Today’s energy predicament is a strange situation that most modelers have never really considered. Let me explain some of the issues I see, using some charts.
[1] It is probably not possible to reduce current energy consumption by 80% or more without dramatically reducing population.
A glance at energy consumption per capita for a few countries suggests that cold countries tend to use a lot more energy per person than warm, wet countries.
Figure 1. Energy consumption per capita in 2019 in selected countries based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
This shouldn’t be a big surprise: Our predecessors in Africa didn’t need much energy. But as humans moved to colder areas, they needed extra warmth, and this required extra energy. The extra energy today is used to build sturdier homes and vehicles, to heat and operate those homes and vehicles, and to build the factories, roads and other structures needed to keep the whole operation going.
Saudi Arabia (not shown on Figure 1) is an example of a hot, dry country that uses a lot of energy. Its energy consumption per capita in 2019 (322 GJ per capita) was very close to that of Norway. It needs to keep its population cool, besides running its large oil operation.
If the entire world population could adopt the lifestyle of Bangladesh or India, we could indeed get our energy consumption down to a very low level. But this is difficult to do when the climate doesn’t cooperate. This means that if energy usage needs to fall dramatically, population will probably need to fall in areas where heating or air conditioning are essential for living.
[2] Many people think that “running out” of oil supplies should be our big worry. I believe that lack of the “demand” needed to keep oil and other energy prices up should be at least as big a worry.
The events of 2020 have shown us that a reduction in energy demand can occur very quickly, in ways we would not expect.
Oil demand can fall from less international trade, from fewer international air flights, and from fewer trips by commuters. Demand for electricity (made mostly with coal or natural gas) is likely to fall if fewer buildings are occupied. This will happen if universities offer courses only online, if nursing homes close for lack of residents who want to live there, or if young people move back with their parents for lack of jobs.
In some ways, the word “appetite” might be a better word than “demand.” Either high or low appetite can be a problem for people. People with excessive appetite tend to get fat; people with low appetite (perhaps as a side-effect of depression or of cancer treatments) can become frail.
Similarly, either high or low energy appetite can also be a problem for an economy. High appetite leads to high oil prices, as occurred back in 2008. These are distressing to oil consumers. Low appetite tends to lead to low energy prices. These are distressing to energy producers. They may cut back on production, as OPEC nations have done in the recent past, in an attempt to get prices back up. Some energy producers may file for bankruptcy.
Figure 2. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Just as people can die from indirect effects of too little appetite, an economy can fail if it cannot keep its energy prices (appetite) up. In fact, an economy will probably collapse quite quickly if it cannot keep oil and other energy prices up. The cost of mining or otherwise extracting energy supplies tends to increase over time because the cheapest, easiest-to-extract supplies are taken first. The selling price of energy products needs to keep rising as well, in order for producers to be able to make a profit and, therefore, be able to continue production.
We know that historically, many economies have collapsed. Revelation 18:11-13 tells us that in the case of the collapse of ancient Babylon, the problem at the time of collapse was inadequate demand for the goods produced. There was not even demand for slaves, which was the type of energy available for purchase at that time. This lack of demand (or low appetite) is similar to the low oil price problem we are encountering today.
[3] The big reduction in energy appetite since mid-2008 has particularly affected the US, EU, and Japan.
We would expect lower energy prices to eventually lead to a decline in energy production because producers will find production unprofitable. On a world basis, however, we don’t see this pattern occurring except during the Great Recession itself (Figure 3).
Figure 3. World per capita energy consumption, based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. On a worldwide basis, energy production and consumption are virtually identical because storage is small compared to production and consumption.
Note that in Figure 3, energy consumption is on a “per capita” basis. This is because energy is required for making goods and services; the higher the population, the greater the quantity of goods and services required to maintain a given standard of living. If energy consumption per capita is rising, there is a good chance that living standards are rising.
The countries of the US, EU, and Japan have not been very successful in keeping their energy consumption per capita level since the big drop in oil prices in mid-2008.
Figure 4. Per capita energy consumption for the US, EU, and Japan, based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
The falling per capita energy consumption for the US, EU, and Japan is what one would expect if economic conditions were getting worse in these countries. For example, this pattern might be expected if young people are having difficulty finding jobs that pay well. It might also happen if repayment of debt starts interfering with young people being able to buy homes and cars. When fewer goods of these types are purchased, less energy consumption per capita is required.
The pattern of falling energy consumption per capita cannot continue for long without reaching a breaking point because people with low wages (or no jobs at all) will become more and more distressed. In fact, we started seeing an increasing number of demonstrations related to low wage levels, low pension levels, and lack of government services starting in 2019. This problem has only gotten worse with layoffs related to the pandemic in 2020. These layoffs corresponded to substantial further reduction in energy consumption per capita.
[4] China, India, and Vietnam are examples of countries whose energy consumption per capita has risen in recent years.
Not all countries have done as poorly as the major economies in recent years:
Figure 5. Some examples of countries with rising energy consumption per capita, based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
These Asian countries could outcompete the US, EU, and Japan in several ways:
- Big undeveloped coal reserves. These resources could be used as an inexpensive fuel to compete with countries that had depleted their own coal resources. Coal tends to be less expensive than other types of energy, especially if pollution problems are ignored.
- Warmer climate, so these countries did not need much fuel for heating. Even Southern China does not heat its buildings in winter.
- Pollution was generally ignored.
- New, more efficient factories could be built.
- Lower wages because of
- Milder climate
- Inexpensive fuel supply
- Lower medical costs
- Lower standard of living
The developed economies were concerned about reducing their own CO2 emissions. Moving heavy industry to these Asian nations meant that the developed economies could benefit in three ways:
- Their own CO2 emissions would fall, whether or not world emissions fell.
- Pollution problems would be moved offshore.
- The cost of finished goods for consumers would be lower.
Moving heavy industry to these and other Asian countries meant the loss of jobs that had paid fairly well in the US, Europe, and Japan. While new jobs replaced the old jobs, they generally did not pay as well, leading to the falling energy consumption per capita pattern seen in Figure 4.
[5] The growing Asian economies in Figure 5 are now reaching coal limits.
While these economies were built on coal reserves, these reserves are becoming depleted. All three of the countries shown in Figure 5 have become net coal importers.
Figure 6. Coal production versus consumption in 2019 for China, India and Vietnam based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
[6] World coal production has remained on a bumpy plateau since 2011, suggesting that its extraction is reaching limits. (Figure 7)
Figure 7. World energy consumption by type, based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. “Renewables” represents renewables other than hydroelectricity. Total world consumption is approximately equal to total world production, since stored amounts are small.
Figure 8, below, shows that growth in China’s coal production was the major reason for the big rise in world coal consumption between 2002 and 2011. In fact, this rise in production started immediately after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Figure 8. World coal production by country based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
China’s rapid growth in coal production stopped in 2011. The problem was that extraction from an increasing share of coal mines became unprofitable: The cost of extraction rose but coal prices did not rise to match these higher costs. China could build new mines in locations more distant from where the coal was to be used, but transportation costs would tend to make this coal higher-cost as well. China could increase its coal consumption by importing coal, but that would also be more expensive.
Figure 9. Coal production for selected areas based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
In Figure 9, above, we see how dramatically higher China’s coal production has been, in comparison to coal production in other areas of the world. After China’s coal production stalled about 2011, it bounced back in 2018 and 2019 as the country opened mines in the north of the country, farther from industrial use.
Figure 9 indicates that the US’s coal production was on a long plateau between 1990 and 2008; more recently, the US’s production has fallen. Coal production for Europe was falling even before 1981, but the data available for this chart only goes back to 1981. Declining production again results from the cost of production rising above the prices producers could obtain from selling the coal.
Whether or not world coal production will increase in the future remains to be seen. Normally, a person would expect a long bumpy plateau in coal production, such as the world has experienced since 2011, to precede a fall in production. This would be similar to the pattern observed in the US’s coal production. This pattern would also be similar to the shape modeled by geophysicist M. King Hubbert for many types of resource production.
Figure 10. M. King Hubbert symmetric curve from Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels.
[7] World oil production through 2019 has continued upward in an amazingly steady pattern, despite low prices. Its major problem has been unprofitability for producers.
Figure 7 above shows the total amount of oil produced has continued upward in almost a straight line, except for a dip at the time of the Great Recession.
In fact, every person needs goods and services made with energy products. Rising energy consumption per capita will mean that, on average, every person is getting the benefit of more energy supplies. Figure 11 shows information similar to that on Figure 7, except on a per-capita basis.
Figure 11. World per capita energy consumption by type based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. Total world consumption is approximately equal to total world production, since stored amounts are small.
Figure 11 indicates that on a per capita basis, oil supply has been approximately flat. In a way, this should not be surprising. Oil is absolutely essential in many ways. It is used for agriculture, transportation and construction. Oil is also used for its chemical properties in medicines, herbicides, pesticides, lubricants, and many other products. Oil is very energy dense and can be easily stored.
Because of its special properties, many people have assumed that oil prices will always rise. We saw in Figure 2 that this doesn’t actually happen. Low prices have continued for long enough now that they are becoming a serious problem for producers. Many companies are seeking bankruptcy. One analysis shows that 230 oil and gas producers and 214 oilfield services companies have filed for bankruptcy since 2015.
Oil exporters find their countries in financial difficulty, because at low prices, the taxes that they can collect are not sufficient to maintain the programs needed for their people. If the programs cannot be maintained, citizens may become unhappy and revolt.
At this point, oil production during 2020 is down. Figure 12 shows OPEC’s estimate of oil production through July 2020. World oil production is reported to be down about 12%. The highest month of supply was about November 2018.
Figure 12. OPEC and world oil production, in a chart made by OPEC, from the August 2020 OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report.
Figure 13 shows oil production for selected areas of the world through 2019.
Figure 13. Oil production for selected areas of the world based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. Europe includes Norway. Russia+ is the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Middle East production tends to bounce up and down. If prices are low, the tendency is to reduce production, as occurred in 2019.
US production rose rapidly between 2008 and 2019, but dipped in 2016, as prices dropped way too low.
Europe’s oil production (including Norway) reached its highest point in the year 2000. It has been declining since then, causing concern for governments.
The production of what I call Russia+ dropped with the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. Oil prices had been very low between 1981 and 1991. It appears to me that these low prices were instrumental in the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union. Production was able to rise again in the early 2000s when prices rose. My concern now is that a similar collapse will happen for some oil exporters in the next few years, due to low prices, and it will lead to a major decline of world oil production.
[8] Natural gas is the fuel that seems to be available in abundant supply, if only the price could be made to rise to a high enough level for producers.
Natural gas production can be seen to be rising on both Figures 7 and 11. The fact that natural gas consumption is rising on a per capita basis in Figure 11 indicates that production is rising robustly–enough to offset weakness in coal production and perhaps help increase the world standard of living, to some extent.
We can see from Figure 14 below that the increase in natural gas production is coming from quite a number of different areas, including the US, Russia and its affiliates, the Middle East, and Australia. Again, Europe (including Norway) seems to be in decline.
Figure 14. Natural gas production for selected areas of the world based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. Europe includes Norway. Russia+ is the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The problem for natural gas is again a price problem. It is difficult to get the price up to a high enough level to cover the cost of both the extraction of natural gas and the infrastructure and fuel needed to transport the natural gas to its destination.
We used to talk about “stranded natural gas,” that is, natural gas that can be extracted, but whose cost of transportation is simply too high to make the overall transaction economic. In fact, historically, a lot of natural gas has simply been burned off as a waste product (flared) or re-injected into oil wells, to keep up pressure, because there was no hope of selling it profitably at a distance. It is this formerly stranded natural gas that is now being produced.
Figure 15. Historical natural gas prices based on data from BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy. LNG is liquefied natural gas transported by ship. German imported natural gas is mostly by pipeline. US Henry Hub gas is natural gas without overseas transport costs included.
The increase in investment in natural gas production in recent years has been based on the hope that prices would rise high enough to cover both the cost of extraction and transportation. In fact, prices have tended to fall with crude oil prices, making the overall price far too low for most natural gas producers. Prices in 2020 have been even lower. For example, recent Japan LNG prices have been about $4 per million Btu. Thus, natural gas seems to have exactly the same problem as coal and oil: Prices are far too low for producers.
[9] The world economy is a self-organizing system, powered by energy. It can be expected to behave in a very strange way when diminishing returns become too much of a problem.
In the language of physics, the world economy is a dissipative structure. This has been known at least since 1996. The economy is a self-organizing system powered by energy; it is not possible to significantly reduce energy consumption without a major collapse.
The economy has many parts to it. I have illustrated the situation in the following way:
Figure 16. Chart I used in a talk given at a meeting of the Casualty Actuarial Society.
The fact that consumers are also employees means that if wages fall too low (for a significant share of the population), then consumption will also tend to fall too low.
Prices are set by the market. Contrary to the popular view, prices are not based primarily on scarcity. Instead, they are based on the quantity of finished goods and services that consumers in the aggregate can afford. If wage disparity gets to be too great a problem, commodity prices of all types will tend to fall too low.
[10] Economists and modelers of all kinds have completely misunderstood how the economy actually operates.
Our academic communities each seem to exist in separate ivory towers. Economists don’t talk to physicists. Physicists know that dissipative structures cannot last indefinitely. Humans are dissipative structures; they each have limited lifetimes. Hurricanes are also dissipative structures that last only a limited time.
Most economists and modelers have never considered the possibility that today’s economy, like that of ancient Babylon, could be reaching collapse because of low demand, and thus, low prices.
Economists don’t realize that once energy resources become too depleted, energy prices are not likely to rise high enough for producers to make a profit; instead, the overall system will tend to collapse. Central banks have been trying, without success, to get commodity prices up to the point where they can be profitable for producers, but they have not been successful to date. I am doubtful that even more new tricks, such as Universal Basic Income, will work, either.
The erroneous belief systems of most economists and modelers leads to all kinds of strange results. The economy is modeled as if it will grow indefinitely. Most modelers assume that if we have oil, coal, or natural gas in the ground, plus the technical capability to pull these resources out, we will eventually pull them out. Perhaps a later civilization, built on the remains of our current civilization, can do this, but our current civilization cannot.
