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.
From ZeroHedge: ‘Rogue’ Chinese Virologist Joins Twitter, Publishes “Smoking Gun” Evidence COVID-19 Created In Lab
Excerpts from the paper are given in the ZeroHedge article.
More news – I even called this one.
“Remote Learning” Sinks Student-Housing CMBS, After Delinquencies Had Already Spiked in 2019″
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/09/14/delinquency-rates-of-student-housing-cmbs-already-spiked-in-2019-then-came-covid/
Well, the students borrowed money to live in these luxurious apts. now what happens?
Assume the virus is with us for a few years, we now have a solution to the homeless, move them into student housing! They will be in a liberal neighborhood and be welcomed, the cafeterias at the university can serve hot meals daily, student health will have patients they can treat and make well. This is a win win for all concerned. It actually uses sunk capital to solve a social problem. The rents due can be put into forbearance. Social justice, yes, many of these landlords have slicked students for years.
Dennis L.
The local newspaper here raised the point that the lenders behind student housing were lobbying for the university here to reopen. The paper is fairly liberal; it was arguing that this was undue influence. In fact, I think there were are lot of other interests pushing in the direction of reopening.
Now, many of the schools in my area are reopening–lower level besides university. They tend to start a few groups at a time, such as young children and children in special ed classes.
ATLANTA – The number of coronavirus cases at Georgia Tech has more than doubled since last weekend.
On August 29, the institute logged 641 cases since March. Less than seven days ago, that number hovered around 300.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/covid-19-cases-double-at-georgia-tech-in-less-than-a-week
As long as the cases resolve well, that is not a major issue, is it?
These cases aren’t really disease cases, are they? The article doesn’t explain, but one supposes they are positive test results that indicate that the testee may be or may have been infected with coronavirus.
How many of these cases are symptomatic? How many of the infected people feel “under the weather”? How many are vomiting pee soup or are at death’s door? The article doesn’t say.
CHS is up again.
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/buffer-collapse5-18%20%281%29_1.png?itok=LN_AW60Y
I like the graph, it is consistent with Cline in “1177” where his thesis is civilizations can endure one or two major blows, the third at the same time is fatal. In CHS’s words, the buffers are exhausted or close to it.
The US had a buffer in shale oil, when COVID came it had a buffer of a trillion or two in debt, now we have fires and hurricanes. The fires out west are major; much human effort over many years has been destroyed as well as forest lands. It’s a challenge.
We shall see, my personal hope is the dam literally does not break – 3 Gorges dam. That would flush the supply lines of modern civilization in a big way.The Chinese are an old, proud and intelligent culture, the dam will hold but it will be a lot worse for the wear one would think.
Dennis L.
Too many things going wrong at once. JHK brings up this issue as well.
Another way to look at China is that they are no longer an old culture, but only one of recent invention as the historic culture was comprehensively trashed by Mao; not that intelligent, as they too have participated eagerly in the wrecking of the world’s ecosystem through participating in globalised industrialism; and their pride is merely vulgar nationalism which teaches hatred of foreigners, fostered by a corrupt and criminal one- Party dictatorship.
Just playing Devil’s advocate. 🙂
For all our sakes I do hope that dam holds.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/steven-mnuchin-now-isnt-the-time-to-worry-about-the-deficit-fed-balance-sheet.html
‘Now is not the time to worry’ about the fiscal deficit or the Fed’s balance sheet, Mnuchin says
No way, why would anyone ask that now at a time of unprecedented printing/borrowing? Why would anyone question if smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer, or if not wearing a safety belt in a car increases chances of dying in a car accident, or why anyone would suggest gun control after a disgruntled person with a military weapon just doinked 30 people in 60 seconds, or why anyone should ask questions about how things are changing when massive fires in Siberia, and the Western US are raging? No way, you just keep on going with blinders on. That’s the whole point of what we as a species do. We aren’t going to start asking hard questions now or even do anything about it. We take pride in remaining steadfast in the midst of escalating crisis.
I am starting to hear from my Republican friends that Mnuchin and Powell did it and we will be back to normal if we could just get a vaccine.They can’t ever let go of their politics even when they are dead they will still be political its a sad thing. I am not so sure….what is the debt? Can it be monitored and can the u.s be the bank for the rest of the world? I just don’t see how this can keep going on… I think that if you sat down and had a talk with Mnuchin and Powell you would freak out at how clueless the two are.
Dan, I fear there will never be a vaccine. The virus can mutate far faster than we can develop countermeasures; this endless and expensive search for a vaccine seems to me to be mere hubris. Our immune systems are the best, and perhaps only, line of defence. And I think we now know how to keep them healthy.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a vaccine is a substance containing a virus or bacterium in a form that is not harmful, given to a person or animal to prevent them from getting the disease that the virus or bacterium causes.
By this definition, there has never been a successful flu vaccine since even the CDC admits that “during seasons when the flu vaccine viruses are similar to circulating flu viruses, flu vaccine has been shown to reduce the risk of having to go to the doctor with flu by 40 percent to 60 percent.” If, as is often the case, the circulating flu viruses are novel, the risk reduction is even less.
What would you think of a car braking system, seat belt, parachute, bulletproof vest, hard or condom hat that under ideal conditions only works half the time? I’m surprised that an intervention that is officially admitted to being successful only half the time or less can be considered a preventive measure at all.
Thank you, Tim; I can add nothing to your analysis, and agree without reservation.
Perhaps we should worry about collapse, instead.
Mike Ruppert worried about collapse so much that he committed suicide. So perhaps we shouldn’t overdo the worrying. But I agree we should make collapse a concern.
Mike Ruppert committed suicide over a woman just like most fools that do that. Knew Mike know the woman. Mike was brilliant but he was a drama queen. RIP
“With all due respect, only skimmed it, I disagree with the ideas.”
Hi Dennis. You disagree with an article you have not read. That does not disrespect me in the least. No worries. I’m sorry that you find the article so threatening.
“These ideas have been used to justify more and more outrageous behavior to the point where now pedophilia is being suggested as some sort of normal.”
The Catholic child abuse scandal is not mentioned anywhere in the article.
Cheers,
D3G
D3G
1. I in no way find the article threatening, I don’t think it works and is a very poor norm for society. Anything works for the individual for a while.
2. Two wrongs don’t make a right; my personal opinion is Vatican II was a disaster for Western Civilization; Western Civilization was very hard to make and the Catholic Church figured heavily in making it. Vatican II tried to secularize religion. Religion appears to be rules of thumb that work fairly well, need to be forgiven often for the abeyance, repeated weekly in short sermons(homilies if you like) accompanied by various emotional music to attract the audience and inspire awe. Hopefully attendees find lessons applicable to life on occasion and return. All this is missing in make it up on the fly secular humanism, or relativism.
3. Sex is basically a domaminergic neurological response of the brain to various stimuli, being sentient, humans found rules of thumb to deal with this. Domaninergic events are for many addicting and need to be moderated if society is to function.
I read very quickly, when appropriate I slow down and read for depth and have a prejudice that most philosophy is hand waving and current philosophers seem mostly exist to collect salaries at universities. Nietzsche claimed god is dead, I claim philosophy is dead, science such as paragraph three is pushing it into circular arguments. Sex is done because it feels good by design, some are wired to elicit that feeling in different ways and among different sexes. Some can control it, some not.
In the end a society has to live with each other, a simple set of rules that work most of the time are good enough, Pareto again, or a religion. We do not live as one, we live as a group, the really talented can get away with almost anything, the rest of us need some guidance and a reference, religion fulfills that need.
Dennis L.
Wise comments. It was interesting how, when Hitler invaded Russia, many people who had concealed their religious faith, in God and Holy Mother Russia, showed that it provided consolation and hope in a time of terror rather than the official atheist system. Religion helps people to endure.
From Wikipedia:
“Stalin passed his exams and his teachers recommended him to the Tiflis Seminary. Here he joined 600 trainee priests. The Seminary was controlled by the Georgian Orthodox Church, which was part of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
It is said that Stalin’s practice of self-criticism (for his communists, not for himself) was inspired the by church practice of confession. I see no difference between fanatics who are religious and atheist fanatics – between the Khmer Rouge and the Spanish Inquisition. All they wanted to do was defend orthodox truth as they saw it – no new thinking allowed. There are commenters here who are riled by new thinking.
As is also illustrated in a famous scene from the movie “War and Peace” (1956), when, on hearing that Napoleon was abandoning Moscow, General Mikhail Kutusov’s immediate reaction was to cry “Russia is saved!”, and kneel in thanks before an icon. The background music was, of course, Alexei Lvov’s ‘Бо́же, Царя́ храни́!’. May God and his archangel Saint Michael bless, preserve, and defend Svyataya Rus, Holy Russia.
Other causes of excessive energy consumption: 1) over-organization, facilitated (necessarily) by 2) over-insurance (versus “assurance”).
Heck of a Monday AM news cycle.
This woman seems credible, she has certainly given up a great deal to publish this. I don’t have a clue about this virus, personally I believe a higher power in charge of a self organizing system is rearranging the deck chairs.
Basic summary, COVID was made in a lab. Who knows?
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/rogue-chinese-virologist-joins-twitter-publishes-evidence-covid-19-created-lab
If it is a fake or made up, it certainly is well organized and well presented. Our societies are becoming so complex that it takes a Ph.D virologist to read this intelligently.
Dennis L.
I put up a link about this as well. (I should have looked at yours first.) The woman sounds credible.
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-patients-twice-likely-restaurants-1531563
‘Coronavirus Patients Twice As Likely To Have Eaten In Restaurants Before Getting Ill: CDC Study’
“The survey did not ask participants if they had dined indoors or outdoors.”
I would like to see more detail on this survey and the interpretation of the results.
My guess is the people who eat in restaurants (especially inside) also do a whole lot of other things, such as visit other people’s homes. It may be more a pattern of behavior, than eating in restaurants per se.
Often fairly big groups of people seem to eat together in restaurants. It may be these groups of friends who are sharing germs, rather than catching the illness from other diners who might be quite a distance away.
This just in: following reports from the UK Ministry of Health that 95% of coronavirus patients had eaten tomatoes, Boris Johnson issued a ukase (welcome to the post democratic UK) banning all sales of tomatoes, and ordering all tomato growers to demolish their orchards and greenhouses. This was estimated to save 122 lives over the next three months, at an economic cost of four billion pounds. “We are ahead of every other country in Europe in our response to the pandemic”, said Boris in a recent interview.
“Religion is fading more quickly in the United States than in any other nation! “The United States now ranks as the 11th least religious country for which we have data,” University of Michigan professor emeritus Ronald Inglehart writes.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-08-11/religion-giving-god#click=https://t.co/ZIyteb4nHt
“Growing numbers of people no longer find religion a necessary source of support and meaning in their lives. Even the United States—long cited as proof that an economically advanced society can be strongly religious—has now joined other wealthy countries in moving away from religion. Several forces are driving this trend, but the most powerful one is the waning hold of a set of beliefs closely linked to the imperative of maintaining high birthrates. Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.”
Well worth a read.
D3G
With all due respect, only skimmed it, I disagree with the ideas.
“Although some religious conservatives warn that the retreat from faith will lead to a collapse of social cohesion and public morality, the evidence doesn’t support this claim. ” Quote out of the referenced article in FA.
Correlation is not causation, our society(US) is having significant social issues, secular humanists seem adrift, with regards to sexual norms please see Netflix
“Cutties” (disclaimer I have not seen it, I will not watch it, read reviews) or see Rubin’s Report referenced below and the rap song WAP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWVubY_jiYM&t=427s
Take the movie “The Ten Commandments”, watch Moses come down from on high and see the orgy, same game, different century.
This is not a healthy society, this idea of not upholding norms does not work. These new norms have been put into our society by media people who have found a fast way to make a buck.
These ideas have been used to justify more and more outrageous behavior to the point where now pedophilia is being suggested as some sort of normal. Doubt it? Cutties. Disgusting, wrong, weak scholarship.
Dennis L.
Inglehart acknowledges that sexual morality about divorce, abortion, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality etc. has become moral liberal, indeed that is one of measures on which he predicates a shift away from religiosity.
It is not seen as a problem as infant mortality rates are down, life expectancy is up, wealth is up, and people feel more secure about their future. It is similar to functionalism but his emphasis is on the subjectivity of the individual within the evolving society, while obviously the individual has its context within the society.
At the same time churches, particularly RCC have been rocked by very public abuse scandals, which have detached perceptions of sexual morality from churches and their authority. Abuse is perhaps perceived as a peculiar aberration that society deals with.
I have not watched the Netflix show in question but I doubt that it is as bad as some people are making out, there are laws in place. Likely it is a panic that is intended to find some remnant of a place for religious constraints in an increasingly liberal, secular society.
Dear dear,
We strive not to argue here nor sermonize to convert others to a point of view, so if you found this reply and it is in reference to your last paragraph I have linked a review to “Cutties.” I am not a prude, but I will not watch the film and contribute to its popularity, generally I link back as far as I can to sources, this one I am taking at face value. You can read it if so inclined and come to your own conclusions.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/10/netflix-cuties-young-girls-plot-story/
Dennis L.
Dennis, I agree with almost everything you say, especially about the bad social consequences of a retreat from religion. But please allow me to add my own observation: it is not just the people that have retreated from religion, so have many of the churches.
