be no surprise, then, that the protests came back, once the lockdowns have ended. There are now more people out of work and more people who are concerned about not having full healthcare costs reimbursed. Social distancing requirements are making it more difficult for businesses to operate profitably, indirectly leading to fewer available jobs.
[7] Violent protests seem to push problems fueled by an inadequate supply of affordable energy toward (a) governments and (b) insurance companies.
In some cases, insurance companies will pay for damages caused by protesters. Eventually, costs could become too great for insurance companies. Most policies have exclusions for “acts of war.” If protests escalate, this exclusion might become applicable.
Governments of all kinds are already being stressed by shutdowns because when citizens are not working, there is less tax revenue. If, in addition, governments have been paying COVID-19 related costs, this creates an even bigger budget mismatch. Governments find themselves less and less able to pay their everyday expenses, such as hiring teachers, policemen, and firemen. All of these issues tend to push city governments toward bankruptcy and more layoffs.
[8] Dark skinned people living in America tend to be Vitamin D deficient, making them more prone to getting severe cases of COVID-19. Vitamin supplements may be an inexpensive way of reducing the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic and thus lessening its diversion of energy resources.
There are a number of reports out that suggest that having adequate Vitamin D from sunlight strengthens the immune system and helps reduce the mortality of COVID-19. Adequate Vitamin C is also helpful for the immune system for people in general, not just those with dark skin.
Dark skinned people are adapted to living near the equator. If they live in the United States or Europe, their bodies make less Vitamin D from the slanted rays available in those parts of the world than they would living near the equator. As a result, studies show that Vitamin D deficiency is more common in African Americans than other Americans.
Recent data shows that the COVID-19 mortality rate for black Americans is 2.4 times that of white Americans. COVID-19 hospitalization rates are no doubt higher as well. Encouraging Americans with dark skin to take Vitamin D supplements would seem to be at least a partial solution to the problem of greater disease severity for Blacks. Vitamin C supplements, or more fresh fruit, might be helpful for all people, not just those with low Vitamin D levels.
If the COVID-19 impact can be lessened in a very inexpensive way, this would seem to be helpful for the economy in general. High-cost solutions simply divert available resources toward fighting COVID-19, making the overall resource shortfall for the rest of the economy worse.
[9] Much more equal wages would seem to be a solution for wage disparity, but this doesn’t bring the wages of low earning workers up enough, in practice.
There are a huge number of low-earning workers in many countries around the world. In order to increase commodity prices enough to make them profitable for producers, we really need wages in all countries to be much higher. For example, wages in Africa and in India need to be much higher, so that people in these parts of the world can afford goods such as cars, air conditioning and vacation travel. There is no way this can be done. Furthermore, such a change would add pollution and climate change issues.
There is a fundamental “not enough to go around” problem that we do not have an answer for. Historically, when there hasn’t been enough to go around, the attempted solution was fighting wars over what was available. In a way, the violence seen in cities around the globe is a new version of this violence. Governments of various kinds may ultimately be casualties of these uprisings. Remaining lower-level governments will be left with the problem of starting over again, issuing new currency and trying to make new alliances. In total, the new economy will be very different; it will probably bear little resemblance to today’s world economy.
Bulk bags of rice at walmart today. got 80 lbs. Bleach was one gallon limit but rice no problemo, Ammonia can not be found, Portland cement short supply. some steel products (t posts) short supply.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/satellite-data-suggests-coronavirus-hit-china-earlier-researchers/story?id=71123270
“Dramatic spikes in auto traffic around major hospitals in Wuhan last fall suggest the novel coronavirus may have been present and spreading through central China long before the outbreak was first reported to the world, according to a new Harvard Medical School study.
Using techniques similar to those employed by intelligence agencies, the research team behind the study analyzed commercial satellite imagery and “observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019,” according to Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical professor who led the research.
Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, said the traffic increase also “coincided with” elevated queries on a Chinese internet search for “certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus.”
so the spread was in motion long before the Chinese New Year…
you can check these assertions with the known R(t) of the virus. pick a date and run the exponential. doubtful it was as early as late summer. sorry, i am math challenged.
This is a link to the article itself:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/42669767/Satellite_Images_Baidu_COVID19_manuscript_preprint.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
I think the article is confusing some intestinal problem, perhaps caused by a problem with sewage treatment, with COVID-19.
A major chart that the article relies on is this one, which shows the relative frequency of the search terms cough and diarrhea for the Wuhan area of China:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/baidu-search-query-from-harvard-paper.png
The assertion is that the big increase in searches for diarrhea that took place very early is a sign that COVID-19 was already active at that point. The increase in hospital activity is believed to be further confirmation of this assertion.
I don’t think that this is the case, when I compare the shapes of the curves to what I see in other countries with the virus, and do Google searches (in English) on the terms “cough, diarrhea, headache.” For example, this is the google search chart for the US:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/us-google-search-term-charts.png
This is a similar chart for the UK:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/uk-search-term-charts.png
This is a chart for Australia:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/australia-search-term-charts.png
A person can see that in the northern hemisphere, a person tends to get a double peak in the latest year. There is an early low peak for “regular” flu, and a later higher peak for COVID-19. In fact, this happens in the Wuhan area of China as well. The peaks are closer together though, and the Wuhan second peak is not as high relative to prior years, and relative to the earlier peak. This would suggest COVID-19 was a somewhat limited outbreak, as they have reported.
The thing that makes me suspicious that the use of diarrhea to try to find COVID-19 cases is the fact that diarrhea never rates very high as a search term in other countries. In fact, it seems to bump up a bit during the regular flu season as well. Another issue is the strange shape of the Wuhan diarrhea curve. It doesn’t look like something that one person catches from another person. It looks more like the a sewage plant problem. Chinese water quality is not necessarily very good. It looks like Wuhan should have issued a “boil water” advisory. In fact, the diarrhea searches still seem to be high. People certainly could have gone to the hospital with this problem.
My guess is that this paper will never make it through peer review.
Nasdaq 9,925…
going over 10,000!!!!!!!
we’re saved!
Prices look like they may be headed downward today.
I see Nasdaq went up, while other indices are down.
Nasdaq at 9953.75.
it’s official… !!!!!!!
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/the-us-entered-a-recession-in-february-according-to-the-official-economic-arbiter.html
“The worst U.S. downturn since the Great Depression is now officially a recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Though it seemed a foregone conclusion, the NBER, the official arbiter of recessions, made the declaration Monday as the nation tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
…it concluded that the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warrants the designation of this episode as a recession, even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contractions.
As a rule of thumb, recessions are thought to entail two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. However, that isn’t always the case, and it’s generally the NBER’s decision to determine recessions.”
for emphasis:
“… the designation of this episode as a recession, even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contractions.”
“even if it turns out to be briefer”…
translation:
it might become a long Depression, so right away we better suggest that it will be a brief Recession just so people won’t panic…
The US entered recession in February – but it did not lock down until the end of March. 🤔
“Already stressed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. living standards are about to be squeezed as never before. At the same time, the world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism.
“Currencies set the equilibrium between these two forces — domestic economic fundamentals and foreign perceptions of a nation’s strength or weakness. The balance is shifting, and a crash in the dollar could well be in the offing.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crash-dollar-coming-210024166.html
[FWIW I’m not so sure. I suspect international demand for the dollar will remain strong, as it remains the most attractive horse in the glue factory. What could replace it? The Euro? The Yuan? I doubt it.]
A lot of things were stopped effective March 15. That seems to be when the big layoffs began.
The U.S. economy, and the world economy more broadly, were already going into recession when corona hit. Double whammy. ☺️
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/06/all-of-a-sudden-people-are-talking-about-a-v-shaped-recovery-again-the-stock-market-had-it-right.html
“May’s shocking increase in jobs has given way to some talk again about a V-shaped recovery.
RBC economist Tom Porcelli said June’s payrolls report could see a gain approaching 10 million.”
first, 40 million Americans apply for unemployment benefits…
then all of a sudden… a fayke unemployment report and…
Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
an “economist” says maybe 10 millions jobs could be gained back in June…
VEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://gellerreport.com/2020/06/blm-looter-charged-with-the-murder-of-black-police-captain.html/
“BLM Looter Charged With the Murder of Black Police Captain…
Retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn was found shot to death outside of a north St. Louis pawn shop after a night of unrest in the city.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced on Sunday that 24-year-old Stephan Cannon has been charged with first-degree murder…”
so to Cannon (a black man), the life of Dorn (a black man) did not “matter”…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/08/chris-beaty-honored-after-being-murdered-by-robbers-in-riots/
“Beaty had tried to stop the robbers from stealing from the women and was fatally shot as a result, according to eyewitnesses.
One eyewitness told police that Beaty had said to the robbers, “You don’t need to do this. There’s a better way” before he was killed.”