Climate change models are applied to fossil fuel assumptions that are absurdly high, given the problems with low energy prices that we are currently encountering. No one stops to model what will happen to the climate if fossil fuel consumption is decreased very quickly, which seems to be a real possibility in 2020. The loss of aerosol emissions (smog, for example) from fossil fuels will tend to spike world temperatures, even with reduced CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
We are led to believe that an economy similar to today’s economy can operate solely on renewables. This is simply absurd. Figures 7 and 11 show that there are nowhere near enough renewables to support today’s population, even if substitution were possible for fossil fuels. In fact, we need fossil fuels to make and maintain solar panels, wind turbines, electric transmission lines, hydroelectric plants, and nuclear power plants.
If we cannot keep fossil fuels operating because of continued low prices, today’s economy can expect a disturbing change for the worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/12/richard-leonard-survives-as-scottish-labour-leader
[Note: Scotland also has its own devolved Labour party, which is part of the UK Labour party].
Extracts:
A rebellion by Scottish Labour’s centrists aimed at toppling their party leader, Richard Leonard, has collapsed after they failed to force through a motion of no confidence in his leadership.
One trades union source said the outcome was an “absolute farce. They have had a botched coup about a lame duck leader. They hardly look like a party of government in waiting. Leonard is presiding over the final death throes of the Scottish Labour party.”
Support for Scottish Labour has slumped to as low as 14% in recent weeks. One recent YouGov poll said 53% of Scottish voters had no opinion of Leonard.
The rebel motion was tabled after four MSPs at Holyrood, including two who resigned from their frontbench posts, urged him to quit or face a leadership challenge.
They were backed by four Labour peers. Ian Murray, Scottish Labour’s sole MP and shadow Scottish secretary, was also expected to vote against Leonard.
The result is an embarrassing setback for the party’s centrists, who had been extremely confident they had the numbers to force his resignation or to force a leadership contest.
It also leaves Leonard badly wounded. With the party’s ruling executive split over his suitability as leader, he now no longer has the support of his own union, the GMB, for which he worked for 20 years, nor of Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union.
====
My thoughts: The 2021 Scottish Parliament election is scheduled to be held on 6 May 2021. Boris Johnson is disliked in Scotland as a Tory and a posh Englishman, and he is floundering in the UK opinion polls.During recent visits to Scotland, more than one Scot told Boris to his face, “You’re not welcome here!” Nor is Labour popular in Scotland these days. The Liberal Democrats are still weak and only recently elected yet another colourless leader.
It looks to me like the SNP will make a clean sweep in the Scottish parliament elections in May. Around the world, everywhere else is in turmoil, so Scotland would only be following the trend. 😀
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/wildfires-are-striking-closer-and-closer-to-cities-we-know-how-this-will-end
Extracts:
In the 1930s, the US Forest Service instituted its so-called 10am policy, according to which fires had to be stamped out by that time the next day. Fire activity decreased, but with scouring flames removed from the environment, forests grew far denser and brushier. In one Arizona forest, 20 trees per acre became 800 trees per acre. These forests burn more severely. In addition the climate crisis is rendering vegetation ever drier, and by 2050 up to three times more acreage in Western forests will burn as a result of global warming. Meanwhile 60m homes can now be found in or close to high-risk areas where wildfires have previously burned.
Cue urban fires. The fire that obliterated Paradise on the morning of November 8, 2018 was sparked in a rural river canyon several miles to the east of town. It hit like a hurricane. Strikingly, many of the hundreds of thousands of trees in the town were spared – it was the homes that became matches setting fire to the next. The fire was so quick, so hot, that people died seeking shelter under their cars, in the driveways of their homes while holding a hose, or huddled in their bathtub.
With so many of our Western paradises now under threat, experts are begging us to bring controlled fire back into the ecosystem in the form of prescribed burns.
This link gives a list of acreage of US fires. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, acreages burned were regularly over 40 million. In fact, they were over 50 million in 1930 and 1931. https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
The highest recent year has been a little over 10 million. We have been suppressing forest fires (and perhaps grass fires) for a very long time.
Well researched, Gail. The picture is far more nuanced than I imagined.
«…,,,federal and state agencies.This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data»
I saw that. But I wonder how different they can be.
This is a MUCH more interesting, succinct analysis of Nietzsche than I’ve seen presented in previous comments here! The ol’ boy was obviously jealous of Schopenhauer’s ability to find immediate satisfaction in life, by the way.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/161
SUCCINCT is good. 😉
Cobb’s kids have been falling down on the job . . . badly.
Quote:
“A year like 2020 could have been the subject of a marvelous science fiction film in 2000,” Cobb said. “Now we have to watch and digest real-time disaster after disaster after disaster, on top of a pandemic. The outlook could not be any more grim. It’s just a horrifying prospect.”
“The 2030s are going to be noticeably worse than the 2020s,” she said.
https://apnews.com/3570f775ee3007888cd651d37fcbd465
“As a mom to four children, I’ve always known that kids could be a huge part of the climate solution . . . ”
https://twitter.com/coralsncaves/status/1106240312928886785
Ugh.
Sadly, Norman Borlaug in 1970 actually believed in humanity’s capability to understand the exponential-growth function:
Quote:
The Green Revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise, the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only. Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the “Population Monster”. . .
Since man is potentially a rational being, however, I am confident that within the next two decades he will recognize the self-destructive course he steers along the road of irresponsible population growth.
WARNING: Contains smut
https://youtu.be/YkgDhDa4HHo
Doug Stanhope–born in 1967, vasectomized, child-free by choice
Stand-up clip from 2012:
“And what you said–that one thing you said, overpopulation. You’re right, Doug. You’re not really funny anymore, But you’re right. What you said about overpopulation, most of the world’s problems are based on overpopulation. There’s just too many g.. d… people.
We’re still gonna have the baby ’cause Janice’s biological clock Is ticking, and plus we live in a gated community. It’s not really overpopulation If you can afford to send It to a Montessori school is my take, but it’s right– What you’re doing is a good thing, and you should keep doing It, and don’t die on us.”
The snake doesn’t have a name, but is identified by the number 361003, according to the zoo. She’s believed to be at least 62 years old.
A ball python laid 7 eggs at the Saint Louis Zoo, even though she hasn’t been around a male in years
By David Williams, CNN
Updated 3:58 AM EDT, Sat September 12, 2020
(CNN)Zookeepers at the Saint Louis Zoo were surprised to see their oldest snake coiled around a clutch of freshly laid eggs because she hadn’t been near a male in more than 15 years.
The ball python, which has been at the zoo since 1961, laid seven eggs on July 23, Mark Wanner, the Zoological Manager of Herpetology told CNN.
“It was a surprise. We didn’t expect her to drop another clutch of eggs, honestly,” he said.
Life always finds a way
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kiVVzxoPTtg
And you thought it was all science fiction 😳
Shout out to Harry, 😺👍 for his morning wrap-up…
Imagine that…the Government wants to get a hold of a useless, ancient relic of the past that only peasant ignorant class think is real money.
Turkey Has New Plan to Crack Open Under-the-Mattress Gold Hoard
(Bloomberg) — Turkey has a new plan to coax gold to its financial system after previous efforts barely made a dent in a so-called under-the-mattress stash valued at about 40% of gross domestic product.
The Turkish Treasury and the Istanbul Gold Refinery will let selected jewelers collect gold from citizens and deposit it at state banks. A major difference under the new regulations is that customers would be able to withdraw physical gold, according to Aysen Esen, the refiner’s chief executive officer.
Previous attempts to get gold into the system have largely failed. Some 100 tons have been pulled into lenders’ gold accounts over the past decade, according to Esen, compared with an estimated 5,000 tons stored elsewhere in the country..
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/turkey-plan-crack-open-under-040000471.html
Turkey is one of the biggest consumers of the precious metal worldwide. Turks use gold as protection against inflation and traditionally gift it for events from weddings to circumcision ceremonies. It’s also used to pay rent by merchants at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, one of the world’s oldest covered markets.
Well now, hope the crazies on Capital Hill put together another stimulus giveaway for people like myself…I know what I’m going to do with it..
Buy something bright and shiny that doesn’t tarnish..😜👍
“A major difference under the new regulations is that customers would be able to withdraw physical gold, …”
And if you believe that, I have a bridge across the Bosphorus to sell you.
I will pick up on an earlier thread.
Xabier said to me: “If you truly believe that morality and heroism -and one must infer nobility, self-sacrifice, humanity, etc – are always ‘lies’, then you are clearly not someone who could be relied upon in a tight corner.”
First to restate my actual argument: all is strategy; there is the strategic act, and there is the strategic spin that is put on it. The spin is basically that it is ‘good’ and ‘true’ rather than just strategy.
I have been continuing my reading through Nietzsche’s BGE and it is important to understand that ‘beyond’ the evaluation of ‘good and evil’ there lies for him another evaluation of ‘good and bad’. He is not a ‘nihilist’ but a moralist.
He too identifies the ‘useful’ (good) with the ‘true’. Indeed the early section of BGE, on ‘the prejudices of the philosophers’, is intended to make that identification. He does so through the ‘will to power’, which I would summarise as making use of things for one’s own interests.
The identification of the ‘good’ and the ‘true’ is obviously very ancient and it appears, if inconsistently, in religions. It is not that simple for Christianity but that is another subject. The identification in philosophy is particularly associated with the ontology of Aristotle, the identity of ‘being, good, and true’.
I reject that identification. Being is sometime useful, and nothing is useful except it is a ‘being’ in some sense, even if it is merely a shared figment of the imagination, some belief that is useful to oneself. But not all being is useful, some of it is harmful, they are not identical.
And neither are the good and the true identical, a belief is not true simply because it is useful to oneself. It can be useful to trick and to deceive people but does not make the trick and the deception ‘true’.
Rather, I simply identify ‘being’ and the ‘true’. Some being is useful but not all of it. ‘Good’ is simply ‘use’ and it is contingent to the user, it is not ‘good in itself’ – indeed there is no such thing. That is my basic ontology.
And that seems to be, at base, the problem that Xabier took from what I said. His response immediately was ‘how is this useful to me?’ ‘How then can I rely on you to fight with me when I am in danger.’
In other words, it came straight back, for him, to his own personal utility. The idea that the useful, ‘good (in itself)’ and the ‘true’ are not the same thing disturbed him because it might negate any apparently unconditional solidarity that I supposedly have with him.
Which proves my point: it is all strategy – what is useful to oneself, and strategic spin on strategy. The spin itself is strategy. It is supposedly ‘good’ and ‘true’ that he could rely on me in a tight spot. It is ‘good’ and ‘true’ because it is useful to him.
In fact it would merely be useful to him, ‘good’ for him, but not ‘good in itself’, as if I would ‘have’ to do it because it is ‘true’.
Hume is quite useful at this point. ‘Ought’ statements cannot be deduced from ‘is’ statements because conclusions can only contain the terms that are found in the premises. ‘Ought’ statements can only be assumed not proved from what ‘is’.
That so and so ‘is’ useful to one is an ‘is’ statement and no ‘ought’ can be logically deduced from that. The pursuit of use is a matter of will, not of ‘ought’ (‘good in itself’) or the ‘true’ (what is) but what I will to be.
Anyway, the conclusion is that it is not ‘true’ or even ‘good’ (maybe for him but not in itself) that I would fight for Xabier ‘in a tight corner’.
I do not ‘have’ to do anything, I do what I do because I choose to do it, not because it is ‘good’ or ‘true’. And frankly his outburst would make it all the less likely that I would step in, risk myself, for him, as if I have no choice but to risk myself for him and otherwise I am ‘evil’ or some other strategic slander.
It is an intent to order my well-being to his own and to sacrifice me for him if need be. It is an act of aggression, an attempt to subjugate me to his own interest even to the point of my death. That makes solidarity unlikely. I do not even know him and he would demand that.
My advice to Xabier would be, do not go around picking fights and the odds are that you will not end up in one.
So, the identification of the usefulness, the good, duty and the true is a trick, a deception, a strategy that frankly does not work on me.
My approach to state nationalism is based on a similar analysis.
Everyone is pushing for their own interests, their own usefulness, and those interests are very often opposed. People are forming tribal gangs, nation states, to push for their own perceived interests. Russia, China, USA, UK, they are all the same in that regard. I have no ‘loyalty’ to any of them and I find their attempts to equate their own perceive interests with the ‘good’ and even the ‘true’ absolutely appalling. I suppose that I am not a ‘sheep’, a ‘herd’ animal that goes ‘baaa’ when it is ordered to.
Nor have I ‘loyalty’ to anyone else, except to those people whom I personally and freely choose to have loyalty to, which is basically those people close to me, people that I like and get on with and with whom I have bonds. No one else. My solidarity is not for free and it is not forced, it autonomous and voluntary. Perhaps that is what is useful to me!
Of course I observe the social contract and I do not harm those who do not harm me, and I might even step in to help people if the occasion arises but not because I ‘have’ to or because it is ‘true’ or because of loyalty but because I freely choose to.
Anyway, I ‘disagree’ with Nietzsche in so far as I do not see the good of his wannabe ‘aristocracy’ as useful to me. Other people’s strategies are their own, not mine, and I am not getting roped into some imaginary aristocracy. He is a wonderful, insightful philosopher but there is a strong element of ‘Boy’s Own’ adventure stories about BGE. His book seems to be a ‘game’ for him, a fanciful novel.
Yep, heckling is also a strategy of non-engagement.
That is fine, if you do not want to engage then do not.
It is of little account to me or I would guess to anyone else.
This is however a serious forum.
And brevity and the KISS principle also go down well. In any case, you have no known nationality and could well be a robot.
You have nothing to say in response to my comment and I have nothing to say to you.
I will not engage you in the future and I would be content if you were to have the courtesy to do the same.
I suggest you become a little less “pushy,” Oh Dear. While you have one belief, other people have different ones. The worlds view of what is right keeps changing over time. We are now looking back from a period of plenty, and making judgments about what people in earlier periods should have done, according to today’s standards.
Today’s major religions arose during a time when the world was beginning to see trade and travel. In some sense, they had enough surplus energy to set aside for these activities. Now we are in a period when surplus energy is shrinking, especially on a per capita basis. Views of at least part of the population will change.