This is perhaps most evident in the stunning collapse of the Roman Catholic Church over the past 60 years, as it abandoned, piece by piece, the historic faith, practice, and liturgy. But a similar disease is also destroying many of the “liberal” denominations, Anglican, Episcopalian, even some Baptist. And if the Church believes in nothing, why should the congregation believe in anything?
I have no solution; this is a process that seems beyond human control, driven by ideologies in the saddle and riding mankind. Thank you for listening.
For example the ‘Messy Sundays’ which are advertised on the banner outside our 900 years old church: what on earth has that to do with the redemption of our sins by Christ?
RCC has been on retreat since the high middle ages, Vatican II was a continuation of its adaptation to changed times. The analysis that its current decline is due to liberalism lacks a control sample, there is no instance of a successful major church in the West that has not liberalised.
The decline may have been all the quicker otherwise. Most RC are thoroughly liberal in their beliefs and attitudes, and there is no chance that RCC would be able to force them into conservative beliefs, they would just leave.
Some people would prefer that, and they are back to the ‘small church of the pure’ of the Jansenists that RCC rejected in 17 c. These sorts of debates have been going on inside RCC for centuries and the Vatican has never been interested in purism, it is not a new phenomenon. It perceives itself as a universal church not a church of a few.
“on retreat”
I meant ‘in retreat’ lol
be generous
it only took the RCC 350 years to formally admit they were wrong and galileo was right
Now all they have to do is figure out how to get jesus on the democrat or GOP ticket when he shows up again
The Catholic Church was not “wrong” in the case of Galileo. And arguably Galileo was not “right”. You can’t judge the rightness or wrongness of things people did or said almost four hundred years ago by you own enlightened standards, without forfeiting those very standards.
Four hundred years from now, if some bloke commenting on a blog types “Norman Page was wrong,” you are going to be rightly peeved.
four hundred years from now I shall be posthumously peeved if I am not the focus of a religious cult, or at a minimum, sanctified, and my resting place a destination of pilgrims anticipating their hour of doom
I respectfully disagree. The Roman Church started a movement called the Counter Reformation in the late sixteenth century, and it was a major success. It is analysed in detail by Kenneth Clarke in his Civilisation, Episode 7, “Grandeur and Obedience”. It held the line against “modernism” for almost four hundred years, and during that time the churches were packed with worshippers, the seminaries were full of postulants, and the worship of God was celebrated with great music, worthy ceremonial, and an almost universal devotion to the Depositum Fidei.
Nothing could have restored the unity of mediaeval christianity, and nothing should have, because God does not do the same thing twice. But the lesson I believe is clear: defend your civilisation in the first trench, not the last.
I personally will never forgive the Protestant mobs for knocking the heads off the statues of of all those saints, angels and cherubs. Barbarians!!
A major reason for the church is to provide a place for people (women, probably more than men) to make friends. They can sit down and talk about issues that are bothering them, without “hanging out” with others in a bar. They can explore what a modern interpretation of the scripture seems to say, taking into account what archaeology seems to show. They can listen to music and step away from the daily issues that have been bothering them.
Believing what someone else believed in the past isn’t necessarily high on this list.
“This phenomenon reflects the fact that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure: starvation, once pervasive, becomes uncommon; life expectancy increases; murder and other forms of violence diminish. And as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious.”
Inglehart appears to have a functionalist interpretation of the decline of religious affiliation. Religion is no longer as necessary to maintain the social roles and institutions and the social equilibrium that is needed by societies to endure over time. The fertility rate no longer matters so much, violent crime, poverty and insecurity are down and there is less social need for moral constraints.
He poses his analysis as opposed to those of “Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim” but I am not convinced that he has not simplified and misrepresented them. Marx did not predicate secularism simply on the spread of scientific knowledge but on the economic and social development of the masses toward a scenario of security and self-determination, which is basically Inglehart’s argument.
There are a number of ways to look at this. I like to compare the situation to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. It used to be necessary, at least for many, to belong to a church, or at least give lip-service to Christianity. As more and more people stopped doing this, it gave courage to others to rebel, or stop deferring to what turns out to be a fairly narrow range of religions. Kids started playing Little League on Sunday (at least until they discovered electronic gaming.) We have arguments about public prayers.
We can also compare it to the decline of membership in fraternal orders like Freemasonry (which is shrinking and heavily aging, just like many “mainline” Protestant churches). Blame generational and social change–people started watching TV instead of going to the Shriners. (Remember the end-of-bowling thesis.) Social niches that were once filled by churches, are now filled by other activities. Couples are more likely to meet at work than at church.
This has a number of effects on the churches that remain. A lot of them are in financial trouble, both at the congregational and denominational level. The ones that prosper tend to be authoritarian and…how shall I put this. Corrupt? Entrepreneurial? You know, like TV evangelists, except you don’t have to be on TV to get this type of style and culture. So I would hesitate to conclude that a decline in religion is associated with a decline in morality! The Satanists may be flamboyant, but at least they’re honest. The traditional assumption that churches are similar to charities should also be re-thought–many are more like Scientology.
Since liberals have been the most comfortable with abandoning religion, many of the churches that remain have become more conservative, in the sense of aligning themselves with the values of the Republican Party. Evangelical support for Trump must sour many who disapprove of Trump, on religion.
“So I would hesitate to conclude that a decline in religion is associated with a decline in morality!”
https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/24/49/96016883-b85df191b03f605d40644bbdd985a53a.jpg
The foreign affairs article basically sounds absurd to me.
Having a lot of children goes with having a high death rate, particularly of children. Without modern contraceptives, a person would need to try hard (perhaps have several abortions) to avoid having a lot children. Old religious writings will document the practices of the times. I expect that there are few people today who would think “having a lot of children” is a major religious teaching for today.
Worldwide, the people with the most children in their families are people in sub-Saharan Africa. I doubt that the reason why they have all of these children is because of writings of some religion.
The PEW Forum in 2014 published the following list of “Completed Fertility,” (average number of children ever born to adults ages 40-59), for various religious groups:
Full sample 2.1
Protestant Subtotal 2.2
—Evangelical 2.2
—Mainline (Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) 1.9
—Historically Black 2.5
Catholic 2.3
Mormon 3.4
Non-Christian Faiths 1.8
— Jewish 2.0
—Others too small sample to produce meaningful information by group
Unaffiliated 1.7
I would point out that 2.1 is the replacement level for a population, because not all children live to have children. The full sample is at 2.1, or at replacement level.
Mormons are by far the highest in terms of number of children in this group, at 3.4. At one time, they encouraged multiple wives. This is a way to raise population. Poor men often cannot afford to marry.
Second most is “historically black.” Blacks have historically had lower income, lower income people have historically had higher birth rates. If a person doesn’t go on to school, “being a mother” is a career for a woman. Also, these groups haven’t had the funds to buy birth control. Family customs have been different as well.
I expect the writer of the article is in the “Unafficilated” group. He basically doesn’t know what he is talking about.
It may be that Inglehart sees religion as largely epiphenomenal, and he thinks that religious ideas reflect behaviour rather than guide it. Thus ideas associated with previous behaviour are discarded.
“Religions inherently tend to present their norms as absolute values, despite the fact that they actually reflect their societies’ histories and socioeconomic characteristics.”
I think religions are a way of documenting practices of the day (perhaps as oral stories) as a means of passing along these values to offspring. As long as conditions remain close to the same, this strategy makes sense. Once outside conditions change, values need to change.
I believe that this is why religions, everywhere, tend to change over time. They fragment to match local conditions. Even though the written documents may suggest that a large number of offspring is desirable, this belief tends to disappear when it is no longer useful.
Another old belief is that men should have as many wives as they can afford. (The is the Old Testament view of marriage.) This tends to lead to maximum childbearing. But as an economy gets richer in resource per capita, it can afford to require only one wife per man.
Yes, I think that is an insightful, honest and practical approach to religion. You might be termed a ‘modernist’ in current terms rather than a ‘traditionalist’ in so far as you accept a ‘development’ within religion. Sexual morality has changed over centuries and millennia, as you point out, and that is reflected in the Biblical texts.
The values reflect the norms that are the current life-process of a people. That process is liable to change along with material conditions. Today, as you mention, there is contraception, low infant mortality, long life expectancy, pensions etc. The life-process is conditioned by altered material circumstances and so are are the norms and the values that reflect it.
There is no reason for a Christian to assume that the norms and values of previous generations are ‘absolute’ rather than relative to the times, the same as OT norms and values were relative to their times. Relativism is not contrary to religion as interpreted in a broad, knowledgeable way. So it is quite right that Christians are modernist and liberal, and they adapt their values to the present life-process.
The norms and values are aimed at a particular objective, even the continuation of the life-process in general, rather than a dogmatic approach to how that life-process is conducted, as if one way fits all eras, times and conditions, when the Bible makes it clear that is not the case.
It follows that the Protestant churches are correct to go liberal and to adapt to the present life-process rather than to let ‘conservatives’ insist on a dogmatic, absolutist adherence to norms and values that are now redundant to the life-process in current conditions. The more centralised, dogmatic RCC struggles with reform.
I am reading about epiphenomenalism today (Stanford has an article), and in particular that of Marx. It seems that a lot of modern sociological thinking is traceable to 19 c. philosophers. I noticed the other day that functionalism (wiki has an article) is traceable to BGE 262, the basic idea that ‘virtues’ and institutions evolve to perpetuate a society in particular conditions (favourable/ unfavourable as Nietzsche put it.) Similarly epiphenomenalism seems to be traceable at least back to Marx and his material base-ideological superstructure analysis of the manifestation of the life-process in ideology, metaphysics, religion. Inglehart seems to be influenced by functionalism and epiphenomenalism and thus by the older writers, so I am looking into those aspects of his article in order to better understand what he saying. At the moment I am reading this paper on Marx and epiphenomenalism. Notice the sci hub website that allows one to post in the links of academic papers and to see the whole paper. Useful.
https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-90-481-2964-5_22
I think Inglehart needs to learn some history. The verdict there seems clear: for the most part, it is societies’ history and socioeconomic characteristics that reflect their religion. You can trace that back to Djoser Neterkhet, third dynasty Egyptian pharaoh. Or to Hesiod’s Theogony. Or to the Emperor Constantine.
Oil production:
https://kunstler.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/chart.jpg
Production down from 13mbpd to 10mbpd in approx 9 months; this would seem to be a crash in production. Annualized to make it more dramatic that is down 4.5mbpd by year end or a annual loss of 35% or so. That is real depletion.
It seems I have read somewhere the GDP might be down a similar amount on an annualized basis, imagine that.
Dennis L.
US production of oil might be somewhat distorted by shut-ins due to Hurricane Laura in Kunstler’s chart. It takes a while to get production back after the hurricane hits. Of course, now we have another hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, Sally, shutting in production. So we have more unplanned outages. It may be that without all of the unplanned outages, production would have been closer to 11 million barrels per day.
On the other hand, OPEC’s production was up in August, related primarily to an increase in production from Saudi Arabia.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/opec-crude-oil-production-through-august.png
The chart Kunstler uses is US crude oil production. I am not sure that GDP crashes by a similar amount. GDP usually is related to total energy consumed; total energy consumed includes a lot of non-oil energy. Think of non-oil energy as mostly electricity. It has stayed closer to flat. There is also an issue of US energy produced versus consumed.
Frank over at spiked has an articulate piece today on the ‘cancellation’ of David Hume by Edinburgh University. The post-imperialist shift in the economy and ideology of the capitalist state to ‘anti-racism’ is continuing to take its toll on the reputation of the towering figures of the past.
It is doubtful that there is going to be anyone left at this rate because they were all ‘racists’ during the imperialist era when racism was the dominant ideology, of the British capitalist state, that reflected the imperialist economic base.
Ironically the announcement to cancel Hume came pretty much the day after I invoked him as a key figure in my own worldview, for his insight that ‘ought’ statements cannot be deduced from ‘is’ statements, as conclusions can only contain the terms contained in the premises, and they are rather simply assumed.
I would much rather hear how students respond to that argument than about whether they feel ‘fragile’ at name of Hume. Most of the figures that I have studied would now be cancelled by the ‘fragile’ – Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Hume. They are all too much for our ‘fragile’, moralistic age.
Edinburgh University was once a towering locus of intellectual thought, but no more. Now it is about little more than posturing by the ‘fragile’ about the ‘moral’ failings of the icons of another era. To be fair to that Uni, enlightenment intellectualism is basically dead in our uptight, limited, regressed culture anyway, so in a way it is appropriate that they would dump those trappings.
> The crusade against the Enlightenment
Edinburgh University’s shameful cancelling of David Hume shows how backward identity politics has become.
… But the fact that Hume had racist views is one of the least interesting and least important things about him. He was an energetic foe of the dogmas and conventions of his era. His philosophical scepticism and atheism were frequently denounced by those who upheld the prevailing moral order. His powerful critique of religious miracles made a profoundly significant contribution to the development of secular and modern scientific thought. Contemporary cognitive science owes a huge debt to Hume.
Hume exercised great influence over philosophers such as Smith, Kant, Darwin and Jeremy Bentham. That is why he is regarded by many as the most important philosopher who wrote in the English language. Even his detractors recognise that his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) is arguably the most significant work of philosophy published in English before the 20th century.
It is unlikely that those who claim to be ‘distressed’ by Hume have actually bothered to study his work. If they had, they would realise that the writings of this remarkably sceptical philosopher are an important intellectual resource that those opposed to prejudice can draw upon. He may have been a prejudiced man, but his writings were animated by a critical spirit that challenged prevailing dogmas. That is why those of us who are committed to free thinking continue to regard him as an intellectual giant.