“Chris was someone who always put others before himself,” Beaty’s nephew wrote. “He truly was one-of-a-kind, with a giant heart filled with love for everyone he met, consistently working to break down racial barriers.”
https://disrn.com/news/chicago-suffers-deadliest-day-in-60-years-with-18-murders-in-24-hours
Records are made to be broken. Just wait till Chicago does the right thing and disbands their vicious racist police force. Imagine all the people, sharing all the hood.
That is going to be quite a love-fest.
Covid, in the US about one thousand blacks are killed every day. But it is a non story. First, because they are killed by Planned Parenthood in their mother’s womb. And secondly, because the Left in the US secretly support Margaret Sanger’s “eugenic” agenda of the elimination of black people. It is for the same reason that black on black crime is cities run by the left goes largely uncontrolled, unpunished, and unremarked.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLq49pwUAAA5N8r.jpg
Women who don’t want a baby are likely not to make good mothers, however.
there’s no place for politics and preaching in planned parenting
If you’re upset at this, just wait and see what nature has in store for human beings. Then you’ll be really mad.
https://www.paypervids.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Population-limits-consequences-of-exceding-carrying-capaicty.jpg
If the population overshoots the carrying capacity of the environment, the result is a population crash.
Brave man, defending the shop belonging to a friend -and he seems to have been greatly respected. RIP. Will he get the same kind of grand memorials arranged for the career criminal George Loyd? Rhetorical question.
But it’s the same in Britain: very few blacks have been killed (whether unlawfully or not) by the police, over decades, or even by racist thugs, but thousands have been killed and injured in gang warfare,robberies and domestic quarrels in the same period. And it’s getting worse, with new levels of viciousness – shocking crimes.
We can extend that to the whole ‘BAME ‘immigrant community: the Turkish, Black African, Indian Asian drug gangs who are very active and violent. Estimated 4,500 gangs in the UK. And just to be balanced, we’ll throw in the Irish and E. European gangs.
To get to the root of things, I’ve been reading the official BLM sites and Twitter accounts here in the UK, and they make no mention of this huge problem! Just a simmering hatred of white people, and an unbalanced obsession with slavery, which is now some two centuries in the past, and colonialism which collapsed 60-odd years ago.
Even worse, the ideological stance, often repeated, of the leaders of BLM here seems to be that ‘crime’ itself is an ‘oppressive racist state construct,’ and black people should not be imprisoned, or deported if illegal aliens who have committed very serious crimes.
They seem to want the total elimination of the police and law and order from their communities. So, gang-rule? How will that help black people?
I would support BLM, in some respects if they were not so blatantly unbalanced, racist and biased, and if they actually campaigned for the total elimination of criminality, drug-taking and dealing in their community.
If the black community is so ‘brave and powerful’,as they always say, why can’t they use that power to clean up their community? Why can’t they even look squarely at the issue? It’s all very pitiful.
They are a front, a catspaw for more powerful groups who fund and manipulate them. But I am sure you already know that.
Only a f00l can’t see that this is a deliberately planned top-down destruction of western society.
But of course, historically, bottom-up revolutions are very rare. We know they are bottom-up when they are ruthlessly crushed. In contrast, they are top-down when they get every support from the establishment, especially in censoring the truth.
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/censorship-instagram-bans-federal-crime-statistics-from-being-posted-on-their-platform/
Disney pledges $5 million to social justice causes. Goody! More trans3xual children’s programs and p3deophile movie directors (like James Gunn) brought back onto heir staff.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2020/06/09/abc-news-parent-company-disney-pledging-5000000-social
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/05/03/watch-roseanne-barrs-son-reads-disney-director-james-gunns-pedophilia-tweets-why-has-my-mother-not-been-forgiven/
GT – 1.Can you please uncouple “violent” from “protest”? Awareness of shades of grey and variability of agendas of the crowds in the streets, seems missing here. Yes there has been violence. Yes there are peaceful protesters. Yes “violent protestors” on a page grabs eyeballs but is very inaccurate. To protest peacefully takes courage. To be violent does not.
This nation was started by “protesters”, some of whom wrote the most brilliant defenses of human rights in the history of civilization. I point to the preamble to the Declaration of Independence as an example (see especially paragraph 2 here) : https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript .
2. The article discussing crime (not “violence”) during the 1930’s depression, at https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/crime-in-the-great-depression, showed a dip in crime, following an initial rise. Oversimplification to call it a “violent” time. The New Deal, as that link shows, was correlated with a drop in crime (if we equate “violence” with “crime”). See the paragr immediately before the “Sources” heading. Been reading your interesting material for years, but now I wonder about your present agenda.
The headlines at the time I wrote the article were about all of the violence. I was trying to explain what was behind the headlines.
There is indeed a difference between protests and violent protests. Atlanta has pretty much had peaceful protests, for example.
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/protests/protests-metro-atlanta-george-floyd/85-0433659e-6c3e-4526-987a-6a0203e7b01f
It has also been less “shut down” than some other areas, and it has a female black mayor who has tried to calm down protesters.
And easily summarised as “ a lie”, given their attitudes to slaves and indigenous people.
If I try to make a public speech and am shouted down, is that “peaceful” or violent”? If I express an opinion the Twitter mob desn’t like and am censored or doxxed, is that “peaceful” or “violent”?
If I express an opinion that the left does not like and am “cancelled” out of my job, is that “peaceful or “violent”?
Perhaps for peaceful we should say “supports free speech and eschews and denounces harrassment” and for violent we should say “does not approve or respect free speech and threatens and seeks to destroy those who disagree and promotes fear of the open expression of opinions among the general public”.
But we already have terms for those things: “peaceul” and “violent”.
Violence does not have to be physical. The law recognizes this and has for a thousand years. Under the law, as well in common sense, threats and intimidation are regarded as “assaults”.
The left needs to abandon its policies of seeking power and compliance through public threats, intimidation and violence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/opinion/brazil-coronavirus-bolsonaro.html
‘Brazil Is in Coronavirus Free Fall’ – Hospitals are on the brink of collapse, cemeteries are burying people in mass graves, and still, we refuse to take this virus seriously.
“Many are simply counting on their immune system’s superpowers.”
“Late last month, Brazil passed a milestone: Our daily death toll has now surpassed that of the United States. We have a contagion rate that ensures more deaths are coming. We have had more than 690,000 diagnosed cases of coronavirus and 36,000 deaths, and yet, the actual numbers are probably much higher — we’ve had such limited testing that we just don’t know.”
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, Jair Bolsonaro has shown disdain for everything that doesn’t suit his personal agenda — especially if it’s fact-based news or scientific recommendations. He said in the past that Covid-19 is a “measly cold” and that people would soon see that they’d been “tricked” by governors and media when it came to the outbreak.”
The Washington Post did an article about how Bolsonaro of Brazil has threatened to restrict data on Covid-19 but they require a subscription, so it’s no good to link the article, but there is proof now that’s exactly what he’s doing. See below:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Brazil’s new cases for today is 2,154, but yesterday it was close to 20,000. They also had over 800 deaths yesterday but today it’s down to 103. So Bolsonaro has taken denial of the virus to a whole new level that China would admire, i.e. forcing the numbers into a dramatic decline. I hope the virus takes notice and realizes it would now be polite to vanish.
Brazil is experiencing the same 1/1000 death rate as the entire world. With their 209 million population that should result in 209,000 deaths. It could be fewer if the population curve is heavy on the young side.
the recent science seems to be moving towards a consensus of a rate of about half a percent… 0.5%, or 1/200…
(average flu 0.05%, or 1/2000…)
so that would mean about a million dead, but only if every Brazilian gets it…
in actuality, perhaps half a million dead… mostly older unhealthier Brazilians…
that’s not high enough to do lockdowns…
same old story by now…
“live with it”… use masks and social distancing, and keep everything open…
I am wondering if the fact that it is the cool (less hot) drier season in Brazil now is making the country a more conducive environment for the virus.
The article is not really about the disease; it is about “Bolsonaro Bad”. In other words, another lefty hit piece by the worlds most discredited newspaper. If the assertions about covid are true, why aren’t Bolsonaro and all his right wing supporters dying like flies?
The real truth has been known for over a century: a pandemic cannot be stopped, only delayed. Eventually everyone susceptible will be infected.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-08/lockdowns-may-have-helped-prevent-half-a-billion-covid-cases
‘Lockdowns May Have Helped Prevent Half a Billion Coronavirus Cases’
“The virus has now caused some 7 million reported cases of Covid-19, with more than 400,000 fatalities. “Seemingly small delays in policy deployment likely produced dramatically different health outcomes” in different countries, said Solomon Hsiang, lead author on the paper from the University of California, Berkeley.”
“Here’s a breakdown of estimated cases prevented by country:
China: 37 million confirmed cases, 285 million total cases
South Korea: 11.5 million confirmed, 38 million total
Italy: 2.1 million confirmed, 49 million total
Iran: 5 million confirmed, 54 million total
France: 1.4 million confirmed, 45 million total
U.S.: 4.8 million confirmed, 60 million total”
The total is much higher than the confirmed count due to those getting infected but not getting tested and asymptomatic cases. And even in those cases, they would have been infecting many more people.