Thanks Gail, I agree with all of that, apart from the idea that I was being pushy. Other people are free to ‘believe’ whatever they want and that is my modus operandi so long as they do not start telling me what to think or heckling, abusing or whatever.
I prefer to explore whatever insights others may have than to impose dogma. A little courtesy and tolerance generally go a long way in any interaction.
How do you see/ foresee the views of people changing as plenty fades? Have your own views changed? How has it been for you personally to contemplate finite limits and their import on the future? Has it changed you as a person in your character or do you feel pretty much the same as before?
As plenty fades, the ties that bind groups together are going to fade. We can already see this with churches. Here, no more than 50 can gather at a time. Churches can have Zoom meetings, or they can have multiple 50 person services, but they cannot have regular services.
I expect that a lot of governmental organizations will disappear. If every country is poor, countries will not want to contribute to world do-good organizations. In fact, there may be some form of international war.
My own view is that there is not a good solution to “too many people for resources.” This is the problem Winston Churchill was encountering. This was the problem at the time of the US civil war. This is the same problem we are encountering now.
Our do-good instincts say, “Let’s share everything equally; let’s avoid war at all costs.” Unfortunately, sharing everything equally doesn’t work, if there is really not enough to go around. Everyone will starve at the same time.
The physics of economies as dissipative structures says that some members of economies cannot make it through the limits that are being reached. Some will be “frozen out” in the words of physicist Francois Roddier. The rich (or better adapted) will receive more, like steam rising to the top. This is the same thing that happens in ecosystems of all kinds, whether we like it or not, when conditions are not right (too hot, cold, wet, dry, windy) for the number of plants/animals to live in a given area. The people in charge have a terrible predicament, but it is really, “Them or us.”
This time, there is a question whether any of us can make it through the limits we are reaching. It is especially difficult for young people, with families.
I am not a young person with a young family, so I don’t have that issue. My immediate family tends to be very liberal. I have always been socially liberal. My daughter is married to another woman. I have a sister who has been married to another woman for many years. But I have moved farther away from liberal politics. I have found it helpful to keep quiet about my views, if I don’t want to start a fight.
I have supported Planned Parenthood in more in recent years.
I think that there has to be a Higher Power behind all of what is happening. I have always been fairly religious. In fact, I believe that many religions can have insights that are helpful. Sitting around worrying about what will happen cannot be very helpful. But I don’t feel like I am very much in a position to do a lot to save myself and my immediate family. So, whatever happens will just have to be what happens. I look for the good in each day. I enjoy visiting with people, whenever I can. I started traveling whenever I could, because I realized that this was a temporary privilege I had that would go away. In the year before COVID-19 hit, I took several trips simply to get together with old friends that I might be increasingly difficult to see.
Yes, Matthew comes to mind, ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ One has to live in the present and to make the most of what the situation affords. We do not have complete control over everything in our lives, let alone over what the future will bring.
The rest is not our responsible and it should not be our burden. There is a lot of wisdom in the ‘little way’ of the French nun S. Theresa, to be simple and to do what one can in the day that is present to us.
Yes, scarcity will inevitably bring out egoism and conflict. I do not adapt my own ‘ideology’ by what might work at some time in the future. It remains adapted to the times in which we live. In particular I avoid tying in ‘identity politics’ with collapse. It is just another excuse for pointless strife and unpleasantness in the here and now.
If anything, my own dispositions have become more laid back in recent years. Again, ‘sufficient unto the day’. We perhaps get to the same peaceful place by different routes, trust in God and scepticism about whether any of it really ‘matters’.
A belief in God is potentially a very valuable resource. Some Catholics find a lot of benefit by adapting the ‘little way’ to a secular life and the book remains popular. Anyway, I am glad to hear that you are bearing up and that things are working out for you.
Yes, it is probably wise to hold one’s peace around people with whom one disagrees, I do it all the time off the web with family and friends. People disagree and there is no point in being disagreeable about that. I ‘act the adult’ and ‘go the extra mile’ on that count.
It does the job without demanding too much of the others. I am not bothered what they think anyway, it is up to them. Fortunately I do not have to do that with everyone and the more intellectual types tend to be more interested and tolerant of a variety of perspectives but they tend to be rarer.
Most people would be surprised at how little is needed, if done with system and style. This applies to the very poor especially–like those living under overpasses in the Bay Area. Such catastrophes would take next to nothing to improve (from their, not our, perspective). And it’s much more mindset than hard physical realities that is obstructing such modifications.
Lebanon succumbs to the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world:
“Lebanon’s gross public debt increased by 8.9 percent annually to $93.40 billion in the first half of 2020, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Finance.
“And it could exceed $95 billion by the end of August, according to economist and banker Nicolas Chikhani… At this pace, the debt to GDP ratio will exceed 375 percent by the end of 2020, the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratio ever, Chikhani said.
“Japan has second highest national debt in the world at 234.18 percent of its GDP, followed by Greece at 181.78 percent.”
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/banking-finance/451713-lebanon-succumbs-to-the-highest-debt-to-gdp-ratio-in-the-world
“The unfolding tragedy falls short of a famine, which is typically set off by a combination of war and environmental disaster. Food remains widely available in most of the world, though prices have climbed in many countries.
“Rather, with the world economy expected to contract nearly 5 percent this year, households are cutting back sharply on spending. Among those who went into the pandemic in extreme poverty, hundreds of millions of people are suffering an intensifying crisis over how to secure their basic dietary needs.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/business/hunger-is-a-growing-scourge-in-the-pandemic.html
It seems to me that there is more than war and environmental disasters setting off famines. Since 1840 or so, I think it was often indirectly set off by too many children living to maturity, because of better sanitation practices. For quite a while, major famines could be averted by some people emigrating to the New World. Now we have run out of parts of the world for people to emigrate to.
Environmental disasters might be defined to include all of the diseases and pests that kill crops. The Irish Potato Famine
These diseases spread most easily when there are wide expanses of a single crop grown. The fact that conditions were ripe for the spread of the disease also points to an overpopulation problem.
I know that I have read previously that in many previous famines, the issue was distribution of food as much as total quantity of food. Poor people could not afford food. It may have appeared that there was a glut of food. Food may have been shipped out of the country to other customers who could pay more for it.
I read recently that the potato blight was imported from Peru on guano fertilizer mined off the Peruvian coast. Makes sense, with potatoes being south American.
That could be. Originally, the soil was naturally fertile, but potatoes took certain nutrients. Guano fertilizer added back in at least some of the missing nutrients.
Often, rotation does not even add back what is missing, especially if human and/or animal waste ends up far from where food is produced. Some nutrients that humans require can become chronically low, without plants being clearly adversely affected. It is humans that have the problems.
As GDP falls, I expect every country’s debt to GDP ratio will rise.
“Frackers are blasting less sand into shale wells for the first time in almost three years as oil explorers adjust to lower oil demand and prices amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Shale explorers are pumping an average of roughly 2.9 million pounds of sand a day during the current quarter, marking the first time since the final three months of 2017 that growth has subsided, according to Coras Research LLC. Sand per well is a key measurement of frack efficiency because more sand typically means more of the rock fissures that allow crude to flow.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-11/fracking-in-the-shale-fields-slows-for-the-first-time-since-2017
“U.S. Rig Count Falls As Oil Market Uncertainty Continues – Baker Hughes reported on Friday that the number of oil rigs in the United States fell by 1 to 180.
“The total number of active oil and gas rigs decreased for the week by 2… Total oil and gas rigs in the United States are now down by 632 compared to this time last year.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Rig-Count-Falls-As-Oil-Market-Uncertainty-Continues.html
“Oil headed for its first back-to-back weekly losses since April’s price rout, driven by a sharp slump in risk sentiment earlier in the week and a patchy demand recovery.”
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/9/11/oil-heading-for-its-first-back-to-back-weekly-loss-since-april
Oil seems to be moving in the same direction as the stock market.
“The amount of money investors are recovering from companies that default on their debt has fallen at a sharper rate this year than during previous credit cycles, potentially heralding a structural shift in debt markets, according to a new report from Barclays.
“CDS recoveries have sunk “alarmingly” to an all-time low of nine cents on the dollar in recent months…”
https://www.ifre.com/story/2528139/sinking-recovery-rates-flash-warning-signs-for-debt-markets-l8n2g75bx
“Companies across the US are taking advantage of low borrowing costs to extend the maturity of their debt, selling longer and longer dated bonds to investors starved of yield.
“So far this year, more than $250bn worth of US bonds have been issued with the primary purpose of refinancing debt that companies have coming due… Add in cases where refinancing is mentioned in a long list of possible uses, and the number rises to almost $870bn.
“Much of this debt has repayment schedules stretching out for decades.”
https://www.ft.com/content/fbe376b0-15cb-4608-b966-1c6e2e8867d5
“The pandemic recession plunged dozens of large American companies into bankruptcy this summer. Countless more are on their way.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/11/business/bankruptcies-recession-economy/index.html
“Extend and pretend” that things will be better later. It may be that interest on prior debt needs to be financed as well.
It may be harder to get loans, if recovery rates are dropping much lower.
We’re all familiar with EROEI and how it’s falling.
That Zac Bush podcast triggered the thought that rates of return are falling on almost everything in our civilisation.
E.g. It’s harder to get proper nutrition from food vs 50 years ago, it’s harder to bring up a healthy kid, it’s harder to get the basics of life sorted vs the oft quoted a US family could live adequately on one working wage in the 50s and 60s.
And not least it’s harder to get anything done under a tsunami of bureaucracy, so we have to burn more energy just to do the same thing.
And harder to bring up a child without exposure to pernicious propaganda and ideologies.
In the mid-20th century it was limited to simple patriotism and religion, but now quite different and more akin to Soviet and Nazi brain-washing – regarding race, gender, etc.
Allowing women to have jobs that pay well can happen only in an economy with a huge amount of energy resources. Otherwise, women need to be close to full-time mothers, raising several children, many of whom will not live to adulthood.
Allowing women to have jobs that pay well also leads to a great deal more concentration of wealth among two educated individuals than would have been possible in the past. This is a significant part of the wage/wealth disparity problem. When there was only one wage earner, or nearly everyone lived on small farms that they (or the state) owned, there was much less wage and wealth disparity.
We now lose sight of the fact that our current view of women cannot last with less energy consumption per capita.
There need to be other distinctions so that energy sharing is not equal, as well, if there is not a very high level of energy consumption per capita. We look at these ideologies as wrong, but unfortunately, they are necessary in a low energy economy. It is a “laws of physics” problem, I am afraid. It is part of the need for complexity in order to sort of make a low-energy system work.
This also reminds me about the Nietzsche thread above of good and true.
What is good for me in the short run might work if I can deceit people to give me an advantage. In the long run, the truth will prevail (imho). In this case it is the 1000s of years old knowledge of farming by nourishing the soil even when there was no knowledge of funghi and bacteria (as we “see” them through the microscope)
Limits To Growth over and over again. So sad, but we are what we are.
Oil service companies are not doing well as oil prices keep on falling.
Halliburton
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhqAaQIXsAAjt0i?format=jpg&name=large
Oil is crashing.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhfNur-X0AIhet6?format=png&name=large
Do we see a triangle of doom here?
During the last months I frequently had the impression:
“This problem, ah. Let’s see. I think we discussed it on The Oil Drum long and broadly…” or “James Hansen” or GMOs Forums or vaccine forums or what have you. Very interesting times we live in…
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/09/10/unemployment-crisis-going-in-wrong-direction-week-25-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/
job losses were getting “less worse” for a few weeks, but now more worse.
“State plus federal PUA initial claims combined jumped to 1.70 million (not seasonally adjusted). These are people who’d newly lost their work and filed for UI during the week ended September 5, translating into a monthly rate of over 7 million people who are still losing their work and file for UI.”
that is flat out bad.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
CHS about the ongoing abandonment of cities.
“The next outmigration will be those who leave all their assets behind. As of this writing, Minneapolis actually is charging owners to remove the remains of the property they were previously taxed on and that the city couldn’t/wouldn’t protect with the services paid for by those very taxes the property owners were coerced to pay.
The final outmigration will be those who don’t leave at all, not even with their lives.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ehip2gzXYAAJdH-?format=jpg&name=medium
What’s wrong with crawling? Most animals crawl. “Four legs good, two legs bada!”
I think dwarfs/midgets should be out in the streets protesting this.
walking upright of course.
it’s outrageous that they were not considered.
Thank you for the saturday morning laugh.
During a scan of various blogs a link came up to podcasts by Zach Bush MD. Here’s one: https://www.richroll.com/podcast/zach-bush-353/
Gobsmacking stats and analysis on the state of our health. Basically it’s a race between economic/energetic collapse vs population collapse due to ill health.
Example of autism: 1 in 5,000 children in the US was autistic in the 1970s, 1 in 35 today, the trend says 1 in 3 by 2035. Clearly a society can’t function with 1 child in 3 autistic.
He asserts roundup/glyphosate is the main culprit and has the data to back it. He also points out the ‘coincidence’ that the company selling the chemicals that kill off soil and destroys the nutrients in food also sells pharmaceuticals to mitigate the resulting sickness.
Takeaway: Try and live somewhere with a low chemical load, get out into nature and grow (and ferment) your own food.
I agree that this is a very good podcast. It is almost two hours long. I have listened to the first 18 minutes of it. Dr. Zach Bush is talking about how the human body is made, and what has gone wrong that has led to the big uptick in disease in the last 20 years in the US. Actually, it may have started with the “green revolution” after World War II.
I expect that it explains quite a bit of why US life expectancies are so much worse than those elsewhere in the world. This is one life expectancy chart I found back in 2014, showing how the US trails the rest of the developed world.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/figure-1-6-female-life-expectancy-at-birth.png
These problems probably make the US population more vulnerable to a lot of disease, including COVID-19.
To add a little more, adding glyphosate to the system is huge problem. It is like an antibiotic, being used incredibly widely. What happens indirectly is we can no longer build essential amino acids. Glyphosate is water soluble so it is very difficult to get out of the environment. There are bacteria who eat it, so eventually it would go away, if we stopped adding more to the environment. Discovered the big problem back in 2012.
If we are missing a particular bacteria in the gut (because glyphosate killed it), it allows a person to get a particular type of cancer.