Whatever the faults of Hume the man, they pale into insignificance in comparison to the faults of his 21st-century detractors. There is nothing critical or questioning about the ‘decolonisation’ movement. Unlike Hume, who questioned the conventions of his time and oriented his thought towards the future, his detractors are devoted to the dogma of reading history backwards. They want to fix the problems of the past through denouncing and ‘cancelling’ 18th-century philosophers. And since these philosophers cannot answer back and account for their thoughts and behaviour, it is easy to win a one-sided argument against them. Under the guise of radical campaigning, there is moral cowardice and intellectual sloth at work here.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/14/the-crusade-against-the-enlightenment/
When there is “not enough to go around,” the laws of physics demand that some groups be left out. Otherwise, everyone will starve. Unfortunately, the result is very unacceptable to those of us who have been raised in an era of plenty. We assume that all can be equal. In fact, on the way up, this almost works. But as we reach limits, this no longer works. Some groups have to be left out.
If the groups to be left out are not chosen by race, there seem to be other choices.
Choose by age: Those who are no longer in the workforce seem to be no longer needed.
Choose by health status: Those who are most prone to depression are no longer needed. Those most overweight are no longer needed. Those with the most severe long-term conditions are no longer needed.
Choose by choice of ecosystem to settle in: People in ecosystems that need to burn regularly for trees to propagate have chosen to live in an unsustainable situation. Perhaps people in California, Australia, and quite a few other fire-prone areas need to leave, or be eliminated by nature.
Or, it could be by money. At the start of the year the government can set a tax say $10,000. Those who can pay are allowed to live for the year. Those who can not pay are killed.
Well, Ed, as the state-provided hospital system grows worse, with increasing waits to see consultants, get operated on, etc, here in the UK, one could well die of something which would have been perfectly treatable and curable if caught at an early stage, unless one has the cash/insurance to go private and be seen quickly.
Works rather well: taxes collected but no service provided; the individual eliminated (and their estate duly taxed of course.)
Yes, clearly the insight that social ‘ideas’ and ‘values’ reflect material, economic conditions is not unique to Marxism.
You are certainly correct that societies adapt their ideas to material circumstances.
Nietzsche takes that same, simpler approach to material ideological determination as yourself. He calls it ‘unfavourable’ and ‘favourable’ conditions that make the difference (plenty and scarcity, conditions favourable to peace). I have appended BGE 262 so that you can see see how he is on the same page as yourself. I would have done extracts but the whole paragraph is apposite.
The issues that you raise are ‘difficult’ on a moral level, and if they unavoidably must be faced at some time in the future, then as you suggest, there probably would be no ‘moral’ solution.
Personally I accept the point but I do not take a ‘crystal ball’ approach to future material-ideological scenarios. It may be that post-industrial collapse is so sudden, and the population collapse so deep, that nature will have taken care of our ‘moral dilemmas’ for us. We will be back to just trying to survive in less favourable conditions.
As I mentioned the other day, I do not adapt my personal ideology to what may happen in the future, but to conditions today. I think that is personally healthier and a saner approach to social living. Philosophy should help us to adapt to the present.
So, what do you think of Nietzsche’s take, does it gel with your own? It seems incredible to me that he would pen this take on modern trends in the 1880s but perhaps our times are not actually that different – conditions were ‘favourable’, and relative plenty abounded, even back then.
> A species arises, a type becomes established and strong, under the long struggle with essentially unchanging, unfavourable conditions. By contrast, we know from the experience of breeders that species which receive an ultra-abundant nourishment and, in general, an increase in protection and care immediately tend towards variety in the type in the strongest manner and are rich in wonders and monstrosities (as well as monstrous vices). Now, let’s look for a moment at an aristocratic commonwealth, for example, an ancient Greek polis [city state] or Venice, as an organization, whether voluntary or involuntary, for the purpose of breeding. There are men there living together who rely upon themselves and who want their species to succeed mainly because it has to succeed or run the fearful risk of being annihilated. Here there is a lack of that advantage, that abundance, that protection under which variations are encouraged. The species senses the need for itself as a species, as something which, particularly thanks to its hardness, uniformity, simplicity of form, can generally succeed and enable itself to keep going in the constant struggles with neighbours or with the rebellious oppressed people or with those who threaten rebellion. The most varied experience teaches them which characteristics they have to thank, above all, for the fact that they are still there, in spite of all the gods and men, that they have always been victorious. These characteristics they call virtues, and they cultivate only these virtues to any great extent. They do that with force – in fact, they desire force. Every aristocratic morality is intolerant in its education of the young, its provisions for women, its marriage customs, its relationships between young and old, its penal laws (which fix their eyes only on those who are deviants) – it reckons intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name “justice.” A type with few but very strong characteristics, a species of strict, war-like, shrewdly laconic people, united and reserved (and, as such, having the most sophisticated feelings for the magic and nuances of society) will in this way establish itself over the succession of generations. The constant struggle with unvarying, unfavourable conditions is, as mentioned, the factor that makes a type fixed and hard. Finally, however, at some point a fortunate time arises, which lets the immense tension ease. Perhaps there are no more enemies among the neighbours, and the means for living, even for enjoying life, are there in abundance. With one blow the bond and the compulsion of the old discipline are torn apart: that discipline no longer registers as necessary, as a condition of existence – if it wished to remain in existence, it could do so only as a form of luxury, as an archaic taste. Variation, whether as something abnormal (something higher, finer, rarer) or as degeneration and monstrosity, suddenly bursts onto the scene in the greatest abundance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and stand out. At these historical turning points there appear alongside each other and often involved and mixed up together marvellous, multifaceted, jungle-like growths, an upward soaring, a kind of tropical tempo in competitiveness for growing and an immense annihilation and self-destruction, thanks to the wild egoisms turned against each other and, as it were, exploding, which wrestle with one another “for sun and light” and no longer know how to derive any limit, any restraint, or any consideration from the morality they have had up to that point. This very morality was the one which built up such immense power, which bent the bow in such a threatening manner – now, at this moment, it has become “outdated.” The dangerous and disturbing point is reached where the greater, more multifaceted, and more comprehensive life lives over and above the old morality; the “individual” stands there, forced to give himself his own laws, his own arts and tricks for self-preservation, self-raising, self-redemption. Nothing but new what-for’s, nothing but new how-to’s, no common formula any more, misunderstanding and contempt bound up together, decay, spoilage, and the highest desires tied together in a ghastly way, the genius of the race brimming over from all the horns of plenty with good and bad, a catastrophic simultaneous presence of spring and autumn, full of new charms and veils, characteristic of young, still unexhausted, still unwearied depravity. Once again there’s danger there, the mother of morality, great danger, this time transferred into the individual, into one’s neighbour and friend, into the alleyways, into one’s own child, into one’s own heart, into all the most personal and most secret wishes and desires. What will the moral philosophers who emerge at such a time now have to preach? They discover, these keen observers and street loafers, that things are quickly coming to an end, that everything around them is going rotten and spreading corruption, that nothing lasts until the day after tomorrow, except for one kind of person, the incurably mediocre. Only the mediocre have the prospect of succeeding, of reproducing themselves – they are the people of the future, the only survivors, “Be like them! Become mediocre!” – from now on that’s the only morality which still makes sense, which people still hear. – But it is difficult to preach, this morality of mediocrity! – it may never admit what it is and what it wants! It must speak about restraint and worth and duty and love of one’s neighbour – it will have difficulty concealing its irony!
http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/beyond-good-and-evil/aphorism-262-quote_6f8563173.html
Kunstler is up this AM, what he says seems in rough agreement with your comment:
“The orgy of political hysteria, insane thinking, and violence is a psychotic reaction to the collapsing techno-industrial economy — a feature of it, actually. When all familiar social and economic arrangements are threatened, people go nuts. Interestingly, the craziness actually started in the colleges and universities where ideas (the products of thinking) are supposed to be the stock-in-trade. The more pressing the practical matters of daily life became, the less intellectuals wanted to face them. So, they desperately generated a force-field of crazy counter-ideas to repel the threat, a curriculum of wishful thinking, childish utopian nostrums, and exercises in boundary-smashing. As all this moved out of the campuses (the graduation function), it infected every other corner of American endeavor, institutions, business, news media, sports, Hollywood, etc. The country is now out of its mind… echoes of France, 1793… a rhyme, not a reprise.”
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/convergence-of-quandaries/#more-13083‘
It is very hard to walk away from what one thinks one has, what one has given one’s life to achieve and what has either less and less value or no value – it is a reflection on how we value ourselves which seems to mirror your choices above.
As always, thanks for a place to think it through, to be wrong and be able to reexamine.
Kunstler has a good analysis this week. He has a better handle on the politics than I do.
My problem with his analysis is that it seems to assume an awareness of impending crises on the part of the masses, to which he traces ideological shifts towards new ways of perceiving society, as false solutions to the crises.
I do not think that there is any such awareness, and rather the trends like BLM are a further logical outworking of ideological trends that reflect times of relative plenty.
For sure there have also been limits to development and social mobility and that is also reflected in trends, but that awareness of limits is located within a scenario of relative plenty rather than in an awareness of the impending crises that he describes.
I doubt that the BLM types will ever transcend their fairly status quo ideology, even when the crises hit. They are too ‘dug in’ to a particular world view. Their response is likely to just be frustration and dismay.
Holding out for a hero
The high growth countries that kept the global economy from free fall
aren’t coming to seesave us this time. Nobody is.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-china-india-europe-cant-save-global-economy-from-recession-2020-9?amp
India is now on its 170th day of lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Credit rating firm Moody’s expects economic growth to fall 11.5% in 2020.
And while the worst of China’s lockdowns have passed (for now), it’s expected GDP growth of around 3.2% for 2020 is a far cry from a decade ago. Plus, this time around China’s policymakers are being much more cautious with their stimulus In some part this is because the government is concerned it may have to institute another lockdown
No one is coming to save the global economy this time
Linette Lopez
Sep 13, 2020, 8:26 A
During the financial crisis, two countries kept the global economy from cratering even further than it did — China and India.
Unfortunately this time around — in the economic crisis caused by the corornavirus pandemic — no country is coming to save us.
India has been on lockdown for months, and China is still feeling the debt hangover from the credit binge it went on to skip the financial crisis.
This gives us all the more reason for Washington to pass another coronavirus aid bill as soon as possible.
The coronavirus depression will be much worse than the last worldwide recession, because this time no country is strong enough to rescue the global economy.
The story of the Great Recession goes like this: the US and Europe were crippled while working to clean up their devastated banking system, the global services sector suffered without its biggest player — the US consumer engine — but global economic growth didn’t completely fall off a cliff because other countries kept money moving around the planet.
Over in China policymakers enacted a massive stimulus to skip over the recession entirely. The country’s GDP grew 9.4% in 2009. India chugged along as if the crisis barely happened, with its GDP growing 7.9% in 2009.
But this time there is no corner of the globe that has been left untouched by the pandemic or its effects. And so, there’s no country that can reasonably chug along and keep things from getting truly disastrous
Economists over the Institute of International Finance (IIF) recently wrote in a recent note that it was the growth of these two countries that lifted the global economy while the US economy was on its knees. That is why global GDP only fell to -0.4% in in 2009. Conversely, without their help the economists estimate that global GDP to fall to -3.8% this year.
The high growth countries that kept the global economy from free fall aren’t coming to save us this time. Nobody is.
So while the government is pulling some levers it pulled to spur economic activity during the financial crisis — like encouraging infrastructure investment — China’s central bank, The People’s Bank of China, has said it sees no need for additional emergency stimulus in 2020.
With weak demand coming from China and India, Latin America will sell fewer commodities, and the whole of Asia will slow, the IIF notes. We cannot expect exceptional growth from there.
Could the European Union could save us? The rapid response of Eurozone countries to the pandemic seemed to be a model for the rest of the world and a potential salve for the economic chaos. But now cases spiking in countries like Spain and France and it’s unlikely that the bloc will have the economic power to boost the rest of the world for the time being.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu1wfHSU1w
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-bad-relations-with-china-could-mess-with-the-energy-transition
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/14/global-oil-demand-may-have-passed-peak-says-bp-energy-report
[Quote from another site]: Chevon, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum (BP) were hauled into a San Francisco court room to answer for their role in climate change. In an historic admission, all admit the IPCC is accurate and CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are to blame for global warming. Full stop. No joke. They agree there is a scientific consensus and the science is settled (as far as the IPCC). There is no “uncertainty”. There is no “hoax”. It is not caused by “natural warming”. Etc..
They said oil doesn’t cause climate change. People burning oil causes climate change. They are not at fault, it is the consumer who creates demand for energy. You are the problem.
The truth is, what else can they say at this late stage. After generations of successfully lobbying against regulations and muddying the waters with dark money dirty tricks, fake science and culture wars, they have trashed the planet and poisoned the political atmosphere. It’s your fault, don’t blame them. [End quote]
https://www.independent.com/2020/09/12/oil-companies-admit-to-contributing-to-climate-change-and-blame-you/
Unfortunately, the oil companies are right. It is the fact that humans want to have jobs and have food, and these are only possible with oil, is the problem. If we could live without food, transportation, manufacturing and construction, we would do just fine. We can’t. The IPCC report is based on a wrong view of the fossil fuels that can be economically extracted. It is not right.
We need to be like the Indian guru’s star pupil:
1st Guru: ‘How’s that brilliant disciple of yours coming along?