‘Lockdowns May Have Helped Prevent Half a Billion Coronavirus Cases’
helped prevent… or just delayed?
Right!
Amazing. We cannot even count the cases that exist, but these medical geniuses can accurately count cases that do not exist. Do they really think we are that stupid? Apart from Boris Johnson, of course, who really is that stupid.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
If you look at the number of covid-19 dead from certain countries, like Russia, India, Peru, Turkey, Iran, Germany & Chile, it’s easy to see they are greatly under-reporting. Likely to reduce concerns people have for getting sick so they go back to work. Even Brazil which has a high death count has been accused of deflating those numbers.
But doesn’t it seem likely that there was an avg. daily global death count pre-Covid-19, and once into the pandemic there has been a higher count with the difference being primarily attributed to this virus? And if so, then what is that increase and can we put it on a bar graph to see if it rising or declining and what is the ACTUAL total so far?
All lied about numbers. Only stupid itali told all the true. Even more. Modt big lied and clever are Russia. Saudi Arabia. Venezuela. Turkmenistan belarus. All dictature
That’s true, Marco, but let’s instead give Italy credit for being truthful. It’s good that we get the right numbers. I miss travelling in Italy with my wife. How that country held on to a lot of its antiquity is truly amazing. I want to be back there now to get some chocolate gelato on a sugar cone, the best in the world. Ciao!
I think center south Italia are most safety Place in world whit new Zealand. Lombardia of course not. 250 new contagion every day
“Only stupid itali told all the true.”
Did they now, doesn’t look like that from a lot of diff info I have encountered …
I can imagine that the virus operates very differently in South Italy than North Italy, if people in South Italy eat more fish and are out in the sun more. They will get more Vitamin D than those in North Italy. This could mean that the virus appears less virulent as it moves south in Italy.
Yes Lombardia have still problems and continue to rise. There are 11 milion of people. My region 1 milion. There are 4 internazionale Airport. 4 soccer team important. It s a best most Rich most parte of Italy. I think in south if really arrive virus Will be disaster because no hospital no organization. Yes vitamina d very important i think but only megadosis. I Know a lot of people Who go on beach everyday and have vitamina d around 20. Not very much
I am sure they are under-reporting. I’ve asked an Iranian friend how it really is: she says that her family and friends are all still alive,and none are seriously ill. They live in Kermanshah and Teheran and are not rich, a pretty average family. More worried about money than the virus as far as I can gather.
Thank Harry for this mornings roundup….saw this of interest and would like to share.
Tibet to become China’s data gateway to South Asia
Rita Liao@ritacyliao / 3:15 am EDT•June 8, 2020
The plateau is now a bridge for China to South Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s ambitious global infrastructure project. Ningsuan, a Tibet-headquartered company with data control centers in Beijing and research teams in Nanjing, is betting on the increasing trade and investment activity between China and India, Nepal, Bangladesh and other countries that are part of the BRI
….Construction of the Lhasa data center began in 2017 and is scheduled for completion around 2025 or 2026, a grand investment that will total almost 12 billion yuan or $1.69 billion. The cloud facility is estimated to generate 10 billion yuan in revenue each year when it goes into full operation.
Alibaba has skin in the game as well. In 2018, the Chinese e-commerce giant, which has a growing cloud computing business, sealed an agreement (in Chinese) with Ningsuan to bring cloud services to industries in the Tibetan region that span electricity supply, finance, national security, government affairs, public security, to cyberspace
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/08/tibet-to-become-chinas-data-gateway-to-south-asia/
All part of the digital yaun currency to bypass the Uncle Sammie Funny $$$😜
Digital currency is, of course, another kind of funny money.
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? | Real Patriot News
“Nigeria’s central bank took 460 billion naira ($1.2 billion) from lenders as additional cash reserves for missing regulatory thresholds, according to people familiar with the matter.
“The accounts of about 25 commercial lenders held with the Central Bank of Nigeria were debited by the regulator on Thursday and Friday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/nigeria-debits-banks-1-2-billion-for-missing-regulatory-targets-1.1446306
“South African banks face the steepest earnings slump in half a century — with some posting losses — as measures to curb the coronavirus drag the economy deeper into recession and lead to a surge in bad debts.
““I have looked at each and every crisis in the last fifty-odd years and there is nothing this severe,” said Corné Conradie, an actuary and partner at auditing and consultancy firm PwC in Johannesburg.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-08/south-african-banks-at-risk-of-deepest-profit-slump-in-50-years
I can believe that South Africa has major problems.
It sounds like this is the problem:
The world is in a deflationary period, and Nigeria is making regulations as if inflation is the biggest concern.
[German industrial output was already contracting in 2019].
“Germany’s industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 17.9% in April, which is the largest monthly drop on record, the Federal Statistical Office said Monday. Compared to April 2019, production fell by 25.3%. Capital-goods production fell 35%, and automotive production dropped 74.6%.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/german-industrial-production-dropped-a-record-179-in-april-2020-06-08
“As part of its economic stimulus package, Berlin wants to expand the role of green hydrogen to help end its reliance on coal. Despite €7 billion being earmarked, there’s no agreement on how it will be spent.”
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-and-hydrogen-7-billion-to-spend-but-no-strategy-yet/a-53719746
“Germany is under tremendous pressure from the United States, which demands Berlin revise its energy policy towards Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.”
https://tass.com/economy/1165097
Harry, thank you for the article, which I have just read. It is mostly rubbish. It begins badly, by calling hydrogen “the universe’s most abundant particle.” Hydrogen isn’t a particle, it’s an atom, two particles, or as found in nature a molecule, four particles. And the Universe’s most abundant particle is the neutrino.
And it gets worse: “Hydrogen’s huge advantage, however, is that can be more easily stored than other forms of renewable energy and for longer periods of time,” Hydrogen is not renewable energy. It is not any form of energy; it is an energy carrier. One might as well call an oil pipeline “energy”. And it is not easily stored; on the contrary, it is the energy carrier that is hardest to store, because of its very low molecular density, its very low boiling point, and its ability to leak through almost any container ever devised. But the german government believes “FNG gas”, which claims it can retrofit over 1000 km of gas pipelines to carry hydrogen. Good luck with that, and perhaps they should also explain that said pipeline, even if if works, will carry only one third the energy of natural gas.
And for all this effort and cost, what is the payoff? 5GV by 2030, and 5 more by 2049. That’s about 88 TWh in 2040, against a total annual energy consumption (today) of some 4000 TWh, or 2.2% Big Fat Deal.
And, of course, it won’t happen: “For the production of water-extracted hydrogen to be a mostly carbon-free process, it will require a massive ramp-up in wind and solar energy production.” Anyone who believes that can be made to happen with 7 billion Euro is living in cloud cuckoo land. And knowing how government projects are typically run, that money will be spent in the planning stage, and the research stage, and the publication for grant renewal stage, before a single molecule of usable hydrogen has bubbled off the electrode.
Good stuff, Robert – thank you for the insights!
Just handing out the money earmarked for hydrogen to people on the street would probably be more beneficial than to talk about such a story.
Gail, you should meet a journalist I (used) to know and teach him about energy!
Every day that they are able to keep these sorts of ideas afloat in the minds of the public has its own value.
Yes, I know from conversations that a lot of people believe in the fairy tale about hydrogen.
That’s right.
And you’re also right about the other assessments.
No criticism of you: Everyone who has been reading month on OFW is aware of this.
And the German government knows also that the idea of promoting hydrogen is idiotic. They do it anyway. Why?
I suppose it was pressure from the German car industry.
They just don’t want to write off their investments in engines and transmission plants prematurely.
Probably hope to bridge the expected oil shortage with hydrogen. Until another solution is found.
Gee, hydrogen powered cars! What could possibly go wrong? Well, many years ago, when working for a large organisation, I counted the number of cars in their enclosed multi storey parking lot. I then calculated how much compressed hydrogen gas those cars would need for a reasonable range (300 miles or about 500 km). Guess what: that garage would end up containing more hydrogen that the Hindenburg. Oh the humanity!
Hydrogen has a habit of leaking, problem is unlike other gasses that cool on expansion hydrogen heats up, BOOOM!!!! A really dangerous particle 🙂
t seems that there is natural pure hydrogène (dihydrogene molécules) in the earth crust:
https://www.industrie-techno.com/article/l-hydrogene-naturel-future-source-d-energie.42054
Strangely, I couldn’t find any article in English on this matter, but I guess you can Google translate it.
It could be that these hydrogen sources are not even fossile but permanently processed :
But where would that hydrogen come from? “Oil has been produced for tens of thousands of years without understanding how it was formed,” explains Alain Prinzhofer. Several interpretations coexist. The most credible one is the hypothesis that water undergoes chemical reduction. The best reducer present in the subsoil is iron. Oxidation of the Fe2+ form to Fe3+ would allow the reduction of H20 to H2. The generation of this hydrogen could therefore take place at many sites at a depth of a few tens of kilometres. Produced in this way continuously, this hydrogen potentially becomes a renewable resource, a flux, not a fossil storage, such as oil or methane.