Glyphosate turns may parts of our bodies into leaky systems. Communication between cells gets compromised. Leads to increase in cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimers, autoimmune illnesses, and general inflammation.
Child with autism will not be able to get rid of toxins; damages mitochondria. Accelerates damage expected from aging on systems. Leads to depression.
We humans function as wireless networks. Bacteria and fungi are changing what is built. Can change on how the body is built, in the future. Even if there is a problem now, it is possible for these bacteria and fungi to fix the problem.
— These notes are nowhere near complete. I am only at 55 minutes, so far.
Interesting.
This is consistent to the idea of Holobionts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holobiont
defined by Lynn Margulis
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/symbiosis-source-evolutionary-innovation
mentioned lately by Ugo Bardi.
http://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/holobiont-unit-selection/
I’m not denying the heath issues caused by toxins, but:
“Example of autism: 1 in 5,000 children in the US was autistic in the 1970s, 1 in 35 today, the trend says 1 in 3 by 2035. Clearly a society can’t function with 1 child in 3 autistic.”
in the 1970s, lots of children were “mentally retarded”, maybe even 1 in 35.
now, I think the number is zero. (I’m not going to look it up, but I bet that’s fairly accurate.)
the autism numbers are skewed by the change from classifying children in the old way to the new way.
“in the 1970s, lots of children were “mentally retarded”, maybe even 1 in 35.”
Not true
It is true we had the term “mentally retarded” at that time, but the actual numbers were very rare.
in the 1960s, when I was in grade school, our K thru 6th grade building had an entire class for the “mentally retarded”.
I would often see them as a group. It was a small class compared to the “normal” classes, but they were probably about 10 or so in a school of less than 350(?).
probably. Of course I was very young etc.
so I can presume 1 in 35 being right on target, though again I’m not going to research it.
I could be wrong, but I’m going by personal experience ie anecdotal evidence.
That would be both major trade deals – USA and EU – gone if Boris presses ahead with plans to break WA NI protocol. Either he is bluffing or he has decided to go for No Deal, no WA and just WTO. I would recommend that, WA is an appalling piece of legislation. But it remains to be seen whether he could get it passed parliament. One would presume that he is bluffing, but this is certainly a very strange turn.
> European Parliament will BLOCK any trade deal with the UK if Boris Johnson tears up parts of Brexit deal, MEPs say, after Brussels also threatened food exports
A statement added: ‘Should the UK authorities breach – or threaten to breach – the Withdrawal Agreement, through the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill in its current form or in any other way, the European Parliament will under no circumstances ratify any agreement between the EU and the UK.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8721645/Gordon-Brown-blasts-Boris-Johnson-Brexit-plans.html
“The European Parliament hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” If that doesn’t sound familiar, it should.
I second that observation! Visited Harbor Freight Tools, a chain hardware tool megastore, and the inventory numbers and selection is way down
Most products are China imports….they must have supply chain issues or trade restrictions…..
Also, my Target store seems to have low inventory. Maybe because they have more traffic now with the pandemic.
We definitely have a new economy evolving and fascinating to see it unfolding.
For Jim Rogers followers …here is one of his latest
https://thefederal.com/business/dollar-no-safe-haven-its-global-dominance-will-be-history-jim-rogers/amp/
Dollar no safe haven, its global dominance will be history: Jim Rogers
The legendary investor says US’s piling debt could result in a crisis; he is currently betting on gold, silver
Venkataraghavan Srinivasan The Federal
6:42 PM, 11 September, 2020
Rogers has been betting on gold and silver for many decades.
«A groundbreaking account of the dangerous marriage of plutocratic economic priorities and right-wing populist appeals―and how it threatens the pillars of American democracy«
https://www.amazon.com/Let-them-Eat-Tweets-Inequality/dp/1631496840
This book has been out since July. It gets high ratings on Amazon.
One review says:
Another says:
And another thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp8X4yOa9FM
It probably would help
“I’d take away the guns.”
yes, it definitely would help.
for example:
if all the guns could be taken away from, or better yet voluntarily surrendered by, all the Blacks in Chicago and all the other D controlled big cities, then there would be a huge reduction in the number of Black Americans who are murdered by other Black Americans more than 90% of the time.
that’s one example. I’m sure there are others.
claw hammer
Yet the super rich Plutocrats are the biggest fans of Socialism.
Communism resulted in Trotsky becoming a mbillionaire for example. And Lenin was funded by Wall Street.
They accuse the Republicans of what is true of themselves.
Cultural conflicts and identity politics related to gender, race and color can perhaps be considered as different types of quasi-religions. Is it a coincidence that they arise and strengthen as the economy approaches the limits of growth? They give poor whites a moral self-esteem that apparently compensates for the economic downturn many have experienced. On the other hand, the cohesion and self-awareness of various minority communities is strengthened by identity politics and gives hallucinations that the system has more to give to everyone only a more just policy comes into place.
The economy needs to bind into smaller groups, so that when there are inadequate resources, not all groups go down together. As I keep mentioning, if there are inadequate resources and they are shared equally, all will die. The laws of physics favor a different approach: Only the better adapted will survive.
Having different groups is, in a way, a gift. I think that to some extent the religions and quasi-religions and political parties are to bind together smaller groups, so that the economy does not all go down at once. That way, successful strategies can be allowed to last, while unsuccessful ones are allowed to fail. Populations that have become too dense for resources can be allowed to fail.
Thanks, Gail!
Yes, it is certainly possible to say that the political organization is embedded in the economy, considered as a dissipative system. Then we can make a distinction between the political organization that occurs when the economy grows and when it approaches limits. I know best the conditions in Norway and Europe and here the heyday of social democracy coincides with the economic growth after the war. The Social Democrats’ project was to bring together different groups in society with a promise of a welfare state with a social safety net. The project was so successful that “everyone became a social democrat”.
In many countries, however, the economic downturn has meant that the Social Democrats are no longer the largest party – in France it has been wiped out. They have become a victim for the “tribalization” of politics, which occurs when the economy hits its head against the walls of energy and resources. The Social Democratic Labor parties have lost voters both to immigration-critical right-wing parties and to parties further to the left, which demand not only a more radical redistribution and a phasing out of fossil energy, but also policies against racism and heteronormativity. Many young people are concerned about the climate, many older people are concerned about limiting immigration.
In Norway, by the way, the parties are not self-financed, between 70 and 80 per cent of most parties’ income comes from the public sector. https://www.ssb.no/valg/statistikker/partifin
Therefore, it is difficult to see that the parties can represent different survival strategies, because they probably can not bind together the group they represent should the state support fall away.
Thank you, Sven, for a most interesting analysis. My own observation is perhaps slightly different. The basic premise of “social democracy” is that the main objective of the state is to euqlaise nor economic opportunity but economic outcomes; in other words, that it should tax the productive to subsidise the parasites. As long as there was a surplus of energy, those taxed did not feel hard done by; they could afford it, and after all, maybe one day they would need the safety net.
But as time went on, and this excess income diminished, and as increasing numbers of people became recipients of state largesse, the traditional work ethic began to erode: why should I work so my neighbour can enjoy what I cannot?
In retrospect, it took a long time, almost three generations, to completely erode this moral and participatory basis of society, but now almost everyone has realised that, within such a polity, the only sane career choice is to become a parasite. From which moral degeneration, there is no return.
As an example of the paring down of consumerism in the wake of COVID, a spot check on a major department store here shows a reduction of about 30% in their offering of imported consumer goods – fridges, freezers, laptops, etc -compared to February 2020.
Kilner jars, 1l size, for home preservation, are still not available after selling out rapidly in March!
The supermarket I buy online from still lacks most brands of flour of all kinds, these disappeared in March, but has lately introduced its own brand in plain, self-raising, bread and cake-baking varieties, but limited to 3 items per order, so about 4.5 kg.
Onwards to Soviet-style shops, Comrades?
Yep, I was just commenting in similar vein few days ago.
As best scenario some is caused by the supplier chain temporary dislocation, perhaps seasonal floods affecting some Chinese factories, and the general spiked up demand from furloughed people..
But some items could never reappear again.
Well the Soviet style shops at least dealt more with the practical wares vs the opulent frivolous stuff of today..
Xabier, perhaps look into purchasing some bulk wheat berries and a grain mill. The whole grains will keep for a very long time.
Thanks for the tip, Lydia.
What happened to the flour supply here was a big wake-up call, which I suspect many have not really heeded.
Quite a few people, to my astonishment, don’t even know it happened, as they don’t make meals from scratch, but buy only factory cake and bread!
The govt. never made any statement on the matter either.
Intact grain will keep much longer than flour in a cool, dry place:
https://www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/organic-wheat-grain-5kg.html
https://www.realfoods.co.uk/product/842/organic-wheat-grain
In the US, it’s often specified whether it is “red” or “white”, “hard” or “soft” … these don’t say. The first site has free shipping over £20, so you don’t have much to lose, I don’t think. You could try to contact them about the nature of the wheat. [Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in the above businesses.]
If a whole-wheat flour is not what you desire, you can buy flour sieves to remove the bran once ground.
I find this site extremely comprehensive and supportive of home bread-bakers, though you may need to do some conversions: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/
I’ve only tried baking bread from scratch a couple of times, and I’m fairly bad at it: I think I let it rise too much before putting it in the oven, and it gets too dense. I did manage to make some super-delicious breadsticks, though, so there may be hope yet.
Thanks for sharing. Interesting.
RE: “…imported consumer goods – fridges, freezers, laptops, etc…”
and
“Kilner jars… most brands of flour of all kinds”
what do you think are the reasons for this?
– expected lower demand by distribution networks,
– current excess demand,
– decreased supply / broken supply chains,
– bankruptcies?
I will try “bulk wheat berries”. Thanks.
This department store did announce that it would be slimming down the range of products offered. One can see that it would be more efficient.
Kilner jars were probably all bought up in March, the same way gardening stuff and lots of home baking machines and flour were snapped up when lock-downs loomed.
This is an interesting experimental paper perhaps serving as a microcosm to our cultural response to scarcity. It seems to suggest that regardless of political orientation, individuals generally agree on the level of resource redistribution appropriate to each tested situation, but disagreed on whether such redistribution is actually possible. This resonated with me; a large part of my political identity is wrapped around a dislike of utopianism or abridged thinking where the ‘back end’ and logistics of political solutions are mysteriously left out of the discourse.
“Many human societies feature institutions for redistributing resources from some individuals to others, but preferred levels of redistribution vary greatly within and between populations. We postulate that support for redistribution is the output of a structured cognitive system that is sensitive to features of the social situation. We developed an experimental approach in which participants prescribe appropriate redistribution for hypothetical villages whose features vary. Over seven experiments involving 2400 adults from the UK, we show that participants shift their redistribution preferences systematically as situational features change. Higher levels of redistribution are favoured when luck is more important in the initial distribution of resources; when social groups are more homogeneous; when the group is at war; and when resources are abundant rather than scarce. Judgements about the right level of redistribution carry moderate or high levels of moral conviction. Participants have systematic intuitions about when the implementation of redistribution will prove problematic, distinct from their intuitions about when it is desirable. Individuals are only weakly consistent in the level of redistribution they prefer, and political orientation explains rather little variation in preferred redistribution for a given situation. We argue that people have divergent views on redistribution at least in part because they have different appraisals of the features of their societies. Understanding the operating principles of the psychology of redistribution may help explain variation and change in support for, and hence existence of, redistributive institutions across societies and over time.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027720300536#f0005
Interesting topic.
I was reading about a small (c35 people) hunter-gatherer group in Africa, and a little surprised that social and moral pressure still had to be applied by those who were less fortunate in the hunt in order to get the meat -the most valued food – they wanted.
And that every now and then a family would try to gorge on their meat and not share it at all generously.
Redistribution was no by no means automatic as one might have expected in such a small and physically close community and some people fantasize.
Our basic feelings about fairness were probably formed in such groups, long ago.
In “Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman”, Nisa was always getting ragged on by her family for stealing the family’s mongongo nuts. Strangely though, Nisa rescues a newborn brother her mother went into the bush to deliver and expose. Not all that clear on the mongongo nut front, is Nisa.
Interesting! The results correspond to what we were expecting.
The question is one of what to do, when there aren’t enough resources to go around. Going to war, and devoting a lot of resources to conquering someone else and taking their resources, is a standard approach.
If we think about it, if there is not enough to go around, dividing up what is available equally is likely to lead to everyone starving to death, or everyone having an inadequate diet and becoming very vulnerable to pandemics. The physics of dissipative structures has a different solution: It tends to “freeze out” the least well adapted to the current situation; at the same time, a disproportionate share of what is available rises to the top, “like steam” to the “best adapted.”
Yet another poll today has shown majority support for Scottish independence. That makes seven polls in a row this year. Support for independence is now undeniably the majority position of Scotland. And that is before the latest Brexit disorder takes its toll on the polls. It is starting to look inevitable now that Scotland will soon go independent.
I see that The Shetlands have officially voted to start seeking ways to leave Scotland – secession in the air!
“Councillors voted 18 to two in favour of a motion to formally explore options “for achieving financial and political self-determination”.
“https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/shetland-votes-explore-ways-become-independent-scotland-2968110
That is actually not the case, and the Unionist online media (DM) have resorted to making things up. Shetland councillors voted to explore ways to increase the autonomy of the island (population 20,000) not for independence. An autonomous Shetland would be accomodated within an independent Scotland.
Gosh, SEVEN polls in a row, our SNP fellow traveller tells us gleefully. If only he could persuade them to do another seven polls over the next seven days, they might even get in the Guinness Book of Scottish Records!
The sad thing is that even 55% is not a lot, and the poor Scots are as split as us poor Brits still are over Brexit. I suppose if Boris messes up over the terms of leaving the single market, the Scots might even poll 60% or more in favour of independence. But the answer is blowing in the wind.
Actually I am not Scottish and I do not vote for SNP.
Thanks for the music. Do you remember this one? 80s electro. I heard it yesterday for the first time in years.
I don’t remember that one. My favourite tunes are from the early to mid 1970s. I do enjoy electro-pop, though. I was always interested in electronic music once I heard it. I got Brian Eno’s autograph back in 1972. He was only known as Eno back then. I managed to ask saxophonist Andy Mackay what Eno’s real name was. He politely declined to tell me. I suppose they were interested in maintaining a certain mystique back then.