2nd Guru: ‘All going just fine, until.. ‘
1st Guru: ‘Until what?
2nd Guru: ‘Well, I’d got him to the point when he could live without any food or water at all , and then – he died on me.’
The externalisation of blame is risible. It is of course industrial civilisation and us, its inhabitants, that are “the problem”.
We the eight billion can’t live without food, transportation, manufacturing and construction supported by oil. We the eighty million can live without the support of oil.
Typical final paragraph: “We as the human race can no longer look the other way at this impending calamity. For ourselves and for our children, the time to act is now.”
The time to act was a long time ago, when we first began the systematic use of fossil fuel, and we first began to make synthetic fertiliser. Now, it is far, far too late, and all this breast beating is merely a distraction from the truth that collapse is unavoidable.
when Rockefeller piped oil into Chicago and made it cheap enough to burn, nobody complained
several generations have passed, but it has been this generation where the truth has dawned that we are burning the only home we have.
too late the blame the oil companies, we all helped Rockefeller to burn his oil,
we all danced round the fire as politicians and economists told us it would last forever.
(Remember the American dream?)
We are the only species of critter that thinks this planet is property with a cash value
Global warming is our eviction notice, covid 19 has served it on us
It’s not like the information re AGW hasn’t been available to the wider public for decades. This is a clip from a Thames Television documentary from 1981:
“I don’t know, apathetic bloody planet, I’ve no sympathy at all,” as Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz says in ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
The American Dream?
Vonnegut, 1965
https://external-preview.redd.it/jRcEj-KbxfNBoI7WkInzIC1-XecKOLpStLIRYHK6z7Y.jpg?auto=webp&s=f453bf6d3245734c1b961f897b262acd96f79a14
Vonnegut: “We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap.”
Vonnegut wrote lots of both positive and negative material concerning humanity and the U.S, but here is one of his last beliefs on Bill Maher’s show in 2005, two years before his death:
VONNEGUT: No, look, I think it’s – I think the earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, and it’s high time [it] did. My goodness, we are a disease on the face of this planet. You know, after two world wars and the Holocaust, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, well, the Roman games and the Spanish Inquisition, and the burning of women in public squares. It’s time we got out of here, and I-
MAHER: You left out “The Gong Show.” [laughter]
VONNEGUT: Yeah, but we are a disease on the planet. And I think we ought to become “syphilis with a conscience” and stop reproducing. [laughter] [applause]
Maximus, have you eaten food grown with fossil fuels?… answer …yes
Have you utilized our civilizations travel advances for anything….Highway, commercial air travel, taxis, personal vehicles…. answer …yes.
Have you gone to a hospital or utilized modern medical systems….answer….yes.
Have you bought or utilized any so called green power….solar, wind, hydro…if yes, then you have Utilized fossil fuels as you put it. You are guilty. Not a corporation….you. Everything you have done in your life is because of fossil fuels.
Contrary to your post, it has not trashed the planet.
But you have with your ignorance.
Thanks for the article, Maximus. JesseJames, huh? Zoom! Right over your head!
We were told many times throughout the decades about the ecological/societal juggernaut headed our way. Huxley in 1958 warned our unlistening selves, and this was before he was accused of being part of the elites’ New World Order.
Quote from article: Overpopulation, manipulative politics, imbalances of societal power, addictive drugs, even more addictive technologies: these and other developments have pushed not just democracy but civilization itself to the brink.
http://www.openculture.com/2018/04/aldous-huxley-tells-mike-wallace-what-will-destroy-democracy-overpopulation-drugs-insidious-technology-1958.html
Huxley was wise: he went out high, administered by his wife…….
…with the most beautiful drug ever created.
“Nightmare in Washington: what happens if Trump does not concede?
“A contested result and the risk of civil unrest would pose a dilemma for Congress, courts and the military.”
https://www.ft.com/content/c8767e22-a727-4a23-90bf-8d2844ca257a
“Gun sales… have continued to climb following widespread unrest in the country this summer. Many of these sales are from first-time gun owners, fearful of an uncertain future.”
Video:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gun-sales-surge-u-following-100006597.html
This is, to an objective observer abroad, an interesting psy op: all the fretting about ‘what if Trump doesn’t concede?’, etc.
It was in fact Hilary Clinton who first came out and instructed Democrats not to concede defeat if the vote went against them.
Which is, in effect, nothing less than a call to subvert the democratic process.
They need to read Jung on ‘projection of the shadow’…..
What will emerge from the end of the US Republic: uni-party deep state government?
Xabier, there is a slim chance it will turn out better.
https://peoplesparty.org/
I hope so: although a foreigner, I am greatly saddened to see what is happening in the US.
Not least because I live next to one of the great US war cemeteries and memorials in Britain, where the tombstones lie ‘white like snow’.
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
With multiple ways to vote, and concern about voting on election day for fear if COVID or long lines, there could be a lot of confusion about what the actual result is.
Gail—you are on the ground in USA, and with a valid sanity claus—while we on the outside looking in might be (are) getting a different take on all this.
So is Trump as mad as a hatter?
Or are we missing something deeper here, something other than the mass ‘news hysteria’ that goes on all the time.
I don’t go for all the conspiracy hoaxy nonsense that gets put about on here and elsewhere, but from your viewpoint is the don really trying to run the USA as a cross between his personal business venture and a TV reality show?
And is his ultimate intent control and dictatorship?
Or does the US govt (in general) realise all this is an energy problem, not a political problem.
Things always seem to suggest that the USA is about to break out into civil war at any moment—whites–blacks–gods and so on. Or is that nonsense too?
I ask these questions in all seriousness because what happens to the USA currently affects the world—for good or ill
I don’t think Trump is “mad as a hatter.” I think he listens to advisors who have a better understanding of the energy situation than Biden’s advisors have. I don’t think either side understands how unfixable the current situation is, however.
There are an awfully lot of newspapers and periodicals in the US that are convinced that everything Trump says is wrong. They are the same folks who are convinced that renewables will save us. They also think anything Anthony Fauci says must be gospel truth. They also think that Trump must be crazy to ignore Fauci. What Fauci says must be “100% science.”
There is an awfully lot of discord between Republicans and Democrats. This has been going on for quite a few years now. It becomes impossible to have a reasonable discussion on a lot of subjects.
The rioting is probably more limited than the impression a person gets from the newspapers. There are indeed some major cities that are being hollowed out because people no longer want to live there. This is partly due to being able to work at home. Downtowns are no longer viable places. If you add riots to the mix, people will certainly move out. I have not been to downtown Atlanta myself, in quite some time. It wouldn’t be a place I would want to go, even before this past year. There are some State of Georgia office buildings, Georgia Institute of Technology the university that used to be called Georgia State University, and the group of historically black colleges (Atlanta University Center). There are hotels and a few tourist attractions, but there is no reasonable shopping area. There are a lot of beggars asking for handouts.
Most of Atlanta’s businesses are distributed around the metropolitan area, not downtown. Public transport was never good; after COVID, it is very much lacking.
The population of the State of Georgia is about one third Black.This is much above the US average. Atlanta has an above average reputation as a place where Blacks can get ahead. There are quite a few Black citizens in most suburbs (fewer in the more expensive ones). Hopefully, this will keep down race conflict. Near where I live, there were a handful of (mostly white) BLM protestors holding up signs on a corner for a few days after the Minnesota riots. I haven’t heard or seen anything more recently.
“A new UNESCO report highlights a sharp increase in the global number of protests during which the police and security forces violated media freedom in the first half of 2020…
“UNESCO’s …report points to a wider upward trend in the use of unlawful force by police and security forces over the last five years.”
https://www.miragenews.com/unesco-sounds-alarm-on-global-surge-in-attacks-against-journalists-covering-protests/
You know, if I lived in a country where almost the entire journalism establishment continually published gross, defamatory, and utterly false lies about the government, the country, and anyone whom they cared to destroy, I would be cheering on every “brutal” policeman I could find. The journalists have sown the wind; let them reap the whirlwind.
“As tensions increase at the border between India and China, what is more, concerning is the economic collapse out of the rivalry relationship between the two nuclear-armed countries. This is because the economic relationship between the two neighbors is too profound to be overlooked.”
https://www.inventiva.co.in/stories/paayel/how-india-china-conflict-will-bring-a-halt-to-the-world-economy-may-even-put-it-on-standstill/
Yawn. A replay of the argument proposed in Norman Angeli’s The Great Illusion”, published in 1909, which argued that the economic integration of the European powers made a war inconceivable, since they would all have too much to lose. It was a best seller, and went through several editions. Until 1914.
“The pandemic is not Mr Modi’s fault, but he owns his government’s dysfunctional response. He imposed a draconian lockdown in late March with no warning and no planning. The prime minister seemed to revel in the drama of a primetime announcement and its muscular message.
“But the national shutdown, which ended in June, destroyed millions of people’s livelihoods. Many of the most affected sit on the bottom rungs of Indian society…”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/13/the-guardian-view-on-indias-strongman-in-denial-about-a-covid-crisis
“The adverse impact of the pandemic-induced lockdowns and restrictions on livelihood of [India’s] women is reflected in a new survey report covering 20 states. More women were out of work post-lockdown compared to men.”
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/in-depth/post-lockdown-more-women-than-men-left-jobless/videoshow/78098795.cms
“The death of five-year-old Sonia Kumari last month allegedly due to starvation has brought media attention and controversy to the village of Nagla Vidhichand in Agra district of Uttar Pradesh.
““There was not a single grain of food for many days before my sister died. In the days before Sonia’s death, we were eating Parle-G biscuits with water,” says her elder sister, Pooja.
“Sonia’s father Pappu Singh suffers from respiratory illness and is unable to work, while her mother is a daily wage labourer at construction sites.”
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/coronavirus-lockdown-death-and-hunger-stalk-village-in-agra/article32595049.ece
The situation in India seems to be very bad. There were an awfully lot of poor people before the ill-advised lockdown.
“Automobile dealers in India are worried that some of them may be forced to default as banks have started pressing them to repay dues after the six-month loan moratorium ended on 31 August amid tepid vehicle sales.”
https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/default-fears-grip-car-dealers-as-sales-slow-11600131604984.html
“Israel becomes first country in the world to impose second national lockdown.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-israel-becomes-first-country-in-the-world-to-impose-second-national-lockdown-12071369
““I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but many businesses on my street have already said they plan to open because if they don’t, they’ll go under,” said the owner of a store on Tel Aviv’s Ibn Gabirol Street.
““The government doesn’t understand that businesses will fail. Another month like this, it’ll all be over.””
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-small-businesses-fear-collapse-as-israel-heads-into-second-lockdown-1.9152660
“Footage from the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak on Sunday showed residents clashing with police officers enforcing a nightly curfew, throwing garbage bags at them and repeatedly calling them “Nazis.””
https://www.timesofisrael.com/violent-clashes-in-bnei-brak-as-police-fail-to-enforce-nightly-curfew/#gs.fk9872
These new lock-downs are puzzling, as it has been clearly established that they are of very doubtful benefit in ‘saving lives’, but 100% effective in crushing commercial life.
Are the con spi theorists therefore correct, and this is just a cover for economic reform and triage?
Or are the career polticos and their epidemiologist advisers morons and detached from everyday reality?
I’m still betting on the latter -but only just……
I tend towards the latter, although I don’t doubt for a minute for a minute that some governments (like Israel’s) are seeing an upside to constraining their troublesome populaces’ freedoms in this fashion.
Taiwan seems to be doing a very good job of maintaining growth *and* avoiding lockdowns:
“Thanks to the outstanding handling of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak by the Central Epidemic Command Center, Taiwan has seen the least impact on its economy by the pandemic, disproving the widely spread myth that controlling infections must always come at the cost of economic growth.”
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4008495
“Are the con spi theorists therefore correct, and this is just a cover for economic reform and triage?”
I vote for this interpretation. As to how complete and thorough the program might be, I don’t have an opinion. As we see below, Taiwan is doing something different, and making it work? So if FE’s EL. D. ers have their reputed superhuman intelligence, could they have planned for lots of wriggle room and a scenario with more than one possible ending?
Politicians can’t fix the economy but they can make us focus on minor problems and pretend to be o so responsible …
Israel does have an unusually high number of cases reported, but not many deaths so far. In fact, it has had this surge long enough that a person would expect a big increase in deaths to have already started, if it were going to start.
“As I described in January, many economists were predicting the end of Germany’s recent “economic miracle” even before Covid-19…
“…it’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked. Germany can keeping pouring on money for a while longer, but it can’t prevent the ebb.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/germanys-economy-is-sicker-than-you-think/2020/09/14/55393f40-f650-11ea-85f7-5941188a98cd_story.html
“Europe’s Deep Economic Crisis Might Not Have a Solution… And that is a problem for the global economy. China, India and other emerging economies depend on Europe’s ability to import their goods for growth.”
https://moneyandmarkets.com/european-economy-crisis/
Germany is facing the problem may other decaying empires faced. You can loot the periphery to feed the centre so long as there is something left to loot; but after that, you are indeed swimming naked in a falling tide. Rome was in just such a state at the accession of Trajan, and his solution was to invade, occupy, and loot Dacia. It kicked the can down the road for a few years, but then Hadrian realised the game was up, and evacuated the province. His can kicking was to end the useless (and unwinnable) war with Parthia, and the to end the equally useless wars in Caledonia. The beginning of a contraction that would never be reversed.
“British mortgage lenders are beginning to batten down the hatches for an oncoming spike in unemployment.