God be blessed, we are saved! Almost saved….
An excellent point, rufus. However, the reduction of water by Fe++ requires a catalyst. This can be done by bacteria; indeed, it is the source of “bog iron” in Scandinavia. But dep in the Earth’s crust? I confess to being skeptical. However, I agree it is well worth further investigation.
I’m skeptic on the fact that we can extract that source on a industrial scale that would match our needs, and convert all our industrial system (machines, véhicules) to that new miraculous source of energy.(it would be marvelous, no carbon involved). We’ll maybe it could become part of our energy mix. Despite the fact that H2 is difficult to store and use, it’s highly inflammatory (as the Germans know since the Hindenburg zeppelin disaster), and volatile. I red that H2 molecules in atmosphere can even escape earth gravity (unbelievable).
And on the contrary of what the article says it’s not renewable : there is no infinite amount of Fe++ in earth crust. What would reverse the iron reduction?
our problem is not of energy supply, it’s energy use and conversion into something use-ful
it isn’t possible to have a viable civilisation where the prime function of it is the acquisition of energy itself in order to maintain that viability.
That would be trying to live in permanent negative equity
to Norman Pagett
Somewhat cryptic.
If I understand it correctly, the first thing to do is to change the financial system in order to get out of the constraint of constant growth.
If you agree with me, we are closer in our thinking than I thought.
i do agree with you–and I do prefer to be short and cryptic if i can.
but our ‘financial system’ is locked into the processes of turning inert base elements and volatile compounds into products that have a value and can be bought and sold.
and——-all financial systems are a sum of the surplus energy available
they are the parameters of our current civilisation. You can pin those rules onto just about any aspect of what we do, and it will fit.
If a society has little or no surplus energy, it is basically primitive peasantry, or aboriginal.
If a society has a lot of surplus energy, you have the ‘American dream’—for as long as it lasts, and for a priveleged few.
Not very complicated.
We may not like it very much, and rail against it, and the thinkers among us realise it’s a dead end, but if there is to be an ‘alternative’ it had better be more than wish science, wish economics and wish politics.
Remember 80m people show up each year, looking for a piece of the action. They must be factored in if you are considering ‘no growth’. The last few weeks have demonstrated what happens when growth stops.—and we start to rely on ‘wishes’.
to Norman Pagett
I don’t have an answer to all open questions either.
And the approximately 80 million that are added every year are really a problem. Not just for humanity.
Only the principle of hope can help. The belief that in societies that are more fairly organized, the birth rate drops.
That’s the way it is in most western countries.
That’s why I’m drumming for a different financial system. A much fairer one. One that was not designed to support the elites.
If it is not even possible to bring about such a change in one of our democracies, we can abolish it right away and call the child by real name: oligarchy.
Then it is at least clear who is responsible for everything.
Wow!
“Japan’s economy braced for its worst postwar slump… as the coronavirus crisis slams the brakes on global growth and raises pressure on Tokyo to cushion the blow to business and consumers.
“Banks are doing their bit to help as lending rose at the fastest annual pace on record in May, a sign companies were tapping loans to meet immediate funding needs to survive slumping sales from the pandemic.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-gdp/japan-braces-for-worst-postwar-economic-slump-pandemic-tests-policy-response-idUSKBN23E0XN
“Asian companies are at a higher risk of default in the coming quarters than last year, a Reuters analysis of their credit ratios showed, as the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed revenue and made it harder to refinance debt.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-asia-companies-debt/asian-companies-at-higher-risk-of-default-this-year-data-idUKKBN23F0QT
More and more debt, but will it be paid back?
“After a decade on the rise, lithium demand will drop for the first time since the subprime crisis.”
https://www.latercera.com/pulso/noticia/tras-una-decada-de-alza-demanda-de-litio-bajara-por-primera-vez-desde-la-crisis-subprime/TRNMEPBIWBHQTDIIO6M7OR5FCA/
Low demand and low price go together.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/04/electric-cars-take-the-spotlight-in-chinas-post-coronavirus-stimulus-plans.html
One bullet for the article says:
My interpretation: Most Chinese people are not buying electric cars. With gasoline prices so low, they make no economic sense, for one thing.
Yeah, but consumption has declined across the board for most items, so not sure there’s anything to conclude here except the overall economy has dampened.
This FT article says more or less the same thing as Psile’s video:
“On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the US labour department, released its latest report on the jobs market, showing unemployment dropping from 14.7 per cent in April to 13.3 per cent in May, an unexpected improvement.
“But the data came with a caveat: the agency acknowledged that some furloughed employees had been labelled as working but absent, when they should have been classified as temporarily laid off.”
https://www.ft.com/content/307a779e-a581-4158-9fcf-1f5957720e88
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – Right Wing Economics
Fossil Fuel (FF) pampered us too much. We have lost the ability to think, and act according to what nature has intended us to do. For the last hundreds of thousands of years, humans have been doing what we are suppose to be doing and yet the last 20 years especially, we try to play God and implement new “rules” that people must follow. We can ignore reality but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. The ugly head of “ignoring reality” is now biting us hard. Very hard.
FF took over a lot of our work. We became weak (because we did not do much physical work) and dumb (TV, social media). Our minds are idle. You will be surprised how videos (moving images) dumb people down tremendously. They do not allow the brain a chance to think. It is force feed it to you. Reading is a thing of the past for most people.
History rhymes – decadent lifestyle in the terminal days of the Roman (or any empire) Empire. Moral decay, high inequality, etc… what we are seeing now is the same. Different era, same issues.
The narrative that the government is trying to force on the Western countries is very strong but unfortunately, it is breaking down and more and more people can see through it. Many people are now seeing the pandemic as a scam. Social distancing seems to be ignored in the riots and protests.
The riots in USA is only serving as a catalyst for collapse. I read that Minneapolis will be disbanding their police. I am not really sure what that means. Does it mean that Minneapolis will not have police at all? That is beyond any logic for me. My friends in other cities in USA complained that police are not really out there patrolling and the streets are filled with rowdy people, blaring stereos and street racing. They could not sleep at all.
All these have consequences and second/third order effect. If one city has no police, people and businesses will leave and the city will be “left for dead”. Other cities seeing that Minneapolis has no police, will also ask/pressure their mayor to do the same. There is a non-zero possibility that many of these cities will be police-free and the city will be like war zones.
Businesses will suffer and so will the confidence of people. In other cities, the police will be demoralized and may not want to work extra or possibly not working at all. Will there be a time where many cities in USA are warzones? What happened to the economy?
Economy, which is already half dead from the lockdown, will be even “deader”…
Any good news since I last asked this question? If there is none, then the collapse has just accelerated. Perhaps, another straw on the camel’s back is the disband of police. This is not just a straw but possibly a iron straw that may just kill the camel.
Good thoughts, CTG.
“We became weak…”
Right, we have the dubious honour of being the first species to self-domesticate, lol.
Re good news, for what it’s worth (not all that much) Vietnam and Bangladesh claim to be doing well.
“Right, we have the dubious honour of being the first species to self-domesticate, lol.”
I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before but that’s an apt way of putting it. A saying I made up is; “If you let the dog jump up on the couch, it will.” Which applies to all species in as much as if there is a way of reducing labor/ increasing comfort, it will readily be accepted.
A few years ago as a result of a political struggle between a state governor and the central government, all the police went on strike and announced they wouldn’t answer any calls. Immediately, all the gangs came out and started looting shops – fascinating videos of the shop owners fighting back, very effectively in many cases!
But of course, we don’t need police because people are basically good at heart…….
In Argentina, that is.
Smaller scale, strong man. There will be enforcement. For example one does not commit a crime in John Gotti’s neighborhood. The only question is will the new enforcers change more or less than the old enforcers.
charge
In Bogotá in the 70’s, half the city didn’t have a police force.
You just needed to know how to negotiate things.
Our current conditions in the US really need to change.
But it is late stage capitalism, we are near the end comrades.
Somewhere between sadistic brutality and shutting down police stations is the middle ground, the gray area, in which the devil’s in the details as how best to provide security for people and property.
My idea, which is shades of Orwell’s 1984 with a trillion tiny cams watching everywhere tied to AI to recognize wrong doing and close in fast with drones to follow the victims and assailants, until officers can get there. The only trouble is there’s no privacy.
Minority Report film would be my idea where you have the concept of future crime detected by telepaths and stopped before they happen. Basically ‘get you retaliation in first’. You don’t need telepaths as Google can probably project future crimes from your browsing history and Facebook likes.
Ah, if it were all that simple. Modern humans like to think that if something can be imagined and technically conceived, it can also be done or accomplished. Imagine, and it was like it was already done.