‘Actually I am not Scottish and I do not vote for SNP.’
So come on then, oh dear. Take a deep breath and own up to your nationality. You don’t have to like it, but it is a necessary encumbrance. Me, I’m English while my passport is British, but I also still feel European.
I would prefer to maintain the ambiguity, it is far more entertaining.
OK then. How many LIMBS have you got? Four or five? 😉
As the children’s game goes, are you animal or a vegetable?
Just the same in Catalonia and the Basque country, more or less evenly split: but try telling a nationalist that at least 90% support would be needed to make a success of independence – a large disaffected minority of dissenters is not a good idea. A movement is truly national or its just a minority obsession.
In Catalonia, many would probably favor a “third” option of increased local powers. The Basque country may already have a high enough degree of autonomy to satisfy the broad majority there.
I have often felt that something like this ought to require a “high majority,” and not just squeak by. Not sure how high would be fair.
That is an increase of 3% in the support for independence on Survation’s last poll in May.
> On the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country, the poll found 53% of Scots backed the idea, with 47% voting no.
In their previous poll, both votes were 50-50.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18714139.survation-poll-new-poll-predicts-snp-lead-holyrood-elections/
Support for independence is running away in the younger generations. Sad to say it like that, but it is only a matter of time before the older Unionists are no longer around to vote. Time is on the side of independence. (Cue Mick Jagger.)
SNP would do well to stave off demands for a referendum for a few more years to let demography take its toll on the vote. They would need to make it count this time, a third referendum any time soon would be asking a lot. Ironically, TP is doing SNP a favour by delaying the referendum.
> It showed that, of those aged 16-24 in the survey, about 60.5 percent would vote Yes and just under 12 percent No, with nearly 27 percent undecided. In the 25-34 age group, 59 percent would vote Yes and 21 percent No with nearly 19 percent undecided.
Only in the categories of respondents aged 55 and above does the No vote begin to outweigh the Yes vote, according to this poll. In the oldest category – those aged 65 and above – just under 31 percent said they would vote Yes with 60.7 percent voting No and 8.4 percent of people undecided. – The Scotsman, today
Yes, the Grim Reaper is pro-SNP for sure. And no doubt there are a few young SNP-voting nurses quietly euthanising the oldies in the old people’s homes. It will make a nice TV drama documentary in years to come.
You do seem obsessed with this subject, though. If you’re not a Scot, then you either have Scottish relatives or you’re a wannabe Scot.
Anyway, which other countries might split? The Canadians treat the French speakers in Quebec appallingly. You can see how starved Celine Dion looks. And do the Inuit really want to be patronised by that sanctimonious performance artist Trudeau?
The Flemings and the Walloons over in Belgium don’t much like one another either.
Would that make the Scots who oppose independence wannabe English?
Maybe hostile tribal subjectivity is not everything to everyone?
I’m…I wouldn’t say *obsessed* with it, but very interested. We are, after all, talking about the breakup of one of the handful of Great Powers in the world.
Most Americans have Scottish relatives or ancestors, but real Scots would laugh at them if they claimed to be Scottish on that basis. It’s even worse with the Irish. One comic book writer had one of his characters ask another, who was from Ireland, what he thought of St. Patrick’s Day in the USA. He pointed to a piece of trash sitting on the street. It was a cardboard leprechaun hat filled with vomit from green beer.
Perhaps a little off topic but what a wonderfully heart-warming tale:
“Homeless, bankrupt and fighting a deadly disease: the couple who never gave up hope.
“With nowhere to go, Raynor and Moth Winn bought a rucksack and hit the coastal path of Cornwall. Here’s what happened after the walk ended.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/homeless-bankrupt-fighting-deadly-disease-couple-never-gave/
“Scores of people protested in Benghazi on Thursday over power cuts and living conditions, witnesses said, burning tyres and blocking some roads in an unusual public show of dissent in the eastern Libyan city.”
https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/protests-flare-in-libyas-benghazi-over-power-cuts-living-conditions-885755.html
“Nigerian police Thursday dispersed and arrested protesters decrying the recent hike in petrol prices and electricity tariff in the suburban city of Ojuelegba, Lagos, local media reported.
“This comes as a series of demonstrations against the increase in petrol prices and electricity tariff has reportedly hit different parts of the oil-rich country…”
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/nigeria-arrests-in-protests-against-fuel-price-hike/1969344
$25 oil wouldn’t help.
“Bank of Russia does not rule out another pandemic wave, geopolitical shocks, $25 oil price.”
https://tass.com/economy/1199339
At least Russia’s central bank is honest about future possibilities.
🙂
Free money pouring from the sky, first the tech stock mania, now oil volatility..
Weren’t they just claiming to have achieved a vaccine?
“Venezuela’s worst economic meltdown in history has had a huge impact on neighboring Colombia, where hospitals, schools and welfare agencies are dealing with 2 million Venezuelan refugees…
“For decades, Colombian motorists along the border eschewed gas stations to fill their tanks with cheaper, smuggled Venezuelan fuel…
“Now, however, Venezuela’s oil industry has collapsed… “The business has totally died,” says José López, a former fuel smuggler in the Colombian border city of Cúcuta who now runs a car wash.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/10/909119540/venezuelas-fuel-shortage-upends-longtime-colombian-border-gas-smuggling-trade
“Violent clashes have erupted in Colombia’s capital following the death of a man in police custody, with angry citizens setting fire to city buses, vandalising police stations and squaring off with officers in confrontations that killed at least nine people.”
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/several-killed-in-protests-over-police-custody-death-in-colombia-39661
It seems like we have heard the “violent clashes” story elsewhere!
Colombian cyclist almost won today’s very hard day on the Tour de France, finishing second.
Or was it the other way around, I can’t even remember TV from few hours ago.. I’m declining fast, lol..
“California’s historically bad fire season marked another sobering milestone Thursday when the August Complex burning on the North Coast became the largest wildfire in state history.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/North-Coast-complex-is-now-California-s-second-15554767.php
“Wildfires across the U.S. West are among the sparks from climate change that could ignite a U.S. financial crisis by damaging home values, state tourism and local government budgets, an advisory panel to a U.S. markets regulator found.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-market-fire/how-californias-wildfires-could-spark-a-financial-crisis-idUKKBN2611TK
At some point, a person would start to think that people would move out of the state.
After 28 years in northern CA, I sold my property in 2015 and moved back to my hometown in Wisconsin. A realtor asked me why I was selling. She didn’t want to hear about a warming climate, drought and increased fire risks and replied, “Ohhhhh, you’re one of tho***se.” 😂 Yup, I’m one of those. I suspect the exodus from CA will be slow.
At this rate, how many states will there be left to move out of?
“The threat of a turbulent US presidential election is raising the pressure on companies to load up on cheap debt as bankers warn that disruption to financial markets could deny them access to funds on favourable terms…
“The November 3 election is “about as clear a risk factor as you have going into year-end,” said Jonny Fine, head of investment grade debt syndicate at Goldman Sachs.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5c851702-3b02-4523-ac2e-2d94b8c65ae4
“Chicago historian Rich Lindberg went further, saying that COVID-19 might be a more severe crisis than World War II, when at least the country was united and the struggle was infused with meaning.
“Partisan division is at perhaps its the highest level since the Civil War, he said, with extremism on both sides, a lack of faith in public institutions and a looming sense of dread.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-covid-compare-national-crises-09092020-20200910-ovkxyg36fje6bkfr45k3fr4jta-story.html
“The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits hovered at high levels last week, suggesting the labor market recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic was stalling.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-weekly-jobless-claims-flattening-as-labor-market-momentum-ebbs-idUSKBN26123R
“With extremism on both sides”?
Howso? I can see only the left that is burning, looting and murdering.
Oh, maybe the reporter is referring to the young mother who was shot in the head, dead, for saying “All lives matter.” Yes, what an extremist!
“Extremism” simply means ideological fanaticism, whether that is expressed through violence or not (it often is).
It does not erupt in a vacuum and needs an opposing polarity to react against, so what he says seems reasonable to me.
I’m not so sure; some fanaticisms are self-generating, and create their own worlds out of abstractions. The Archdruid Greer is quite good on that subject.
For instance, I am a-political, call ‘a curse on all their houses’, and am definitely not Right-wing; but merely because I am not 100% Antifa my rabid sister defines my position as, by default, ‘fascist’.
‘If you are not with us, comrade, you are against us: bang!’ All pretty ludicrous as our grandfather was hunted by the real fascists in 1936…..
Of course, this kind of unreasoning craziness then succeeds in calling a real and determined opposition into being: much as a decent person in 1930’s Germany who just wanted a quieter and more orderly life might have voted for the Nazis solely in order to stop Communism, seeing them as the best bet in the short-term.
Or we can imagine the first Muslim armies turning up and compelling people to convert or be killed, when there had been no history of opposition and persecution, the religion of Islam being utterly new.
I think we should look for parallels in Islam and perhaps early Christianity, when it was a religion of shrine and temple-wrecking fanatics (although the latter had suffered persecution, or course.) Antifa is a cult.
I feel very sorry indeed for Americans having to deal with economic devastation and this craziness on top of it all.
I like the Druid a lot, but something about his implacable Goldilocks insistence that things will veer neither too far one way nor too far the other seems a product of his own temperamental necessities.
Antifa is a cult with priests who are well-financed, indeed. Not sure whether we can say the same for early Islam or Christianity. Don’t think they rolled up in brand-new chariots with a $1.5 billion-shekel bankroll.
Xabier, you raise an interesting point. I can well imagine that fanatical religious movements could materialise ex nihilo, as it were, although one wonders if perhaps environmental stressors or existential threats may have played a role in some. Certainly we see cults spring up all the time around charismatic individuals based, as you say, on their own mental abstractions.
But extreme political movements always seem, to me at least, to be a reaction against some tyranny or perceived injustice or unfairness. And once that collective ego has become strongly identified with its story it becomes totally intolerant of alternative stories, guaranteeing polarisation and conflict.
Dmitry Orlov believes that the survivalist groups that are likely to succeed will be bound together by a strong religious belief. If they are somewhat persecuted, this will help their success as well. Groups that just want to be “green” or are based on votes of what the group as a whole want will get nowhere.
Our intuition regarding what is “right” and what “works” is based on a long period of high consumption of fossil fuels. If lower energy consumption is ahead, groups that think differently will be the ones that succeed.
A person wonders how the US election will work out, with election day voting, advance voting, and absentee ballots. Georgia (where I live) is using new voting machines that don’t work very well, to make matters worse. The machines give a paper record of a person’s vote, besides automatically recording the vote. Their problem is too much complexity; it is difficult for the poll workers to figure out what is wrong with the machines and fix them quickly. There is also concern that people will vote more than one way, adding to the confusion. Also, the post office has been behind on deliveries, making people wonder if absentee ballots will be recorded.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/09/investigative-reports/bipartisan-washington-insiders-reveal-their-plan-for-chaos-if-trump-wins-the-election/
Buckle your seat belts.
HRC told Biden not to concede “under ANY circumstance”.
ANY means ANY.
So there you go.
Interesting! This is quite a long report called ,”“Bipartisan” Washington Insiders Reveal Their Plan for Chaos if Trump Wins the Election.”
According to the article,
(Not in the article:) I can imagine a situation in which the United States divides into two groups of states: Trump states and Biden states. This would give a convenient excuse to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. Each new group of states could have whatever plans it could really afford–probably not very much.
Perhaps November 2020 is too soon for this to happen. Somewhere down the line, I keep thinking that some sort of split will take place. It would make it much easier to walk away from expensive programs and way too much debt.
What a dark thing to imagine. It never occurred to me, but sounds possible, sadly. I hope I don’t see it.
“The European Central Bank has dashed hopes of fresh stimulus to buttress the faltering recovery and to restrain the surging euro, sending the single currency rocketing higher against sterling, the dollar, and the yuan.
“The relentless rise of the euro is pushing large parts of the eurozone into a Japanese deflation trap, threatening a fresh banking crisis and playing havoc with debt dynamics in a string of vulnerable countries already reeling from the shock of Covid-19.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/09/10/lagarde-retreats-currency-war-accepting-deflation-euro-spirals/
Too high a currency seems to be as much of a concern as too low a currency.
Unwelcome for Germany above all, which depends on the Euro being just so, to suit their export model.
Nasdaq failed to regain the trendline again.
This time it looks as if it hit the trendline and rejected it. (I don’t make these charts).
The crash comes today? I don’t think so. Today is 9/11 and it would be unpatriotic to allow it crash today.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ehlf7O_UMAEovCf?format=jpg&name=large
“Britain’s economy recovered half of its COVID-19 crash by the end of July, helped by pubs and restaurants reopening from lockdown, but the bounce-back is expected to slow as job losses mount and Brexit tensions rise.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-economy/uk-economy-extends-recovery-from-covid-crash-growth-seen-fading-idUSKBN2620MO
“The UK travel sector is bracing itself for the collapse of yet more holiday companies as businesses continue to struggle to meet the challenges of the Covid-19 crisis…
“Industry bosses have voiced concerns about the closure of the government’s furlough scheme at the end of October, as well as the ongoing slump in overseas bookings, a double whammy that may be the death knell of more businesses.”
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/sep/10/travel-industry-fears-covid-19-crisis-will-cause-more-holiday-comapnies-to-collapse
The end of the government furlough scheme at the end of October will almost certainly damage the economy. COVID cases are likely to rise, as people move more indoors. Sounds like a excuse to close down the economy again.
And as temperatures fall: no outdoor seating!
However, I have noticed here that people seem happy enough to crowd indoors – can’t see much distancing at all in the spacing of tables.
“Japan’s exports in August were expected to have suffered a double-digit contraction for the sixth straight month, a Reuters poll showed, underlining the sweeping impact of the coronavirus crisis on global demand and growth.”
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-japan-economy-trade/japan-august-exports-set-for-another-double-digit-fall-core-cpi-to-drop-reuters-poll-shows-idINKBN2620MX?il=0
“The UK has struck its first major post-Brexit trade pact after signing a deal with Japan that aims to boost trade between the countries by about £15bn.