“HSBC Holdings Plc, Barclays Plc and Natwest Group Plc have tightened restrictions on home loans for risky borrowers as officials unwind pandemic-support efforts. Then there’s the renewed prospect of a no-deal Brexit, threatening to deepen what’s already the worst recession in centuries.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-13/british-banks-brace-for-deeper-slump-by-pulling-mortgage-deals
“Based on the number of planned redundancies being notified to the Insolvency Service, the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) estimated that the UK would see around 450,000 job losses in the coming months.
“However, if notifications made via HR1 forms continued to rise, the number of redundancies could exceed 700,000, it warned.”
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/autumn-redundancies-could-exceed-450000/
“Britain is in the grip of a long-term and widescale decline in the networks and institutions that constitute its social fabric with people less likely belong to a local group, be debt free or trust civic institutions, according to a new study.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/britain-social-fabric-fraying-urgent-attention-study-suggest-644422
Time to join the Women’s Institute and share my recipe for melt-in-the-mouth pastry?
*Past* time, Xabier. 😂
Tightening lending requirements for those with a high risk defaulting means reducing the number of people who can afford to buy homes. It is not long after this approach leads to falling home prices, because there is little demand for homes.
a home represents embodied energy, no different to a lump of coal or barrel of oil
no use unless it is ‘traded’ in some way,. or used–which is what happens in the housing market, houses ‘flow’ (in energy terms) the way oil flows, value is created by the use-flow.
We add to, repair, embellish our homes, which also adds to the ‘energy flow’ of the overall housing/energy business.
If fewer and fewer people find themselves unable to afford to do this, then housing joins cruise ships and aircraft as unusable, not through lack of fuel, but because fuel itself is unaffordable.
One wonders what the next big domino is. (or next but one)
I sometimes make a correct forecast—the internet maybe?
The internet is now a colossal fuel consumer, we seem to be using it to provide ourselves with ’employment’ that strictly speaking has little bearing on our necessary existence.
Essentially covid 19 is shutting down everything that is destroying the planet
BON has a typically articulate new article on why the EU WA should be entirely scrapped, simply because it is contrary to national sovereignty and therefore to democracy. I might be more animated by that principled stand did the demos have genuine democratic control over UK.
The recent TP – CBI pact to lift any cap on incomers, contrary to four successive TP manifesto pledges, undermines any such illusions. If Brexit, and sovereignty, is merely about the liberty of organised British capital to pursue its own interests, then I do not see what that has got to do with democracy or why I should care one way or the other.
I have reached the point where Brexit does not matter to me one way or the other because it is devoid of any genuine democratic content. Spiked is maintaining ‘enlightenment values’ of ‘reason and democracy’ but that seems to now just be a front for the unaccountable bourgeois state.
I do not understand why the demos would see that state as its ally. It seems more likely that democracy will dwindle in the near term as energy-economic constraints limit the options of organised capital, Brexit or no Brexit. So what then is the point of it? Open question.
> There it is. The Brexit battle summed up. There are those who believe that international laws, rules, regulations and treaties, whether drawn up in the EU or the UN, should have the same authority as laws drawn up in a democratically elected national parliament, and there are those of us who believe that the parliament we elect should be sovereign over everything else, including treaties we signed and have now changed our minds about. A parliament bound by international treaties it cannot change, and threatened by legal action from a foreign court, is not a free parliament. There is only one problem with the Internal Market Bill: it doesn’t go far enough. To defend democracy in the UK, the Withdrawal Agreement must not only be tweaked – it must be torn up.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/14/the-battle-for-brexit-isnt-over-yet/
If there is “not enough to go around” then layers of administration and complexity need to start disappearing. In the case of the UK, belonging to the EU seems to be one of these layers. In fact, given that Scotland seems to want to leave as well, even the UK structure, as it stands, may be headed in the same direction.
Agreed. But Scotland is a classic study of how even a small country’s administration can become bloated beyond reason by socialist policies, rampant vote buying, and cronyism and corruption in all levels of the public sector. The Scottish “devolved” government today spends far more on administration was needed when the country was a full part of the Union and largely administered from England.
“As households struggle to make ends meet, more Americans have been forced to halt or raid their retirement savings in this coronavirus-induced recession.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/americans-are-forced-to-raid-retirement-savings-during-the-pandemic.html
“A debt crisis looms as renters turn to credit cards to stay afloat.”
https://crosscut.com/focus/2020/09/debt-crisis-looms-renters-turn-credit-cards-stay-afloat
“Ever since the pandemic began closing down most American colleges, the rate of food insecurity among students has been rising — and it’s about to get much worse.”
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/hungry-to-learn-soledad-obrien-investigates-college-student-hunger-crisis-homelessness-035925085.html
There are certainly some students with food insecurity, but the survey they quote would seem to represent a group of student with an “above-average” level of insecurity.
I know that the university where my husband teaches has its enrollment up 8% this year. Some people seem to be attending school, if they can’t get jobs.
“Credit investors are unconvinced about the ability of the world’s weakest lenders to weather a coronavirus economic slowdown, according to Bank for International Settlements.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/bank-credit-swaps-signal-concern-over-world-s-weakest-lenders
Not a big surprise!
The next subprime crisis could be in food:
“Of all the many problems caused by Covid-19, three of the most visible have been food insecurity, the demise of small businesses and asset market volatility.
“All of those things might be poised to get worse, thanks to an unexpected but important financial shift. Big banks, including ABN Amro, ING and BNP Paribas, are either pulling out of commodity trade financing or scaling it back. This will leave a funding hole for some farmers, agricultural producers and distributors, as well as grocery chains and other small and medium-sized companies that represent crucial parts of the global food supply chain.
“The problem is like a gigantic iceberg under the surface of financial markets, one that we can’t yet see but are nonetheless headed for…”
https://www.ft.com/content/ad2cf2eb-bdfc-4194-9c95-bdb3b9b2a641
Financing the global food supply chain is not something we think much about, but it is critical to food supply landing on the world’s tables. If big banks pull out, we will have a major problem.
I read a story elsewhere about apparel industry suppliers not being able to credit on goods that they want to deliver to department stores and other clothing stores, because of fear by the lenders that these businesses would not really be able to sell the clothing. They would default instead.
With food, a person would think that most of the food could get sold, unless there is again a problem with restaurants, hotels, and schools buying food for large groups not buying enough food. So maybe the problem will be pretty much the same for food and clothing. Cessation of credit will tend to make a significant part of the chain “freeze up.”
“Oil-rich Gulf nations are relying on a well-worn playbook of spending less and borrowing more to get through the coronavirus crisis but with the outlook for oil clouded by uncertainty the strategy is riskier than before.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-gulf-economy-analysis/gulfs-fiscal-diet-risks-deeper-pain-amid-oil-price-uncertainty-idUKKBN2650GA
“The economic hit from the coronavirus pandemic will hurt global energy demand harder and for longer than previously feared, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said Monday.
“In its monthly report, OPEC said it expects the pandemic to reduce demand by 9.5 million barrels a day, forecasting a fall in demand of 9.5% from last year.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/opec-deepens-forecast-for-decline-in-global-oil-demand-11600083622
A ten percent fall in world oil demand is huge!
Under normal conditions, it would seem like world population would need to start falling as well, but perhaps that doesn’t happen until next year.
“COVID-19 containment measures weighed heavily on economic activity in the second quarter of 2020, with unprecedented falls in real gross domestic product (GDP) in most G20 countries.
“For the G20 area as a whole, GDP dropped by a record (minus) 6.9%, significantly larger than the (minus) 1.6% recorded in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the financial crisis.”
http://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/g20-gdp-growth-second-quarter-2020-oecd.htm
“Countries coping with the coronavirus crisis and a slump in commodities prices are dipping into sovereign wealth funds for more than $100 billion, and that figure could swell as budget pressures mount for some emerging markets.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-swf-assets-analysis/sovereigns-raid-rainy-day-funds-for-100-billion-after-covid-19-storm-idUKKBN2650SZ
I didn’t realize all of these countries had rainy day funds of some sort.
https://graphics.reuters.com/SWF-ASSETS/xlbpglewgvq/chart.png
This list doesn’t include the big countries with sovereign wealth funds. Russia has $130 billion, and will take out as much as a third of it. Others will borrow instead of reducing the amounts in their funds.
One data point: Mexico, drawing down $5.4 billion; population 126 million; expenditure per person $43. Good luck with that.
Small band aid.
Minus 6.9% is a big step down!
BP boss is declaring this morning that peak oil demand is just a few years away due to renewable sources and electric vehicles. Probably a good time to buy oil shares.
The BP report links the peak of oil production with a fall in demand that is linked simply to the climate agenda. There are no economics of the expensive production involved in the analysis – at least as presented through the media. C19 is viewed as a likely occasion of an increase in the climate agenda. BP is looking to shift its focus into ‘renewables’.
> BP warns of oil demand peak by early 2020s
UK energy major BP has warned of a peak in oil demand within the next few years, signalling that the coronavirus pandemic is ushering in an earlier than anticipated decline for the fossil fuel era.
The company, in its annual energy outlook published on Monday, modelled three scenarios for the world’s transition to cleaner fuels that all see oil demand falling over the next 30 years.
In the “business as usual” case, which assumes government policies, technologies and societal preferences evolve in a manner and speed as in the recent past, oil demand rebounds from the Covid-19 hit then plateaus in the early 2020s.
In two other scenarios that model more aggressive policies to tackle climate change, oil demand never fully recovers, implying 2019 levels of 100m barrels a day will be the peak for consumption.
BP said in August it will reduce production by 40 per cent and increase renewable energy spending 10-fold by 2030 as it plans to become a net-zero emissions company by 2050.
In the report, BP’s “rapid” scenario assumes the introduction of policy measures, such as a massive increase in carbon prices and a drastic reduction in emissions. Its “net zero” scenario — the most extreme — is broadly in line with reaching Paris climate goals of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
So it’s time to buy oil shares.
I think peak world oil demand happened in November, 2018. It was already on a downhill slope before the pandemic. The pandemic pushed oil demand down further. It is hard to see how oil demand will ever recover.
Peak oil has nothing to do with the climate agenda. It has to do with people becoming too poor to afford cars. Also, economies behaving so poorly that governments see “shutdowns” as a reasonable alternative to letting the economy continue BAU, with COVID-19.
Interesting, do you have a graph or something to illustrate the peak in Nov 18?
Yes, I suspect that states are dressing up energy problems as a climate agenda. Green austerity is intended to be an ideology for the masses that is ‘adapted’ to times of energy decline. It is intended to provide social cohesion and political stability while people get poorer instead of better off.
It is a way to manage the aspirations and expectations of the masses and to give them some ‘purpose’ for the decline, to make them ‘moral’ advocates of their own impoverishment. ‘It is all for the planet, it a virtuous sacrifice!’ Really it is expensive energy in a depleted world.
Capitalism has hit its financial-economic-geological limits to improve living standards and the ideology of the American Dream, of times of growth, is being replaced with one of ecological ‘virtue’ for times of decline. Changing material conditions call for a change in ideological conditions.
Look at Figure 12 in my post. The highest oil production/consumption was in Oct/November 2018. It has been down since then. The meetings of OPEC have been in the direction of lowering production further. The low prices are a sign that demand is terribly low. WTI currently seems to be at $37.26 per barrel.
The human energy is traded for (or transformed into) another type of energy. We can not create a system that produces and consumes energy independently from a larger context, as the universe is.
One type of energy changes into another type of energy – such are the laws of physics.
As the wages are declining, the amount of volunteer work opportunities rises. The need for human work still exists, but the wages become ridiculously low. Giving the needed work the badge of volunteering, obscures the reality of the energy shortage.
We now have “interns” working on farms, instead of slaves.
Many Peace Core “volunteers”benefited” from their experience, though.
https://twitter.com/wdunlap/status/1305182680816869376/photo/1
The fact that hospitals are not overwhelmed with the many cases is important.
Early models said that hospitals and ICUs would be overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases. Now, we are seeing that this is not the case, even as schools restart in-person classes and meetings start to be held in person again.
On a world basis, daily new cases have never fallen as a result of all of the transportation cut offs, social distancing, and masks.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/daily-new-covid-cases-worldometer-sept-13.png
On a world basis, deaths fell after April 18. At that point, we had started to figure out how to handle COVID-19 cases medically. The rising wave of cases caused world deaths to start rising about the beginning of June. There was a significant rise in deaths, reaching a peak about Aug 13. Total deaths have been falling since then.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/world-daily-deaths-worldometer-sept.-13.png
Given that new cases have been flat for a fairly long time, it makes sense to compare deaths to new cases. In the most recent week, deaths have been 5,032 and new cases are reported to be 265,073. The ratio of deaths to new cases reported is 1.9%.
We expect that actual new cases are a multiple of 265,073 because most people without symptoms won’t be tested. In fact, a significant share of people with only a mild illness will never bother to be tested. If we guess that “true” new cases is at least 3 times 265,073, then the indicated death rate relative to total cases is 0.6%, or less. It will be higher than this for the elderly and those with non-white skin, living in areas of low solar insulation (and thus, likely vitamin D deficient). For people under age 85, with adequate vitamin D levels, the death rate is likely quite close to zero.
What was the original or ancestral sin of Adam and Eve in the Bible? The snake told Eve that you will be like God, when you eat it.
Was it not the use of additional energy itself? As this use allowed humans to create new worlds for humans? I.e. to be like God-Creator. And the humans, after eating it, realized that they are nsked. They did not realize their nakedness in the state where there was just enough energy. They realized it after they tried the use of additional energy. When this additional energy disappeared, they realized, that they are naked, i.e. they lack the additional energy.