However, it’s possible to conceive the best plan in the world, but no plan, not even the most clever. can cover all possible situations, because reality is simply too vast and complex for our little brain of verbal needy /greedy monkeys.
I suspect the invention of God turned human mind a little groggy with pride and self-assurance, and since we found fossil fuels, that mind literally went blind crazy.
For sure, humans 500,000 years ago must have their brains much more in tune with their reality than us with our. Most modern humans live 24/24 in the lala land of ads and PR.
That to say, if it wasn’t clear, that a possible plan to ship-control the plebs in a degrowth world can never work, or at least for a significant amount of time. But if it could buy us, say, 5 years, it would have my fully aprove. Big Brother i love you!
Hi Xabier, this is the complete story:
Following the trend arisen by gender issues and women trafic, the provincial government banned brothels. As the police forces were getting a profit there, they went on strike. The national government was at odds with the province, so they didn’t sent they own forces. Eleven people were killed, and many people believe the cops themselves fuelled the lootings
But cops didn’t went on strike recently when they were stripped of pensions privileges along with the other state employees. I don’t particularily like the cops, but I think they know we are living a hard moment and they will stand with the governement. I never had problems with them, but they are rather incompetent
Hope your chorizo ibérico is getting along, it’s delicious. Here nothing is missing, excepting my sleeping pils (which is remarkable given the brand is in the market since the 1930’s). I found another equally suitable and cheapest, and the province is still unlocking, so everything is cool right now
Cops and doctors recently recieved a bonus, so the government is culling the herd, so to speak
The big buildings in the center of many cities are increasingly becoming problems. They have elevators where people are “trapped” with other people. They have big open floor spaces where they work with other people. The heating/air conditioning systems have been set up for maximum efficiency. Thus, there is very little outside are circulating.
If the virus does spread in aerosol mode, this is a perfect way to spread the virus to someone working at quite some distance (50+ feet), if people are working together all day. The Diamond Princess experience seemed to suggest that this was happening. I don’t think that anyone has really been able to prove that it is not happening.
I would advise investing heavily in companies that provide UV scrubbers to air conditioning systems.
Might kill off viruses floating by.
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? | AlltopCash.com
One small point; these bastions of racism still seem to be magnets for those same ‘peoples’ who try, through fair means and/or foul, to emigrate there. Actions speak louder than words.
Yes, it’s amusing. So rotten, but still so desirable to settle in.
The Guardian often runs articles in which ethnic minority people who have reached highly desirable positions (often these days Indian Asian) – consultant surgeon, tenured university professor, etc – whinge about systemic racism because it was ‘so hard’ for them to get their post. Even success, by any measure, isn’t good enough for them!
In contrast, a friend of mine who came from Iran at the age of 8, lived in one of the worst ‘deprived’ areas of London, and attended a very poor state school, gives short shrift to all this pathetic complaining.
He is now a consultant transplant surgeon, researcher, Director of Studies at his College, and University lecturer. He had the stuff it takes, and encountered NO obstacles or prejudice in his career path.
And he is delighted not to have to pretend to fast in Ramadan or recite the Koran daily as he had to do in Iran!
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, I’m afraid. At least from Mom. Dad is usually not so tolerant of wheedling and complaining and bush-lawyering.
Just wait until your father gets home!
a new June 7 article at surplusenergyeconomics…
the text is comprehensive and easy to agree with, though the numbers he projects are usually too optimistic (to me)…
though his trend is towards lower numbers…
all in all, he is quite in agreement with much that has been discussed here in March and April…
perhaps his personality skews towards overly cautious…
Tim Morgan’s post is superb, and the predictions entirely plausible.
The point he makes about the divergence of GDP from ‘real prosperity’ is worth dwelling upon, and that it will be a factor in governments misunderstanding how the economy is really performing.
His one great fault is the tendency to allow his dislike of mass consumerism to colour his analysis. He has some vision of a reduced BAU-lite economy in which our purchases of morally-reprehensible ‘trinkets’ decline steeply or go away altogether.
This feeds into the common assumption that ‘De-growth’ could be quite nice and even cool, as we rediscover moral worth aside from the mere possession of things, as if the quest to own things dates from post WW2 consumerism alone, and is not a fundamental element in human nature.
Before consumerism, people -even in the simplest societies and economies – sought as many pigs, cattle, sheep, woods, fields and yes, slaves, as they could get their hands on, for obvious psycho-biological reasons.
This is to confuse moral/spiritual and physical (energy) arguments and realities. Whatever the state of our souls in the Collapse, it is the inability to house, feed and clothe bodies which which will be at the forefront of politics and consciousness! And on the whole, people do not tend to be very spiritual in such circumstances.
But we do seem to like moral narratives: ‘Give me some of that, now -because it’s right!’
Every member of the criminal class -like the late George Floyd – thinks they are entirely justified taking what they have, in some way, a right to. Legitimate redistribution, like the gang who house-raided my mother 2 years ago….
One of the comments on the post is by a scientist who has worked in the Defence Ministry in the UK, and he makes the point that although many experts understand the energy crisis, they are impelled by the political culture to present to ministers wonderful prospects of success through innovation – no other narrative would go down well.
The political narrative, for both Left and Right, is:
Innovation = more GDP = politically acceptable growth (to be enjoyed privately or redistributed) = more votes for my party.
This is not conceptually well-adapted to the coming crisis in our civilization….
“He has some vision of a reduced BAU-lite economy in which our purchases of morally-reprehensible ‘trinkets’ decline steeply or go away altogether.”
Right – he has some romantic notions about de-growth, just as Jim Kunstler has some romantic notions about what a post-collapse society might look like.
It’s odd that two such perceptive and intelligent observers should be quite so naive; to which we must add Greer’s ‘collapse first and brew beer for the war bands’ nonsense.
Wishful thinking I suppose, which is natural faced by this monster breathing hotly in our faces.
To see a systemic collapse with clarity, to grasp where all the figures are logically leading us, is not comfortable.
Collapse can be avoided. Install a dictatorship, impose quotas on the consumption of every day items, quotas on births. This is what communism did. We lived during communism with 1/10 of the resources that capitalism uses. Without loosing much in life expectancy.
dictators are invariably unpleasant people
lets hope you are part of the inner circle when it comes about
If you read at this site a little more you will find that the issue is no longer merely consumption, but affordability, and that reduced consumption would just make matters worse. We have to keep up a high level of demand using massive loads of debt in order to underwrite the high costs of exploration/drilling/mining/etc.
So no, at the modern scale, and after a number of rather scarifying trial runs, communism is still not the answer. We might try it again once we get society down to the scale of wandering bands.
Ultimately the problem arises when a cash value is put on a finite (and essential) resource. In human terms, cash is a very recent invention. As is ‘property’.
We live on a sphere (essentially finite) which we, as a living species, have made into a tradable commodity.
that being so, the growing numbers of us all want our share of that commodity. There is enough to go round at a median level, but not at the level of ‘western’ developed lifestyle. Unfortunately that is what we all aspire to. Right now we are struggling to maintain our delusions in that respect.
but a few of us are smarter than the rest, or luckier–whatever, so that lucky few cream off the best of the finite assets of the world. The more they acquire, the stronger is their ability to acquire more. And the less there is for everyone else.
And human nature being what it is, this is what they do.
No millionaire/billionate says 1 million/billion is enough.
They do not consider that their asset-pile is draining the resource base of everyone else. I think 0.1% of humankind owns as much as half the rest of the world. (something like that)
Musk acquires billions, and diverts it to make giant fireworks, blowing global assets into pointless nothing. Just because he can. For the past 60 years, pointless space exploration has lgnored the poverty of billions left behind on Earth. We send probes to Mars just because we can. They bring no return on the investment
So if you want an alternative to communism or capitalism,. I have just described the idiotic situation that must change. Trouble is, change to what? Who is going to tell us that spaceflight is unaffordable? Or for that matter, cruises in the Caribbean?
We all have the right to spend our money as we please—but lets not lose sight of the fact that we are burning finite assets at the same time.
it will change of course, but it will not be of our doing; rather a tectonic ‘shift’ that will happen as resources become unusable and unaffordable. (Like now perhaps?)
to Kim
it was already clear to me when I started posting here recently that I had to drill thick boards.
I have been bored hearing the argument from others for years that there is only alternative capitalism or communism.
Because that’s what I’ve been told again and again since my youth. The newspapers and media were full of it.
And since 1990 it has been said that capitalism has won.
Does he have that?
Look at our world and tell me that what you see is a victory.
I have great doubts.
I wrote a few days ago that I came across another variant in 1994, a real eye-opener.
Did that lead to a discussion about it? No, it didn’t.
There is something like human persistence. Changes in thinking are exhausting. Nobody likes to leave their familiar thinking patterns. So ways are sought to discredit such suggestions and their adepts in the beginning.
Galileo Galileo, Giordano Bruno, …, Silvio Gesell … Should I continue the list. If I go on a search I will probably find thousands.