“International Trade Secretary Liz Truss said it was an “historic moment”.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54116606
“The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has projected a gloomy outlook for the global manufacturing industry, saying it was set for its biggest collapse in decades, by year-end.” [2019 wasn’t so hot either.]
https://guardian.ng/business-services/unido-projects-biggest-collapse-for-global-manufacturing/
“State support has been essential to keep firms going and avoid a devastating economic collapse. But the experience of the financial crisis showed that subsidies can have negative long-term consequences which play out through international trade flows…
“…subsidies risk giving an advantage to less efficient producers at the expense of more efficient ones. Over the long term, this can lead to lower productivity growth in the country implementing the subsidy. Subsidised industries may also lead to excess capacity and ‘dumping’ of goods on international markets, which damages exporters’ prospects in other countries.”
https://think.ing.com/articles/world-trade-from-subsidies-covid-19-war-recession-support
“US sabre-rattling towards China could rip apart the core of the global economy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/11/us-china-global-economy-donald-trump
Or maybe it is too little energy to go around that will rip apart the core of the global economy.
“State support has been essential to keep firms going and avoid a devastating economic collapse… subsidies risk giving an advantage to less efficient producers at the expense of more efficient ones. Over the long term, this can lead to lower productivity growth in the country implementing the subsidy.”
Maybe they need to face up to that the gradual ‘socialisation’ (state financial support) of the economy countervails systemic TRPF in an era of expensive energy and that it helps to maintain system function while productivity growth, and indeed productivity, wind down.
They are still attempting to see the global economy as simply within a long-term phase of expansion rather than wind down. They see gradual socialisation as a response to a sort of cyclical rather secular (long-term) crisis.
If that is wrong then it would hinder the wind down response to secular crisis and worsen the situation.
” …subsidies risk giving an advantage to less efficient producers at the expense of more efficient ones.” Glory be, another classical economist. So we are not quite an extinct species. Of course, the subsidies are contingent upon a certain amount of “vigorish” being returned.
I tried to find the actual report of UNIDO, but I couldn’t find it. Most UN reports are unbelievably optimistic. I looked down a list of Latest Publications, and they followed the usual pattern.
https://www.unido.org/resources-publications/latest-publications
Harry’s linked article above gives lots of interesting information.
Part of this ship looks translucent…or as if it was made of smoke.
It’s the glowing aura that surrounds the ship.
It forms strange energy waves as it interacts with the planets gravity field…just like cigarette smoke does.
https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8757531-genesis-2-project-unidentified-aerial-phenomenon-uap/image/IMG0535_1597678378163-CUSTOM.JPG
it looks like a hot American or French, British, Russian fighter caught in an IR image. (note the trees are glowing as well.) the plane image may be blurred because of the speed of the aircraft?
There’s no hot jet engine exhaust.
You would have seen them in a IR image.
Ship ??? Ship ???
The object is closer than the tree tops !
It’s a bat. Anyone with knowledge of photography can see that.
Not really an OFW topic.
A bat??? A bat???
It’s a demon!
Obviously a bat. you can clearly see the ears and fingers.
Yes…but bats do not have a tail.
yes they do! look at this https://dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/plants_wildlife/bats/batanatomy.aspx
Ok.
But not one that sticks out from their wings.
Maybe the bat carries a stick between its toes?
I’m sometimes terrified how people can be far away from mother nature… What is more common that a bat? I love those animals. well all animals indeed!
Imagery Reveals Autism-Related Brain Differences
Summary: People on the autism spectrum have lower levels of a protein that regulates serotonin in the brain.
https://neurosciencenews.com/autism-brain-differences-16991/
Interesting!
Goodness, the talk now is of an EU ‘trade war’ against UK over the NI Provision in WA – legal action, financial sanctions, trade war. WA gives EU authority over disputes for four years. It may be that Boris intends to entirely scrap WA and to go for ‘no deal’. I would recommend that, it is an appalling piece of legislation.
Sounds like a problem of “not enough to go around.” Countries that formerly wanted to cooperate now are fighting, especially on agricultural goods and car parts.
Yes, it will be very interesting to see the masks come off as scarcity leads to conflict. The claim has been that the western ‘values’ of ‘liberal democracy’ and the ‘rule of law’ have led to an era of peaceful cooperation, when really it is the growth of global capitalism and the steady increase of wealth in the post-WWII that has allowed the moralistic posturing.
The Churchill statue in London was tagged again today, which some may object to but it simply states the truth that the self-righteous and self-congratulatory British state has managed to keep more or less under wraps for decades. Like they are the ‘heroes’ of history. That is the self-image that they promote in the domestic media. It is quite amusing really.
But it will be economic collapse that really rips off the masks and reveals the naked ‘will to power’ that has always driven statesmen and peoples. How easy it is to pose as ‘moral’ when the sun shines on all.
https://e3.365dm.com/20/09/2048×1152/skynews-churchill-statue_5092466.jpg
All is strategy. The state presents itself as ‘moral’ and even as the ‘heroes of history’ in order to justify itself and its power to impose authority and order on society. In the real world it is a competitive, geopolitical, class-based state and society.
Its pride, its self-glory, its self-honour, its feeling of self-satisfaction and self-righteousness is ‘will to power’, to dominate, to exploit, to grow. The moralistic affects and the window dressing of history are also ‘will to power’.
‘Morality’ and ‘heroism’ are lies to disguise what humans really are deep down, artful strategists – the entirety of human civilisation and culture mere strategy. Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, imperialism, communism, global capitalism, racism, anti-racism, all will to power – all strategy.
I have not found in my village anyone that thinks strategically. I wonder if thinking strategically doesn’t require systems thinking of a sort? (Not thinking systematically means painting oneself into corners.)
Yes, I think that is a fair point.
Most people are just doing what they are doing, fitting in and ‘getting on’ with their roles. That is how human societies tend to be structured, it tends to be only a few who bring systems into critical consciousness, be they ‘leaders’, scientists of sorts, or intellectual layabouts.
For most, ‘strategy’ remains ‘from deep down’ and it amounts to little more than the instinct to conform and the adoption of social appearances – they are particular social roles and places in action. It is an instinctive drive, to conform in order to function, the ‘herd’. They have limited responsibilities and horizons and their ‘strategy’ is aimed at that.
But at base, it is strategy, however limited the horizons, instinctive and uncritical. Strategy becomes grander and more encompassing, more thoughtful for those who have systemic responsibilities. Our ‘system’ is simply the national capitalist state and its aim is the accumulation of capital.
It takes an additional level of thought to critically evaluate the ‘purpose’ of the human social system and to imagine what else it might be, which is where philosophy and ideology come in. But it all remains a matter of aims and strategies just on a grander scale. ‘Being’ and ‘doing’ always imply ‘how’ and strategy on some level.
To be fair, I have aimed at distinct categories in that analysis, for the purpose of articulation, and people are not always as black and white as I have depicted. But deep down, humans are simply artful strategists, however limited their horizons may be, and the ‘rest’ – ‘virtue’, ‘vice’, ‘heroism’, ‘nobility’, ‘baseness’, whatever – is strategic window dressing.
If you truly believe that morality and heroism -and one must infer nobility, self-sacrifice, humanity, etc – are always ‘lies’, then you are clearly not someone who could be relied upon in a tight corner.
I am not sure that you understood what I said, there is the strategic act and the strategic spin that is put on it. I doubt that you have any statistical data to correlate adherence to that analysis with performance in a tight spot. Please do not try to personalise the discussion, which would be petty and proves nothing.
If by a ‘tight corner’ you mean would I fight for the British capitalist state then the answer is definitely no. There are people, and maybe even causes that I might fight for in the right circumstances, but the British capitalist state is definitely not one of them.
I’m not sure I’m up to saying why, but I have read, and agree, that the oinacle of British empire was during the last 20 or thirty years of the 19th century. I don’t see what happened during the age of oil as strictly British, since it was also the age of networked globalism, leading to deferred power and ideology of the empire. I personally don’t think this high point is inaccessible yet; it just has to be returned to in a very different way.
Although OFW focuses on energy, and gives that as a reason for decline of all sorts, I see a correlating reality where people start behaving differently, and that strikes me as being just as determinative as energy.
And I think energy and behavior are in dynamic relationship. If human systems are determined by energy, that is affected by ideas about energy. Taking energy for granted would mean that people attribute undesirable change exclusively to the wrong things.
He was also a sexist and a classist, and he couldn’t abide pansies. So what? Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to a single individual. He made our British Empire a better place for me and you. 🙂
The last time the forces of barbarism were threatening to pounce on this sceptered isle, we had Winston to defend our freedoms. But let’s not despair totally. This time, we have Boris. What a clown he’s turned out to be.
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
So here we are, sunk into the abyss of a new Dark Age, etc., etc. And the fact that people are defacing Churchill’s statue and trying to knock it down to cheers from the gallery is all the symbolic proof we need in order to confirm just how dark our situation is.
Tim, yes times are bleak but I would say “we are, sinking into the abyss of a new Dark Age”. It is just starting.
People only understand the fairy tale that they have been told: Greater complexity will save us; we really don’t need growing energy supplies. As Artleads said above, they have been taught to take energy supplies for granted. People cannot face the idea of a new Dark Age. They need another story.
And dear old Winnie is so quotable.
For instance, when complimented by Lady Diana Cooper in 1943 on ‘having given his energy to the British people’ he immediately corrected her:
‘No, not at all: I simply helped them to concentrate their own energy.’
Perfectly just, it’s exactly what he did, and no vanity about it either.
Compare that to the vain boasting of Hitler and Mussolini, the poisoned dwarf Franco, or the psychotic mass-murderer Stalin, and the hollow arrogance and common ingratitude towards the British of the EU today – ‘We are the 27, and you are just a little island.’
With all his faults, none of them could ever match his stature.
Chucrhhill quotes:
‘I propose that 100,000 degenerate Britons should be forcibly sterilized and others put in labour camps to halt the decline of the British race.’
‘The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.’
‘I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.’
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’
‘I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.’
To be fair, if certain persons have a psychological attachment to WC then that is fair enough but it is of no interest to anyone else.
Xabier, I agree. Churchill himself understood only too well how mores shift over time. He later wrote about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, which was rather stomach-churning in its one-sided brutality:
“Mussolini’s designs on Abyssinia were unsuited to the ethics of the twentieth century. They belonged to those dark ages when white men felt themselves entitled to conquer yellow, brown, black or red men, and subjugate them by superior strength and weapons.”
It may be worth consulting the context in which that quote is given in the only web source for it – a discussion of post-war hypocritical British posturing. The point is to undertand what is going on, but fan boys are only interested in adoring ‘heroes’, which is of no interest to anyone else.
Google Books
“He made our British Empire a better place for me and you.”
It is old history now, and no one really cares, but in fact he bankrupt Britain, lost the British Empire, left UK with a shattered domestic industrial base – and left half of Europe under the USSR to boot. No one else is interested in adoration of WC.
To be fair, no else cares how much British state fanboys adore WC, it is no interest to anyone apart from themselves.
This is an odd line of argument as clearly it is of interest to you, oh dear. And indeed WC looms larger of late in our national psyche than he has done in years.
For the record, I do not have the man on a pedestal. In fact, I don’t have *anyone* on a pedestal. We all have feet of clay. There is a happy medium between being a fanboy and the sort of immature and hysterical reductionist who screams “racist” as if that defines the man and settles the debate on his place in history.
Not really, I am interested in WC only as a state propaganda phenomenon that affords broader political and philosophical analysis, I have no interest in nationalistic fan boy adoration, which is especially silly on an international forum.
I would not necessarily agree that the two approaches that you mention form ‘poles’ between which there is a ‘moderate’ perspective in which WC has a valued ‘place in history’. Personally I am not interested in making value judgements, especially about the past, only in pure understand of what went on and what goes on.
“…only in pure understand of what went on and what goes on.”
Clearly you are on a higher intellectual plane, oh dear.
The point is that I am interested in understanding and not in making value judgements. If you think that I am then point out where I have made any. And please let us not reduce ourselves to petty sarcasm. The outburst of national sentiment was bad enough on a serious, public and international forum without going to petty personal heckling. It is not a good image for the tribe.
What is tiresome about your position here, oh dear, is your wide-eyed claim that you are not making value judgements, as if by some miracle you are the first human being to enjoy a perfectly objective overview of history unsullied by emotional engagement.
And yet at the same time you *are* clearly irritated by Pro-Churchill sentiments to the point where you are denigrating other commenters as British state fanboys – an entirely unfair inference in my case. You have obviously already made a value-judgement re Churchill and your comments are transparently designed to depict him as a racist and a failure.
In other words, you are not just looking to understand – you are pushing an agenda. So, either you are being intentionally dishonest or you really are deluding yourself that you are operating on a higher plane.
I am not interested in getting into a silly, personal public dispute with you. This is not an episode of EastEnders.
I made no value judgement and you have shown none. Neither have I an ‘agenda’ and neither have you shown one. What you infer is of no account.
No one told you or anyone else to jump on the serious discussion with silly nationalistic praise of WC – and yes I did point that out for what it was.
This is not a British nationalist forum and no ‘herd’ performance is of account. It is not a pub.
I should that we should agree to leave it at that. Like I said, this is not an episode of EastEnders.
“No one told you or anyone else to jump on the serious discussion with silly nationalistic praise of WC – and yes I did point that out for what it was.”
Megalomania stalking the comments section, I see. I’ll try to remember to ask permission the next time I want to interject myself in one of your lofty threads.
Lat year the UK had a trade deficit with the EU of 72 billion pounds. Bring on the trade war! Seriously, though, this absurd threat shows yet again how much contempt the Brussels oligarchs have for the peasants they misrule.
“Two months into China’s fastest stock rally in years, and the days of making easy money are ending…
““Turnover and liquidity conditions are not aligning in the best place for the market right now,” said Shen Zhengyang, an analyst at Northeast Securities Co. “We’re halfway through a correction.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-09/pullback-in-china-stocks-has-investors-fearing-deeper-slump
“As the Covid-19-induced economic slowdown deepens, Indian banks have been preparing for the worst. But what they are considering worst might still be conservative…
“…analysts believe bad loans could eventually be much higher than the buffer created by banks so far.”
https://qz.com/india/1900272/indian-banks-bad-loans-will-be-much-worse-than-provisioning/
Nasdaq futures have broken the trendline…retested it…rejected it…and now comes the crash?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhfbqHwXkAEaV62?format=jpg&name=large
So far, today, the stock market is up. So, not yet!
The retest isn’t done yet.
I see it is at 11646 and the index is now at 11255.
Still a bit to go before we know if the trendline will be rejected.
The retail gamblers are still pouring in, mostly for leveraged derivative trades, which can be done easily by one tap-click from smartphones. People were lured in from Q1/Q2 examples of easy-crazy 20-50-100x gains of past months, such late manias usually signal severe crash around the corner.
Nasdaq is now down -2.24%. Not the end of the day yet, though.
“Financial markets are being pulled in different directions by two big forces: the injection of liquidity from central banks and concerns over a “second wave” of Covid-19 infections. Daily news headlines can lead us to believe that, of the two, coronavirus is the dominant force for markets.
“The coming months are likely to show that it is not. Investors should back central bankers to win this tug of war, and set up their portfolios accordingly.”
[Says the FT]
https://www.ft.com/content/0a57283d-b001-419b-a442-a258ecd45e25
[The Washington Post begs to differ]
“Jerome Powell, chair of the Fed, has repeatedly said that his institution can’t keep equity and debt assets propped up if the economy continues to deteriorate.
“Businesses are still going bankrupt. Low- and moderate-income renters who are unemployed are preparing to fight evictions in the coming months, as moratoriums end. And workers in industries hardest-hit by the pandemic — think airlines and big hotel chains, among others — who initially kept their jobs are now joining the ranks of the unemployed.
“Amid all this, one thing remains clear: For Wall Street, too, there will be a reckoning.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stock-market-unemployment-disconnect/2020/09/09/087374ca-f306-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html
Yes, the day of reckoning is coming. I am afraid it is not far away.
Many Retailers Are Closing. That’s Good for Survivors.
Even after the large number of bankruptcies in recent years, Barron’s has argued that the U.S. still has too many stores. Ed Yardeni writes that perhaps with this most recent wave of bankruptcies, we might reach a point where the excess is finally taken out of the system and “the remaining players have a fighting chance at survival.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/retailers-closing-macys-gap-survivors-51599750585?mod=mw_latestnews
It’s all a matter of how you look at it.
D3G
There were way too many retail stores in theUS. There had also been a model of women, especially buying more and more clothes, to show off at work and at restaurants and other gatherings. Now that people are not going out as much, it is hard to justify as many new clothes as before. They also don’t have to be as fancy. This makes less work for the many seamstresses around the world. So they are encountering economic problems as well.
President Carter on CIA’s use of parapsychology.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1qDQEzXgAAWexh?format=jpg&name=900×900
Well that’s thought-provoking.
Article from 1996:
[FWIW I am agnostic leaning towards sceptical]
“The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars, according to three new reports, on secret projects to investigate extrasensory phenomena and to see if the sheer power of the human mind can be harnessed to perform various acts of espionage and war – penetrating secret files, for example, locating submarines or blowing up guided missiles in midflight.
“Further, one of the reports says concern about a psychic arms gap has reached as high as the White House in at least one instance. In 1977, by this account, President Carter ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct a high-level review of psychic research behind the Iron Curtain in an attempt to assess a possible Soviet threat.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/10/science/pentagon-is-said-to-focus-on-esp-for-wartime-use.html
The US government is now spending billions on programs to indoctrinate its own people – including the military – to hate and despise their own country. This is of course insane, but they are doing it.
So they spent money on wacky research? That’s not a blip on the screen.
What you can see in the sky using infrared night vision? Are those craft OURS? I doubt it. Nor do I think the authorities know much more than we do. But they wish to seem in control, so they censor information about it – NASA photoshopped a mentioned image when alerted to it. They also think knowledge of this phenomenon would scare the public. I suppose it could scare the concrete heads, whose ideas are set in stone.
A weird looking UFO (in infra red?).
A photo now being studied by Senate intelligence committee and MIT.
https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8757531-genesis-2-project-unidentified-aerial-phenomenon-uap/image/IMG0535_1597678378163-CUSTOM.JPG
is that a youeffowe a mile away?
or a bird/bat/insect a foot away?
Don’t be a cement head. 🙁 Do you think the authorities are unable to measure distance?
I don’t know, but it looks batsh1t crazy.
“A photo now being studied by Senate intelligence committee and MIT.”
oh, sorry, I didn’t realize that there are geniuses out there who can “measure distance” from a photo. (sarc, by the way)
hey, everybody, we got photos!
yaaahooo, hey let’s study them!
Test. UFO.
“Thousands of people urgently require emergency shelter and aid after a fire destroyed Europe’s largest refugee camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos.
“As the Athens government declared a state of emergency and a delegation of officials rushed to the north-eastern Aegean island, the sheer scale of devastation wrought by the overnight blaze became increasingly evident.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/thousands-need-aid-after-fire-destroys-europes-largest-refugee-camp
““When you have lost your leg, your home, your stability and certainty, nothing matters anymore. What else do you have to lose?”
“Refugees in Lebanon are struggling to cope with the deteriorating economic crisis, made worse by the pandemic. ”
https://www.nrc.no/perspectives/2020/refugees-with-nothing-left-to-lose/
“Act now to help more fragile countries weather the coronavirus crisis, or pay a far greater price later, the UN’s humanitarian chief has warned rich countries and global financial institutions.
“Lambasting the “tepid” response seen so far, Sir Mark Lowcock told The Telegraph that not taking more action now would lead to more poverty, starvation and child death across the world – the perfect conditions for conflict, insecurity and extremism to thrive.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/act-now-help-poorer-countries-coronavirus-pay-price-warns-un/
>>has warned rich countries and global financial institutions.
And who would that be? They are all bankrupt.
Um … Perhaps they could go home? Or do they expect to be given another free camp to burn down?
That seems a somewhat pitiless assessment of their predicament, Robert, but then perhaps I am too sentimental in these matters.
Harry, fires do not start simultaneously in three widely separated places. The evidence that the “refugees” set fire to their own camp is very strong. And no, I am not at all sentimental about what seems to me to be a barbarian invasion.
One does wonder why they can’t/don’t migrate to Saudi Arabia. Lots of wealth there….
Robert, *some* refugees may have been responsible but I would guess that the vast majority were rather upset to see their shelter and meagre belongings go up in flames.
Lesbos’s migrant reception, community centre and school, amusingly called “The One Happy Family Centre” were burnt down in March after Erdogan enraged the Greeks by temporarily opening the Turkish border to allow more refugees through. Certainly it seems the locals are capable of arson, too.
I can’t blame the Greeks for being angry; I would not want similar hordes washing up on Islay. But nor can I blame the migrants for wanting to improve their lot; no doubt some of the lives they leave behind must be desperate to justify the risks they take.
I wish I could see comments like this more often.
Thank you Harry
In other words, the Human Tragedy. I find the way that Erdogan plays with them as a political tool and instrument of blackmail to be the most repellent thing.
Thank you, Harry. On sober reflection, my comments were indeed ungentle, unkind, and unworthy. I accept your gentle correction, and withdraw them unreservedly. you are right; I am wrong. My heartfelt apology.
Bless you, V Fatalis and Robert for the very sweet comments. No apology necessary, Robert.
I lost my remaining sympathy for the “migrants” when they maliciously chopped down thousands of olive trees there (on Lesbos).
We can understand them rightfully fighting back against us in their country; why can’t we fight back against them in ours? I think this generation of Westerners is so pampered, they don’t understand an invasion when they see it. Oh well. The fittest will survive.
I never had any sympathy for them. They should seek refuge in their own continents. Even the Dalai Lama has said there are too many Muslims in Europe. No wonder China, India and Burma are pushing back against them.
Years and Years: The erstwhile sites.
This seems to say that a prior method of dealing with too many unwanted people was to put them together in crowded camps. Neglect made it easy for diseases to be passed around, thereby reducing the camp population.
And contrary to popular belief, it was apparently Napoleon who invented concentration camps. He used them in Haiti against the black population.
Nope, the United States did concentration camps with Native American Indians before Napoleon. Give credit where credit is due
You mean, back to the homes that we have obliterated with our bombs?
Enough reality—
We need simple ideology.
Ideology clearly *is* reality; there are some who fall into a naive paternalism suggesting its all the West’s fault they live in this predicament, and there are those that see them as having agency and making the decisions that led here. Both are somewhat true.
I am afraid the law of physics are behind the problems. Population keeps growing, if there are energy resources to exploit. Wage disparity keeps rising. Resources get more and more exhausted, and prices fall far too low for producers. At least a few people begin to realize that there are too many people for the available resources.
Refugees become a problem, many places around the world. Epidemics become more of a problem. Overfishing becomes more of a problem. Antibiotic resistant bacteria become more of a problem. Fires become more of a problem, after suppressing the natural fire cycle for years.
A novel virus comes along, and closing down economies seems to be a good idea, because things are so bad, in general, that this seems like a reasonable solution. Except people staying at home don’t make much in the way of real goods and services that people need, and the situation starts to spiral downward..
I was not aware that any European country has recently bombed Nigeria. Nor anywhere else in Africa. Nor Bangladesh, nor Pakistan nor anywhere in South America, all places that provide Europe with a steady stream of low quality third world overstayers.
And even had they, what power does the average person in Europe have to stop the European bureaucrats from enacting the mandates of the true ruling class? What “responsibility” does an average European have in these matters? Did Hungary invade Somalia? Did Greece occupy Afghanistan?
And if that is the game we are to play, then why should the pressure be released off Turkey, which has not only been up to its neck stirring up wars and conflicts in Kurdistan and Syria, creating refugee flows that it then directs at Europe and uses to blackmail (will we reward that?), Erdogan and friends are doubling down on these piratical and geopolitical irresponsible games all the while, threatening more war in the Eastern Med while trying to implement that old Israeli trick of trying to change demographic facts on the (European) ground to suit his medium and long term imperial Turkish goals.
The fact of the matter is that these risibly inconsistent pseudo-ethical positions are just chattering class talking points that are near to the point now of chattering away the rights of heritage Europeans to enjoy in security the heritage of thousands of years left to them by their forbears.
The fact is there is an invasion of Europe underway, a deliberately planned and executed Great Replacement, that is being directed against heritage Europeans by a ruling class that wants to rule by division.
For Godsake, Europe and dozens of other places throughout the 20th C fought bloody conflicts to disentangle the many skeins of racial and communal circumstances that constantly tore places and societies apart. From the great muslim-turk exchange of 1922, to the Armenian genocide, to the Partition of India, through to the horrors of Yugoslavia, the persecution of Copts in Egypt, and so many other proofs that communities in proximity are invariably communities in conflict (Swedish no-go areas anyone?), all exemplified nowhere better than in the Middle East these last 20 years.
But no sooner had Europe seemed to have the prospect in sight of having removed the most serious causes of social racial and religious conflict than the rulers of Europe immediately set about reintroducing as many sources of grievance and conflict as they can.
Strange to say, it almost looks like the rulers prefer to have the societies that we Iive in kept in a permanent state of stess and social conflict rather than the peaceful homogeneity and comfortable, familiar tradition that the normal, naive citizen might expect.
>>I was not aware that any European country has recently bombed Nigeria
What you saying , the millions of refugees heading for Europe are coming from Nigeria? We must be reading our propaganda from different sources.
Until a few years ago, the movement of refugees into much of Europe was minimal, but then they started arriving from two main sources in their millions. Libya and Syria. We obliterated Libya. The UK, French and I think the USA turned it into a failed state. Many people arriving in the dodgy boats from Libya come from further south such as Sudan, but they only started arriving in their droves after we bombed Libya and assisted in the killing of Gaddafi.
As for Syria, that is where the vast majority of refugees in Greece and Turkey come from, millions. Nothing to with us that they are there? Can’t image too many from Nigeria in the Turkey / Greece camps.
Syria, Afghanistan and Venezuela accounted for the largest number of first-time asylum applications in the 27 EU Member States, according to official EU stats from 2019.
Below is the country by country breakdown. There is quite a lot of variety with refugees perhaps unsurprisingly favouring destinations with which their nations of origin share linguistic, colonial or other historical ties, so we can see Angolans preferring Portugal, Central and Southern Americans preferring Spain, the Turks preferring Germany etc.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/9/9e/Five_main_citizenships_of_first-time_asylum_applicants_%28non-EU-27_citizens%29%2C_2019_%28number%2C_rounded_figures%29.png
Why are there now black people in Ireland? There are Somalis in the Republic of Ireland. Why? Did Eire invade or bomb Eritrea, or Sudan , or Burundi, or Congo? Why has the European Union persisted in trying to twist the arms of Hungarians and Poles to take in people who are culturally hostile to them?
It is ludicrous to suggest that the people of Europe are responsible for the vast numbers of people from indigestible and hostile cultures that are being transported and smuggled into Europe by criminal gangs, whether they are Libyan terrorist mafias or their Europolitical equivalents , Soros-funded NGOs.
Why are the streets of Italy lined with Nigerian prostitutes held in bondage to Nigerian mafias?
Why are the people of Sweden hostage to Middle Eastern gangs?
Why does Paris have no-go areas?
Tony Blair and his criminal pals did nothing for the people of Europe and Europeans have no obligations or responsibilities to foreigners who claim they do…in particular, Europe owes no one the debt of committing demographic and cultural suicide.
Kim, excellent post. It is sad that the citizens have no voice and no power. Money rules.
Very true, Kim.
The only privilege that those who truly have the right to consider themselves European citizens, by virtue of long residence and descent, is now to silently suffer being abused by ungrateful newcomers, stirred up by agitators hungry for power; to be lectured on their moral faults by their so-called leaders; and to suffer the overcrowding, crime, and the degradation of daily life which comes from mass immigration.
When I went to lay a wreath on the memorial to the regiment in which my gt-grandfather served 1914-19 (surviving 14 battles!), almost none of the people in the street would have had any family in this country in 1914, or even many of them in 2014: the little local park, formerly a village green in a very nice London suburb, was full of black (mostly Jamaican) gang bangers and addicts, while fat Latinos ambled about.
Not far from there, the site of the house where my great-grandmother had started her married life in a lovely Regency terrace just over a century before had become the site of a notorious public housing estate, where shortly before there had been a quadruple stabbing in broad daylight, something utterly unimaginable in her day. Savage stabbings are a common occurrence, and far more shootings than the authorities care to admit.