This sounds like something Daniel Quinn wrote, except he was referring to mass agriculture.
Agriculture is obviously only a part of the human world. The words in the Bible about the hard work point to the energy issue.
original sin was sex, god was practicing population control when he told adam and eve to not do it six thousand years later the population has exploded .
The original sin was feeding all of the babies who were born. This is what led to the population explosion.
Interesting idea! Of course, pre-humans started using additional energy over one million years ago. This additional energy is what made humans different from other animals.
I believe that the Old Testament gives the myths of the day, regarding how the world was created. They can be compared with the myths of other groups at the same time.
I suppose the idea of original sin can fit into this context as well. Once we need additional energy, the population needs more and more additional energy, to keep up with rising population, depletion, and pollution. It is this quest for additional energy that leads to conflict among peoples.
“It is this quest for additional energy that leads to conflict among peoples.” – that is the point. Because THE SIN IS ABOUT DOING SOMETHING, i.e. bribery, stealing, fraud etc. All this accumulates as you move from the ideal place, i.e. the Eden, where you do not have to do nothing, you do not need clothes, homes, cars etc., there you simply have enough naked and without any posession. YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO SOMETHING.
When somebody commits sin, he or she hides. In fact, he or she hides his or her nakedness, i.e. that he or she does not have enough.
If human were like the animals, we would not have this energy-related problem. We know, however, that many animals are very territorial. This helps keep population down. Males will fight with males from other groups, to maintain their territory. So I don’t think the issue is entirely “additional” energy related. It is really related to “survival of the best-adapted.” But survival of the best adapted reaches ever higher limits, with additional energy.
The point is rather the mutations that destroy the human race, as mutations destroy other species, e.g. dogs.
The need for additional energy is driven by the genetic mutation. The mutated organisms need to get additional energy, as I have mentioned it before. The humans are not able to adapt to less energy, they need more energy to fight own mutations, so they commit sins, which, of course, ends badly, as the mutated humans kill or rob the weak humans, not understanding the additional energy problem.
excellent prog on bbc world service today about early fire and cooking
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz1sv
A couple of days ago, commenter “Fred” posted an interesting video by Dr. Zach Bush. This is a link to the prior comment. http://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/09/01/todays-energy-predicament-a-look-at-some-charts/comment-page-19/#comment-260058 In this earlier comment, he was very concerned about glyphosate really messing up ecosystems and our bodies. He sees this as the problem underlying the growth in autism and in many other health problems that are growing now.
I found another video by Dr. Zach Bush. He has a very different view of COVID-19 than Dr. Fauci. In fact, one of his COVID videos seems to have been taken down you tube. He sees COVID-19 as actually helpful, in helping mankind to adapt to new pollutants. High particulates in an area lead to high death rates. There is a lot of detail to his theory, which I cannot explain adequately.
https://www.facebook.com/responsibletechnology/videos/663965114184267
Thanks, I will watch when I get time, some thoughts on self organizing systems and possible research.
The greatest expense for medicare used to be the last year or so of life – it would be interesting to see the medicare costs/patient pre and post Covid, a guess is they are lower. Similarly, smokers had lower life time medical costs, HBR sometime in the seventies.
All ag chemicals are bad,unless one wants to eat. At one time I lived in the center of a golf club, at that time there was a reported increase incidence of cancer of those living on courses compared to those who did not, old study from memory. I moved.
We are being reorganized and capital is being destroyed that is not useful.
Some very interesting trends in agriculture – I think some current practices won’t work much longer due to capital destruction, robots are coming and they work 24/7, they are smaller, require much smaller shops, smaller tires, etc. Row crops, and rock picking are two good candidates. Question is, how many people will be left to eat the crops? Might be possible to return to old fashion cultivation as opposed to spraying the heck out of everything? Bayer probably wouldn’t see the humor in the change.
Dennis L.
Loss of topsoil is a big issue as well. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations is an extremely good book that came out in 2007. He argues that erosion of topsoil is a major issue leading to civilizational collapse. Also, the poisoning of the soil by irrigation is another problem people overlook.
I believe that the no-till approaches were aimed at greatly reducing the erosion problem.
Agriculture or horticulture where you dig up the ground releases mucho carbon into the air. Since learning that, any kind of digging has become viscerally repellant to me (to any extensive degree).
And although hugelkultur can be about extensive burying of organic-material growing medium underground, it can also be about piling it up on the surface (which I prefer).
https://greentumble.com/what-is-hugelkultur/
Also, in view of predial larceny in so many poor places, growing should probably go on within the web of the built environment where it can be closely guarded.
One of my lectures on the history of technology talked about “technology traps”: it is good in the short term, disastrous in the long term, and almost irreversible. One example I gave was the irrigation of North Africa in Roman times; it made the soil more productive, until the salination created a desert. (The crazy spelling checker behind this window seems to think that word should be “salinization”; the OED says otherwise.) Another, more controversial example, was antibiotics, which in the longer term breed plagues (had I but known, that 25 years later, …). Another well documented example is the erosion of Iceland’s soil by inappropriate farming practices.
These problems become obvious, but nothing is done about them, because we value the immediate future and heavily discount the more distant future. So we stuff ourselves with prime cuts of beef but our grandchildren will eat insects and tree bark.
That is a very good point.
I suppose suppression of forest fires is another technology trap. It works, until it doesn’t.
Thank you, Gail, and I agree. However did the forests manage themselves for 300 million years without our woke environmentalists to nurture them? I remember visiting Marin County (just across the Golden Gate Bridge), and reflecting on how useful forest fires were. In fact, without them the great redwood trees would go extinct: the fires burn the tree bark and release the seeds, clear the ground of underbrush, and leave a deposit of potassium rich soil to nourish the seedlings.
Listened to most of it, it is consistent. Know someone in medical administration of a very large group, well accepted this is not a respiratory disease.
Dennis L.
I would be interested in whether people who are more involved with this think that what he is saying has any chance of being true. Is Dr. Bush mostly a good orator, or does he really have new insights? Some Reddit commenters thought that he had a tendency to stretch the truth. https://www.reddit.com/r/richroll/comments/guko6h/zach_bush_quack_or_science/
Glyphosate is often used as a crop desiccant, it’s a systemic herbicide, so if you eat eg non organic oats and wheat, then you will also be getting a dose of these chemicals. Other ‘weed’ killers are also used. I never eat any grain or food that could have been sprayed like this before harvest, I always buy organic oats and flour for my family although I rarely eat wheat myself.The process of milling grains into flour results in the body treating it like pure sugar. I think Dr John Day wrote about this in his book ‘The Longevity Plan’ .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation
Family member tested positive for C19 on Friday, she feels fine bit of a cough but working as normal from home today, husband and young son showing no systems so far, were tested Saturday and are awaiting results, also working from home. All our family have been taking Vit D and C for months as per Dr John Campbell’s advice and getting a dose of sunshine where weather permits in the cloudy NW UK. My daughters friend also tested negative despite Mum and boyfriend testing positive but with no systems at all. She is a radiographer in a hospital. From my experience so far this whole C19 thing has been blown out of all proportion and a lot of people are going to suffer horribly due to C19 restrictions as Gail has already pointed out.
Dr John even mentions the C word in this video re Vitamin D, CONSPIRACY.
His video on hydroxychloroquine is also a must watch.
Thanks! This has really been a strange pandemic. It is hard to believe how little attention has been paid to what seem like inexpensive solutions to the problem.
I do hope your family members and friends make it through this round of COVID-19 without many problems. Good luck to all!
Dennis, true, there are drawbacks, risks and challenges in so called “stored wealth”. Precious metals have a track record that is well understood by Historical accounts and the remains of numerous hoards that were never retrieved by their former owners, from Ancient times to modern.
Each one has to decide the best allocation and strategy to pursue.
Gail’s advice is diversity, something may just work out.
Yes, we folks are in uncharted territory and it is difficult to foresee ahead.
In my case, being older, my time frame is shorter, less worry.;
If I don’t enjoy a retirement, so what!🤭
There was an early buyout offer at my employment.
Still too early for me and do not feel being a useless eater now is wise.
Rather still be attached to the system and protected because once officially retired…you are on your own….
Judging from the talk in Washington DC, entitlements.(Social Security, Medicare), as they are coined, are going to be targeted. By a stroke of a pen, some Judge, court or political party can nullify expectations.
If a Pension gets insolvent, the Government takes it and one receives at most half. From what I understand, it is already in trouble.
Yes, Fast Eddie gave good advice, enjoy BAU now with what you want to do before it disappears…just try not to be foolish
Herbie,
Agree, entitlements are targeted, incomes to support them have decreased, costs have increased. Hopefully, I look tpo 2029 as of now, that is when SS “runs out of money” whatever that means, COVID may have changed that again.
Work is good, being useful is good, and best of all if one has a group of people, social is good. Everything social is mostly shut down, symphony, Rotary, etc. Dining is fought with risks, school is closed for all practical purposes. Old teachers are afraid of death is my guess.
All the best,
Dennis L.
Time to cross the street over to Standard & Poor’s
Turkey Gets Unprecedented Downgrade, Crisis Warning From Moody’s
(Bloomberg) — Turkey had its debt rating cut deeper into junk by Moody’s Investors Service, which warned of a possible balance-of-payments crisis in assigning the lowest grade it’s ever given to the country.
The sovereign credit rating was cut to B2, five levels below investment grade and on par with Egypt, Jamaica and Rwanda. The company kept a negative outlook on the rating, saying fiscal metrics could deteriorate faster than currently expected.
“Turkey’s external vulnerabilities are increasingly likely to crystallize in a balance-of-payments crisis,” London-based Moody’s analysts Sarah Carlson and Yves Lemay said in a report Friday
……Turkey’s credit-default swaps, local-currency debt and the lira have been the worst performers in emerging markets this quarter. The nation has spent its foreign-exchange reserves faster than any other major developing economy this year, with state-run lenders intervening in the market to support the lira as it slid to successive all-time lows.
Maybe there is some hidden wealth the government can extort?
Something that’s bright and shiny and doesn’t tarnish and is hidden by it’s citizens.
There are many others whose credit ratings could be downgraded. Italy, for example.
Herbie,
Perhaps natural gas and a very large military force.
With regards to shiny items, they seem very difficult to use in a practical sense for most people. Wealthy people storing this sort of thing in various physical locations seems problematical. One doesn’t have to physically steal it, only make it inaccessible.
Dennis L.
Oh on NO PEAK 😂 GOLD!
Yahoo NewsYahoo News
Reuters
World’s gold miners wary of production ramp-up despite price surge
Tanisha Heiberg and Arunima Kumar
September 13, 2020, 7:00 AM EDT
By Tanisha Heiberg and Arunima Kumar
JOHANNESBURG/BENGALURU, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The world’s top gold miners are retrenching after COVID-19 related shutdowns despite record prices for the yellow metal, with cost-conscious executives prioritizing investor returns over production growth.
Gold prices have jumped 30% this year to roughly $2,000 an ounce as central banks dial up stimulus measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
That has fuelled a cash surge for miners, with top- and mid-tier producers holding roughly $5 billion in cash as of June 30, according to Scotiabank estimates.
But interviews with executives, analysts and fund managers show miners are hesitant to spend on pricey projects and tap marginal deposits that require sizeable capital and take years to break even.
Seven out of 10 of the global gold miners, including Newmont , the world’s biggest gold miner, Canada’s Barrick and South Africa’s Gold Fields, have cut planned output for the year by 7%, citing coronavirus-related shutdowns, regulatory filings show.
The caution is a reversal from the 2011 gold price boom, which prompted buyers to overspend on acquisitions and led to billions in impairments when prices crashed in subsequent years.
Companies which have won back investor favor are fearful of making similar mistakes.
“The real trap in the gold industry in the past was chasing volume,” Newmont Chief Executive Officer Tom Palmer told Reuters.
Perhaps the Chinese will have a method to extend it out some…
With COVID-related income supplements and unemployment benefits now expired or reduced, we face a new wave of mortgage and rental delinquencies, many of which will come in the next few months.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/516032-the-coming-wave-of-defaults?amp
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as of June 30, mortgage delinquency in the U.S. had reached 8.2 percent, the highest since 2011 and almost double the 4.5 percent of a year earlier. With 53 million mortgages in the U.S., that means more than 4.3 million mortgages are delinquent. Add to that the fact that, per Black Knight mortgage analytics, almost 5 million homes have been in forbearance. With that, I estimate that at least 1 million to 2 million more of these loans will fall delinquent before the end of this year.
As for renters, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that, as of July, 18 percent were delinquent in their rent payments. That compares with less than 7 percent in prior years. With more than 43 million renters, that means more than 7.4 million are behind on their rental payments. With the loss of income and unemployment support, it is reasonable to believe that number will increase by several million over the next few months.
Many of the resulting evictions that normally would have occurred have been forestalled by government mandate, and a major portion of the mortgage payments and apartment rental payments that would have been late have been staved off by the lifeline of the $1,200 checks from the CARES Act and augmented unemployment benefits. Since this assistance has now expired, a new wave of delinquency is before us, and millions more Americans could go delinquent in the months immediately ahead.
Telling us the obvious…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc
Oh YES …I believe before Ftrump became High Chief he claimed the Mighty Dollar must Default….