There is always an alternative to the present. The only question is whether you like it.
Like liberal democracies, dictatorships of the proletariat saw population increases too, as well as of living standards, consumption levels, industrialism, pollution, etc, with a concomitant decline in their habitats. Left, right, capitalism, communism, or its little brother, socialism, are all wedded to the same growth imperative, which is toxic to a habitable planet, because these are byproducts of human nature in the service of entropy (burning of energy).
“Every member of the criminal class…”
News flash: lots of people commit crimes, they just aren’t aware they have (i.e. petty crimes / misdemeanors) and/or they never get caught. Also, some countries have far more activities enshrined as crimes than other countries do (not to mention “conspiracy” based crimes, where you are deemed a criminal simply for discussing the possibility of committing a crime, despite not having acted to commit said crime).
Some people may exhibit more antisocial behaviour than others, but they don’t belong to some sort of “class”, as it’s not as if they make it a point of their existence to go out of their way to break every law they can. Many criminals follow the laws/rules 95%+ of the time, but struggle with certain issues that society has outlawed.
Can you imagine being a gay man when it was illegal to openly identify with and engage in acts of homosexuality? Were all homosexuals part of the “criminal class” until the point that those laws were abolished? Many laws are/were insanely arbitrary, and offer little as a reflection of how “good” or “bad” a person truly is.
Cheers,
-GBV
There are not many convicted felonious criminals who are criminals of conscience. (Please do not tell me that meth, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and fentanyl dealers are really just human rights activists). Libertarianism is a childish fantasy and the damage done by these evil drugs is real.
Nor are there many career riminals who became career criminals because of poverty. The world is full of poor people who do not decide to do armed robberies, or import tonnes of cocaine, commit murders, assaults, rapes and so on. This is especially the case in the United States, which even in its current sad condition is the wealthiest and most-fed and best fed and clothes polity in history.
People who commit felonious crimes more often than not do so habitually, without conscience, and are very, very nasty people.
As for the “many” “insanely arbitrary” laws, I am not aware of what they might be. You could specify. But if you are talking about things like laws requiring people to walk in front of a motor vehicle carrying a red flag, or the law that makes it a felony to remove the tag from a hotel mattress, then I 100% agree with you, those kinds of laws should be repealed forthwith. But let’s try to retain the laws and policing that keep the worst people, the violent, bullying, narcissistic, selfish, sociopathic and psychopathic, at bay and where they belong, in prison.
Kim, a good post. But may I please disagree with your final comment: “But let’s try to retain the laws and policing that keep the worst people, the violent, bullying, narcissistic, selfish, sociopathic and psychopathic, at bay and where they belong, in prison.” As best I can see, in many countries of the world, including the US, the laws do not keep these people in prison; they keep them in power.
This is a link to Tim Morgan’s post, called, The Affordability Crisis.
This is a chart of what he is forecasting. Note that there is no steep step-down in discretionary spending, only in tax revenue.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/1.-prosperity-metrics.jpg
No country steps down much in prosperity per capita, after 2020. Instead, they step down in discretionary prosperity per capita, as tax revenue gradually rises.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/2.-regional-prosp.jpg
He expects debt to continue to rise–thus, no popping of the big debt bubble, except to the extent it can be offset by more government debt. I think that this is one of the things Tim Morgan misses. Also, the indirect impacts of the tax cuts. Governments will cut back on their spending, laying off workers. And problems we had before will continue, leading to more broken supply lines, many fewer businesses, and less employment. The low commodity price problem will not be fixed, leading to declines in energy supplies and low wages in many lesser developed areas of the world, especially.
Morgan concludes:
It would appear to me that the distraction of convid and these over-cooked riots have taken attention away from one of the most important events regarding the Obama mal-presidency. There are a lot of less than flattering revelations being pushed to the back pages by the more photogenic ‘protests’.
The whole can of worms which is Russia-gate seems to be being ignored. These riots are very timely and could just what the perps ordered/fostered. Hopefully the real business of seeking justice for seditious behaviour can be seen through to some sort of resolution; one way or another.
Because Honest Govt Matters.
Faint hope?
JHK keeps beating that drum… that the DOJ is soon going to indict many of the perps for the serious crymes of 2014 – 2016… Obama-led illllegal coup in Ukraine… spyying on the 2016 R election campaign…
but it’s been stretched out for 3 and a half years…
faint hope?
yes, I have a little bit of hope that all of the political cryminals of 2014 – 2016 will be charged and convicted…
a very very little bit…
Trump is a great strategist. He wanted most of the action to coincide with his reelection.
the other part of this story is that the MSM here seriously wants the D side to win in November…
so anything that might make the R side look bad will be amplified 10x…
the impeachment ploy failed…
the “blame Trump for covid” was failing…
next up… police bruutailty is all because of Trump…
where’s this question:
Obama had 8 years to address this issue, especially during the months when many instances of police bruutality/racism were all over the news…
what did he do to change things for the better?
I live way down under, but from here it looks like the D’s have only one policy platform; get rid of Trump.
Have they got anything else to campaign on? Maybe I haven’t been paying attention….?
Looks like that from up here as well, a pathetic excuse for a political party, I’m glad the old greek philosophers are long dead …
some contrarian optimism… try not to laughh:
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-mars-city-launch-date
“SpaceX wants to build a city on Mars, and it’s not waiting around to get started.
On Friday, CEO Elon Musk confirmed via Twitter that he’s still aiming to launch the first ships to Mars by 2022. These ships will hold cargo designed to support a future manned mission. That mission will come in 2024, the next time when the Earth and Mars are close again.”
“We’re really excited about the possibilities of doing both, having bases on the moon while we’re also setting up these cities on Mars.”
We need lots and lots of jobs. If people can be convinced to contribute money toward this kind of endeavor (buy shares of stock and buy bonds, for example), this money can be used to hire staff and to pay for supplies. This kind of activity is part of what keeps prices of commodities from falling to zero.
Is this kind of activity any worse than hiring professors to write academic papers declaring the feasibility of sustainable green growth?
the radiation on Mars and the Moon’s bright side will fry them unless they intend to use lead for domes.
Recommended reading: “The Sands of Mars”, by Arthur C Clarke. A classic example of the science fiction age of optimism, or, if you will, of hubris. When I first read it in 1957 It said optimism; when I last read it in 2019 it said hubris. We live and learn.
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem?Since 1998 Hitrust.net = Privacy and Protection | Since 1998 Hitrust.net = Privacy and Protection
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – Maris Research
Yesterday, me and my friends visited our friend living in the neighbouring village. We have spotted a new big white cross on the opposite hill. According to him, the cross was erected on the place where a father and later his son commited suicide stabbing themselves with the knife into the heart.
The village was known to have a high percentage of alcoholics in the past and this new monument confirms that some limits were reached.
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – SYFX+
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? - COVID-19 | Coronavirus
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? - Tradezy
Pingback: Повышенное насилие отражает энергетическую проблему? - Коронавирус | COVID-19
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? - StockGuy.ca
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – Finanz.dk
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? | NewsLinks.Net | Conservatve News
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? | Commentary and Observations | CuttingScore.com
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem?
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – iftttwall
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? - The Republican Ballot
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – Truly Times
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – Investing Money Trends
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? | Zero Hedge
Pingback: Does Increased Violence Reflect An Energy Problem? – TradingCheatSheet
Riots, burning and looting has started in Brussels.
Antifa + a fitna
Time has come for Europe to burn.
I notice that Brussels had riots in April as well. Any excuse seems to be a good excuse to riot.
https://www.euronews.com/2020/06/07/no-to-racism-protests-after-george-floyd-killing-spread-across-europe
this quote in particular:
“Racism knows no borders,” Leinisa Seemdo, a 26-year-old Spanish translator from Cape Verde, said
“I have lived in China, Portugal, and now in Spain, and in every country I have experienced discrimination because of my skin colour.”
so the EU “us” is protesting against the USA “them”…
perhaps some persons are just experiencing a hormonal rush as they participate in these protests and assuage the blandness of their lives…
Mass hysteria, accentuated by social media and shadowy political elements, naive excitement-seeking, plus that age-old hatred of the criminal layer of society for the police and any authority – all converging in one ridiculous carnival.
There are sinister elements in all of this, even menacing, but let’s just have a good laugh at the fact that it is all ‘in honour’ of the lowest kind of scumbag, cowardly armed criminal, and drug addict, George Floyd.
It’s like the very old Persian story of the people who mistook a dead donkey for a Saint, and built a pilgrimage shrine over the grave, which was venerated for centuries thereafter…..
Xabier, would that be Shams-i-Tabrizi, the teacher of Rumi? But of course he was in turn the disciple of ‘Ali ibn Abu Talib, the father of Sufism.
Just a Sufi teaching story, as far as I know.
In the tale, the descendants of the man whose donkey died made a living for centuries from gifts made to the shrine by the pious.
People initially assumed the dead and buried donkey must have been a saint because the owner was weeping so much by the mound of earth.