And this has happened all over London. What’s more, we are expected to love it.
“Nearly 125,000 retail jobs have been lost in the UK in the first eight months of this year, according to a fresh estimate, as major chains including Debenhams, Marks & Spencer joined independents in shutting stores.
“As many as 13,867 shops have closed permanently, including thousands of small stores employing 32,598, the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) said.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/09/almost-125000-uk-retail-jobs-lost-so-far-this-year-study-estimates
“The chief executive of UK-based low-cost carrier EasyJet has warned that the lack of government support targeted at the airline industry is threatening the sector’s long-term competitiveness…
““This is the last chance to save the UK airline industry and ensure it is as vibrant and competitive after Covid as it was before,” he states. “I hope the Government takes it.””
https://www.flightglobal.com/strategy/last-chance-to-save-uk-airline-industry-easyjet-chief/140093.article
“”Continuing the trend of the past few weeks, the number of (global) scheduled flights operated this week is 47% below the number operated for the same week last year,” aviation data firm OAG said in a statement.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/markets-distillates-asia/asia-distillates-jet-fuel-cash-differentials-slump-to-weakest-since-late-may-idUKL4N2G619N
“..the lack of gov support targeted at the airline industry..”
wink, wink, another evidence.. of deliberate triage in overall reset environment towards de-growth and quasi autarky setup for ..2020s and beyond..
So government support is needed to keep EasyJet competitive? Alice in Wonderland economics strikes again.
The airline industry was struggling before COVID-19. Low-cost carriers were having more difficulties than others.
“This is… a more perilous phase for the economy. In March and April, policymakers pulled out all the stops to staunch the economic bleeding. But there will be less policy support now if the economy again goes south.
“Although the Federal Reserve can always devise another asset-purchase programme, it has already lowered interest rates to zero and hoovered up many of the relevant assets.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/10/us-covid-19-crisis-health-economy
“…small-business owners across DC were buoyed for months by an influx of funding from federal and local government programs and propelled by hope that gradual reopenings would breathe new life into their storefronts. But as summer stretched on, sales sputtered and pandemic-relief grants ran dry.
“Now, as Congress squabbles over how to help the millions of struggling businesses nationwide, owners of small firms across the region are left teetering on the edge of financial ruin.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/sputtering-summer-sales-dwindling-federal-aid-cripples-dcs-small-businesses/2020/09/08/412a37d2-da82-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html
“Amid the gloom of the coronavirus recession, even the good economic news tends to be bad. Take productivity [in the US]. Its growth is soaring to rates not seen in half a century. Wage growth is accelerating, too. Normally, this would be a cause for celebration…
“Average wages aren’t growing because individual workers are getting raises. Instead, they are growing because so many low-wage workers have been laid off.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/u-productivity-soaring-hold-applause-103039932.html
I am sure that banks will have problems as well, as businesses default on their loans and as more workers lose their jobs.
From “Oyls is Oyls,” by Louis Hissink:
“ExxonMobil announced the 18th discovery of oil off Guyana, as Oilprice.com reports. Really? Why is ExxonMobil exploring if the oil demand has slumped? Can’t be climate change could it? Obviously ExxonMobil expects future demand for oil to increase but this cannot be because the DAVOS WEF insists a move away from fossil fuels. If that is the global policy, then why are they still exploring? Why aren’t the various environmental NGO’s shrieking? Perhaps it’s China’s involvement?
Sound of a penny dropping.
Update: Eric Zuesse, writing for Strategic-Culture Foundation, interprets the present South China Sea situation being over underwater oil and gas exploration rights. Strange emphasis considering the UN policy to decarbonize the global economies unless climate change theory has nothing to do with climate. Interesting times indeed.“
https://lhcrazyworld.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/oyls-is-oyls/
It might have to do with renewables not really working.
Eric Zuesse sends up a red flag for me because he’s been accused of being a naughty boy by the people at Off-Guardian.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/27/offguardian-is-not-in-denial/
I wasn’t familiar with Eric Zuesse. Thanks for sharing the Off-Guardian piece.
“Why are they still exploring?”, could be due to long lead times, that the rig and personnel onboard already was paid for etc.
How about something else to worry about?
AI, kind of interesting topic it think. Personally I see a roomba cobbled together sitting on the seat of my lawn tractor mowing the grass at the farm while I have a cool drink and read a book in the shade.What could go wrong?
As far as editorials, can’t be worse than what we are getting now.
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/the-guardian-published-an-editorial-written-entirely-by-ai-i-know-that-i-will-not-be-able-to-avoid-destroying-humankind/
Dennis L.
I do not believe it. They syntax is too complex to be artificial, and there are idioms that indicate a human author, and even the social class of the author.. And an AI, with access to encyclopaedias of data, would be able to find out that “robot” is not Greek (it is Czech), and that it does not mean “forced to work”. Its judgemental tone also sounds like a Guardian hack, and not a robot.
That’s because programmers make AI in their own image, Robert – faults and all.
Excellent point, Malcopian. I just doubt they are that good at it. The text seems to have been post edited by a human.
Another point worth pointing out is that today’s average Guardian hack is a sort of human robot, programmed to employ a series of simple algorithms in order to churn out verbal crud of a certain consistency—which varies between vapid and insipid—on any given subject.
Or as UG Krishnamurti would say: “I have no thought that I can call my own”.
He makes a compelling case for humans to be mere automatons. That all the thoughts we have are a result of inputs from others. Except doomers of course 🙂
It is not remarkable that AI can imitate the style of an NPC.
New Study: Vitamin D reduces risk of ICU admission 97%
This is a link to the peer reviewed report itself. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub
Will a dangerous ineffective and expensive vaccine still be advocated as a solution? If so why? Because “they” say so? MY BODY. This will be dismissed and suppressed just like quinine/zinc. Sick of a controlled narrative that is destroying peoples lives.
Thank you once again.
I spent four years dancing when it was possible because of you, I increased my dosage of vitamin D more than a month ago because of you, we are ahead of the curve.
Thanks,
Dennis L.
I talked via zoom to a couple last night who are getting over COVID-19. They wife is 75, with asthma and COPD. The husband is 78. They both “just sailed through.” They both had been taking vitamin D. The wife took prednisone and an antibiotic for five days. Neither had a fever that ever reached 102. The husband’s illness was pretty much gone inside of a week. The wife’s illness lasted a little longer, about two weeks.
It’s great news that this couple are recovering so well.
I’ve been taking and commenting high-dose vitamin D to anyone living more than 30 degrees north or south of the equator who’ll listen for about five years now.
It doesn’t take a lot of exposure to sunshine for the body to synthesize more than enough in summer, but when the days grow shorter and the sun doesn’t rise very high in the sky, we can no longer make our own and as the months go by we become increasingly deficient, with lots of health implications.
Life is horrible enough without having to go through it vitamin D deficient!
There is such a thing as too much vitamin D intake. I found this article to be interesting.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-vitamin-d-is-too-much
“Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. In contrast to water-soluble vitamins, the body has no easy way of getting rid of fat-soluble vitamins.”
I don’t think there is much to worry about for people who are not taking a whole lot of supplements.
Their bottom line:
I think we are now finding that sufficiency does not really come until 30 ng/ml; 20 ng/ml is too low. That is old thinking.
If people with symptoms of toxicity really come above 150 ng/ml, that is “way, way up there.” It is easy enough to get your blood level tested. There is a huge problem with not enough. I think you would have a hard time finding 1 in 1000 with toxicity problems.
I have also heard that 10,000 units a day can cause balance problems, especially in older people prone to falls.
A dose of 2,000 units a day seems to be a reasonable one, if we are aiming for a blood level of 30 ng/ml or higher.
Toxicity is extremely rare, and someone has to work at it by taking supplements by the fistful every day (https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/69/5/842/4714819; more recent reviews show similar results).
The body, via the skin, can synthesize up to 10,000 IU daily with enough sun exposure (https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/69/5/842/4714819). For many millennia, this is the level humans had if they lived in the tropics and subtropics. In fact, east Africans who spend a lot of time outdoors with minimal clothing have serum vitamin D levels averaging about 46 ng/ml (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221765800_Traditionally_living_populations_in_East_Africa_have_a_mean_serum_25-hydroxyvitamin_D_concentration_of_115_nmolL/link/5481e7510cf2e5f7ceaa8d21/download). The health benefits grow as levels surpass 30 ng/ml.
Interesting!
I wanted to mention as well a chart I showed previously, showing vitamin D levels in the US by ethnic groups.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-status-of-3-us-ethnic-groups.png
Whites seem to be in the 27 ng/ml range in the early dates of this study, and up at 30 ng/nl the later dates. Blacks are down about 18 ng/ml, and Mexican Americans are about 22 ng/ml. It is ten years since 2010, so we don’t know what the rates are now. There seems to be a lot of variability. Older people would seem to be more likely to have lower values than the average.
I think that there is sometimes a tendency to say, “Such and such a value seems to be typical; it must be enough.” Then, the low end of the range is not set as high as it should be. If vitamin D deficiency is instrumental in fighting many types of diseases, lower vitamin D levels could explain at least part of the difference in life expectancies of the darker-skinned portion of the US population.
This chart is from:
Schleicher, R. L., Sternberg, M. R., Lacher, D. A., Sempos, C. T., Looker, A. C., Durazo-Arvizu, R. A.,…Johnson, C. L. (2016). The vitamin D status of the US population from 1988 to 2010 using standardized serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D shows recent modest increases. Am J Clin Nutr, 104:454-461. ajcn.nutrition.org
Thanks, top reporting!
Net Power and the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle. Are the claims justified?
https://netpower.com/
https://netpower.com/the-cycle/
No, they are not. The system keeps a fixed, finite amount of carbon dioxide to run the cycle. But it is always generating new carbon dioxide. This is nt released into the atmosphere; it is sold to other organisations for them to release into the atmosphere. The plant therefore gains carbon sequestering credits for not sequestering the carbon but rather selling it on. In other words, it is another scam to defraud rich environmentalists.
Capitalist technology is already solving the climate crisis but Extinction Rebellion hasn’t noticed:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/09/09/capitalist-technology-already-solving-climate-crisis-extinction/
Extracts:
New solar and wind already undercut new coal without subsidy in areas holding two-thirds of the global population.
Cryogenic compressed air already competes with shale gas in Texas and will drive liquefied natural gas (LNG) out of the market.
Hydrogen fuel cells for new ships, trains, and long-haul lorries are coming this decade, with clean synthetic fuel for jets taking a little longer.
Hydrogen will be used as a feedstock for steel, cement, glass, chemicals, and fertilisers.
Thanks to Elon Musk, the crossover point for the purchase cost of electric cars will arrive between 2022 and 2024.
Tesla has already unveiled its million-mile battery. Later this month it will unveil a 500 mile-range battery on a single charge.
Solar and wind that are allowed to “go first” are receiving a huge subsidy. These studies invariably compare apples to oranges. Electricity that can be controlled is far different form electricity that comes and goes according to its on plan.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m sure you saw this article, Gail. Maybe peak oil will go mainstream again but right now they’re still pretending we can replace all our energy needs with renewables.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/07/18/the-end-of-the-arab-worlds-oil-age-is-nigh
It is amazing the nonsense that we read everywhere.
I thought that USA was going to
rebuldIraq? Maybe they could pump in a load moreoil.It will be interesting to see how long the Iraqi ‘government’ can
funditsarmiesand what happens after that.The USA/ UK invasions of
Iraqmay have been the worst timing to set up a certain group just before collapse sets in. The Iraqigovernmentwill find it hard to suppress them once theeconomyis gone.Yes, collapse is not far away from the oil exporting nations. They cannot exist on today’s low oil prices. Clearly population of this area must fall. We have read about this happening to some extent by sending migrant workers back home.
How long before these countries start collapsing or going to war with one another? If would seem like a few months, at most.
Flu is killing more people than Covid19, and has been for months (UK)
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/09/flu-is-killing-more-people-than-covid19-and-has-been-for-months/
“A report from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows that since at least June 19th, more people in the UK have been dying of influenza than Covid19…”
It is very strange that influenza deaths were not influenced at all by the lockdown.
This is a link to the image in the report:
https://off-guardian.org/wp-content/medialibrary/flu-deaths-greater-than-covid-deaths-ons-graph-aug-28th.jpg
One in five deaths each year in the USA are the result of obesity-related diseases. That is 560,000 deaths a year, every year.
This could be prevented if the government would only set up a nationwide system of carbohydrate rationing. People’s carb consumption could be tracked through a centralized smartphone enabled database.
Why are we not doing that?
Political correctness reaches new levels of complete and utter madness, beyond madness. A California-based lecturer / professor seems to have lost his job for repeating a very common word in Mandarin, that sounds like a very offensive word in English.
The students that were offended and demanding the professor’s lynching should have received a metaphorical very swift boot up the backside (or as is said in the USA, ‘fanny’, an offensive word in the UK, the irony), issue resolved. The video is 14 mins long, but you’ll get the gist of the story in the first few minutes.
Professor “Fired” in USA For Speaking Chinese
Party like it’s 2029.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rblt2EtFfC4&list=RDrblt2EtFfC4&start_radio=1
Stanley Druckenmiller says the stock market is in an ‘absolute raging mania’
PUBLISHED WED, SEP 9 2020 7:45 AM EDT CNBC
Fred Imbert
“Everybody loves a party … but, inevitably, after a big party there’s a hangover,” billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller told CNBC.
“Right now, we’re in an absolute raging mania. We’ve got commentators encouraging companies to do stock splits. Companies then go up 50%, 30%, 40% on stock splits. That brings no value, but the stocks go up.”
The stock market is in a mania fueled by the Federal Reserve and investor speculation that will end badly in coming years, longtime hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller told CNBC on Wednesday.
“Everybody loves a party … but, inevitably, after a big party there’s a hangover,” the billionaire CEO of the Duquesne Family Office said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “Right now, we’re in an absolute raging mania. We’ve got commentators encouraging companies to do stock splits. Companies then go up 50%, 30%, 40% on stock splits. That brings no value, but the stocks go up.
Well get to heaven eventually