That’s the big one the Big Boys are planning on currently
I have been reading in the local paper about issues with respect to families who live in the weekly rental hotels. These tend to be the cheapest form of housing around here. Families with several children will jam into a small space. The hotel rooms will have a small cooking device, perhaps a small refrigerator and a bathroom. Now families in these spaces are facing eviction if they are behind on rent. There is an argument as to whether the residents should be treated as long term renters who cannot yet be evicted for lack of payment of rent.
It’s sizing up to be a very rough winter for a lot of people.
In space things are different.
The atoms will move from one piece of metal to another and the pieces will merge as one solid.
Space missions do have a problem with this natural phenomenon.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1281707903120900096
The effect is caused by the exchange forces between the atoms, or, specifically, of the atomic nuclei: exchange forces between bosons are attractive. In metals, this attraction at close range will overcome the electrostatic repulsion of the electron shells, and so cause the “welding”. The situation for ferromagnetic alloys is rather more complicated, and so far I believe only approximate solutions are available.
Interesting! The Space Solar folks will need to keep this in mind.
This seems to be the lack of gas contaminants (vacuum) and clean surfaces, resulting in the Van Der Walls molecular attraction cementing the two together. This is done on some present day laser crystal constructions, where the material is polished so smooth that the clean uncontaminated surfaces adhere to each other through molecular attraction forces. No glue or adhesive required!
I would rather bet on Casimir effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
My understanding is this is due to clean metal surfaces with no oxide covering. Basically everything on Earth in atmosphere is coated with an oxide layer. In outer space with a vacuum a clean surface can stay clean. But of course you must first clean it.
It seems that Christians are being completely wiped out everywhere and by everyone and that there is no possibility of tolerance between them and anyone else. Can you imagine people who would put gang attacks on people for their beliefs on the internet and what that must be like for the people involved. I suppose that is what happens when tolerance is not possible and it seems that is only going to end one way. Sad.
> Radicals in India Use Social Media to Circulate Videos of Attacks on Christians
09/12/2020 India (International Christian Concern) – According to the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN), radical Hindu nationalists are making and circulating videos of their attacks on Christians in an effort to incite hatred and fear. This report comes as Persecution Relief, an Indian Christian NGO, reports that it has documented some 293 cases of Christian persecution in India in just the first half of 2020.
In an interview with UCAN, Shibu Thomas of Persecution Relief explains that many incidents of Christian persecution are being recorded by radical Hindu nationalists. These videos are then widely circulated on social media, with Facebook alone having a network of 33 million users in India.
According to Thomas, the videos of attacks on Christians are circulated to incite hatred and defame the Christian minority of India. In these videos, the Christian victims are falsely accused of committing a crime before being attacked. Often, the crime these victims are accused of is forced religious conversions.
Accusations of forced conversions are especially used against Christians in states where anti-conversion laws are currently enforced.
In states where anti-conversion laws are currently enacted, including Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttrakhand, they are widely abused. Radical nationalists falsely accused Christian leaders and evangelists of forcefully converting individuals to Christianity to justify harassment and assault. Local police often overlook this harassment due to the false accusation of forced conversions.
https://www.persecution.org/2020/09/12/radicals-india-use-social-media-circulate-videos-attacks-christians/
Blacks and Muslims in the USA and Europe regularly put their gang attacks on white people on the internet. They gave been known to stream them live on Facebook.
Nothing new there. Don’t you know that is okay? White people are evil.
And you are a racist if you object.
The problem is not so much race, per se, but the exaltation of violence: when I was looking into London black gangs, I even found videos made by them in prison, posted on Youtube, boasting about attacks on young black inmates.
It’s simply a vile sub-culture, egoistic and without any morality except inspiring terror and proving how vicious you can be.
What did we do with such groups in the past – bandits and outlaws?
Exterminate them, with rope and axe – for the benefit of ALL decent people, whatever their race.
“Virus pushes world’s biggest job program to brink in India – Rathod is vying for work under the world’s largest jobs programs: The only option for the millions of migrant workers who face mass job losses in a struggling economy and a raging pandemic.
““If there were 15 people for a job earlier, now there are 200. Work for eight days is getting done in one day,” Rathod, 45, said from Nawabganj in Uttar Pradesh.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1733666/business-economy
According to the article:
But there really aren’t enough jobs available for all the people without work because of the pandemic.
“Riot police fought running battles with opposing groups of protesters near Beirut’s Presidential Palace on Saturday after rights activists clashed with rival demonstrators chanting their support for President Michel Aoun.
“Clashes erupted after activists marking the 40th day since the deadly Beirut port explosion on Aug. 4 were confronted by Free Patriotic Movement supporters who tried to break through a security blockade.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1733486/middle-east
“Tens of thousands of anti-Shiite protesters including demonstrators linked to Sunni extremists rallied in Pakistan’s Karachi on Saturday, in the second day of protests that have sparked fears of sectarian violence.”
[Photos]
https://gulfnews.com/photos/news/photos-anti-shiite-protesters-march-for-second-day-in-karachi-1.1599979580412
When resources are scarce, there seem to be more extremists willing to fight with others.
“The French police fired tear gas and arrested more than 250 people in Paris as “yellow vest” protesters returned to the capital’s streets in force for the first time since the coronavirus lockdown…
“Some of the protesters wore black clothes and carried the flag of an anti-fascist movement, suggesting the presence of radical demonstrators dubbed “black blocs” often blamed for violence at street marches in France.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/clashes-arrests-yellow-vest-protests-return-france-200912161751866.html
“The tourists are leaving Italy. Now catastrophe looms… Fears of a second wave appear to have dashed earlier projections of a September and October tourism revival.”
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/italy-tourism-economy-catastrophe-covid/index.html
“Greece’s president will head to a tiny island that is at the heart of the country’s bitter dispute with Turkey on Sunday as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s authoritarian leader, threatened to resolve the two nation’s differences “on the battlefield…
“While speaking in Istanbul, he issued another threat towards Greece, referring obliquely to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and other pacts that established the borders of modern Turkey.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/12/greek-president-heads-tiny-island-crux-crisis-turkey/
The Treaty of Lausanne involved a massive population swap that saw 1.2 million people forcibly driven from Turkey and Greece in an officially agreed and supervised ethnic cleansing.
The fellow from the League of Nations refugee office who oversaw the “swap” – Fridtjof Nansen – received the Nobel Peace Prize for that year, 1922.
Anyway, that was the end of the Ottoman Empire of course. It seems Erdogan wants to reiterate the whole issue.
relitigate…but maybe reiterate also applies. That autosuggest irony strikes again.
I have wandered the ruins of Kayakoy in Turkey, a town left deserted after its Greek population was evacuated in 1923. A rather eerie spot.
“Turks/Muslims from Greece did not wish to settle in Kayakoy due to rumors of ghosts of the Greeks killed there.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayaköy
Passed near it during a tour of Anatolia. Its old name was Karmilassos, which tells you it was not originally Greek, but Pelasgian. Very sad.
These are a couple of charts of COVID-19 cases. The first one is new case average for the last seven days. A wide range of countries have had big increases, whether or not they number of illnesses dropped to a low level previously. Relative to population, the US is no longer highest of the countries shown. Spain and France are higher.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/spain-us-france-italy-new-covid-cases-sept-12.png-.png
When it comes to deaths, the number of deaths is a whole lot lower now. This is partly because the people catching COVID-19 are younger. It is also because treatments are a whole lot better.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/italy-france-spena-and-us-new-deaths-sept-12.png
Hopefully, it’s also because the virus strain is less aggressive as the time goes by..
“For millions of Americans this week, a temporary $300 bump in their unemployment checks will be their last.
“Funding for President Donald Trump’s $300 unemployment benefits is starting to run out, leaving nearly 30 million people on unemployment benefits with only a fraction of their past wages.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-300-dollar-unemployment-benefit-expiring-economy-americans-still-jobless-2020-9?r=US&IR=T
“If the costs of living [in the US] these days seems to be rising faster than the official 1.3% inflation rate, there’s a reason.
“The annual inflation rate for Covid-connected purchases is 1.85%, or a half percentage point higher than the Consumer Price Index, according according to Harvard Business School professor Alberto Cavallo.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-12/u-s-cost-of-living-is-higher-than-official-inflation-rate-shows
“With COVID-related income supplements and unemployment benefits now expired or reduced, we face a new wave of mortgage and rental delinquencies, many of which will come in the next few months.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/516032-the-coming-wave-of-defaults
Ending supplemental payments makes a difference!
The Belarusian IT sector is threatening to bring down the tax office, the banks and electricity if the arrests of protesters continue today and if Lukashenko doesn’t leave by tomorrow.
https://mobile.twitter.com/bneeditor/status/1304825847602442240
I suppose the computer network folks have a huge amount of power today.
“Belarusian IT sector” will be outsourced to Asia when Lukashenko falls, the young flirting with imported color revolution scheme are very naive and gullible bunch..
There will be no shortage of incel Chinese nerds with a shot of scoring a white beauty
It seems Lukashenko is still there, as is the country’s IT. This crazy scheme sounds like something a deep state weenie would dream up as a high tech “colour revolution”. My guess is the US/NATO neocon warmongers gave him the goahead as an easy way of getting him to shut up and go away.
I read worldofhanumanotg’s writing that the old bankers live longer and they will thwart the fourth turning.
Isn’t it going to be the younger people’s advantage to murder as many older people as they could see? A full blown generational war.
“Young people” isn’t a cohesive cohort. Through the ages, humans have bonded for action and mutual security usiing far more basic and longlasting criteria than mere age.
And so it will be in the future.
Of course, we should still bear in mind that more than half of Americans under the age of 21 are now non-white. So in that case racial and age-related bonding in the USA may overlap.
One waits with great interest to see what kind of society this young cohort will manage to build.
It was meant as mere extension of megatrend, as even today’s 70s owner class cohort won’t be likely as effective when reaching age of 90+ but that’s ~20yrs from now, and many believe [it] will be over by then anyway..
Simple to achieve: send the “old” people to Carousel at age 30. Identifying the movie is left as an exercise for the reader.
Picked this off of Zerohedge, again it is the contrast between the baby boomers and the millennial generation. I think the big issue in the next few years is this transfer of wealth, baby boomers have to step up to the plate.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/millennials-are-coming-boomers-money-one-bank-sees-generational-conflict-breaking-out
Follow the money, from 1964 to 2019 I claim the increase in transfer of wealth from the young to the old was greater than the per capital increase cost of energy/captia of energy. This was based on media income/capita from BLS and SS admin.
I am running like hell fwiw.
Dennis L.
I’m a millennial and I’m coming after you, Denise. Give me all your toys!
I was born in 1945, and anyone after my money must first cope with my bodyguard of trained attack hedgehogs.
For entertainment and maybe serious thought -UFO.
This is an interview with David Fravor and Lex Fridman.
David was a wing commander on the Nimitz, Lex has a Ph,D in EE and is currently at MIT as a post doc in AI, as a side job he has a YouTube with close to 600K subscribers.
The UFO begins at 1:11:04 and lasts until 2:16:23 for the relevant part.
This encounter was from 2004, a similar one occurred off the East Coast in 2014 I believe.
My only conclusion is we are not as smart as we think, we are not alone and a surprising number of people seem to be coming back to the idea of an ultimate power. Which means to me, there is a reason to stick around, things may not be as bad as we think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E&feature=emb_err_woyt
Dennis L.
If this link was posted before, my apologies.
Dennis L.
I wonder Dennis, if the laws of physics universally apply. If yes then alien civilizations would risk collapse for the same general reasons that ours does, probably long before they can leave their worlds. No amount of superior intelligence could make a difference in a dissipative energy system.
D3G
“Superior intelligence” increases the dissipation.
So then, superior intelligence must therefore accelerate collapse? Intersesting point.
This is the “Fermi Paradox”, though in fact it was first proposed in 1933 by Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky. If life is abundant in our universe, and some of that life is intelligent, and some of *that* is advanced enough to have interstellar travel, where are they?
One way out is to deny one of the premises: life is rare; intelligent life is very rare; civilisations destroy themselves by smoking tobacco or inventing fiat currency before they develop space flight… Another is to deny the conclusion: they are here and two of them anally probed me last night; or they are here, but we are such an evil species the Earth has been quarantined (if that sounds familiar, it’s from C S Lewis’ “Out of the Silent Planet”, published in 1938).
The orthodox scientists have another explanation: faster than light travel is impossible, therefore no space aliens. Two hundred years ago, orthodox scientists had a similar fatuous reason for disbelieving reports of meteorites: “There are no stones in the sky; therefore no stones can fall out of the sky”. The word “impossible” is in my book a substitute for true skepticism.
Do I have an explanation? No. But two observations. First, SETI is a hopeless idea. A civilisation advanced enough to use interstellar communication would know enough to make such transmissions essentially lossless, so there would be nothing to overhear, anymore than we could equip a boat to overhear transatlantic cable traffic. Secondly, any civilisation advanced enough to visit us would be advanced enough to make their craft completely undetectable, at least until we can detect their gravitational attraction, probably the one thing you cannot cloak.
So this is a subject of little interest to me, and if you read C G Jung’s “Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky”, from 1958, it will probably become of little interest to you, too.
I’ve posted this on OFW before but for those who may not have seen it, it is an interesting read:
‘A Thermodynamic Answer to Fermi’s Paradox’ by Paul Chefurka.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Fermi.html
Thanks for reposting this. I remembered the outcome of this analysis, but not who posted it or when.
My earliest post that talked about dissipative structures seems to have been in April 2014. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/04/11/oil-limits-and-climate-change-how-they-fit-together/ I had been corresponding with Francois Roddier prior to this time about dissipative structures.
This article by Paul Chefurka was written on October 29, 2013. He says,
“Life is a dissipative structure as described by Ilya Prigogine: it lives by applying exergy to environmental raw materials to obtain the necessities for survival;”
So this is life, not economies, as dissipative structures. But a combination of dissipative structures is again a dissipative structure.
I doubt that I saw this back when it was actually written, or that I understood enough about it, to figure out exactly what it was saying. We know one way that things can work. The big question I have is whether we are missing some other way that things might work, with a different combination of elements in a different part of the universe.
Universe is homogeneous as the number of stable elements are limited to 81 due to the structure of the number line. Peter Plichta ‘Gods Secret Formula’. A dazzling read.
That is sort of what I thought.
Thank you, Harry. I read it several years ago, good to see it again. If you accept the premises, that every civilisation will follow our development path, then the conclusions pretty much follow. But the premises seem highly dubious. To give just one example, you don’t need rockets to get up to Earth orbit; you can use our planet’s magnetic field to do the same thing at about 1/1000 of the energy expenditure. And you don’t need fossil fuel to have a high energy economy: ocean thermal power can give you ten times the energy at one tenth the cost; the only obstacle is its lower energy flux density, but that is a soluble problem if were are more thoughtful and less greedy.
And once in Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere else in the inner system, and can use solar sails to get there.
Robert—
I fully accept that I might have missed a pertinent factoid here and there but, isn’t a high energy economy by definition greedy?
no other animal species carries our level of greed.
>>>>>And you don’t need fossil fuel to have a high energy economy: ocean thermal power can give you ten times the energy at one tenth the cost; the only obstacle is its lower energy flux density, but that is a soluble problem if were are more thoughtful and less greedy.<<<>>>And once in Earth orbit, you are halfway to anywhere else in the inner system, and can use solar sails to get there<<<<<
off -earth lift is always going to be the problem, and while solar sails CAN provide thrust., I hesitate to ask what size solar sail would be needed to push worthwhile cargo, then over what time period, and to exactly what purpose?
Robert, I believe intelligent life would send out self replicating probes to each solar system in the galaxy. They would observe and send reports once per century to the probes in the near by system who would in replay to their neighbors. The whole galactic network would receive reports all reports. This would help hide the point of origin. There may be bad aliens that one does not want to revile ones home location to.
The probe would just observe no kidnapping or dissecting of cows. It might build probes to be deployed on a planet with video and audio but small and camouflaged and self destructing ( in a quiet and discrete way) when done.
reveal
Thank you, Ed, and I agree this would be an excellent strategy. But one that requires some very long term thinking, which we have been unable to do since the end of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty.
This is an interesting video regarding a UFO sighting in 2004. David Fravor makes a good witness. He hadn’t been willing to talk very publicly about this early on because he figured people would think the four of them who saw the UFO were crazy. The technology of the UFO seemed to be way above what we have now in 2020. It looked like a white “tic tack.” It moved too fast and shifted too quickly from side to side to be a drone or a helicopter. The type of propulsion and fuel were impossible to make sense out of. They seemed to be way beyond what we can do now.
If I saw something like that, I would suspect either an optical phenomenon, or hallucination. Both are fairly common.
I’m sceptical that so many hard-boiled experienced military men are having ‘hallucinations’. They certainly can’t film their hallucinations. They do see lots of optical phenomena and learn to recognise Venus, swamp gas and all the rest.
Perhaps the conviction that we humans are top dog in this universe or even on this planet is a mental hallucination.
Of all of the theories that have been proposed to explain this, the simplest is that this is just another globalist psy-op.
It is strange to me that people who so fiercely baulk at “conspiracy theories” are apparently quite happy to swallow tales of little green men.
Steve Justice from Skunk Works analysed a metamaterial allegedly from a UFO crash.
The conclusion was that UFO’s are built in zero gravity, atom by atom…and even the atoms seems to have been built by the constructor.
Strange! I am skeptical that atoms can be built by the constructor. Do you have links to this?
Gail, I am sure atoms ca be built by a “constructor” of some kind; that, after all, is how we humble Earthlings built the transuranics. But could we tell the difference between a purpose built atom and an ordinary one? I rather doubt it. Supernova explosions almost certainly create transuranic elements; it’s just that they decay before anyone sees them.
I’m no scientist, Robert, but it’s clear that what happens naturally, on any scale, can potentially be duplicated by science. That’s how we humans managed to produce nuclear explosions on Earth. But so many people have little faith in science and cannot believe that it can progress, or cannot believe what it is currently capable of. In the past, when I have mentioned that tractor beams and teleportation are in their early phases in current science, occasionally commenters have ridiculed me and accused me of purveying pseudo-science. But then I have pointed them to the relevant, highly serious, online articles and told them to google the subject too. That shut them up. Fortunately our host, Gail, is not one of those people, and she poses open-minded questions if she is in doubt.
It is of course fine to be sceptical and it is also necessary. However, there are too many potentially intelligent people whose ideas are set in stone and can’t imagine a future beyond now with scientific capabilities that are also far beyond what we possess now. As somebody once wrote, you could imagine Victorians objecting to the idea of space travel because no spaceship could ever be big enough to carry all the coal it would need to burn and still be light enough to leave Earth’s atmosphere.
Not only can the rigid sceptics not imagine that science is capable of huge leaps, but they also cannot imagine what use such huge leaps would be put to. They cannot imagine that brilliant scientists of the future would find amazing uses to put them to, that we here in the present cannot conceive of. Such people are the equivalent of flat-earthers, because they cannot move on in their imagination, and they cannot imagine that others (and science) would move beyond their own flat-earther-ish imagination. It’s so frustrating to see such commenters still posting here.
For Malcopian: Gee, two Victorians sent people t the Moon: Jules Verne (with a very big gun), and H G Wells (with a coat of paint that cut off gravity). But then, some other Victorians called these scientific romances, and pointed out that even getting to Earth orbit was impossible.
Calculation: compute how much energy is needed to reach Earth orbit; measure how much energy is released by the most powerful known explosive (rather less), and hence there is nothing that could even lift itself into Earth orbit, let alone a payload. QED!
Of course, about 90% of the energy in a rocket indeed never reaches Earth orbit, a trick the Victorians overlooked. But to be fair, even space fanatic (and former SS officer) Wernher von Braun, in “Conquest of the Moon” estimated that a Moon rocket would need to weigh 800,000 tons to make the journey.
Our planet’s magnetic field, by the way, extends out into space for over 40,000 miles (65,000 km), well beyond the geosynchronous Clarke orbit. So magnetic repulsion, properly harnessed, could indeed get us there. The trick is working out how to do it.
“two Victorians sent people t the Moon: Jules Verne (with a very big gun), and H G Wells (with a coat of paint that cut off gravity).”
Thanks for that, Robert. I believe that Jonathan Swift and Edgar Allan Poe wrote stories that each incorporated a fictional element about one or two of the planets in the solar system that was later found to correspond to fact. It makes me wonder where intuition comes from.
@Robert: Then there’s the Kardashev scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
Guaranteed to get the cement heads frothing at the mouth. 🙂
For Malcopian (again)
In Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Swift wrote that the scientists of Laputa had discovered two small satellites of Mars. They were observed by Asaph Hall some 150 years later. Swift’s imaginary satellites have been seen as something prescient, but I think he simply made them up, not least because they don’t obey Kepler’s Second Law, which had been published in 1609.
Poe’s only space story was a rather silly satire called “The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall”, published in 1835. The protagonist goes to the Moon in a balloon, which Poe knew to be impossible since the story mentions the vacuum of space.
Unidentified: UFO Encounter Freezes Team in Time (Season 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85roqz-GCvs
From the ancient Hindu Vedic texts: ‘Prince Arjuna, flying in his vimana, laid on a beam that paralysed his opponent.’
Spooky, those parallels.
——————————–
Search ‘Unidentified: series 2’ on the dailymotion site to see some full videos from the new series.
“Singapore Airlines is not the first airline to offer trips that land at the same airport that they departed from.
“Japan’s ANA Holdings sold tickets for charter flights to nowhere last month, while two Taiwan carriers launched similar campaigns.
“Starlux Airlines introduced a ‘pretending to go abroad’ journey while EVA Airways filled all 309 seats on a Father’s Day flight.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8725811/Singapore-Airlines-planning-trips-start-end-airport-boost-business.html
Amazing!
But somehow feels apposite for our era of artificial stimulus and fake news.
Fake money, fake news, fake trips, fake people. It’s perfect.
I just came upon this article, Harry.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/united-sued-for-packing-nfl-charters-with-young-blond-crews
Maybe the airlines should bring back the mini skirts and go-go boots of the ’60’s.
Years ago, Australian airline Qantas had a memorable billboard advertising on the way to the airport. One side showed a Qantas flight being served by ‘blond bombshell’ flight crews. The other half portrayed a United flight being served by normally expected senior flight crews. International flights at US carriers get bid very senior. Anyway, the billboard caption below read: Fly Qantas to SFO to visit your Grandmother or book United and fly with your Grandmother.
D3G
Interesting! Wouldn’t be politically correct now, if airlines were actually offering the flights.
Singapore Airlines and JAL advertise with attractive Asian ladies. Will they also be attacked? I have heard that Asians are “white-adjacent”.
“Will they also be attacked?”
You saw my post as an attack? I thought the billboard was hilarious. I should have mentioned that this was 25 years ago. No US air carrier would have dared to do an ad campaign like that in those days. Just as no US carrier back then would have violated their contract agreements with the flight attendants by spicing up the crew roster on the senior NFL trip. I made no personal judgements here. I only observed that things are changing.
Cheers,
D3G
No, no, no… I meant “attacked” as in sued, as the airline was.
I’m sorry if I was not clear that I was reacting to the link at your initial post.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/f7/f7ffd2e906b1cf8e344ff12cb78190eadefbb587ac86531cd6000a183e67911f.jpg
Tonight we celebrate the Singapore Girl.
https://youtu.be/P5sGKR6NJBw
Yes, East Asian women are attractive to white males. This might be because they are sweet, submissive and willing to please, which by the way is a total myth, but more likely because their faces are slightly more neotonous, which our biological programming understands as better breeding stock. By the way, treat an Asian woman with due respect, and she will be very pleased. You will avoid being called an “ang moh”.
“Maybe the airlines should bring back the mini skirts and go-go boots of the ’60’s.”
Lol – I would endorse this strategy, D3G. 2020 is no fun.
I recall thinking in my twenties that the cultural pendulum was going to keep swinging towards fun and yet here we are two decades later saddled with a bizarre form of puritanism.
Cold water splash, but we might recall what Anthony Burgess wrote in his autobiography about the glorious 60’s:
‘I wanted the girls in mini skirts, but they didn’t want me: I was 45, and they called me ‘Grandad’.
Still carry on dreaming chaps! I am sure you can make your own fun on that island, Sir Harry, and we shall soon be reading scandalising reports about you in the Daily Mail……
How I sympathise with dear, old Andrew – I can’t imagine how out of place and pathetically lecherous I would look these days in a nightclub or similar.
When my scandal comes to light I shall have to tell the DM, “Please, sir – Xabier the hot-blooded Basque made me do it.”
A situation parodied in a rather funny movie called “Twinky”, released in 1970 when the craze was almost over. The US release was called “Lola”. The censors of the time cut the movie, not because of anything that happened, but because it contained readings from Twinky’s rather explicit diary. (Yes, it’s in my library)
This is a twenty minute discussion of the status of the Three Gorges Dam. The speaker does not feel that the dam is really designed properly to prevent floods. In fact, it can make them worse. It also has experienced damage in many ways, making it unstable. Like an unstable house, it is not really safe to use. The government has let some information on this leak out on the internet, so people won’t be too surprised when eventually the dam fails in some catastrophic way.
At about 17:00 from Stalin’s book on Political economy, “We have the tools to conquer nature.” I am not a fan of Guy McPherson whose statement “Nature bats last,” is well known, but with regards to the dam, we will see. My guess in August was it would hold – always an optimist, my concern was the amount or erosion all the water and silt/sand must be causing on the spill ways. The hydrologist seems like a smart cookie.
It is obvious there are shortcomings of the dam regarding flood control.
We appear to have reached the point where we are engineering to the limit when that limit is uncertain, we are at the limits to growth.
Dennis L.
The current population of China is 1,440,000,000. China can easily afford to lose a few million population and scarcely notice. And their government does not concern itself about the welfare of a few individuals. Neither did the Soviet Union, which is why it treated many of its citizens so brutally.
And fed them the lie that the rest of the world was crushed in misery under the capitalist boot, while they lived in Paradise.
Reading ZH today and Alasdair Macleod’s post on “Inflation, Deflation, and Other Fallacies”:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/inflation-deflation-other-fallacies
He mentions Gibson’s Paradox, a term I was unfamiliar with.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gibsonsparadox.asp
Basically the rate of inflation/deflation correlates to the wholesale prices, not the amount of currency in circulation. The price of energy (fossil fuels) consumers can afford to pay, for whatever reason is dropping as reflected by the drop in WTI prices, and since energy price is the ultimate controller of economies, by Gibson’s paradox then this would predict deflation. This is in contrast to the traditional supply-demand Keynesian theory that would predict price increases from the relentless printing of fiat money. Macleod does mention that going off the gold standard does complicate this however.