Maybe George Floyd should be known as the Donkey Saint in homage to this fine tale?
Let’s see how big his monument turns out to be first……
Xabier, assuming my mantle of political incorrectness, I fear his monument will be burned out buildings, destroyed livelihoods, and ruined cities. They will make a desert, and call it Black Lives Matter.
Lockdown millions of big school age and college age students for months at home, take away any jobs some might have had, then give them an excuse to get out on the streets, and you get marches everywhere. There is a lot of pent up energy that had to be released. Besides, many of them are now fully indoctrinated in PC and SJW ideas.
The loss of jobs for these young and older people is a great danger.
Right!
Just a shame they don’t know were to point the fingers … superficial more than PC.
A tornado in Central Europe, in Poland, just 35 km from Slovak border:
https://youtu.be/ylJuKp3xQK0
I was surprised to learn that per square mile, England has more tornadoes each year than any other country.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.5.4016/full/
It makes perfect sense that the UK would have so many tornadoes as members of the Royal family need to keep spinning every time the paparazzi come to visit them – gives the general public something to talk about. Add on spinning politicians (especially with Brexit) and the air over the UK would be very tornadic.
i thought it was when the cold artic air mixed with the hot air rising from all those pubs.
Humor is always welcome.
Dennis L.
At my employment, a number of individuals and family members had cases of what seemed like the China flu in January and this confirms it may have been introduced to the USA earlier that mid to late February.
Business Insider
The coronavirus was likely in the US before anyone knew it existed. It’s now hard to believe we ever assumed otherwise
Indeed, the timeline of the US’s outbreak has required revisions.
Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t confirm community spread in California until February 27, a recent CDC report found that the virus actually began to spread in the country between January 18 and February 9. The US’s first coronavirus death, California autopsies have shown, happened weeks earlier than we originally thought. In Florida, at least 170 people who were later confirmed to have COVID-19 first reported their symptoms from December 31 to February 29, according to the Miami Herald.
On January 30, however, CDC director Robert Redfield told reporters that “the immediate risk to the American public is low.”
https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-likely-us-anyone-knew-115200361.html
So, it seems we are not really prepared to deal with this pandemic .
If it turns out that it was spreading more extensively before we were aware of it, it might lead us to change our estimates for the proportion of cases that are asymptomatic or mild,” Meyers said. “It might also just sort of give people intuition for how long it takes between when a virus is first introduced into a city, and when it starts becoming apparent and really leading to a large number of cases in hospitals and deaths.”
Understanding how new viruses spread around the world world — and how quickly they can seep into new populations — could help scientists and policymakers learn from the mistakes of 2020 and prepare for the next pandemic.
Actually, this one will likely be around for a long, long time. We have had a hard time figuring out how to maintain an economy with it.
What I will predict is more Capital punishment. More like Iran where murderers,torturers and mutilators were executed.
Prison rapists will also get on death row and die. And the process will be sped up.
In Old Mongolia, prisoners were put into boxes with one small hole for their heads,and left to starve or – even worse – half-starve.
Pretty economical, and the boxes were of course multi-use, which is terribly Green.
Much better than the infamous garrote, much favored in Iberian peninsule untill ~1800.
Compared with it, death by starving seems suddenly a very nice way to go. I didn’t imagine that the Mongol lords were so lenient. Very nice of them.
“In Old Mongolia, prisoners were put into boxes with one small hole for their heads,and left to starve or – even worse – half-starve.”
The Iranians had a special punishment for highway robbers. They were encased in masonry by the side of the highway – with only their heads exposed. They would beg people to cut their throats before the birds came to feast.
One of my customers is directly descended from the old Persian Shahs, in other times she would have been a princess, and when we were discussing this sort of thing we agreed that the punishments had to be harsh, because the people were so wild and violent that only terrifying punishments would have any chance of working.
Actually, if one reads the history of Iran before the Oil Age, it’s clear that the tribes just used to stick two fingers up to the Shah anyway. Even as late as the 1920’s they were able to occupy Teheran and terrify everyone.
Kidnapping and secret murder were also used by the Shahs, as they were often too weak to fight the tribes openly, and the country so large and mountainous.
The more basic the economy and society, the more execution seems to be the most economical punishment. Or enslavement of the fit and strong for their labour.
The trend in our liftetimes has in fact been away from capital punishment. Very much so. Back in the 1930s, even (not to diminish it) rape could get a man the death penalty but the last execution for rape in the United States was in 1964. Since then, the rape rate has increased about 450 percent.
Why the rate of rape has increased so much is a very complicated question. It may be that the definition of rape has changed. Or it may be that we as a society are becoming more tolerant of rape. Or perhaps criminals were aware of the potential consequences.
If we are becoming more tolerant of rape, I would see that as a sign of decivilization. Others may of course disagree.
@Kim
Capital Punishment is good for reducing the mouths to feed.
Only a rich country can afford punishments other than the death penalty. Or perhaps putting people in stocks, or flogging them.
Incarceration leads to a build-up of prison populations where diseases can easily propagate. They get to be a hazard for workers in the prison, as well, spreading diseases far and wide. We have had the luxury of medicines to stop many bacterial infections, but even this is leaving us.
Otherwise, the only choice is to “look the other way.” Poor people can’t pay monetary fines. Rich people don’t care, one way or the other. Monetary fines only affect the middle class.
I was just reading an account of Ireland in the 1830’s: a judge told the author that murder, assault, rape and theft were ‘hardly known’. At worst, injuries, never premeditated, from drunken fights.
He was describing those who were among the poorest and most down-trodden people on earth at that time, the Irish Catholics. -the people the English called ‘savages’.
Those who use poverty and ‘ systemic oppression’ to excuse and even condone the most horrible crimes might do well to reflect on that.
Of course, most of those people would have sincerely believed that Hell awaited them if they were to do any of those things.
The poverty is deepening: the people washing meat in the public fountain on a square in the Czech city of Brno
https://tv.pravda.sk/relacie/spravodajstvo/epizoda/4496-umyvala-kilogramy-masa-vo-fontane-doma-nemali-drez
People are inventive. In India, people wash clothes outside in available pools. This is a photo I took a few years ago.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/women-washing-clothes.jpg
In my childhood in almost every neighborhood there was a public washroom, which most families used because the washing machine was a rarity. Since the 1980s, they have stopped being used, some have been demolished, but many are still there.
http://puraexperiencia.blogspot.com/2011/05/
There are still some public “laundromats” in the United States, but not as many as years ago. They seem to have been replaced by nail salons and other shops selling services that are more in current demand.
When I was a graduate student, I pulled my cart and brought my laundry to the nearest laundromat. Later, I bought a little portable washing machine that I could hitch up to the kitchen sink and use. When I was done, the machine could be stored in a bedroom.
Sorry. wrong link. I meant to show you the public wash place i was talking. It was a big stone washtub were the women of the street gathered to wash (and talk).
Same, of course, once, in every village in Spain and Portugal: I love to stand beside the old washing pool in our village, which must have seen a lot in over 2,000 years, and countless generations of women singing their washing songs and gossiping – it was settled by the Romans. As evocative as old, old fireplaces in ancient stone houses…….
Businesses that have steadily built up over decades but now stopped will find it really hard to restart, if at all. Here is one small example from Cowes, UK.
There is a water taxi business in the Medina river which normally runs 0800-2200 at this time of year ferrying people to moored boats and back. They reopened two weeks ago with a 1000-1700 service, however they found that there were not enough passengers to justify running those times so they have now reduced it to 1100-1600. Given you have to get to your boats, sail and come back this is hardly enough time to warrant the trouble, particularly since charges are now £10/p return rather than the previous £4/p return. I suspect they will find even less customers under this revised service and so rather than building the business back to normal levels it’s going backwards with ever increasing losses presumably.
This will be the tragedy, the destruction of solid well-run little businesses, invisible to politicians and statistics, but a vital part of local lives.
Similarly, one of the last independent shops here in Cambridge, the Cheese Company, long-established, is now manned only 10-3 weekdays for orders which are phoned in.
They used to make nearly all their profit at this time of year, mostly from University business including supplying the summer conferences held here.
That’s been totally wiped out, and one wonders if they can survive any second lock-down.
Only those who’ve established a small business, and worked hard to get customers and a reputation over many years can appreciate what this sort of thing means.
A quasi legal trade in cannabis seeds “sold as curiosities and not for germination” in Dublin is only operating from 12pm to 4pm down the street here. I’d have thought there’d have been a high demand, given recent events.
Xabier,
Perhaps understanding it as a depreciation rate may be insightful. Scarcity of raw materials means some uses of them are no longer profitable, marginal revenues decline until they meet cost of goods sold and then go to zero immediately. The causes are many, the results are the same.
Many here have laid in a supply of popcorn for this event, it might be thought of as a series with a different episode each week.
It will be interesting to see if it is as much fun as many assumed, personally I assume it will be as painful as you describe.
Dennis L.
This is identical to restaurants operating at half capacity. It just does not work. Demand of oil come back big time as stated by MSM. Is that certain? Colour me surprise if it did
CTG, I think it could work in some areas if people were willing to pay the tab. Let us say it is twice the normal (what I paid for my recent haircut). I would certainly pay 3 Euro for the excellent cappuccino from my favourite cafe, and 6 Euro for a light lunch with wine at my local pub. And a Chinese meal at that tiny shop in Valletta where you eat at a table on the pavement; with a bottle of Tsingtao beer? Cheap at 16 Euro. (Yes, I’ve doubled all the prices)
I noticed that a shop that is part of a low-cost hair cutting chain near me has a sign up now. It says something to the effect that coupons will no longer be honored. Look for the new (higher?) prices in their online site.
These shops can serve fewer customers, so they need to charge more for each haircut, if they are to cover their costs. People have gotten used to having their hair longer, so I suppose people visiting these places will go longer between haircuts. Perhaps this will work out; I don’t know. Fewer hairdressers will be hired and fewer haircuts in total will be sold.
A new class divide: those with COVID bad hair, and the rich who will still be well-groomed? 🙂
My wife cut my hair during the lockdown. I just thought “it’s not bad, why bother going to a hairdresser shop”. I’m afraid many will think the Same, especially if they’re short on money.
It’s suddenly become quite trendy to have a home grown buzz cut.
I find hairdressers are great bellwethers for the economy. The worse the state of the economy the longer the hair they have to cut.
My local hairdresser reopened about 10 days ago. Masks, hand sanitiser, and only one customer in the shop at a time. Not easy. Officially she had raised her price from ER 5 to 7. But since I had skipped at least one regular haircut I gave her 10. Hope that helped.
Communist!
Did he give it up at gunpoint?
No, I gave it up because Honest Lives Matter.
“Here is one small example from Cowes, UK”
I lived at Ryde, Isle of Wight, for several years until we moved to Melbourne in 2009. It was obviously in decline even then. I notice that the local newspaper, at least the online version, was renamed and had now seemingly disappeared.
When the ferry you referred to becames expensive and infrequent, fewer people will want to moor their boats at Cowes. Everyone loses from the local hotels, pubs and of course the ferries to the Mainland. It is a downward spiral. 🙁
Alfred, yes indeed. Since 2009 crash Cowes has struggled to fill all the Medina berths available, there used to be a waiting list but no longer. The planned marina development in East Cowes has been cancelled. Over the last 10 years Cowes has become more noticeably dependent on yachting for high street business, much of which is passing trade from mainland visitors. This is not good in a declining market.
The County Press island newspaper is still running by the way. https://www.countypress.co.uk/
“Just a month into his fledgling rule, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is facing an economic crisis that could leave millions of Iraqis out of pocket and may spell fresh unrest in the beleaguered country…
“Appearing on the horizon is Baghdad’s inability to secure the next two months’ salaries for public sector employees, or pay pensions and benefits, a loss of income that would affect the majority of Iraqi households.
“Officials fear such an outcome could stoke widespread unrest, threaten the new government and see public institutions, including oil fields, targeted by angry protesters.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iraq-hurtling-towards-financial-crisis-could-leave-millions-unpaid
“When Saudi Arabia unveiled tough austerity measures last month few areas of government spending were expected to be untouched. But in one sector — defence — the message to industry executives was business as usual.
““I was fully expecting there to be a cut, but the information from very senior levels and princes is ‘no, we’re not going to do it. In fact, don’t come and ask me if your programme is going to slip, keep working hard at it, because we are just carrying ahead,’” said one western arms industry executive based in the Gulf. “We’ve got a large number of requirements popping in through the door.””
https://www.ft.com/content/062a1fa4-2892-4b84-8518-0a1a35d78bf1
“Violent clashes between supporters of Iran-backed Hezbollah and rival protesters left more than 35 people injured as anti-government demonstrations returned to Lebanon’s capital on Saturday.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1685796/middle-east
The pattern seems to be clear in every collapsed society: the war lords take control of parts of the nation.
The wolves take control and the sheep get slaughtered.
In a tribal society with a more primitive economy, warlords take over, organised on a religious and tribal basis.
In an advanced economy, mafias of criminal ‘businessmen’, politicians and police come to dominate.
It will look more similar to Yassa Law:
http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/mongols-sup.htm
More Capital punishment yay.
That’s why it’s called the Criminal Law?
Xabier,
I can only speak(write) to the police. I come from a police family, I grew up among cops and perhaps what is instructive was a comment probably in the 1960’s by a veteran cop in my home town whom I personally knew to the effect when he began his career the goal was prevention then it changed to writing tickets and collecting income. My experience is it was NOT the cops who wanted stepped up enforcement, it was the political class. A “statie” does not get rewarded for the decrease in accidents along his route, he gets rewarded by the tickets written. Cops of my youth had no desire to dominate, they were nice guys many of whom had side jobs as masons, carpenters, plumbers to help support their family. The beat cop knew his beat, knew the people, the greatest source of tension in La Crosse was 3rd street, the 18 year old beer bars and college kids looking for “fun,” when in 2002 I returned the city had bus runs to the bars with the vomit comet. In the late fifties times were tough, Oktoberfest was started – basically a public drunk. The cops hated it, people peeing on the street, everyone having a cultural experience. Politicians celebrated it, it brought people to the city, a chance to behave poorly away from they eyes of friends, family, etc.
March a line a cops down a street under orders to control a crowd and someone is going to be hurt, soon cops will not risk pensions, or penalties to perfectly enforce the law – judgment is ex post facto.
In the sixties on the campus of the University of Wisconsin cops were spat on, bags of urine thrown at them, feces thrown at them and chants of pigs were common. The greatest radicals seemed to come from New York to enlighten the rubes of Madison, they also paid out of state tuition and lived in expensive private dorms on Langdon. They wrote regularly in the “Daily Cardinal.” On State Street during Halloween when things got going calls of “We want gas” were common. I was at the “riots” of the sixties, I took 8mm home movies standing not on the sidelines, but from the very center of the mob. There were 50 cal guns on the jeeps, but there were no bullets – a cop’s kid notices such things.
Those cops were incredibly patient, call them pigs for fifty years and maybe the outcomes might be less than desirable. These are challenging times for all of us, emotions are very high and the outcome is now uncertain. Cops are very visible, they are the easy targets when things do not go perfectly and they never do.
Dennis L.
“The wolves take control and the sheep get slaughtered.”
… until the sheep have had it and kill the wolves. Sheep don’t do that but human “sheep” do …
https://www.kark.com/news/breaking-news/officer-involved-shooting-in-north-little-rock/
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (News release) – During the course of the investigation, it was determined that Officers with the North Little Rock Police Department were at the Rose City Sub-Station when they heard several gunshots nearby. The Officers went to the parking lot next door to the Sub-Station to investigate when they were forced to engage an armed subject who was actively shooting a handgun in the parking lot of 4615 E. Broadway which is next to the Rose City Sub-Station. Detectives have interviewed numerous witnesses who corroborated the initial actions of the Officers on the scene.
Officers then began immediate lockdown procedures with the businesses that were affected. Officers gathered all innocent persons in the immediate vicinity of the armed subject and placed them in positions of safety while other Officers began to try to deescalate the armed subject’s actions. While doing so, the armed subject jumped into an innocent bystander’s vehicle that was parked in front of 4615 E. Broadway. Officers continued to try to persuade the armed subject to comply with their demands to relinquish the handgun but he adamantly refused and then pointed the handgun at the Officers. One Officer utilized deadly force to stop the immediate threat.
………………………………………………………………….
Imagine that was your daily job: to run not away but towards the bullets. It will become very interesting for Minneapolis and surrounding areas if the police are disbanded.
Just imagine, someone could commit crimes in nearby towns and cities, then return to the safety of the liberated zone of Minneapolis where police have no authority.
This is 1905. Which of course was the great dress rehearsal for 1917.
Hint:
Police are not even in the top 10 of dangerous jobs.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/110496-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-us-the-top-20
By most counts, not even in the top 20.
(I have had 3 in the top 10)
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries)
Is that praise for their work-safety practises and training or an argument that their work environment should be made more hazardous?
We expected exactly this kind of outcome, when oil prices fell too low for oil producers.
“China’s exports contracted in May as global coronavirus lockdowns continued to devastate demand, while a sharper-than-expected fall in imports pointed to mounting pressure on the country’s manufacturers as global growth stalls.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-economy-trade/china-may-exports-slip-back-into-contraction-imports-worst-in-six-years-idUKKBN23E053
“China is considering using about 200bn yuan ($28bn) in proceeds from government bond sales to help address risks in the banking sector, according to people familiar with the matter.”
https://www.gulf-times.com/story/664977/China-mulls-28bn-funding-to-backstop-troubled-bank
$28 billion doesn’t sound like nearly enough.
China’s import drop was especially bad: