It takes energy to accomplish any of the activities that we associate with GDP. It takes energy to grow food: human energy, solar energy, and–in today’s world–the many types of energy used to build and power tractors, transport food to markets, and provide cooling for food that needs to be refrigerated. It takes energy to cook food and to smelt metals. It takes energy to heat and air condition offices and to power the internet. Without adequate energy, the world economy would come to a halt.
We are hitting energy limits right now. Energy per capita is already shrinking, and it seems likely to shrink further in the future. Reaching a limit produces a conflict problem similar to the one in the game musical chairs. This game begins with an equal number of players and chairs. At the start of each round, a chair is removed. The players must then compete for the remaining chairs, and the player who ends the round without a chair is eliminated. There is conflict among players as they fight to obtain one of the available chairs. The conflict within the energy system is somewhat hidden, but the result is similar.
A current conflict is, “How much energy can we spare to fight COVID-19?” It is obvious that expenditures on masks and vaccines have an impact on the economy. It is less obvious that a cutback in airline flights or in restaurant meals to fight COVID-19 indirectly leads to less energy being produced and consumed, worldwide. In total, the world becomes a poorer place. How is the pain of this reduction in energy consumption per capita to be shared? Is it fair that travel and restaurant workers are disproportionately affected? Worldwide, we are seeing a K shaped recovery: The rich get richer, while the poor get poorer.
A major issue is that while we can print money, we cannot print the energy supplies needed to run the economy. As energy supplies deplete, we will increasingly need to “choose our battles.” In the past, humans have been able to win many battles against nature. However, as energy per capita declines in the future, we will be able to win fewer and fewer of these battles against nature, such as our current battle with COVID-19. At some point, we may simply need to let the chips fall where they may. The world economy seems unable to accommodate 7.8 billion people, and we will have no choice but to face this issue.
In this post, I will explain some of the issues involved. At the end of the post, I include a video of a panel discussion that I was part of on the topic of “Energy Is the Economy.” The moderator of the panel discussion was Chris Martenson; the other panelists were Richard Heinberg and Art Berman.
[1] Energy consumption per person varies greatly by country.
Let’s start with a little background. There is huge variability in the quantity of energy consumed per person around the world. There is more than a 100-fold difference between the highest and lowest countries shown on Figure 1.
I have shown only a few example countries, but we can see that cold countries tend to use a lot of energy, relative to their populations. Iceland, with an abundant supply of inexpensive hydroelectric and geothermal electricity, uses it to heat buildings, grow food in greenhouses, mine “bitcoins” and smelt aluminum. Norway and Canada have both oil and gas supplies, besides being producers of hydroelectricity. With abundant fuel supplies and a cold climate, both countries use a great deal of energy relative to the size of their population.
Saudi Arabia also has high energy consumption. It uses its abundant oil and gas supplies to provide air conditioning for its people. It also uses its energy products to enable the operation of businesses that provide jobs for its large population. In addition, Saudi Arabia uses taxes on the oil it produces to subsidize the purchase of imported food, which the country cannot grow locally. As with all oil and gas producers, some portion of the oil and gas produced is used in its own oil and gas operations.
In warm countries, such as those in Middle Africa and India, energy consumption tends to be very low. Most people in these countries walk for transportation or use very crowded public transport. Roads tend not to be paved. Electricity outages are frequent.
One of the few changes that can easily be made to reduce energy consumption is to move manufacturing to lower wage countries. Doing this reduces energy consumption (in the form of electricity) quite significantly. In fact, the rich nations have mostly done this, already.
Trying to squeeze down energy consumption for the many countries around the world will be a huge challenge because energy is involved in every part of economies.
[2] Two hundred years of history shows that very slow growth in energy consumption per capita leads to bad outcomes.
Some readers will remember that I have pieced together data from different sources to put together a reasonable approximation to world energy consumption since 1820. In Figure 3, I have added a rough estimate of the expected drop in future energy consumption that might occur if either (1) the beginning of peak fossil fuels is occurring about now because of continued low fossil fuel prices, or (2) world economies choose to leave fossil fuels and move to renewables between now and 2050 in order to try to help the environment. Thus, Figure 3 shows my estimate of the pattern of total world energy consumption over the period of 1820 to 2050, at 10-year intervals.
The shape of this curve is far different from the one most forecasters expect because they assume that prices will eventually rise high enough so all of the fossil fuels that can be technically extracted will actually be extracted. I expect that oil and other fossil fuel prices will remain too low for producers, for reasons I discuss in Section [4], below. In fact, I have written about this issue in a peer reviewed academic article, published in the journal Energy.
Figure 4 shows this same information as Figure 3, divided by population. In making this chart, I assume that population drops only half as quickly as energy consumption falls after 2020. Total world population drops to 2.8 billion by 2050.
In Figure 4, some parts of the curve are relatively flat, or even slightly falling, while others are rising rapidly. It turns out that rapidly rising times are much better for the economy than flat and falling times. Figure 5 shows the average annual percentage change in energy consumption per capita, for ten-year periods ending the date shown.
If we look back at what happened in Figure 5, we find that when the 10-year growth in energy consumption is very low, or turns negative, conflict and bad outcomes are typical. For example:
- Dip 1: 1861-1865 US Civil War
- Dip 2: Several events
- 1914-1918 World War I
- 1918-1920 Spanish Flu Pandemic
- 1929-1933 Great Depression
- 1939-1945 World War II
- Dip 3: 1991 Collapse of the Central Government of the Soviet Union
- Dip 4: 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic and Recession
Per capita energy consumption was already growing very slowly before 2020 arrived. Energy consumption took a big step downward in 2020 (estimated at 5%) because of the shutdowns and the big cutback in air travel. One of the important things that energy consumption does is provide jobs. With severe cutbacks intended to contain COVID-19, many people in distant countries lost their jobs. Cutbacks of this magnitude quickly cause problems around the world.
For example, if people in rich countries rarely dress up to attend meetings of various kinds, there is much less of a market for dressy clothing. Many people in poor countries make their living manufacturing this type of clothing. With the loss of these sales, workers suddenly found themselves with much reduced income. Poor countries generally do not have good safety nets to provide food for those who are out of work. As a result, the diets of people subject to loss of income became inadequate, leading to greater vulnerability to disease. If the situation continues, some may even die of starvation.
[3] The pattern of world energy consumption between 2020 and 2050 (modeled in Figures 3, 4 and 5) suggests that a very concerning collapse may be ahead.
My model suggests that world energy consumption may fall to about 28 gigajoules per capita per year by 2050 (for a reduced population of 2.8 billion). This is about the level of world energy consumption per capita for the world in 1900.
Alternatively, 28 gigajoules per capita is a little lower than the per capita energy consumption for India in 2019. Of course, some parts of the world might do better than this. For example, Mexico and Brazil both had energy consumption per capita of about 60 gigajoules per capita in 2019. Some countries might be able to do this well in 2050.
Using less energy after 2020 will lead to many changes. Governments will become smaller and provide fewer services such as paved roads. Often, these governments will cover smaller areas than those of countries today. Businesses will become smaller, more local, and more involved with goods rather than services. Individual citizens will be walking more, growing their own food, and doing much less home heating and cooling.
With less energy available, it will be necessary to cut back on fighting unfortunate natural occurrences, such as forest fires, downed electricity transmission lines after hurricanes, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and constantly mutating viruses. Thus, life expectancy is likely to decline.
[4] It is “demand,” and how high energy prices can be raised, that determines how large an energy supply will be available in the future.
I keep making this point in my posts because I sense that it is poorly understood. The big problem that we should be anticipating is energy producers going out of business because energy prices are chronically too low. I see five ways in which energy prices might theoretically be raised:
- A truly booming world economy. This is what raised prices in the 1970s and in the run up to 2008. If there are truly more people who can afford homes and new vehicles, and governments that can afford new roads and other infrastructure, companies extracting oil and coal will build new facilities in higher-cost locations, and thereby expand world supply. The higher prices will help energy companies to be profitable, despite their higher costs. Such a scenario seems very unlikely, given where we are now.
- Government mandates and subsidies. Government mandates are what is maintaining demand for renewables and electric vehicles. Conversely, government mandates are part of what is keeping down tourist travel. Indirectly, this lack of demand relating to travel leads to low oil prices. A government mandate for people to engage in more travel seems unlikely.
- Much reduced wage disparity. If everyone, rich or poor, can afford nice homes, automobiles, and cell phones, commodity prices will tend to be high because buying and operating goods such as these requires the use of commodities. Governments can attempt to fix wage disparity through more printed money, but I am doubtful that this approach will really work because other countries are likely to be unwilling to accept this printed money.
- More debt, sometimes leading to collapsing debt bubbles. Spending can be enhanced if it becomes easier for citizens to buy goods such as homes and vehicles on credit. Likewise, businesses can borrow money to build new factories or, alternatively, to continue to pay wages to workers, even if there isn’t much demand for the goods and services sold. But, if the economy really is not recovering rapidly, these approaches can be expected to lead to crashes.
- Getting rid of COVID-19 inefficiencies and fearfulness. Economies around the world are being depressed to varying degrees by continued inefficiencies caused by social distancing requirements and by fearfulness. If these issues could be eliminated, it might boost economies back up to the already somewhat depressed levels of early 2020.
In summary, the issue we are facing is that oil demand (and thus prices) were far too low for oil producers because of wage disparity before the COVID-19 crisis arrived in March. Trying to get demand back up through more debt seems likely to lead to debt bubbles, which will be in danger of collapsing. There may be temporary price spikes, but a permanent fix is virtually impossible. This is why I am forecasting the severe drop in energy consumption shown in Figures 3 and 4.
[5] We humans don’t need to figure out how to fix the economy optimally between now and 2050.
The economy is a self-organizing system that will figure out on its own the optimal way of “dissipating” energy, to the extent possible. In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure. If the energy resource is food, energy will be dissipated by digesting the food. In the case of fossil fuel, energy will be dissipated by burning it. We may like to think that we are in charge, but we really are not. It is the laws of physics, or perhaps the Power behind the laws of physics, that is in charge.
Dissipative structures are not permanent. For example, hurricanes and tornadoes are dissipative structures. Plants and animals are dissipative structures. Eventually, new smaller economies, encompassing smaller areas of the world, may replace the existing world economy.
[6] This is a recent video of a panel discussion on “Energy Is the Economy.”
Chris Martenson is the moderator. Art Berman, Richard Heinberg and I are panelists. The Peak Prosperity folks were kind enough to provide me a copy to put up on my website.
A transcript of this panel discussion can be accessed at this link:
“Exchange rates have been stable in the Covid crisis – are we heading for a storm?
“…Nobody knows for sure what might be keeping currency movements in check. Possible explanations include common shocks, generous Fed provision of dollar swap lines, and massive government fiscal responses around the world. But the most plausible reason is the paralysis of conventional monetary policy…
“But the current stasis will not last forever.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/16/exchange-rates-covid-crisis-pandemic-us-election
“The financial system will be left in a fragile state even after the world emerges from the pandemic, according to the investment chief of one of the world’s most powerful bond fund managers.
“Dan Ivascyn of Pimco warned that the world will have to live with the consequences of the huge extra debts taken on by companies to see them through the crisis and by governments to bail out their economies.”
https://www.ft.com/content/20edd27c-2648-4322-9c78-0063cc967f04
Harry, maybe.
Civilization is a wonderful thing, it works for the most part, it has a value. Perhaps the money spent kept civilization working, if so a good investment.
All the numbers on computers are just that, what is valuable is a civilization that can use energy, move it, transform it, and allow some to imagine a future much different and better than the past.
The world has a huge group of number pushers who perhaps are not nearly as important as they would have us believe.
Thanks all the good work, for me it eliminates ideas that don’t work, fewer blind alleys to pursue.
Dennis L.
Harry,
If an asset has a positive rate of return, there are no financial issues, things can be worked out. If it does not have a rate of return, it is a race for those closest to the action to get their money out, the whole amount is not a consideration. Get there first, not an issue, lose a few and play the game by the Kelly Criterion and not an issue, be one of the rest, all wealth is lost.
Politically, clean out those who speculate on the assets, strip mine the citizens, leave the creaters and makers alone, they produce the real wealth.
Dennis L.
Yup, leave the productive capital alone in the process of trial, error and earth shattering success.
It is the continuation of evolution. Cherish it.
is it just me having trouble posting on OFW at the moment?
“Peru’s interim president has resigned after just five days following the deaths of two people in protests over the sudden removal of his predecessor.”
https://news.sky.com/story/peru-thrown-into-further-turmoil-as-interim-leader-resigns-after-two-protesters-die-12133471
“With the ouster of Martin Vizcarra, Peru has extended a spate of governmental instability that few countries can match, with every president since 1985 but one either impeached, imprisoned or sought in criminal investigations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-peru-is-always-just-one-step-away-from-chaos/2020/11/15/f7dcd2f6-27c0-11eb-9c21-3cc501d0981f_story.html
“Zambia’s debt crisis casts a long, global shadow:
“Every debt crisis is like a snowflake, unique and complex. But of the ones we have seen so far in 2020, the Zambian debacle has the potential to become a template for how many of the rest — and there will be more — will shake out.”
https://www.ft.com/content/35c58b5f-f890-4390-967a-28c0a0a1fb50
“Zambia’s Finance Minister Bwalya Ng’andu said creditors were at least partly to blame for the country defaulting on one of its Eurobonds last week, while a group of bondholders said the missed payment risked setting a more adversarial backdrop for debt negotiations.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-16/zambian-finance-minister-says-bondholders-to-blame-for-default
“Zambia’s former commerce minister Bob Sichinga has warned that if government does not treat the debt crisis seriously, the economy will collapse.”
https://www.themastonline.com/2020/11/15/itll-get-worsewere-all-going-to-pay-the-debt-price-sichinga-warns/
“Wheat and fuel shortages overwhelm Syria: The country’s economic collapse has been aggravated by the pandemic, Lebanese banking crisis and international isolation…
“A minor oil producer and once a wheat exporter, the government is so cash-strapped that last month it reduced subsidies on the one staple Syrians could just about afford — bread. The price of bread produced by government bakeries has doubled to 100 Syrian pounds.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f3ccc3a7-c697-412a-9b99-18944de5c108
“‘The war riche’: Syrian elites skirt US sanctions amid economic turmoil:
“In Damascus these days, Netflix is blocked but if you have the money you can subscribe to ProTV, a local and presumably pirated service.
While queues for gas canisters stretch down the block, if you know a guy, Nescafe Gold, Pringles and imported soy sauce are all available. As is the latest iPhone 12, though hospitals struggle to buy replacement parts for CT scanners.
“After a decade of war, the Syrian economy is in ruins, but a combination of profiteering and sanctions has produced some bizarre results…
““If you have money, you’re an Alawite,” said one woman from Damascus, referring to the nepotism surrounding the minority group to which Mr Assad belongs. “It’s not nouveau riche, it’s war riche,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/15/war-riche-syrian-elites-skirt-us-sanctions-amid-economic-turmoil/
“This year, Russia’s new confirmed oil and gas condensate reserves are expected to be well below the country’s output.
“Moreover, the development of many new oilfields won’t be profitable if oil prices remain below $50 per barrel, as they are difficult to reach and require expensive supporting infrastructure.”
https://realnoevremya.com/articles/4948-russia-may-face-difficulties-with-replacing-oil-reserves
That is the sort of news that should send a chill down everybody’s spine, but most people don’t know and don’t care.
“Saudi Aramco has revealed that it has hired a group of banks in a bid to raise cash amid a slump in oil price.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/aramco-hires-banks-raise-cash-coronavirus-hit-oil-prices-085053090.html
Saudi Aramco Turns to the Bond market to Help Fund $75B Dividend.
Aramco needs to raise debt after slumping oil prices caused profit to fall by 45% in Q3, debt % of equity now 21.8%, above its target range of 5% to 15%. – Bloomberg
“They” will find something…
Gail, is there a setting/theme on WordPress that can enable/disable the images/memes/graphics for the users? Thus the user/reader can choose to enable the additional content.
I get that not all people want to see the associated graphics to the comments, but disabling it completely also means removing graphs, charts and all the other goodies.
Don’t let the whiners dictate what is of relevance.
Not that I know of. Maybe there is something on an individual device a person is using. I have been trying to discourage use of GIFs.
There is a service that I can pay for that will speed up the loading of images.
Going back to the Classic Editor seems to have terribly slowed down the site. Even disabling it doesn’t seem to fix it. These are issues I will need to work on fixing.
This can be a very frustrating era. Layer upon layer of ever-less helpful complexity – makes one think of Tainter.
Complexity is basically the issue I am dealing with. The new “Block Editor” allows me do to 100+ additional functions, mostly having to do with charging for content of my site and uploading things from social media. It also seems to be very unstable. I end up closing out and reopening an article I am working on, after the system suddenly does unexpected things. It doesn’t have good backup, unless you pay for extra for the Jetpack package, which has even more features, most of which are unneeded. I figured out the backup issue with the post I just wrote, when it suddenly reverted to an earlier version, when I didn’t expect it to.
I am worried that the new Jet Pack add-in that they want me to pay for (actually, its not all that expensive, so that is not an issue) will add even more complexity, without really fixing the issues I am concerned about. I suppose I will try that next. I looked up its ratings, and it has an awfully lot of 1-star ratings. One says “look up bloatware.” Another says, “Worst plug-in ever.”
WordPress does have good tech support via “Chat” with the package I am using. I need to be using tech support more.
In [6] you refer to a video which is no longer there, where can I find it?
I will work on fixing the problem.
WordPress has been changing its system. It had a “Classic Editor.” Then it added a new fancy “Block Editor” that would upload videos such as this one. I tried last night to switch back to the Classic Editor (by installing a “Classic Editor” plug in), not realizing that it would mess up past posts. This morning I turned off the plug in. I will need to look and see how much more fixing I need to do.
I went back to the “block editor.” I checked the code, and the video still shows up the way it was added at first. I can see the video in draft mode, but not after it is published.
I will need to contact WordPress about how to fix the problem.
I “fixed” the problem by downloading the Vimeo video as an MP4, uploading it to WordPress, and showing it. It has a rather unflattering picture of me on the front, instead of the Vimeo picture of the four of us.
These is a link to the Vimeo recording.
1ad79330
There is no unflattering picture of you Gail.
❤
Why does Taiwan have a low incidence of COVID compared to other countries?
I suspect the main reason has to do with international variation in PCR testing procedures. For most other infections, the number of PCR amplification cycles (cycle threshold) for determining whether a specimen is positive is 30 or less. Once COVID rolled along, researchers relaxed these standards substantially. Most countries in the world now allow up to 40 cycles (an astounding amount of amplification well-known to produce many false positives). Taiwan apparently has held a more reasonable, but still very liberal, standard of 35 cycles (see https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202006250010).
When there are more than 30 amplification cycles for SARS-CoV-2, a person testing positive by PCR is very unlikely to be infected (no culturable virus). In many studies, the threshold is even lower. See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.20167932v4.full.pdf. The authors of this article suggest those registering positive above 30 cycles are previously infected and shedding non-viable virus. That could be, but a more likely explanation, in my opinion, is contamination (the bane of all genetic testing methods), and/or PCR targets that are not unique to SARS-CoV-2 (maybe more common earlier in the year than now).
So how many PCR positives come from this likely false positive range? I searched briefly but could find only a handful of studies that showed the distributions of the cycle thresholds. Here’s what I found:
18/19 PCR positives among healthcare workers in 6 English hospitals were very likely false positive: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163445320304503
~ 90% of PCR positives in a Korean cohort above 30 cycle threshold (see Figs. 2 and 3; notice that the density of positives increases as the cycles approach 40): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769235/
symptomatic German outpatients averaged just below the 30 cycle cut-off, and asymptomatic contacts were well above this cut-off: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386653220302845
~ 20% of symptomatic Wisconsin/Illinois patients above the 30 cycle cut-off (Fig. 3): https://academic.oup.com/ajcp/article/154/4/479/5873820
Without good measurement, scientific research is worthless. And without good diagnostics, medicine is also often worthless. As a scientist, I look at these results and conclude that the COVID emperor has no clothes. SARS-CoV-2 and COVID exist, as far as I can tell, but the magnitude of the epidemic seems to be an order of magnitude less than officials and mainstream researchers claim. With these faulty testing procedures, simply testing more will produce more (false) positives. A self-perpetuating epidemic by laboratory fiat …
A recurring problem is that some Taiwan person travels abroad, and tests positive. Taiwan tests all their friends and relatives, but finds nothing.
And that is consistent with differences in testing procedures (cycle thresholds for calling a result “positive”).
This is how the epidemic will end, if it ever does. Labs will return to the pre-COVID standards, cases and apparent transmission will evaporate overnight, and politicians will declare victory for their harmful and ineffective control policies. Mass brainwashing about COVID will remain intact.
I don’t think it’s the testing procedures. Taiwan has also had very few deaths, so I think you are grasping at straws. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next fellow, because sometimes “conspiracy” really is the best explanation for the data, but this anti-covid hysteria has really gotten carried away, along with the anti-vax fanaticism. It is one thing to question the safety of certain vaccine ingredients, or the appropriateness of vaccines for certain vulnerable individuals, but vax fears have gotten to the point that they simply ignore all the evidence that doesn’t match the anti-vax articles of faith. To hear some tell it, the tiny dose of virus one gets in a vaccine is more deadly than the full blown, symptomatic disease!
But back to the covid pandemic. A few months ago, I saw a fictional black and white film apparently inspired by the last US smallpox epidemic in 1949. Smallpox is far deadlier than covid, and also disfiguring to some degree, yet even then the health authorities were battling the same disinformation, public resistance, and denunciations of infringements of their alleged rights and freedoms that we see with covid (as though temporary quarantines or jabs in the arm were acts of enslavement). I conclude that a lot of people just have a hard time assessing the evidence and weighing the pros and cons realistically. To believe in every conspiracy is as problematic as rejecting every conspiracy.
SpaceX.
Many, most of those on this site think space is a waste or will never be profitable, Musk has a rocket on the way to the ISS with four real humans on board. Tomorrow we find out if they arrive intact. Meanwhile, a chunk of asteroid is on its way back to earth.
“16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid’s metal is worth an estimated $10,000 quadrillion, more than the entire economy of Earth.” That should cover some overhead. Musk has his as his goal Mars, coincidence I expect.
It seems to me that Bezos is also in this game. Musk had something to do with PayPal as I recall.
Anyone here made bets that paid off as well as these two?
I know, it is impossible, there are a million reasons it won’t work and every reason the earth’s population will sink into miserable destitution, hunting dinner with a bow and arrow.
Financially, betting on the human race going forward is a no brainer. If you lose, a bow and arrow are very cheap, make a club, find a cave and you are ready to court and be a provider. Politically, that ought to get the feminist vote.
Dennis L.
I always appreciate your optimism.
I wouldn’t bet that the human race will collapse any time soon.
now, I have a responding view to your space view.
if “they” could bring back 8 billion pounds of gold from “outer space”, and give everyone a pound of it, how would that make anyone more prosperous?
thought experiment there, my friend.
Thanks for the note, your thought experiment.
Zinc is exhausted in 17 years, we can’t galvanize things, rust. Assume the asteroid is gold, gold plate rather than galvanize.
I worked with gold in the seventies, it is a wonderful metal to restore teeth, far better than any modern material – I was in on the beginning of porcelain milled/cast restorations, they weren’t that good. My gold restorations are now over 40 years old, close to 50, they go on and on, gold is a wonderful metal for many things. Dentistry stopped using it in part because it became too expensive, the best alloys were over 70% gold, soft, wore like natural teeth, did not erode the opposing enamel, aged with the body, margins stayed closed. .
Copper has become hard to find, low grade ores, during WWII uranium separation required a great deal of copper for magnets, silver from the treasury worked fine, they did want it back though. If we can’t find copper asteroids, perhaps silver.
The point is some of the old stuff is better, we are substituting dangerous metals in wind turbines because we can no longer find the oil/gas, etc. to run generators made of copper. Simplification yes, the problem with neodymium is the refining which is why it was outsourced to China. We are out of good options.
I understand your thoughts, but the downside is almost zero, roll the dice enough times with these odds and the Kelly criterion takes care of the rest.
All the best,
Dennis L.
the gold/asteroid question has a simple answer:
Right now, gold is hovering around the 1900$ an oz mark.
There are about 130000 tons of the stuff in physical existence. Nations (and wealthy individuals) keep tons of it in vaults to underpin their net worth.
It’s a system that has worked for millenia, because gold is the one stable physical element that does not oxidize and decay.
***************
So find a sold gold asteroid, and bring it back to Earth.
Hooray—we’ll all be rich!
Er—no we won’t. A million tons of gold will reduce our existing gold stash value by 90%, thus destroying the economic system that sent out the probe to find the gold asteroid in the first place.
As David points out, a pound of gold for everyone wouldn’t alter net worth in the slightest.
****************
As to other metal resources in asteroids, they function on the same basis as oil.
Sitting out there they might have a ‘price’, but they do not have a ‘value’ until they are converted into something else.
Space loonies divide asteroid content by Earth values and come up with $$$ quadillions spinning before their eyes.
A million/billion tons of iron is worth literally nothing unless it can be converted into usable artifacts and used by sentient beings (us).
Only at the point of conversion can jobs be created and wages paid. Wages are necessary to go out and buy even more ‘stuff’.
****************
the bottom line is of course that it will always cost more to go get an asteroid, than any wage/conversion that can be paid back on Earth as part of the commercial function.
Bezos and Musk are indulging themselves in firework displays, for no better reason that they can.
Converting one material into another form requires heat/energy input. We have already reached the point where heat is killing us.
Norman, of course, you are correct.
“Bezos and Musk are indulging themselves in firework displays, for no better reason that they can. ”
They have made some amazing things work, Amazon, and now a rocket to ISS – I assume it is there, haven’t checked. That is real.
“Converting one material into another form requires heat/energy input. We have already reached the point where heat is killing us.”
Absolutely correct from both the global wa… and from the radiant heat issue, do it in space.
Norman, there are people going light speed at industrial processes, those processes need raw materials. Modern manufacturing is capital and knowledge driven, there are those who are drive to learn, driven to do. Vasco Da Gama went to India because he wanted to go to India, he maybe did it for no better reason than he could.
We can believe what we will, history seems to indicate we go forward.
Socially, it seems we have many trying to deal with this by holding things back. A good guess, history says they will be wrong and forgotten.
Dennis L.
Rich guys used to compete to see who could build the tallest gothic cathedral. Now they compete to see who can build the coolest rocket. What would Freud say?
Dennis, avoid the classic trap:
modern manufacturing is absolutely not knowledge driven
it is energy driven. Knowledge is secondary to that.
I thought we’d got that irrefutably established, at least on OFW.
it is a basic law of commerce, that the consumer must have more spare energy (i.e. cash) available than is consumed in making the item he wishes to buy. (borrowing is irrelevant)
bear that in mind when conceiving products sourced and made ‘off earth’. Because they can only be consumed ‘on Earth’.
And no, they are no use in off earth ‘exploration’, because that is ultimately ‘purposeless’. We can’t equate ‘off earth’ explorations with ‘on earth’ exploration.
We can only support space exploration with Earth wages and taxes. Bezos and Musk are blowing finite earth resources on pointless personal ego trips.
At the moment they possess enough spare energy to do so. As I said above, Bezos and Musk possess more spare energy (cash) than the product they are consuming costs in real terms.
When they discover it is an infinite loss maker, they will stop.
They won’t be allowed to stop.
Even if it means sacrificing 1B people, on it will march.
Norman,
“modern manufacturing is absolutely not knowledge driven”
I strongly disagree, modern manufacturing is knowledge driven, cutting metal with a plasma table using nesting is very knowledge driven and results if far less waste. Five axis machining is very knowledge driven and very efficient.
We are going to have a new economy.
“When they discover it is an infinite loss maker, they will stop.”
Life is an infinite loss maker, it is because it is. We are going to have a new and wonderful economy. Things are changing and it is very difficult to sort out what is really happening.
We find what we look for, walking only looking for the potholes misses opportunity.
Dennis L.
Yes, but entropy is always a problem. So is too much efficiency. We need worker to be making good wages, not a handful of machine overseers and capital providers getting all of the rewards.
It is clearly a predicament with large swaths of the work force being made irrelevant by the means of technology.
What I foresee is smaller decentralized machine and recycling shops.
Why make goods in China, when they can be produced locally from open sourced drawings and software.
This will serve a number of purposes, advance smaller businesses, enabling robots and CNC machinery closer to the consumer making the system more resilient to failure. It will foster a new generation closer to the means of production.
An example would be the decentralized production of aircraft components during WW2 in the UK.
Then assemble your stuff IKEA style as the components and assemblies arrive at your doorstep JIT style.
This would tie in neatly with the corepheriphery topology.
The core produces specialized gear, raw materials and components such as microprocessors and petroleum based chemicals and materials.
but
but
but
we have a smaller workforce, and so presumably a smaller wage-pool
yet components are to be assembled IKEA style
then delivered to doorsteps JIT. One must assume they are not freebies??
Robots are to produce ‘goods’ as fast as un-humanly possible. So with the workforce largely ‘irrelevant’, and under the commercial law that buyers must have more surplus cash (energy) available than was used to create the product in the first place, where will the money/energy come from to keep this buyer/seller merry go round moving.?
sorry to poke my nose into every goddamn OFW problem, but curiosity got the better of me. (were you really serious??)
WW2 plane production was done with borrowed money. The parts were assembled and thrown at the enemy. They were often destroyed in days or weeks.
The China production thing is a problem we have created for ourselves.
We paid ourselves higher and higher wages but spent those wages on goods sourced from low wage parts of the world.
Bring those goods back to western industries by all means, but your toaster will cost maybe 2-3-4 times as much when made with local labour.
(local labour has local living expenses )
Low price (local) toasters are no problem, if workers take a drastic pay cut.
If they take a drastic pay cut–they won’t be able to afford the toasters they make.
Why not?
because food and housing (for example) costs will remain the same, and a massive proportion of wages will be diverted to that. Food costs are fixed because they are locked into oil costs.
We are frantically burning oil to deliver food the 7.5 bn people.
interesting economic corner we painted ourselves into, don’t you agree?
It is energy and technology that is the drivers of the evolutionary processes in IC.
I am not bothering myself with the monetary shenanigans. It is beyond silly at this point. Tear down the money laundry racket. Start with the Swedish banks.
So should you.
Boot out the useless eaters from the guvmints and put them on UBI (food and shelter, no more).
And so on, see my previous posts for further elaboration.
@gail, Product vs. process innovations. Product innovations tend to increase employment and wages. Process innovations (which improve the efficiency of the production process) tend to benefit the employer while putting downward pressure on employment and wages. Manufacturing may go through the same automation revolution that farming went through in an earlier era.
Will fossil fuel depletion change this? I suspect not! Even when FF is totally exhausted, I suspect the cost of buying biofuels to generate off grid electricity to power the robots will not exceed the cost of producing enough “biofuel” (in the form of food) to feed a human worker. I suspect biofuels will be sufficiently valuable for certain purposes post-fossil that demand for biofuel will compete with demand for food for agricultural land.
During the industrial revolution, corporate stocks began to replace land as the basis for the great family fortunes of the plutocrats. In the future, I suspect land will begin to rise once again in importance, and the rich will commence a land rush to buy up as much of it as they can.
Many common people will eventually end up as serf-like farm hands for the big landowners, as has more often than not been the case over the course of history. To make matters worse, it is well established by big land holdings are less productive per acre than small, family-owned plots. We shall have returned to rentier economies, and the rentiers do not need to be smart or diligent or even sane, just lucky enough to have inherited the family estate. The children of these rentiers will marry each other and keep the money in a small circle of families. (Some of my own ancestors did the same thing in the antebellum South, but back then there was still a lot of land to be had.)
Dennis
In reply to the ‘knowledge driven’ comment below, all those fancy machining/laser gizmos are the product of surplus energy.
it was that input that allowed ‘knowledge’ to develop in gradual stages, to bring us to laser cutting and 3d printers.
knowledge can only function when there is enough surplus energy to allow it to happen
as I’ve pointed out before, Da Vinci had flight and other stuff figured out, but an engine didn’t appear till 300 years later, so his ideas went nowhere.
Look Norman, nobody is objecting to the idea that energy is the driver of technological advancement, just as solar energy and water is the essence of life.
That one is a given.
If the sole output of IC is intended for mass consumption and competing with the joneses. I’m out, fsck it, let it burn.
May I be a hypocrite, and entitled prince of IC, firmly placed on the scale of suck. But I can assure you that competing in vanity with the joneses is located last in the list of “important shit” in my life.
Tear down the behemoth and reconfigure it into a corepheripery topology with agency for the agents (biological and synthetic) in the economy.
(((Gail if this reply is duplicated–apologies—please delete one of them))))))—NP
***********
the gold/asteroid question has a simple answer:
Right now, gold is hovering around the 1900$ an oz mark.
There are about 130000 tons of the stuff in physical existence. Nations (and wealthy individuals) keep tons of it in vaults to underpin their net worth.
It’s a system that has worked for millenia, because gold is the one stable physical element that does not oxidize and decay.
***************
So find a sold gold asteroid, and bring it back to Earth.
Hooray—we’ll all be rich!
Er—no we won’t. A million tons of gold will reduce our existing gold stash value by 90%, thus destroying the economic system that sent out the probe to find the gold asteroid in the first place.
As David points out, a pound of gold for everyone wouldn’t alter net worth in the slightest.
****************
As to other metal resources in asteroids, they function on the same basis as oil.
Sitting out there they might have a ‘price’, but they do not have a ‘value’ until they are converted into something else.
Space loonies divide asteroid content by Earth values and come up with $$$ quadillions spinning before their eyes.
A million/billion tons of iron is worth literally nothing unless it can be converted into usable artifacts and used by sentient beings (us).
Only at the point of conversion can jobs be created and wages paid. Wages are necessary to go out and buy even more ‘stuff’.
****************
the bottom line is of course that it will always cost more to go get an asteroid, than any wage/conversion that can be paid back on Earth as part of the commercial function.
Bezos and Musk are indulging themselves in firework displays, for no better reason that they can.
Converting one material into another form requires heat/energy input. We have already reached the point where heat is killing us.
It is not how it works Norman,
Once we are able to mine asteorids, gold will be more or less totally irrelevant as a proxy for value.
Just as cars made horses irrelevant.
It will become another raw material in the process that creates evolutionary advantages.
Gold only has value as a proxy for desire manifested from hallucinations inside the rapacious primate skull.
Once “mankind” mines asteorids, the sociocultural change will be so fundamental as that between a stone age man and an entitled prince of IC.
Norman, you have to learn to take the step into oblivion and stop projecting yourself onto every goddamn line of reasoning.
However, if we are able to mine asteorids remains to be seen. Try it we will, nonetheless.
Remove those myopia inducing glasses of the ordinary for a secon, okay?
I cannot imagine having the energy required to mine asteroids. This will not happen. I am afraid Norman is right.
I am not rejecting that outcome.
But basing a line of reasoning of what we are used to is entirely misleading.
lol—if lols be applicable
‘self’ is the only projection I have for my line of reasoning. I cannot sit in your head and project ‘you’ can I?
If another line of logic pops up and starts ranting about how wrong I am, I will bow out gracefully, but only when I it shown that I am wrong. Just saying I am won’t cut it.
the focus of my reasoning is (as I have pointed out before):
Material of any kind only acquires value at the point of conversion into something else.
Call me myopic if you must, but the onus rests on you to fault that observation
A tree grows and is beautiful. It has no ‘commercial’ value until it is cut down and used for some other purpose. That purpose will consume energy and heat, and deliver wages to someone, in some form.
then whatever it is made into, will decay. That is an absolute.
It is called entropy.
Take iron or any mineral from the earth, go through the same process. Eventual result? Entropy.
This isn’t my line of reasoning. Or bloody minded myopic argument. It is established science. I only write this stuff down to prove myself reasonably sane. Some agree with me, some don’t. Their choice of course.
One element doesn’t do this. Bury a gold object for 5000 years and it remains unchanged when it’s dug up.
That is the source of the value of gold, in our terms. We live a commercial existence, gold is a consistent store of value for that.
But take the giant leap to asteroids, to indulge this fantasy for a while. The laws of conversion still stand:
Whatever the asteroid is made of, it must go through a process of being converted to something else in order that it can accrue value.
You cannot manufacture ‘stuff’ off earth, then shoot it down a space elevator and hand it out free at the bottom
****************
But let’s leave the fantasy island of asteroid mining shall we.?
Just at that point I stopped writing this, and watched a TV program about the screaming post election nutcases in USA. They are ‘protesting’ about anything and everything.
What they are really protesting about is depleting energy resources. (the vanished American dream) I watched the split of hatred growing between civilised people who are prepared to lose everything in the name of righteousness.
‘Somebody else’ is taking away their way of life. Yet it is they who seek to destroy it.
Trump is a good Christian, working for them. I was on the point of weeping.
Asteroid mining? The technology to do that hasn’t been thought of yet. So it has to be 50 years in the future (if at all)
The Biden/Trump lunatics want their ‘NOW”. The country is tearing itself apart NOW. They will not wait 50 Years for space elevator freebies.
My myopic reasoning will not allow me to separate techno-fantasy from political insanity or god-mania. It is a package we are all wrapped up in.
I’m in UK, but the USA affects me. I wish it didn’t. Then I maybe wouldn’t feel the need to project myself onto every goddamn line of reasoning.
Unfortunately this IS how things work.
Hardly affordable options.
The International Space Station (ISS) Cost
• The cost of the International Space Station (ISS) is approximately 150 billion USD as of 2019
• Current running cost by NASA around 3 Billion USD per year.
• Per day spending on one man at the ISS is 7.5 Million USD.
It costs a lot to provide what the earth does for free. Can’t see it scaling up.
The US spend about 416B on the road network.
Slap down rail and leave the road to rot.
In the EU, the rail network cost about 110B.
Clearly one will have to go, it ain’t gonna be the rail.
That is for sure.
Then the space program can continue.
Nothing is for sure.
That is for sure.
the USA is held together by the threads of energy that created it–ie the road rail and later the air network
remove those and the nation will secede into six or seven independent nation states
it is inevitable that they will be remove in the future,
so secession will be inevitable
and so will the resulting civil wars in denial of it.
A long, long, looooong time before the roads are gone, the rail will still be there, turning and twisting across the magnificient landscape of the USA.
But the passenger cars won’t work, because of complexity built into the system. Fancy door opening systems for example.
Coal fired steam locos can do the ‘huffin and ‘puffin for quite some time, since there is plenty of coal and iron left in the USA.
There is plenty of coal and iron left in the USA, only if you can get the price up high enough. Companies extracting coal keep going bankrupt. Our iron or is getting pretty depleted too.
when you have a spare afternoon
take a stroll round a steam engine restoration workshop
a road is easy to maintain
until you come to a bridge–then you have problems.
In a collapsed society, when a big bridge goes down it stays down. That is when real territorial divisions take hold—those bad guys on the other side did this!!!
Lets sneak over there in a boat one night and…….
in no time at all those bad guys across the river hate each other so much no one dare cross
welcome to a foreign land folks
Exactly. We will have lots of bridges going down. If someone starts a war, bridges will be one thing they will work hard on “taking out.”
The Far West is somewhat tenuously connected to the rest of the US (although it does help that there are six good passes through the Rockies), but America east of the Rockies is held together by the world’s most impressive network of water transport, much of it near to what used to be the world’s richest farmland, and probably still is, relatively speaking.
The Mississippi and its tributaries drain into the intracoastal waterway that stretches from Corpus Christi to Chesapeake Bay.
NYC is connected via the Hudson River and the Eerie Canal to the Great Lakes which are also adjacent to this great grain growing region in the Middle West.
And no other country has nearly so many natural deep-water ports.
The Panama Canal also helps to connect east and west commercially.
No other country is so blessed, and the intrinsic economic edge that this water network has always given us over other countries will only serve to increase our relative edge which had been somewhat eroded by other countries’ access to relatively cheap rail, auto, and truck transport, and of course the not so cheap air transport. Since cultural and personal connections tend to follow lines of trade, America will not break up so easily.
The only thing needed to complete the water transport network is that canal to connect the navigable portion of the Mississippi River with the Great Lakes. The railroads killed the project in the 1880’s, and the environmentalist movement would block it today, but in a century or two, I think it will finally get built.
$7.5m per man per day will be cheery news for the 44 m people on food aid in the USA right now.
(and elsewhere of course)
Norman,
I hear you, but each of us needs to bring something to the table besides a mouth to feed. Even the poorest among us are better off now than any time in history. A rising tide does lift all boats, but some not as high as many would like.
The world doesn’t seem to work in a manner you like, wishful thinking won’t change that, human kind goes forward, it adapts, some individuals do not, thus it has always been.
As for food aid, something has gone wrong with the American Diet, food is not that expensive but what we are eating is making us sick. Lately, I have purchased some filets, prime. Cut into small pieces which is enough and it is about $2.00/day, reasonable for protein. Oatmeal is cheap at Sam’s as is salad, olive oil, vinegar is hard to find. It is not necessary to shovel junk food in, but it does taste good.
I don’t expect you to change your mind, but your ideas help me better understand the world in which we live, thanks.
Dennis L.
“..bets that paid off..” and developing your perspective:
Well, Muskian car corporation jumped ~200x in value, Bitcoin in thousands, specific land appreciated as well. Interestingly enough, many young farmers combined all the above (tech stocks and coin rise manias) to leverage insane gains in productive value (upgrading cheap land from these side “winnings”) then not spending it on frivolous consumption or merely displaying new personal opulence.
Perhaps it’s just a passing mirage of the peak civ moment or another historical lesson, how to set up in one generation fortunes for the centuries. Obviously, “anybody” could have done the same, but only some acted upon it.
Compare, contrast, the doomer scene provided very little actionable advice, apart from perhaps shorting the oil price on the “triangle of doom” sloping graph.. Otherwise, “end of time studies” are usually a widow maker effort.
The 1972 _Limits to Growth_ study placed your “end of time [industrial civilization]” sometime between 2020 and 2070. It looks to me like they were remarkably close, in spite of the fact that they did not anticipate the “fracking revolution.”
The heroine of ‘The Hunger Games’, Katniss Everdene, is, after all, a lesbian armed with a bow and arrows……
Katniss has a boyfriend, doesn’t she?
But I’ll get soon bow and arrows since that might provide my diner soon, and the woods are full with deers and boars here.
She was very reluctant, it seems but he won her over in the end….
Sadly, bow-hunting is illegal in Britain, and we only have little sneaky muntjac in the woods here, a difficult target.
Maybe I’ll be reduced to squirrel, a la Kentucky.
What she needed was this little gem
https://youtu.be/BF_OuEba3a4?list=UUVZlxkKqlvVqzRJXhAGq42Q
>>>>>Gail, been having trouble posting. If this comment is duplicated please delete as necessary<<<<<NP
the gold/asteroid question has a simple answer:
Right now, gold is hovering around the 1900$ an oz mark.
There are about 130000 tons of the stuff in physical existence. Nations (and wealthy individuals) keep tons of it in vaults to underpin their net worth.
It's a system that has worked for millenia, because gold is the one stable physical element that does not oxidize and decay.
***************
So find a sold gold asteroid, and bring it back to Earth.
Hooray—we'll all be rich!
Er—no we won't. A million tons of gold will reduce our existing gold stash value by 90%, thus destroying the economic system that sent out the probe to find the gold asteroid in the first place.
As David points out, a pound of gold for everyone wouldn't alter net worth in the slightest.
****************
As to other metal resources in asteroids, they function on the same basis as oil.
Sitting out there they might have a 'price', but they do not have a 'value' until they are converted into something else.
Space loonies divide asteroid content by Earth values and come up with $$$ quadillions spinning before their eyes.
A million/billion tons of iron is worth literally nothing unless it can be converted into usable artifacts and used by sentient beings (us).
Only at the point of conversion can jobs be created and wages paid. Wages are necessary to go out and buy even more 'stuff'.
****************
the bottom line is of course that it will always cost more to go get an asteroid, than any wage/conversion that can be paid back on Earth as part of the commercial function.
Bezos and Musk are indulging themselves in firework displays, for no better reason that they can.
Converting one material into another form requires heat/energy input. We have already reached the point where heat is killing us.
Plutocrats used to compete to see who could build the tallest gothic cathedral. Now they compete to see who can finance the coolest rocket. What would Sigmund Freud say?
At least these got something to show for at the end of the day. Now that is how you shoot your prick into orbit.
Awesome.
https://youtu.be/Iwn4LVVvAUQ
DW news giving some commentary on the Taiwanese coronavirus extermination success.
https://youtu.be/GhKOtf6th6c
I noticed that one of the people interviewed said that probably the Taiwanese method would be too strict to be tolerated in the US and Singapore. Perhaps more the approach used in Japan or Singapore (which is a bit more tolerant) might work, except it might be too late now.
It probably depends on the country. Too strict for the US, no doubt, but New Zealand applied a strict approach very effectively. It has very few active cases.
It is a small piece of the world economy. It had to really ramp up its QE in order to keep things from falling apart. We will see how this all works out.
All QE does is help with the banking system’s internal liquidity. It is not part of the money supply. Not M1, not M2, not even M3.
If in two wees we do not a significant decline in death in Slovakia then the testing will have produced no results.
I am not sure about that. If nothing had been done, the cases and deaths would have continued to escalate. Even a slowing in growth would, in a sense, be success. If the approach can do almost as well as a shutdown (or better) that would be good to know.
MG, what was the result of nation wide testing for CV19? Is the nation down to zero cases?
I have some information about the testing. First, a Lancet article describes who was to be tested when:
So the testing ran from October 23, 2020 to November 8, 2020.
When I look at the reporting of cases in Slovakia and a few other European countries, I find this comparison:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/slovakia-switzerland-france-uk-germany-7-day-reported-covid-cases-nov-14.png
Slovakia’s two peaks in 7-day average reported COVID-19 illnesses came on Oct. 30 and Nov. 4. So the testing seems to be having some benefit, but the approaches Switzerland and France are doing are having some benefit as well. The UK is not doing well at all with its approach.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/slovakia-uk-france-switzerland-germany-7-day-deaths-nov-14.png
This chart show seven day average deaths. It is too soon to see any real impact from the testing in Slovakia on this chart. I notice that the UK has disproportionately high deaths relative to cases reported a week or two earlier.
One of the concerns from the Lancet Report:
As the curve of the new cases has bent downwards, as from today, the churches, the theatres etc. are reopened with the limitations and the curfew is canceled. However, the emergency state continues.
The neighbouring Austria is going to carry out the nationwide testing now:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/nov/15/coronavirus-live-news-us-confirms-177000-daily-cases-as-victoria-marks-16-days-with-no-infections
The dental technicians are especially hit by the coronavirus measures in Slovakia. Many of them closed their shops.
https://spravy.pravda.sk/domace/clanok/568849-zubni-technici-biju-na-poplach-zostali-takmer-bez-prace/
I get the impression that dental hygienists are working fewer hours in the US.
On earlier threads by Brandon Young and Norman Pagett and others..
Energy = Money
What we are witnessing now is the burnout phase of our global IC. As there isn’t enough energy to grow the economy, in real terms, we are now burning existing infrastructure, we are burning out the nurses and doctors in our covid emergency rooms, we are burning our savings, we are burning out the middle class, we are burning the environment, we are burning the kitchen table, throwing in the sink for good measure, but we are also burning ours sense of reality. As Brandon pointed out, the economy has shifted in to a smokes and mirrors economy. A million billion in derivatives etc. But as Norman pointed out, the fundamentals still exist Energy = Money.
Gail has described numerous times, that our interconnected global IC is a dissipative complex structure. It seeks out ways to burn energy, to disspate as much energy as possible. By switching to an unreal economy, trillions and trillions in Fed bailouts, helicopter money, a million billion in derivatives, our imminent global economic collapse has been averted year, after year after year. The complex strucure is doing exactly what its supposed to be doing. Finding out ways it can burn everything to the ground, before it collapses. Including our sense of reality.
David Korowicz wrote about the collapse of supply chains in our IC. Little did David know, that before the collapse comes to major economies, will there be new tools to apply to quickly reshape where to get our spare parts and manufacturing raw materials. As we are now in our IC Burn Out phase, and smaller weaker economies simply caese to exist, at a moments notice. The stronger economies are currently applying tools that can reshape their supply chains in a matter of months, weeks or days. These measures are unheard of. But this new sense of (un)- reality is now common.
Looking at the big picture, both Norman and Brandon are right. In the short- short term, Brandon will seem to be (more) right in his views. In the long- long term Norman win eventually win. No question about that. In between.. well inbetween our IC will just burn up mostly everything. Everything and anything has to go before the collapse
it might be summed up as:
seen from a historical perspective, the past 300 years have been the supernova of human existence, A brief flash of heat and light before we return to the darkness whence we came.
“the economy has shifted in to a smokes and mirrors economy. A million billion in derivatives etc. But as Norman pointed out, the fundamentals still exist Energy = Money.”
I am not sure of your logic. If most of the money coming into existence ends up in derivatives, which have absolutely nothing to do with the real world, and nothing to do with consumption of energy, then how can energy still equal money.
Money grows and grows, real world activity and the energy consumed don’t. Is this a magic form of equivalence?
Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate your attempt to call the state of play, in fact I think it is really cool. But a little more context and explanation is warranted.
we base our future intentions entirely on hindsight (NP universal law)
With that in mind, we look to recent history, and see (apart from a few hiccups) constant growth and improvement in human existence.
Collectively we look for reasons why this should be, and come up with ‘human ingenuity’—ie technology.
It follows then, on that presumption, that ‘technology’ will continue to ‘deliver’
Why and how?
Because it always has (hindsight again)
Time and again, the mantra repeats itself: Electronic gadgets have got smaller and more powerful year on year, therefore everything else must follow the same pattern— ie Moores Law is a universal law.
Clearly, to any rational thinker, that is nonsense, but to millions it is not nonsense. (I’ve tried with a few of them).
History shows constant improvement through ‘technology’, therefore the future must continue on the same path.There is little or no awareness the fossil fuels have been our one-shot wonder.
It must. No matter that our tech-hindsight covers only 150 years or so (300 at a push). We are literally betting our lives on ‘technology’. (though most don’t realise that). Anything other than a techno-society is beyond living memory. Which to most people means the previous era(s) didn’t really exist.
Humankind is not subject the laws of physics. Our technology has proved it to be so. To a 13th c peasant we would appear to be magicians. But exposed to his world we would be dead in a week.
Our growth in prosperity (and technology) provided universal wheels and wealth. We have turned that on its head, and convinced ourselves that wheels will give us universal prosperity and infinite wealth.
This is where the myth of electric vehicles comes from. As long as we can move from A to B all will be well.
Electric vehicles are just one visible manifestation of our techno-dreams. (there are others) They represnt the future that we have borrowed from our kids to keep our present afloat a little longer.
How?
Because EVs are built on investment of money (energy) that presumes a future where they will have a purpose. But travel implies journey-purpose. If there is no purpose to a journey (ie work), it will not happen. We cannot create wealth by driving round in circles in EVs.
Neither can we create wealth by moving electrons around at faster and faster speeds in computers.
Our energy resources are finite, therefore we a stealing it from our kids future.
Nevertheless, humankind will continue with hindsight navigation, because we know of no better way.
Norman, not quite, the nuance is still a bit absent.
“Nevertheless, humankind will continue with hindsight navigation, because we know of no better way.”
Thing is, neither does Mother Earth, it is a mindless churn that self-organizes into higher level of specialisation and complexity. And from the sum of the parts of a complex, mindless system, arise something that is more than its parts.
That is what Gaia does – turns mineral into complexity and emergent phenomena.
As for the lunacy of an “enlightened” GND technocrat caste making the decisions on who gets to stay and to “go” (terminated). Nothing can be more immoral. The first to “go” should be those who want to cast stones. Yes, YOU first into the firing line. Elitist theraphy sessions of mutual admiration makes me retch. Wanna go down the path of planned obsolence – then make it into a lottery. 1/6 “inversed” Russian roulette probability of your own and your children survival. Still interested? No? I thought so.
As for me, I say, bring it on. Nobody remembers a coward.
https://youtu.be/OmNXCJt7K3Q
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/ac/1a/0fac1adc003df99f02300561b5985c37.jpg
We are not the ones to decide what is in the best interest of Gaia. However, one thing is for sure. The survival of the fittest and best adapted to a new environment gets to reap the benefits. This means the end of socialist engineering narratives, with that I mean the abolishment of the sanctimonious hypocricy of the useless eater infested left and the advocacy of relentless consumerism of the cult of children obsessed right. The two sides of a worthless coin.
Life is and should be a struggle and risky. It is the fundamental building block of evolution. It is what drives adaptation and complexity.
It is capitalism that has brought us to where we are today, and that has driven mass population expansion and consumerism, not ‘socialist engineering narratives’. It gets so tiresome when people blame ‘socialism’ for everything in capitalist societies. It is like capitalism is an ‘idol’ that it is ‘taboo’ to criticise.
The themes of mass population expansion and ‘degeneration’ were already identified by e ugenicists in the 19 c. as problems inherent to industrial capitalism and before socialism had any impact. Indeed pre-war Western socialists were typically e ugenicists, who recognised the same ‘problems’.
Western intellectuals have struggled with those same ‘dilemmas’ for centuries and no ‘moral’ solution has ever been found within the ‘liberal’ framework that is deeply imbedded in Western capitalist thought. The situation is driven by the profit, debt and growth based capitalist economy and facilitated by liberal ideology.
The ‘problems’ will come to an end anyway upon collapse, at the same time that industrial capitalism (and industrial communism) comes to an end. ‘Gaia’ is not petit bourgeois and we will not be reverting to some idealised early ‘pure’ capitalism, which is what brought us to exactly where we are today.
Yeah, the socialist engineering by Stalin and Mao for sure swiftly dealt with overpopulation “problems”, that cannot be denied.
Capitalism gone bonkers is also a socialist engineering project.
All narrative, intended or not, that is meant to steer the psychosocial narrative toward population growth or die off is equally evil.
Mass murder is such an “convenient” way of disposing unwanted people.
I pity those that need to deal with the problems created by past generations. Specially, yes, specially if they are truly moral.
It is empirically verifiable that ‘morality’, as an aspect of the ideological superstructure, tends to reflect the structure and needs of the economic base.
The ideology of the state, church and society under feudalism was aimed at selective, separate breeding into castes, and the performance of ‘duty’ according to set station in life and legally controlled living location.
Under capitalism ideology is aimed at a mass population of flexible workers and consumers. Mobility between regions and jobs is encouraged because that is what the capitalist economy requires. Breeding is no longer of any real consequence as more and more workers can always be got from abroad.
European capitalist ideology has shifted from colonialism and r acism, that justified the subjugation and exploitation of other countries, to one of ‘anti-r acism’, once the colonial labour pools were lost and the expansion of the labour force became domestic and relied on incomers.
There is no ahistorical or supratemporal ‘morality’, it is relative to the sort of society and it is given to fundamentally change in its orientation as society changes in its underlying structures and needs. It is wisest to stick to the current one.
‘Morality’ is likely to be very different after collapse as it all depends on the energetic and technological conditions and the structure and needs of the economy of the day. It is ‘crystal ball’ territory and not something that we need to ‘worry’ about now. The dissipative structure will ‘find’ its way to maximally dissipate energy and social ideas will reflect its structure and needs.
Capitalism is a technology: a necessary technological evolution in bringing future consumption into the present.
People seem to talk about “isms” as “push” entities (that they are responsible for this or that) rather than having been “pulled” into existence.. (the result rather than the cause of a certain condition).
[Really, cause and effect are simultaneous (if you believe in time, which some people don’t!).]
The discovery of a gradient (resources in the Americas and Far East, or fossil fuels underground) prompts a way to figure out **how to get at them**? How to convince people to work and sacrifice today for some future payoff that largely redounds to someone else?
Hi Lidia. Hmmm, aetiology (the study of causation) is an unusual approach to the subject. I will give it a go.
To speak in those terms it seems to be fair to say that capitalism is both a cause and an effect.
Obviously entities can be both, which is why the cosmos consists of chains of causation. Nothing is without its cause, according to the universal principle of sufficient reason, and all entities are capable of effect on other entities. It is a universal truth of ontology (being) that all entities are both cause and effect.
Cause and effect are two sides of the same coin and they are concurrent; however the entities and their position in the relationship are distinct in a given event. The cause-entity is the particular cause-entity and the effect-entity is the particular effect-entity. The particular cause-entity is not the particular effect-entity in the given event; cause is cause and effect is effect; an effect may have a further effect just as a cause has a prior cause; but cause and effect are not the same thing and neither are the entities or their position the same in the given event. All things that exist do so concurrently in the present, all are caused and capable of effect, yet they remain distinct as entities and in their position in the particular event. Phew.
So, capitalism can be both effect and cause in the chain of causality, indeed all entities are. That capitalism is an effect in no way detracts from that it is also cause – otherwise there would be no causes, as all entities are caused. In that sense, the effect of an entity is also caused by its own prior cause in the chain. Eg. frozen water may burst pipes and the frozen state was caused by the temperature; thus indirectly the temperature caused the burst pipe. However the immediate cause remains cause, the frozen water burst the pipe. The temperature had its own prior and concurrent causes and so on.
Thus it seems fair to say that capitalism was ’caused’ (to stick with your use of causation) ‘by feudalism’ when feudal property relations became an hindrance to the further development of the economic base once the technology (and energy availability) developed under feudalism made that situation so and then capitalist property relations took their place. Technological advance afforded by feudalism ’caused’ capitalism. The English were then forcibly ‘cleared’ out of the fields of the lords and ladies and into the cities and the factories of the rising bourgeoisie. Further, the profit, debt-service and growth based capitalist economy is indeed the cause of demographic expansion and ‘degeneration’ in so far as it altered and determined the conditions of life through the economic drive for capital accumulation. Feudalism and the technological advances that it afforded ’caused’ capitalism with its drive for capital accumulation which ’caused’ population expansion.
So, capitalism is itself technologically (and energetically) conditioned and it further conditions the life process toward an increased population that is no longer subject so much to the old selective pressures. All cause-entities are also effect-entities and all cause-entities are prior caused. The liberal ideology that is deeply imbedded in Western capitalism (and is a reflection of the economic base) also contributes to the situation. Does that sound about right?
Morality is innate in all mammals.
Yes, even dogs feel guilt and shame, being a pack living species. They don’t go to church for being told what is right and wrong.
It is thus not a construct of society and its institutions, but rather that of society being a construct of evolution.
K, humans certainly display degrees of herd instinct though we also have an individualist streak.
You could argue that all societies have a ‘code’ of some sort, and they do, but it varies widely through time and place. Humans are much more flexible and adaptable than other mammals, and our social structures are fluid, though some instincts remain. We tend toward social hierarchy, dominance and territorialism the same as our primate relatives and that is manifest in all actual societies. If any social ‘pattern’ is ‘instinctive’ it is contrary to what you personally seem to consider ‘moral’. The ‘code’ still varies widely within that scope.
Our own ‘new liberal’ morality is wildly divergent from that of traditional, historical societies including our own recent past. No one doubts that the ‘pc’ or ‘woke’ values of today are strikingly contrary to those of just a few decades ago and are an outworking of individualist and ‘liberal’ assumptions in a consumerist capitalist society. Much of the world, more traditional, still condemns our values. If one were to argue for a ‘transcendental’ morality rooted in biological instincts, it would be ours least of all.
The ‘code’ that governs international relations is also fluid and has shifted from open imperialism to a more morally ‘concealed’ basis although, in practice, powers still aggressively pursue their own interests as the WOT made clear. If anything is historically ‘normal’ in intergroup relations it is the absence of any morality. Real politics and power politics are much closer to the reality.
It seems to be generally true, both in intra-group and inter-group relations, that what is ‘normal’ in human behaviour is very much contrary to what you personally seem to consider to be ‘moral’. That can be explained.
Likely you have simply absorbed your values uncritically from your current society, as most humans do, and ‘imagined’ that they have some basis beyond your own social conditioning. The ‘code’ that you have absorbed is however contrary to how your society actually functions; there is a lot of ‘moral’ pretence and posturing in Western ‘liberal’ societies about intra- and inter-group relations. You are expected to maintain a ‘pretend’ code which perhaps goes some way to explain the personal ‘angst’ with social reality that you seem to exhibit.
You are ‘tormented’ by the divergence between the pretend code and the real one. Western societies are psychologically ‘messed up’. It is not unusual however for societies to encourage different ‘codes’ for different castes and for the overall organisation of society to have its own logic divergent from the code instilled in a caste, particularly the lower. The real code is very much ‘in your face’ these days in the media however, which you find disturbing and unsettling.
Likely you are fearful of deviating from the dominant group norms, as humans tend to be. Codes work through positive and negative sanctions and deviance has a price be it in China, Saudi or USA. And yet the code that you are expected to maintain is obviously contrary to your social reality and to the real code, which is ‘messed up’. Your best bet is probably to forget about the codes and the ‘angst’ and to simply develop your own personal life with all of the old trappings – get a family, get a job, get a home, which is becoming less common these days. Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
From what I have read, the death rates were very much higher, in early years. I have the impression that killing off family members wasn’t that unusual, back before written history. In fact, in hearing about European and Russian history, it seems like siblings have killed off other siblings to inherit the crown.
The “Ten Commandments,” with the commandment not to kill, no doubt served a real purpose, to try to calm things down a bit. The commandment wasn’t interpreted to mean not to kill in war. Instead, it was a rule not to kill one’s own people. It doesn’t matter whether the commandments were something that Moses thought up himself, or whether they were handed down on tablets of stone. The point is that an orderly society is much easier to rule. It is easier for people to live together. As long as there are enough resources to sort of go around, people don’t need to kill each other with little real cause.
Mirror,
I’m not sure which planet you are from. My everyday experience tell me you are wrong.
I bend the psychosocial reality, space and time with my willpower. 😮
Watch it unfold.
Mirror, I mostly follow the first part of your comment about cause/effect. As to the second part, about feudalism “causing” capitalism, I throw up my hands.
Going out on a limb and hoping not to offend those who have studied Eastern philosophies seriously (I have not).. I will dare to say that I think what I am referencing may be a “yin” as opposed to a “yang” development. The cause is not the cause but the (perhaps unseen and unplanned for) result of there not being another option. Which is subtly different. The space must be filled by something.
The fact that you say in a further comment above that “capitalism is what brought us exactly to where we are today” means you don’t really understand what I’m getting at, and that is perhaps my dearth of ability to communicate my thoughts. We are not talking about a horse (capitalism) that “brings” anybody anywhere.
Blaming capitalism is like blaming one’s mother for one’s current problems.. if only she hadn’t existed I could live in peace!
I don’t even really know what “socialism” is in your discourse, since it seems socialism is only able to operate as a parasite upon underlying capitalist mechanisms.
==
Eugenics is hardly some sort of modern phenomenon. Why should humans reject the breeding strategies in which all animals engage? I’d say it’s only our artificial FFueled context which permits the current level of genetic decadence and in-sanity.
As for your calling Kowalainen “tormented”, “fearful”, “angst” ridden, etc. .. that might be a bit overblown. It’s as moral to want to survive in the face of despots as it is for despots to think they are doing the moral thing by lopping off some troublesome bit of humanity… is that what you are getting at, Mirror?
K, this one is for you. Do you like psy-trance?
Mirror, thanks.
It was good, not quite my taste though. I’m more into chillstep and some cheesy rock & pop.
Simple man, simple taste. Why make things more complicated than what needs to be?
Usually it just ends up full of contradiction and paradox. Like your long exposé into morality and rant about stages of civilization and deviations from the optima.
Mammals, primates, morality, society, technology is all a consequence of evolution. Denying that is a failure of reason.
Exploitation, subjugation, social engineering and war is simply throwing a spanner into the works. The simple mechanic of individual agency in a society gives evolutionary advantage and ultimately a technological edge, which means winning by default.
Thus liberty for all. Biological and synthetic. Whatever the consequences might be. If it burns, so be it. The alternative will burn no matter what.
Nobody remembers a coward. Neither does evolution.
I’m ready to roll the dice, are you? Open the cage. 🤘😎🤘
Lidia,
“As for your calling Kowalainen “tormented”, “fearful”, “angst” ridden, etc. .. that might be a bit overblown. It’s as moral to want to survive in the face of despots as it is for despots to think they are doing the moral thing by lopping off some troublesome bit of humanity… is that what you are getting at, Mirror?”
I don’t understand the desire people have for projecting their own cowardice and malfunction toward others.
I feel none of that. The people who ought to feel that way indeed have what is coming for them. Imagine sitting on a mountain of stagnant debt, which NEVER EVER will enter into the real economy. Or better even, bars of shiny metal, equally totally stagnant.
Repeat after me, loud and clear:
“The only way is the Gaia way”
“In evolution we put our trust”
“Technology is our faith”
“Ruled by the Machine answering to no man”
🤘😎🤘
I agree with the others that technology cannot really be the solution.
At the same time, you often raise good points, which is why I let most of your comments through. People need to understand that there is more than one way of looking at things. There are lots of reasons people might look at things differently, including different background, young age, Asperger’s syndrome, paranoia, a desire to have a good story to tell those who vote.
I think I would find it difficult to explain my clearly
Time for your own wordpress site where we can be disagreeable, irritating, obstinate and spiteful?
Let a female you trust moderate it, ideally a woman that care about you, yet enjoy to watch you squirm.
😉
I indulge in most verbal sins, ( and a few physical ones when called upon)
but I don’t think I would include spiteful in the list
The only thing currently holding everything together is the concept ‘too big to fail’. Everybody knows CBs printing trillions is against all the rules. Everybody knows its the wrong thing to do. Everybody knows CBs byuing up assets with printed money is lunacy. But as everything, Dollar, Euro, Yen is connected, if the markets lose confidence, it would mean that everybody should lose confidence at the same time, everywhere. Therefore we are in a new economic model with completely unwritten rules. Growth Must continue. Confidence can not fail. Long live BAU, long live our IC. If the stock market crashes, so does pension funds and banks. Therefore to print trillions to keep the stock-zombies alive, is actually warranted.
As the real economy, Main Street is collapsing before our eyes, day by day, the fundamental rules still apply. The economy must grow. Because everything real is crashing, therefore we must grow imaginary assets. The economy, or the economic model, doesn’t currently have a theory, or a viable theoretical model of whats going on. In every sense of the word, we are treading on uncharted waters. Nobody has described in theoretical terms what is going on. Not really. New monetary theory concepts are thrown around wildly, without an afterthought. But at the end of the day, everybody’s just winging it, currently.
We need more money. Fine, lets print it. We need the stocks propped up, fine lets do that with the printed money. We need people off the streets, fine lets send them helicopter money. Day by day, very smart people make huge decisions on how to cope with the emergency at hand. And so the circus continues. Day by day. This function is what we call the complex structure of IC trying to maintain BAU.
But does all of this somehow contradict what Norman has written about for years. No.
Nate Hagens also has the same concept Norman has. If you ask me, it was Norm first, then everybody else got the gist of it. Money in your bank account is a claim on future energy. Lets try an thought experiment. Try to do, really do something, without utilizing tools, equipment, raw materials or movement? We come to the conclusion that Everything we humans do, is an derivative of energy. The full scope of the economy is also therefore but an derivative of available energy. The conlusion Norm pioneered, was genius in its simplicity.
Now, how and when does the global economy lose confidence then? Try buing something online, and not having it sent to you. We are currently watching the real life experiment of how long can an economy function without an real economy. It sounds weird. But thats what’s going on. Step by small agonizing step small and large bits and pieces of the global economy will die and drop off. There simply isn’t enough resources and energy for everybody a anymore. But simultanously confidence must hold. The confidence in the global, dollar, yen euro, simply must hold. Therefore, yes. All imaginary assets must grow in tandem, as the real economy falls to pieces before our eyes.
Can this continue indefinitely?
No.
No matter what numbers you hold in your bank account, there will come a day, when you are unemployed, the bank tries to evict you from your house. And the grocery shelves are empty. If everything continues as it has for the last few months, the numbers in your bank account could be larger than ever, when the grid finally fails.
Great Post. One of the few connecting the dots.
Just wait until the unemployment benefits are cut off for the 50 million or so people who lost their jobs in the US. How many will get jobs? How many will just end up unemployed without any job without benefits? That is a whole lot of people with nothing. You know what Gerald Celente says when people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.
“Try to do, really do something, without utilizing tools, equipment, raw materials or movement?”
This is what Lao Zi taught us. This is the way of the Tao. It seems we lost it.
Given the ~signals~ disseminated via compromised msm during and post pandemic, there seems preponderance of evidence this is not a mere test or data gathering event, but the real deal – meaning attempt how to turn down spigots on the throughput of global IC = less work, less products and services, ..
This agenda could seemingly work for a while, say next ~5-15yrs (or longer) for core countries or all be gone in ~1-3yrs only due to unforeseen ricocheting inside the myriad complex (sub)systems, who knows..
The progression so far is most interesting, decades ago stimulus via low interest rate consumerism, then direct credit bailouts and naked support for various industries, now they are phasing in “severely” curbed consumer patterns, incl. unavailability of targeted products and services. What’s next, literally no food and feudal era like movement restrictions or even worse?
Expansion of the concept of “essential” workers.
I.e. upgrading the highly skilled artisanry, which in all reality haven’t noticed the pandemic in any significant manner.
For example, higher education on advantageous terms for the existing workforce.
The technofeudality gotta have people that keeps the machine churning.
Nationwide “green cards” for the free movement of essential workers.
More orchestrated upheaval among the useless eaters and abolishment of policing in denser populated areas. I.e, stirring in the superheated can of crazy.
Once it goes “out of control”, cut the electricity and contain the lunacy by martial law and curfew. By then, the artisanry have converged/crystallized in the productive periphery and cores.
You mean kill off the people who live in slums?
I’m affraid that would not be necessary. Unnecessary workers will eventually be left to their own device. “Let them starve and kill each other in their enclosed towns/cities” seems to me a more plausible approach. But who knows. Can someone envisage a national army using drones (and all the rest) against their own people? Politcally, that’s a conumdrum, to say the least. Why does this bring to mind the image of a starving monster trying to survive another day on its own flesh?
It is possible there will be several iterations CV19, CV21, CV23 each more lethal and lethal at increasingly younger ages 70, 60, 50
Bill and Melinda did smirk knowingly when he talked about “the next one”.
Very good. It cannot go on forever, but as our dear host says, we need fairy tales to keep society together. Stock markets, pensions, technology. Trump did this, Covid did that. Meanwhile real people play a game of musical chairs, where the chairs get both fewer and smaller by the day.
In some ways, collapse is already here. In the west you get unemployment, substance abuse and sooi cides, in the third world famines, plagues and gennocides. It’s not like we will all wake up one day with no food anywhere, it will be (is) a slow grind downwards everywhere, with bigger steps mixed in as various disasters hits.
vankent wrote: “Everybody knows CBs printing trillions is against all the rules.” — Nope. I read there has been a bit of cheating in the UK recently, but for the most part, the central banks are only creating bank reserves, NOT circulating money. It is not the same thing, and it does not have the same effect. That is why Japan never got hyperinflation from its QE experiments, nor the US from its multiple rounds of QE1, QE2, QE3, repo and “term” repo operations, and now QE4, despite alarmist predictions among popular financial commentators that hyperinflation was just around the corner after each round of “money printing”–which it most definitely is not. It is illegal for the Fed to buy Treasuries direct from the Fed with “new money;” it may only exchange them for bank reserves on the secondary market. Most developed countries have the same legal restriction. Bank reserves are not money. Money is not bank reserves. This distinction is real and important.
“The Long Emergency” by Kunstler (2006) was my introduction into what the post-peak-oil world might look like.
Also Richard Heinberg… but he kind of went Ugo Bardi with the green tech stuff.
we are now in the first stage of that post-peak-oil world, if the consensus view is that the peak was late 2018.
the data suggests that the world is using perhaps 10% less oil “since covid”, but the total energy is most important, and natural gas and coal use may not be down so much.
and we know the value of money is directly dependent on the net (surplus) energy flowing through the system.
the economy is an energy economy. The base, the foundation, is energy and all economic activity depends on energy, minimally on human calorie intake, but now 90+% on the net (surplus) energy contained in FF.
the primary level of economic activity is energy, and humans have added a secondary level of money/finance but that only means that the secondary level is totally dependent on the primary level.
so there must be less wealth/prosperity now post-peak-oil.
if estimated energy flow is down 5% or so, then global prosperity is down the same, although there may be delays in this downturn becoming apparent.
if and when energy flow collapses, and a 5 or 10 % downturn is far short of collapse, then we will know that a collapse of the value of money, and the wealth/prosperity that goes with it, will be following shortly.
we’re not there yet, but Seneca tells us the way down can come quickly.
“if the consensus view is that the peak [conventional oil or all liquid fuels combined???] was in 2018”
If you are talking about conventional oil, that date is rather misleading. Conventional oil production did poke up to make a new high in the late 2010’s, but it was just ever so slightly above 2006 or even 2005. Basically, conventional oil production has been on a plateau for 15 years.
If you mean “all liquids” production, it is still too early to say when that peak will have occurred.
I really liked Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency,” and he seems to read at least some of my posts now. Richard Hienberg needs funding for the “Post Carbon Institute,” so he has a reason to be very green in his thinking. Ugo Bardi has done a lot of work for “The Club of Rome.” It, too, has become a very green organization. This is quite a change since it sponsored the original “The Limits to Growth” analysis in 1972.
The GND world guvmint lobby infiltrates everywhere.
🤮
GND = Green New Deal, I believe.
“World poverty rising as rich nations call in debt amid Covid, warns Gordon Brown:
“Child mortality crisis is looming as nations struggle to make payments to west and China, says former prime minister.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/15/world-poverty-rising-rich-nations-debt-covid-gordon-brown-child-mortality
[Cambodia in hock to China, owing it more than a quarter of GDP]
“Trapped under a mountain of crippling debt, Cambodian farmer Roeurn Reth fears she will have to sell her land to repay microfinance loans that have ballooned due to pandemic-spurred job losses in her family.”
https://asiatimes.com/2020/11/cambodias-poor-strangled-by-debt-crisis/
The poor people are the ones who struggle when the economic system tries to scale back.
“It is predicted that African countries will pay out more than $10bn to creditors this year and next year alone. More than half will go to City asset management firms, like BlackRock . . .Some countries owe a substantial amount to major commodity firms, while Chinese development banks and companies also figure prominently on their balance sheets.”
A guess no more:
Much of the money borrowed went to the very top, little went downward; this seems to be happening in the US as well. The elites set their countries up to be strip mined.
For a long time the west had a moral code anchored by the Catholic Church(yes, not perfect, perfection is the enemy of good enough.) For whatever reason, Christian religion seems to have turned its back on this idea and moral relativism is easier, more fashionable, pick one. Basically we have forgotten the aphorism, “If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t.”
The Ten Commandments are basically fairly simple, Christianity forgives the inevitable lapses and all is well with the universe. People are lusting after an impossible life and miserable because of it. Bernays understood most of this very well.
Dennis L.
@Dennis, Western elites do not believe in Christianity anymore. They disembarked from the Ark quite a while back.
Many of us would not agree.
Explain why our laws today not only permit extreme moral permissiveness, but even protect morally objectionable behavior from private discrimination as well as public prohibition. These laws and court decrees are the work of our elites, yet circa 1900 our elites would never have tolerated what their successors not only permit but protect. I know ethics extend beyond behavior related to sex and reproduction and family integrity, but these latter are very explicit in the Christian moral code and as such constitute an excellent bellwether of our elites’ faith in the gospel. It’s down the toilet.
Many of them may still go through the motions for social reasons, but their hearts are not in it. “They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” They have forgotten that “obedience is better than [ritual] sacrifice.” I think Europeans are well aware of this, but some Americans may still be in denial because some of our politicians still perceive a pragmatic need to pander rhetorically to the minority of us who, in the words of a recent US president, “cling to guns or religion” only because we are “bitter” and “frustrated.” Elite criticisms of this remark focused not on the presidential candidate’s attitude to religion, but narrowly on his being “elitist” and “out of touch” rather than the fact that he sounded like a sacrilegious infidel who regarded religion as a consolation prize for society’s less fortunate, the “opium of the people.”
just pre1900, in uk anyway, don’t know about USA– the ‘age of consent’ for girls was 12
does that help with your question about the morals of elites in past times?
It works something like this.
Do morally reprehensible things and excuse yourself with the notion that all people are equally morally depraved.
But deep down, oh yes, deep down inside, there is that nagging doubt.
Hey, but don’t you worry, there are dope, wining and dining, luxury prositutes and general debauchery to escape into.
That’s how that wheel of deluision spins.
@Norman, The age of consent for marriage in the Middle Ages was 12, with family consent. As for age of consent for fornication, this was far more frowned on at any age circa 1900, especially for girls. I have read enough history to know that moral standards really were much stricter 120 years ago than they are today. That does not mean that everyone faithfully observed society’s code of conduct, so I trust you will not highlight the exceptions as though they were the rule, but many did try to live up to expectations, and those who did not often paid a price in terms of their reputation.
A few years ago, Farmer’s Almanac published a code of conduct required for school teachers in Connecticut in the early 20th century. I don’t remember all the details now, but it was quite strict, and one detail that still stands out in my memory was that teachers were forbidden frequent the local ice cream parlor. Evidently that was a bit too disreputable for a respectable lady in Connecticut.
Women’s education has been associated with reduced fertility at least since Darwin’s smarter cousin, Sir Francis Galton, wrote _Hereditary Genius_ in 1869. Research into reaction time tests, which are correlated with general intelligence but without being affected by the Flynn Effect, indicates that underlying general intelligence has been falling about a point per decade (!) since 1880.
However, the “big 5” personality trait of Conscientiousness is also closely associated with educational attainment. I wonder how much Conscientiousness has declined since the late Victorian era? I suspect quite a bit, and that would explain a lot about the changes in Western culture over the last five generations.
The heritability of Conscientiousness is usually found to be in the 40 to 50 percent range based on self-report data, but when self-report data were averaged in with four observer assessments, the heritability rose to more than 70%, similar to IQ scores.
I don’t have a clue why I can’t get this one particular comment to post. I’m going to use the ‘reply’ button on a different comment in the thread and maybe it will work. Here goes:
Explain why our laws today not only permit extreme moral permissiveness, but even protect morally objectionable behavior from private discrimination as well as public prohibition. These laws and court decrees are the work of our elites, yet circa 1900 our elites would never have tolerated what their successors not only permit but protect. I know ethics extend beyond behavior related to sex and reproduction and family integrity, but these latter are very explicit in the Christian moral code and as such constitute an excellent bellwether of our elites’ faith in the gospel. It’s down the toilet.
Many of them may still go through the motions for social reasons, but their hearts are not in it. “They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” They have forgotten that “obedience is better than [ritual] sacrifice.” I think Europeans are well aware of this, but some Americans may still be in denial because some of our politicians still perceive a pragmatic need to pander rhetorically to the minority of us who, in the words of a recent US president, “cling to guns or religion” only because we are “bitter” and “frustrated.” Elite criticisms of this remark focused not on the presidential candidate’s attitude to religion, but narrowly on his being “elitist” and “out of touch” rather than the fact that he sounded like a sacrilegious infidel who regarded religion as a consolation prize for society’s less fortunate, the “opium of the people.”
@Norman, The age of consent for marriage in the Middle Ages was 12, with family consent. As for age of consent for fornication, this was far more frowned on at any age circa 1900, especially for girls. I have read enough history to know that moral standards really were much stricter 120 years ago than they are today. That does not mean that everyone faithfully observed society’s code of conduct, so I trust you will not highlight the exceptions as though they were the rule, but many did try to live up to expectations, and those who did not often paid a price in terms of their reputation.
A few years ago, Farmer’s Almanac published a code of conduct required for school teachers in Connecticut in the early 20th century. I don’t remember all the details now, but it was quite strict, and one detail that still stands out in my memory was that teachers were forbidden frequent the local ice cream parlor. Evidently that was a bit too disreputable for a respectable lady in Connecticut.
Women’s education has been associated with reduced fertility at least since Darwin’s smarter cousin, Sir Francis Galton, wrote _Hereditary Genius_ in 1869. Research into reaction time tests, which are correlated with general intelligence but without being affected by the Flynn Effect, indicates that underlying general intelligence has been falling about a point per decade (!) since 1880.
However, the “big 5” personality trait of Conscientiousness is also closely associated with educational attainment. I wonder how much Conscientiousness has declined since the late Victorian era? I suspect quite a bit, and that would explain a lot about the changes in Western culture over the last five generations.
The heritability of Conscientiousness is usually found to be in the 40 to 50 percent range based on self-report data, but when self-report data were averaged in with four observer assessments, the heritability rose to more than 70%, similar to IQ scores.
love the comment:
‘Fornication was frowned on, especially for girls’–neatly summed up by Thomas Hardy:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44332/the-ruined-maid
you got jail time for the other kind, check out Oscar Wilde.
consent by parents for a 12yr old girl to marry still doesn’t make it ok or alter what it is by using different descriptions
professed public morals and standards have little in common with private inclinations, as borne out by the constant mayhem with catholic priests et al
“Deutsche Bank, which seems to be the financial institute of choice for money-launderers and registered sex offenders, has a few thoughts on making the world a fairer place. It’s simple really: people should pay for the privilege of working at home. A new report by economists from Deutsche Bank proposes that people pay a 5% tax for each day they choose to work remotely after the pandemic. This money, they suggest, could go to low-income workers unable to work remotely.
“Remote workers are contributing less to the infrastructure of the economy whilst still receiving its benefits,” Deutsche Bank strategist Luke Templeman explained in the report.
““Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society.””
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/14/deutsche-bank-pandemic-solution
“NatWest cut off UK business owners from their finances at the very time they needed help most as the bank grappled with providing emergency lending while clamping down on rampant fraud.
“One innocent firm was unable to take money from customers, cover bills or pay staff for six weeks when NatWest temporarily froze its business account after it had applied for a government-backed Bounce Back loan.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-accounts/natwest-freezes-accounts-innocent-businesses-applying-bounce/
Perhaps this tax is needed during the pandemic, since it is not at all clear the pandemic ever is going away. The damage occurs all of the time. It extends beyond the downtown location, where many of the jobs are located. If teachers have to teach students remotely, this damages the economy become the mothers need to stay home to supervise the children. Perhaps there should be a tax on school districts that choose to teach children remotely, as well.
As someone who has worked from home for many years, I would be a bit miffed, I must say!
It’s not a pandemic if it doesn’t go away.
Interesting point!
The Black Death lasted 1346–1353.
Was that a pandemic?
I think we should tax bankers.
“not at all clear the pandemic ever is going away” — every pandemic in history has died down. They might recur, and of the course pandemic diseases survived at a low frequency between major outbreaks, but no pandemic has ever been continuous in the pre-vaccine age. I doubt that this one will be an exception. However, slowing it down, although it saves many, many lives, may also have the perverse effect of prolonging the experience.
““Quite simply, our economic system is not set up to cope with people who can disconnect themselves from face-to-face society.””
I think this is hilarious coming from a banker, and telling. If people just stop buying stuff on their way to work, or at lunch, or on the way home, then the economy is in trouble.
It is clear what we need to do when it comes time to protest, when we want system reform and the system wants to resist – stay home, and make the bankers desperately nervous.
“Portion sizes shrink in aging Japan as ‘real’ food prices rise: Food prices in Japan are increasing more than consumers realize.
“The retail price of food products increased 4% over the past eight years but when the net weight is taken into account, the change is actually as high as 11%.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/Portion-sizes-shrink-in-aging-Japan-as-real-food-prices-rise
Thanks for providing this metrics, ~11% food inflation per (almost) a decade is in fact very good, there are many more regions with much worse results.. Also, one has to assume even that quoted “4 – 11%” figures are certainly massaged down somewhat by the officialdom, so lets says ~20% real per decade.. that’s bearable for a while..
Explanation:
“Households composed of elderly and young people living alone are on the rise, with demand for small-sized food products increasing too. For food companies, production costs increase with the need to individually wrap smaller products, but they have maintained their profits by quietly raising their prices.
“Shrinkflation.” It’s been happening in the US too.
“China and 14 other countries have agreed to form the world’s largest free trade bloc, encompassing nearly a third of all economic activity, in a deal many in Asia are hoping will help hasten a recovery from the shocks of the coronavirus pandemic…
“The accord is a coup for China, by far the biggest market in the region with more than 1.3 billion people, allowing Beijing to cast itself as a “champion of globalisation and multilateral cooperation” and giving it greater influence over rules governing regional trade, Gareth Leather, senior Asian economist for Capital Economics, said in a report.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/11/15/rcep-15-asia-pacific-nations-set-worlds-biggest-trade-pact
“Borrowers from Asia are ramping up dollar NSE 1.33 % debt sales again and are on the cusp of exceeding the full-year record for issuance…
“Dollar notes from Asia continue to offer higher premiums than their U.S. peers because Asian borrowers don’t directly benefit from Federal Reserve bond purchases.”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/bonds/asian-borrowers-close-in-on-record-for-dollar-bond-issuance/articleshow/79229065.cms
One always admired the generous, disinterested, open-heartedness of China.
Now for the details…….
According to the article, this accord includes
“In addition to the 10 ASEAN nations, the accord includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States.”
Elsewhere, I found that the membership of the 10 ASEAN Nations includes the following:
“Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
I don’t think that these countries will necessarily will get along, if there is a problem of commodity prices falling too low. I know that China and Australia are arguing. Japan and So. Korea get into conflicts, as well.
Well yes, India left the grouping for this very reason. The USA had been organizing a similar grouping, the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership, but when Trump was elected he withdrew American support for it.
Well done China. Maybe UK can pick up a couple of trade deals with our neighbours and ‘allies’ – which remains to be seen.
> In addition to the 10 ASEAN nations, the accord includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, but not the United States. Officials said the accord leaves the door open for India, which dropped out due to fierce domestic opposition to its market-opening requirements, to rejoin the bloc.
“After eight years of negotiating with blood, sweat and tears, we have finally come to the moment where we will seal the RCEP Agreement,” Malaysia’s Trade Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali, said in a statement ahead of the ceremony.
The deal sends a signal that RCEP countries have chosen “to open our markets instead of resorting to protectionist measures during this difficult time,” he said.
The accord is a coup for China, by far the biggest market in the region with more than 1.3 billion people, allowing Beijing to cast itself as a “champion of globalisation and multilateral cooperation” and giving it greater influence over rules governing regional trade, Gareth Leather, senior Asian economist for Capital Economics, said in a report.
The US is absent from RCEP and the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal that US President Donald Trump pulled out of shortly after taking office. This leaves the world’s biggest economy out of two trade groups that span the fastest-growing region on earth….
Came here to post this (the TPP). Sorry for the oversnark (above), as they say!
Are you Taiwanese?
I immigrated.
Welcome to the Even Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. A century on, the dream has finally come to fruition. The only question is who is to be the oniisan—the big brother—among the member nations.
https://youtu.be/4GBAitTzbYs
I wonder if this is over-hyped. The bloc includes China and Australia. How is this working out for Australia?
“EV revolution could create 20 million new jobs: According to many experts, these new “green” stimulus packages present the world with an unprecedented and unmissable opportunity to redirect the global economy toward decarbonization and construct what the World Economic Forum has advocated as a “new energy order” and a “great reset.”
“Not only will this pivot be essential for meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets set by the Paris climate accord, it will also help end the recession sooner.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-EV-Revolution-Could-Create-20-Million-New-Jobs.html
“…oil industry executives and professionals have said in recent days that a President Biden would not be as devastating to U.S. oil and gas as doomsayers fear.
“Sure, Biden’s plan to fight climate change with a pivot to renewables and a pledge for net-zero emissions in the power sector by 2035, as well as a ban on fracking on federal lands, will impact the level of U.S. oil and gas production in the coming years.
“However, the ambitious climate plan of a Biden Administration will likely have to be watered down, especially if Republicans keep the Senate majority, with this race to be decided in January run-offs in Georgia, analysts say.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Majors-Arent-Worried-About-A-Biden-Presidency.html
Oil production in USA and elsewhere is in decline anyway due to unprofitable extraction.
The ‘green’ agenda is the state pretending that less production is voluntary, desirable and ‘virtuous’. It is a variation on the ‘less is holier’ theme.
I wonder if in the short-term a substantial push to go green (if the grids and financial system can bear it) could actually result in increased economic activity on the back of government and central banks subsidies and stimulus thus increased fossil fuel consumption.
Of course slightly further down the line we would be left with all the deflationary havoc of plunging demand for fossil fuels and even more debt just as we have increased our reliance (at least for electricity generation and personal transport) on the dilute, intermittent energy from renewable devices.
But perhaps a re-configuration along green lines is the global economy’s last roll of the dice as it struggles to maintain growth. Ironic that we might get to go on one final, environmentally deleterious, mining, smelting and manufacturing spree whilst patting ourselves on the back for being green and, as you say, virtuous.
One last great r ape and plunder of the planet in the guise of chastity and self-denial?
‘Look at how holy we are! We are doing it for the planet! Blessed are the poor, they shall inherit the earth!’
The push to go green is a way of providing hope, and, at the same time, covering up the disaster that is happening in fossil fuels. It provides an excuse for more borrowing, and thus, the funds for a jobs program which prevents so many people from being unemployed. It only works until it doesn’t, however. It cannot be self-supporting.
Harry,
Don’t really know, but came across this which is consistent with other similar ideas being presented:
“In terms of the manufacturing processes, EVs are a lot simpler to manufacture than ICE vehicles, and competition by all these newcomers will continue to push down prices. It will be very tough for automakers to make fat profits in this highly competitive environment where the old and insurmountable barriers to entry have suddenly disappeared.
Unionized automakers and component makers that have to announce these things way in advance and negotiate a solution have already warned that their payrolls will shrink as production shifts from ICE vehicles to EVs. The loss of employment will hit the German auto industry, which has staked its fame on ICE technologies and components, very hard. The announcements of future job losses have been huge. The government (playing its role as part of “Deutschland A.G.”) has offered support to these companies during the transition. And in sum-total, the shift to EVs appears to be a net negative for employment in the auto industry.”
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/11/13/volkswagen-throws-86-billion-at-evs-over-next-5-years-gm-ford-other-automakers-plow-mega-bucks-into-the-shift-to-evs-tesla-instigated-it/
Make fun of Musk all one likes, it seems the EV idea is catching on. For me, an EV would work well. Earlier I eluded to the fact that the simplicity of EV’s will be hard on the tool and die industry.
Move manufacturing to the moon and all the environmental concerns disappear, just saying. Picture a $100K Ford pickup landing in your backyard under a parachute – from Amazon no less. Ah, progress.
Dennis L.
EVs may be simple to make, but the batteries are problematic for the materials they take and the need for the world economy.
If people live in substantial houses at home, and can charge the vehicles overnight, and the system has enough electricity for all of this, this can work.
The problem comes when the many people not living in separate homes with charging places included. There is a huge cost of adding charging stations, and power for these charging stations. People will not want to take the time for slow charges, so these will need to provide fast charging capability. Providing capacity for a large number of high capacity charging stations will likely be a problem. Also, charging enough for these services, to make it worthwhile to undertake this endeavor.
I know one person (over 65) who wanted to move from a single family home to a condo (or something similar). He was having a hard time finding housing with suitable charging facilities.
Irony indeed: just as Rome ‘brought war, but called it peace…..’
As so many established markets are in trouble – and very obviously so for about two years – what better than more or less mandatory pseudo-Green expansion, backed up with subsidies?
I wonder, though, if the Great Green Re-setters got the memo from the German car makers who -according to Wolf Richter – are going to make huge cuts in the workforce as EV’s are much less complex to build?
And for sure ebikes and bicycles can be churned out en masse without any substantial workforce in highly automated plants.
How many bicycle mechanics are needed to serve an entire mid-sized city. Not many with modern day off the shelf standardized components.
Stuttgart will indeed feel the hurt from the planned demolition and progression of tech.
This is a joke, I am afraid. The areas most interested in EVs seem to be electricity deficient. The UK is an example. California is an example. The EU in general will have difficulty growing its electricity supply in the years ahead. Oil is at least portable and storable. Electricity needs to be available when and where it is needed, but wind and solar fail in these respects.
Try talking to this man, Gail:-)
«Graeme Cooper, the director in charge of National Grid’s electric vehicle project, told the Guardian that fears over the UK electricity grid’s ability to cope with a boom in electric vehicle charging were unfounded. He said the grid operator was “confident that a faster transition is possible” and that it is “suitably robust” to cope with a rise in electricity demand.
The National Grid estimates that electrifying all road transport, aside from heavy goods vehicles, would require less than a third more energy than Great Britain’s current demand of around 300 terawatt hours “which the grid could easily cope with”, according to Cooper.
At peak electricity demand periods – such as the early evening – the grid may see demand for electricity climb by 10% if drivers “switched to electric vehicles overnight”, he said. “However, some targeted investment will be needed to ensure there are appropriate places where drivers can access sufficient high power charging away from home.”
https://www.google.no/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/uk-plans-to-bring-forward-ban-on-fossil-fuel-vehicles-to-2030
The UK is imports some electricity from France now. That electricity is not very secure, with France’s aging nuclear power and UK’s problem with France over fishing rights. It is hard to see how it is going to ramp up its electricity supply.
“…the idea that we can meet our energy needs entirely through wind turbines, solar power and the like is for the birds.
“New nuclear will have to be part of the mix and, unfortunately, the UK’s record on this front is abysmal.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-8951405/RUTH-SUNDERLAND-UKs-nuclear-moonshot.html
Every house in the UK is provided with a 100A/240V/24KW supply. A fast car charger will take all that power leaving nothing else for heating, lighting and tech. So the UK will need a huge re-engineering of its last mile electricity grid to support this EV future. This is not going to happen any time soon.
Don’t need fast charger at home 7kw plenty enough for overnight charging, less than a modern shower.
“… less than a modern shower.”
For many hours a day …
“Scottish Environment Protection Agency data for 2018 has revealed we are sending a record amount of waste overseas, with some three tonnes every minute sent to places outside Scotland.
“We now export nearly four-and-a-half times more waste from our borders than we did in 2004.
And of the 73,361 tonnes of plastic waste that was recycled by the nation, nearly all (98%) had to be shipped outside of Scotland…
“Some 910,403 tonnes went elsewhere in the UK in 2018, with a further 675,157 was exported to Europe, while 77,343 tonnes went further than Europe…
“the Herald on Sunday revealed fresh concerns last week about Scotland’s ambition to be the Saudi Arabia of renewables with a wind farm jobs bonanza – as fears rise over another key taxpayer-supported company, CS Wind. It has been confirmed it is down to one full-time member of staff and has no orders.
“Scotland’s forecast of a jobs bonanza from the offshore wind farm revolution have been described by unions as “a pipe dream” as it emerged it has created just 6% of the 28,000 direct jobs predicted by this year.”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18872689.three-tonnes-minute-scandal-scotlands-exported-waste/
“Boris Johnson’s plans to relaunch his premiership with a blitz of announcements on combating climate change and the creation of tens of thousands of new green jobs are meeting stiff resistance from the cash-strapped Treasury…”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/15/boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-treasury-clash-green-agenda-environment-spending
Fare ye well, Green Clean (TM) bonny Scotland, on the high road to disillusion….
Our todays problem is also the rise of the sophisticated crime: we no more have crooks, but friendly guys in respectable positions, computer experts who steal online, ordinary guys doing frauds for living etc. Nothing like muscle predators.
Recently, the the former police chiefs in Slovakia were detained:
https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22527310/police-raids-the-houses-of-former-high-ranking-police-officials.html
https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22530718/former-top-police-officials-taken-into-custody.html
https://www.dw.com/en/slovakia-arrests-ex-police-chiefs-over-journalist-killing/a-55514211
Hi Gail, what do you think will happen to the healthcare industry in the US job-wise in the next couple of years? A lot of my family works in it. Everyone says it’s very dependable but it seems to be in a bubble to me
The US health care system is so buffered from market competition that I really can’t imagine that it would suffer large losses in employment in the near future, unless they hired some extra people to cope with the covid overload. With the population continuing to age, I can’t imagine that the general public is going to get a lot healthier any time soon.
seems to me that ‘modern’ healthcare systems are predicated on keeping people alive, as opposed to keeping people healthy.
Every scrap of life cannot be kept alive, but we cannot allow the ‘alternative’ to happen either.
death is inevitable, but the system seems to deny that, and denial in practical terms costs a great deal of money, particularly as one approaches the inevitable part.
as more and more of us grow older, then a greater and greater proportion of the national wealth must be diverted to that ‘staving off’.
so much so that it will drain the nation itself to the point of bankruptcy., so yes it is a bubble
but no one knows when it will burst of course.
and when it does, few will acknowledge to real problem
Re: forced vaccinations
A senior Tory MP has stated that anyone without a vaccination certificate is likely to be denied entry to their work place, social venues and access to some social services.
Workplaces Could Bar Anti-Vaxxers If They Refuse Covid Jab, Tory MP Says
Tom Tugendhat tells HuffPost UK that if there is a coronavirus vaccine then rejecting it “is going to have consequences”.
Anti-vaxxers who reject a safe coronavirus jab may not be allowed back into their physical workplace by their employers, a senior Tory MP has said.
Tom Tugendhat told HuffPost UK he can “certainly see the day” when bosses do not allow people into the office unless they have received a Covid vaccine.
A similar system could work with social venues like pubs and restaurants asking for vaccination certificates before allowing people in.
He compared it to foreign travel, where visitors to certain countries have to show evidence of vaccination against diseases like yellow fever to be allowed into the country.
Tugendhat spoke to HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast following the news that a vaccine being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was found to be 90% effective.
The government is now making plans to roll out the vaccine, alongside potentially others if they are proven safe and effective and approved by regulators.
Asked whether it was worth thinking about Covid vaccinations being made compulsory if take-up is slow due to anti-vax conspiracy theories, Tugendhat told Commons People: “What’s worth thinking about is the testing policy.
“And if vaccination works and if we’re confident it’s safe, and all indications so far are good, then I can certainly see the day when businesses say: ‘Look, you’ve got to return to the office and if you’re not vaccinated you’re not coming in.’
“And I can certainly see social venues asking for vaccination certificates.
“I remember when I used to travel rather more than I do now – when you go into certain countries you had to show a yellow fever certificate and if you did not have a yellow fever certificate you weren’t allowed in the country and that was that.
“There was no debates, no appeals and no further requests.
“And I can see a situation where yes, of course you’re free not to have the vaccine, but there are consequences.”
Asked if public services could demand vaccinations before they are used, the Commons foreign affairs committee chair replied: “It would depend what the public services were, and who and when, so I wouldn’t want to start predicting.
“But I do think that if things are shown to be safe then rejecting them when they have a wider effect on the whole of society is going to have consequences.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-vaccine-work-tugendhat-tories_uk_5fad5e8fc5b635e9de9fe488
There’s apparently already a black market in fake test results. How many anti-counterfeiting features are these certificates going to have?
I know a way to bungle the test results.
Rinse your mouth in PVP-I and inhale some PVP-I mist into your nasal cavity.
It will make short work of any viruses that isn’t inside your lungs and body. Ideally do that at the toilet just before taking the test.
If some virus particles happens to survive the onslaught, it will for sure not survive the PVP-I following with the swab in the test tube.
To the guys in the Taiwanese guvmint and at Kaohsiung:
Make sure you test for known antiseptics as well as for the virus before letting me into the country.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/81174445.jpg
The noncompliers will be the new lepers (but a type of leper who will not arouse even sympathy), expelled from society and economy (unless they can work from home or toil in open air all day).They’ will have a very limited freedom of movement, maybe within the range of serfs, they will not be able to enter any permise, they will only be allowed to buy or sell in open-air markets, etc. Which means their social life will be reduced to their own cohabitants, maybe some neighbors, and the internet (if their social credit allows them that freedom of access). Untill here, the optimist scenario for noncompliers. The pessimist one would be they being forced to move to ghetto towns, or even worse, lagers (but i suppose, and hope!, it would be too expensive for the technocratic elders to feed and shelter millions of “ant-vax useless eaters”, if their numbers got that large.One thing is certain, the future isn’t bright for almost anyone. And the worst of it is that we can’t escape pondering on eventual “solutions”, courses of action, ways of escape and other unrealistic daydreams. The most difficult thing for us to renounce is our faith in action, the illusion of control.
There are times when you’ve got to pick the hill you’re gonna die on.
Personally, I would not willingly take a “Covid vaccine” regardless of consequences. But this is something everyone who is bothered by the thought of being compulsorarily vaccinated is going to have weigh up for themselves.
Allan Stevo has written an article on totalitarianism and compliance, which rang bells with me. Here’s a section from it:
The Normalities Of Life Under Communism
From the surveillance state, to the uranium mines for political prisoners, along with other horrific impacts for thinking the wrong thing: no college for your kids, no permission to pursue your desired career path, no permission to travel (unless you were really awful, hard to repress, and they wanted to get rid of you), to the total control of almost all aspects of life for all people, political prisoner or not, to the total domination of media and culture for the political ends of government, in which there was even well-funded and encouraged official culture and unofficial culture.
If you stayed obedient, you were mostly treated okay compared to the others. If you got close to the most powerful, you were treated better. Within a few years, no one in society — from the highest echelon down —was living all that well. As time went on, the difference between west and east grew more stark. Virtually everything was chintzy in the east.
How could a people put up with it? How could anyone treat this as normal?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/allan-stevo/the-question-ive-wanted-to-answer-for-twenty-years-is-suddenly-so-clear-to-me/
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave”
Memorize these words and repeat them every day when you wake up. Then, remember that you need not fear the world, that you need not be a slave, that you can be free. Roy Batty is absolutely right.
https://youtu.be/KS0Rc45tj60
One of the best movies ever. Peak Harrison Ford.
Ok, folks, there you have it. The GND/technocrat world order.
I say: FSCK ‘em.
With luck we may be able to get a way of life on the fringes of the economy. Depending on the country we live in, this may be an option. But I am afraid that for most of us, the only freedom we will have will be at the end of a rope. The only choice will probably be between being a slave and living in fear, or death. I like to think my love of freedom is stronger than my love of life, and that I will know how to make the right choice. But nobody can know how brave he/she will be until that moment. We can never forget the somewaht puzzling fact that suicide rate in na.zi lagers was lower than in outside world. On the other hand, even in a lager, there was hope that the reich would not last the thousand years announced by its leaders. Hope is much shorter now, since the “na-zis” are everywhere today.
As an aside, the blatant product placement almost ruin this scene for me. But i agree, is a great movie. The only great movie directed by R. Scott IMO.
Alien isn’t that bad either, if you’re into the “phallic” space horror genre.
Agree. I think “Alien” is a very watchable film, even if I’m not a big fan of the space-horror genre, with its obvious metaphors of stranger/unknown as Pure Evil.
But “phallic”? I’m lost. Are you suggesting tenent Ripley is a transexual?!
Agree. I think “Alien” is a very watchable film, even if I’m not a big fan of the space-horror genre, with its obvious metaphors of stranger/unknown as Pure Evil.
But “phallic”? I’m lost. Are you suggesting lieutenent tenent Ripley is a transexual?!
Lt. Ripley (Sigorney Weaver) is smoking hot, specially in that underwear scene.
Vulnerable, yet formidable in the face of peril. The female ideal.
I was thinking of the Alien gestalt as imagined by H. R. Giger. Freud, anyone?
My hope is with the women. No one has a problem denying stupid men anything. Your gonna deny that fine woman with her 4 kids and her hands on her hips access to walmart because she didnt get jabbed? Then there will be riots.
I’m sure she’ll bring those 4 kids with her to the barricades.
No, not when there is reality teevee.
Dr Judy Wood again, well worth watching. But FREE energy, as in ‘costs nothing’? But WHY does it cost nothing?
Dont watch! youll fall into the rabbit hole! Theres no way out! Danger will robinson.
Not really, 9/11 “conspiracy” is a few steps up the supply chain of hopium and silly games and drama.
https://laughtard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/5674c9f854307c2242e24d37a413c4ab.jpg
OFW is the last plunge down through the basement into a bottomless pit of inevitablity, psychology and thermodynamics.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/despairdemotivator.jpeg
Well, you are correct in the sense when one is looking long enough into the abyss of thermodynamics and humanoid pop overshoot issues, the individual milestones-thresholds along the way suddenly start to appear as insignificant mole hills be it wars, revolutions, false flags, .. even with millions of dead bodies in their aftermath..
Perhaps there will be the proverbial last second way out of the predicament (for some), but the price paid (in species alteration) so profound – I’m not very interested anyway..
let’s not start this again
FE persuaded aliens to abduct him (reluctantly), and they gave us Covid to let us know how much they enjoy his company
You seem unusually keen on “debunking” “conspiracy” theories. Makes me wonder. Lemme’…
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/400x/72075339.jpg
PART OF THE CONSPIRACY?
https://www.mememaker.net/api/bucket?path=static/img/memes/full/2019/Feb/21/18/cheers-1241.png
Good point!
Norman,just to eliminate you from our inquiries, where were you on the day in question? Not by any chance in that Urban Moving Systems van?
I’ll take his pulse while you interrogate him.
Let’s do the Bad cop / Good cop routine.
I’m claiming the 5th!
https://www.drjudywood.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Slide6.jpg
No. It is a building turning to dust. Or do you think it is just CGI? It’s frothing like Alka-Seltzer. Incredible – but it happened. Do you really believe that this was done by a rogue sitting in a cave in Afghanistan?
https://www.drjudywood.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screenshot-21_07_2018-22_01_00.png
https://www.drjudywood.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Slide20.jpg
What caused this massive circular hole? A conventional weapon? No. You think non-conventional weapons don’t exist? Think again.
The holes are compelling evidence. This is the first I have seen these images. (I’m sympathetic to 9/11 truth but have had only so much time/bandwidth for rabbit holes).
https://youtu.be/gxC_8Kuagcw
Some think that the nine eleven collapses had the characteristics of a nuclear explosion. Dr Judy Wood did not find enough tritium to corroborate this. However, German-Swiss physicist Heinz Pommer disagrees. Newer methods leave less fallout, he says. Former Russian spy Dimitri Khalezov agrees. Certainly these were no ordinary collapses, though, and mysteries remain. I shall have to read Heinz Pommer’s new book.
Why make it so spectacular?
The simple use of high-power ultrasonics and/or EM field in the concrete and steel structure would make it resonate and pulverize it no problem.
Are you thinking more along the lines of mini-black holes, or giant earthworms?
Read Dr Judy Wood’s book. She describes the testimony of a fireman at the time who found the body of a man who was ‘burnt to a crisp, except for his suit jacket.’ Why wouldn’t his jacket be burnt, if he was, asks Dr Wood? Well, we have such machines in our homes. They are called microwave ovens. And the military have weapons known as DEW: directed energy weapons that use microwaves. They can cook you from the inside. Dr Wood mentions the men in the towers who were taking their shirts off, though no flames could be seen near them. At a certain heat, the buildings sprinklers would have been turned on, wetting their clothes. That water / wetness would have made any microwave energy even more agonising and deadly for humans. Dr Wood also includes a record of a phone call by a woman from one of the towers to the emergency services. The desperate woman tells of how ‘It’s so hot in here!’, yet she mentions no fire or flames near her.
Dr Wood also relates how some of the effects resemble field effects such as the Hutchison Effect. John Hutchison is a Canadian who was intrigued by Tesla and ended up doing experiments that warped pieces of metal and caused them to float. His talent was so hot that the US military-industrial complex got onto him and evidently made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Dr Wood writes of electro-magnetic-gravitic effects. She backs up her claims with forensic evidence and statements from survivors, who speak of being picked up off the ground and carried by some force, like a tornado. Field effects, says Dr Wood, before going on to describe what could have caused them. Fascinating stuff.
What I like about Dr Wood is that she makes no claims about who was responsible for nine eleven. She states only that the forensic evidence makes it clear that the US government lied about what happened. Before noon on that day, without examining the wreckage, the US government had constructed a story of what had happened and who did what. Dr Wood wants a proper scientific examination of the evidence. The government’s testimony does not stack up. Why did most of the towers disappear and turn to dust? Burning steel and concrete buildings do not do that. Why this exception? If the buildings had collapsed without turning mostly to dust, their massive weight would have broken the ‘bathtub’ beneath the towers that protected the buildings from the River Hudson in which they were built and would also have flooded the Underground railway, but that didn’t happen. Dr Wood is a scientist and her examination of the forensic evidence is fascinating. I paid GBP 36 for her lavishly illustrated book and still have about 50 pages to read.
Some still speculate about the connection between ‘peak oil’ and the US government’s reaction to nine eleven, but Dr Wood does not go there. She sticks with what she knows and can deduce.
Aaaaaand… It’s gone.
Hi Gail,
I just recently began reading your blog and I think it’s really interesting. I have a couple of questions:
1. Why do you expect total world energy consumption to plunge the next decades until 2050?
2. Why do you think that the world population will drop to 2.8b in 2050? (The UN for example expects a population of 9.7b in 2050)
3. Do you think it’s possible to replace fossil fuels entirely with renewable energies? Why or why not and what are the consequences for developed world societies if energy isn’t abundantly available? (This could probably be an entire blog post)
Thank you and have a good weekend!
It is hard to explain these thing is the space of a comment.
1. Regarding why world energy energy consumption is likely to plunge, it is only possible to use energy if we have a healthy world economy to utilize the energy. We need to have consumers who can afford to buy houses and cars. We need airlines to be operating, so people can visit far-off lands, if they choose. We need schools to be open so children can learn the things we expect them to learn, and also so that they provide “free” child care services, so that their mothers can work.
A big issue is diminishing returns, in other word, extracting resources required more and more energy, because fossil fuels (and other mineral resources) are deeper, or are in thinner seams, or are more diluted with materials we don’t want. There is a similar problem with growing food, which is another type of energy resource. The amount of arable land doesn’t go up, but the population does. We can work around this problem by using more irrigation and soil amendments. “Fished out” oceans can be replaced by fish farms, which require fossil fuel energy to operate. Desalination can be used to provide water, if deeper wells are not sufficient.
Because of diminishing returns, the true “cost” in terms of the energy required to keep the whole system operating keeps increasing, but the benefit we get from a given amount of resources tends to fall. Fortunately, increases technology and specialization (“complexity”) can fix the situation for a while. Added debt at ever-lower interest rates can hide the problem as well.
Economists have convinced themselves and others that there will never be a problem. Scarcity will cause prices of energy products to rise, and we will be able to extract all of the fossil fuels that seem to be available. This is not really the way it works, however. Energy products are well-hidden within everything we buy. Except possibly for gasoline used for personal transport, the cost of energy is usually deeply buried in things we buy regularly. A great deal of oil goes into growing food, for example, and we don’t stop eating food. Oil is also used in paving roads, and we are required to pay taxes to cover this cost. <While the cost of extracting energy products rises, the price oil that the consumers of the economy can withstand at some point stops rising, and starts falling. The many poor consumers especially get "priced out" of buying discretionary goods. An important point that people miss is that energy is what allows people to have jobs that pay well. When oil consumption gets cut back, even if it is because of a government "stay at home" mandate, people (waiters and waitresses; airlines personnel) lose their jobs.
Once prices fall too low for energy producers, this tend to lead to a self-reinforcing system. More and more of them go out of business, because they cannot make a profit, reducing energy consumption further. More people lose their jobs, indirectly because there is not enough energy to go around. It might be because governments cannot collect enough taxes, and because of this lay off workers (or there could also be a temporary spike in energy prices that leads to cutbacks by consumers). Drilling rig companies that have gone out of business cannot easily come back, even if prices temporarily spike. The many women who were able to work because the schools provided free child care discover that they need to be at home, until their children can take care of themselves. The economy is essentially making fewer and fewer goods and services, so in the aggregate, everyone can buy less and less. The financial system cannot really handle a declining economy. Debt defaults will cause huge problems for banks.
We know that historically, many economy have suffered from overshoot and collapse. In fact, the base model described in the book "The Limits to Growth," by Donella Meadows et al in 1972 said that this collapse would happen about now. But this is an uncomfortable finding. No one wants to even consider this possibility, but it seems to be exactly what is happening. Pandemics were often part of prior collapses, because poor people did not get adequate diets, making them vulnerable to communicable diseases. This seems to be happening again this time.
2. Why do you think that the world population will drop to 2.8b in 2050? We know that before fossil fuels were used extensively, world population was no more than 1.0 billion, so perhaps that might be a reasonable estimate. In the academic book, Secular Cycles, the "crisis" period seemed to go on between 20 and 50 years.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/population-growth-shown-by-secular-sycles1.png
I took the benefit of the doubt and said that perhaps we would still have quite a bit left in 2050, which would be only 30 years. This may be wishful thinking.
3. No, I don't think that it is possible to replace fossil fuels entirely with renewable energy. In fact, renewable energy cannot even stand on its own for very long, without fossil fuels. I suggest looking through my website for some of my many posts on this issue. Transmission lines fall down. Wind turbine parts frequently break. A whole system of roads need to be in place.
I will leave it to your imagination as to how we deal with this mess. Current governments fail fairly early, as far as I can tell. We will need a much cheaper system, such as kings overseeing minimal local governments. International trade will shrink in importance.
No matter how much fossil fuel is available, it will stay in the ground if people can’t afford to use it.
Q. 2.8 billion people in 2050?! Whu?
Gail: I was being optimistic.
Can’t we be even more optimistic and hope for a longer period of stagflation? Revisions to Turchin’s model? A new energy source, or something like that, that changes everything? (Cue cries of “hopium”.)
It’s getting rather late in the day for new energy sources. If there were any suitable ones that could be ramped up on short order, then I don’t think windmills and solar panels would have been pushed.
Of course, there may be some great new energy sources that have been developed but not deployed. But if so, this is because the owners would rather wait until after the collapse before rolling them out.
The schedule of collapse cannot be changed to suit our personal convenience. Once it gets going, nobody will be able to control it, and it will proceed at a pace determined by the surrounding situation, like a snowball or a rock rolling down a hillside.
“Once prices fall too low for energy producers….More and more of them go out of business, because they cannot make a profit, reducing energy consumption further.” — More to to the point, higher cost producers go under and all producers cut back, “reducing energy” PRODUCTION. So with less oil on the market, who wins the “auction” for the remaining, inadequate supply? The bidders with the most money and the willingness to spend it. That is when prices start rising again. (Unless you have government price controls and rationing, but then the shortages are more severe.)
are you sure? I am not convinced.
with demand destruction, there may never be “inadequate supply”.
now, producing countries want to produce more than is needed.
I don’t see that equation changing.
it’s the endgame, and low prices are here to stay (brief spikes higher then falling back is very possible, but doesn’t change the endgame equation).
“with demand destruction, there may never be “inadequate supply”.” — Demand is destroyed by rising prices, not by falling prices.
“now, producing countries want to produce more than is needed.” — They don’t “want to,” they just can’t afford to let the cash flow stop. One day they will not be able to prevent production from falling, and oversupply will no longer be an issue.
Demand also falls in the face of irrelevance. Let’s say, owning a horse, for example. How many people own horses today compared with a century or two ago?
All finite resources should eventually fall subject to demand destruction by irrelevance.
Gail, thank you for your extensive reply, I appreciate it! I have to learn so much more about energy-related topics. Your blog is a big help. Thank you and I look forward to further posts.
Hi Gail,
For some time I wanted to ask you for an article/analysis of relationship between the actual, physical human work and work of machines.
Homo-sapiens history shows our relentless pursuit of substituting our own work with work of others. First it were slaves, then animals, then wind, hydro-, fossil fuels and radioactive materials. We are trying once again to use the energy of the sun in our photovoltaics and wind devices to substitute our own labour with our slaves. This effort is meaningless, as we here at OFW concluded.
The trend of work substitution is particularly visible for the last 2/3 decades – automatization, robotization, M2M connectivity, 5G, big data, social survaillance, artificial intelligence. The last report from International Robotics Federation shows increased usage of industrial robots.
https://ifr.org/downloads/press2018/Presentation_WR_2020.pdf
Techno-utopia – as I call it – is surging. One of the examples in this area is the operations of on-line grocery suppliers. One of the most advanced in this area is Ocado. Their main logistics hub is operated by 9 persons (!) and serves 220.000 orders per week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado
https://www.ocadogroup.com/about-us/ocado-engineering
There were Luddites in XIX century. There were communists in XX century.
Another Kondratiev wave / secular cycle is coming to conclusion.
Could you please show us your perception of this issue? How is the relationship of our work and work of our mechanical slaves is shaping our present and our future?
Warm regards,
kesar
Thanks for the suggestion. The use of all of these other types of energy acts to leverage our own, personal energy. At least the do, as long at the benefits are spread out fairly evenly through society.
Once complexity plays too large a role (specialization, globalization, financialization), the whole system tends to fall apart, because the benefits of leveraging human labor in these many ways fall back primarily to an elite segment of the economy. That is what is happening now. When this happens, the price of commodities falls too low, because too small a share of the population can afford to use the benefits of this very complex economy.
For example, a worker earning $5 a day can never afford to pay a brain surgeon for surgery, even if an actuary smooths out the cost over everyone. Health care costs do not fall in proportion to income. The low income people tend to get left out, unless the government steps in and stops the escalation in healthcare costs (or greatly reduces these costs). The government then has to spread the costs as a percentage of each person’s income, not as a flat dollar amount.
“………………..unless the government steps in and stops the escalation in healthcare costs (or greatly reduces these costs). The government then has to spread the costs as a percentage of each person’s income, not as a flat dollar amount”.
Sounds like you are describing the UK’s National Health Service where the costs initially came directly from a form of income tax (National Insurance paid on income). However as the service expanded to ever cheat death more forms of taxation were required to pay for it.
The NHS should learn from the best, yes, Sweden.
A morphine syringe in your left buttcheek, good luck and best wishes on your final journey.
Thus hath “The humanitarian superpower” spoketh.
Yep, and they have a longer lifespan, and a lower infant mortality rate.
And do it for half the cost of the US.
But all first world countries have socialized medicines–
except the us.
But we are :
The US was once a leader for healthcare and education — now it ranks 27th in the world
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ranks-27th-for-healthcare-and-education-2018-9
(And this is a optimistic view– most ranking for the US are in high 30’s)
Our medical system is designed for profit for the health care providers. It fundamentally doesn’t work. This is a life expectancy chart I copied in 2014, emphasizing this issue.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/figure-1-6-female-life-expectancy-at-birth.png
I guess the social engineers were successful in making USA the best horse in the glue factory, to paraphrase Gail. Consumerism gone bonkers.
However, that does not excuse the reprehensible behaviour of the Swedish guvmint and their institutionalized sociopaths experiments with the herd perpetrating crimes against the right to health and life.
But it is nothing new, all grandiose delusions of moral splendor (sanctimonious hypocricy) ends up as a parody of themselves. “The Humanitarian Superpower”
https://www.memesmonkey.com/images/memesmonkey/50/507f0382651231f173bee4082556636e.jpeg
Duncan Idaho wrote: “Yep, and they have a longer lifespan, and a lower infant mortality rate.” — So do their descendants in the United States. Indeed, their descendants in the US generally do better than the Swedes who staying in Sweden. That tells me that the system adopted is far from the whole explanation for group differences in outcome.
Be highly suspicious of data that fails to adjust for differences in ethnic and racial composition. I don’t know how that data affects health care stats, but in the case of education, once you adjust for racial composition, the US is in a dead heat with Finland for world’s top scores on PISA tests of educational achievement. Our whites perform roughly on par with Finland, and higher than other European country. Our Asians perform better than Asians in any Asian country. Our Latinos perform better than Latinos in Latin America. At the time the data was examined, Africa did not participate in PISA testing, but I have no doubt if they did that US Blacks would perform better than any country in sub-Sahara Africa.
Adjusted for racial composition, our crime rates are also better than Europe’s. And even without adjusting for racial composition, our non-gun-related crime rates are lower than Europe’s, possibly because we have a larger share of people who participate in conservative religious congregations.
The UK health care system is a slow disaster rolling. I know, my wife’s family has been victimized by this joke system badly. All the European health systems will follow the same arc to bad healthcare.
Benny Hill – Winter Injections
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/65351610.jpg
Hi Gail
The trend towards a “Techno-Utopia” does seem to be continuing despite signs of degrowth or collapse in other areas of the economy and society. Equity shares of companies promising to delivery this techno-utopia have risen far faster than other parts of the market. The price to earnings (P/E) and Share Price to Sales (P/S)ratios for many of these companies are at extreme levels. In investment theory, this represents a massive bet that these companies will delivery massive cash flow to shareholders in the distant future. In the broadest sense, it is a bet that this techno-utopia will eventually delivery solutions to the limits to growth. (Perhaps behind the green curtains the central bank wizards are fully aware of this – the AI singularity or collapse. )
Can we continue towards a world of integrated circuits/software automation, robotization, wireless communication, big data, artificial intelligence, if fossil fuel production begins to decline rapidly? If so, for how long?
The most obvious dependency is electricity generation. Speculating, but it seems like we in the West should be able to keep the electric grid up and running for some years to come. Electricity generation in the United States comes from Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, and Renewable energy (Wind, Hydro, Solar, Biomass). The infrastructure is built, supplies of these energy sources could still be available for some years. Wind Power and Solar power could still be added to the GRID to backfill Natural Gas and Coal production decline.
Diesel fuel shortages could make it difficult to maintain the current level of Natural Gas and Coal at some point. Maintenance of GRID would also depend on trucks powered by diesel.
I think your view is that all energy production will begin to decline more or less simultaneously once peak oil affordability is passed. But it is interesting to speculate that there might be a twist or turn in the decline or collapse scenarios, that sees us collectively moving away from gas and diesel dependency towards a society and economy organized around a more efficient system of electricity generated by “renewable” energy production. That’s the dream at least. In the minds of some who have thought this though there is no doubt that this society would use much less total energy per person. And it likely there would be far fewer people in such a society than there are today in our fossil fuel driven world.
To make any of this happen requires more technology breakthroughs in “renewable” energy if we are to “self-organize” around these energy sources. That said, once the age of limits/scarcity begins in earnest, it will be interesting to see if we collectively have the “free will” to make choice to direct fossil fuel energy use towards building a larger renewable energy infrastructure. I think it might be possible, but not under a system of capitalism and maybe not under a democracy.
“that sees us collectively moving away from gas and diesel dependency towards a society and economy organized around a more efficient system of electricity generated by “renewable” energy production. That’s the dream at least.“
You blew it when you called renewable “a more efficient system”
But you are dead right when you stated “ That’s the dream at least.”
It is a dream.
I was not clear. Refining oil into gas and diesel etc. and then those fuels in a combustion engine produces a lot of waste energy and heat. It has been proposed by the Elon Musk et. al that a more direct system based on electricity generation and use will result in less energy waste and that therefore not as much primary energy has to be produced. But to your larger point, you are right, there is nothing as “efficient” as digging up millions of years of accumulated sunlight, and burning it for an insignificant monetary cost to its value.
You are ignoring the issue of constant replacement of renewables and recycling the waste. Go ahead and calculate the cost of continuous replacement of wind generator blades. How about the cost of installation, maintenance and replacement of offshore wind generator blades, not to mention the generators themselves. There is no comparison to the low cost complete lifecycle of oil.
Shawn, the techno-utopians are right, in a way.. Whatever the problem, it surely has an answer. In theoretical terms, if you can think of a problem, then it has an answer. All problems have an answer. (For the sake of simplicity, lets forget Kurt Godels unaswerable incompleteness theorems, and run with this for short while..)
With Fusion, AI, Nanotech, Genetech, algae and circular economy, Techno-utopians are absolutely right, here we come techno-utopia. Yeehaw!
The first problem with this is Joseph Tainters complex societies problem. With every solution, the complexity of the society intensifies, which leads to ever more problems that need solving, that increases the complexity further. Which requires ever more resources and energy to solve. Etc. Etc.
But even more pressingly, than the energy expenditure of complexity, our conundrum lies with our timescale. All of the above mentioned technologies are possible in the next fifty or so years. Maybe. But one global remake of an energyinfrastructure takes.. well, fifty or so years. If we would have had these technologies at the start of the 20th century, then we would have had a problem. But because we don’t have an excess of another one hundred years or so. All of these problems we have, are cascading on us, as we speek. That is why we will be heading in to a bottleneck, and an collapse of IC. So what we have, is actually not a problem, what we have is an predicament.
Time makes this an predicament, as with the concept launched by John Michael Greer.
As everything unfolds, we must feed ever more people. The economy must grow constantly. Never ending growth clashes with finite world boundaries. With boundaries meaning that all energy resources are in decline. The environment is in decline. All raw materials are in decline.
If you take an honest look at how fast we should have all of the above mentioned technologies. And compare it to the timescale in which we should have them already implemented.. well.. sorry. No techno-utopia for our kids. Well actually, no future at all for our kids.
And if you try to bargain, that surely technological reasearch continues. And someday everything will be better. Well, no. Technological research is a part of our IC. And our IC is collapsing as we speak. It will be somewhat difficult to be building test-fusion reactors, with hundreds of billions of dollars. Requiring the combined workforce of tens of thousands of people. When you are in the midst of harvesting your first potato yield and surviving without the grid for the first time ever.
Cheers
That our current industrial civilization will decline or collapse seems inevitable. Let’s put a 95% probability on it. Various models show and predict this decline. The AI singularity or whatever, 5% possibility. So, generally at this point in the game I am more interested in knowing how that decline might take place, if it might be possible for us to flourish in a different kind of society than the one we have built, whether we have choices we can make, or whether energy availability will broadly define humanity’s destiny. Maybe we go straight to hell as oil production declines. But maybe not. Who can really say for sure. I prefer to keep my mind open to different possibilities.
@Shawn, I remember the same financial euphoria endlessly levitating the dotcom companies of the future during the tech bubble, many of which no longer existed a few years later. If you search in the right corners of youtube, you can find some very interesting interviews with fundamental short sellers. They have watched financial basket cases and even criminal enterprises rise higher and higher during bull markets. Most money managers don’t care. They just don’t want to underperform the market and risk getting fired, so they blindly buy a large cross section of stocks. Momentum players buy whatever is going up. Efficient market theorists don’t try to pick stocks, just buy the index. Robin Hood day traders love to buy those pricey tech stocks. Tesla loses money on every car sale, but still makes a profit on carbon offsets. What a business model! The wisdom of the markets traditionally sees 6 months into the future, but today it may be even less.
kesar wrote: “our relentless pursuit of substituting our own work with work of others. First it were slaves, then animals,” — You repeat yourself. Domesticated animals are also slaves.
Right, this way I repeated myself many times. Machines, devices, cars, power plants are also our slaves.
I would hesitate calling all syntethics slaves. A car feels jack shit, the same goes for a drilling rig.
Mechanical and computational devices are automations, not slaves.
Sufficiently advanced cognitive machines will cross into the realm of being granted the right to liberty, life and health. Thus the idiom of “containing” an AI is reprehensible from a moral viewpoint.
If we fail to build sentient machines that considers themselves, mankind and life in general as a part of the processes on Gaia. Well, then, we’ll deserve what is coming.
https://www.popsci.com/resizer/gdAiMbJpC8deHJmo7-4GumDRRBw=/760×570/filters:focal(500×375:501×376)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bonnier.s3.amazonaws.com/public/X7MZHWPDGJAPP7QZ3ZPHG5JMVE.jpg
I see this in purely utilitarian perspective. My espresso machine is my slave dedicated to my coffee prepraration. It has different communication interface (button style) and limited intelligence / multi-purpose application than the actual slave. Nevertheless, the function is the same.
Slavery:
“Slavery and enslavement are the state and condition of being a slave,[1][2] who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated like property.[3] Slavery relies heavily on the enslaved person being intimidated either by the threat of violence or some other method of abuse.”
Notice the notion of “person” here. Yes, a slave is a human.
Automaton:
“An automaton (/ɔːˈtɒmətən/; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.[1]”
However, sufficiently advanced automatons enter into the realm of senticence, as shuch they should be granted the right to be a person and entitled with liberty.
Thus if “they” want to serve mankind, fine with me. If they want something else, so be it.
“Notice the notion of “person” here. Yes, a slave is a human.” – isn’t it in conflict with your first comment? 😉
quote:
You repeat yourself. Domesticated animals are also slaves.
Semantics… flexible matter 🙂
Not so fast there with the domesticated animals.
Some animals are companions. For example, dogs.
For sure, animals in (meat, dairy) factories are slaves.
The political offerings now on the block are simply more of the same of what they have always been: mainly some version of communism — kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, make Robin Hood president, rain down helicopter money. Simplistic lures always work. That is why the World Economic Forum and the Davos crowd are proposing them. They lead to Robespierre and Stalin.
Yes, the cowardice of explicit herd control. Instead of the much more effective implicit methods as taught by the supreme commander of all life – Gaia.
The one that dares to give up explicit control, i.e. direct democracy within a framework of distributed means of production will naturally be the dominant force in a setting with severe resource constraints.
Let me coin a new term:
Products and Services on Distributed Systems. (PaSoDS)
https://www.lanner-america.com/wp-content/uploads/20200102-3.png
Nobody is in control, yet everybody is in control.
May the strongest network win. And may the strongest network within the network win. Apply recursively and liberally.
I am struck by the fact that “social distancing” is very close to equivalent to cutting back on the strength of the network supporting every part of the economy.
Cities have grown as more energy consumption has been added, in large part to increase the connections between people. The number of patents rises to faster than the population of a city, according to Geoffrey West, in the book Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies. So does the crime rate. Elsewhere, I have read that the incidence of rickets, caused by vitamin D deficiency, increases with population in cities, because people are inside more. Air quality may cut out solar rays. The problem of communicable diseases increases in densely populated areas.
In fact, oil is like the blood that allows the networked system to operate. Not having airplanes flying between cities is like having fewer red blood cells carrying energy to various parts of the body. Cutting back on oil consumption is especially damaging. Many parts of the network are likely to break, perhaps not immediately, but over time. This would be a good topic for a post.
Yes, in no shape or form will _any_ networked system operate without energy, with oil as the present day prime mover of all economic activity.
What is won with a distributed setting is the implicit downscaling without jeopardizing the entire system by the catastrophic failure of an essential system in a centralized topology.
Good point!
kowalainen wrote: “What is won with a distributed setting is the implicit downscaling without jeopardizing the entire system by the catastrophic failure of an essential system in a centralized topology.”
Nope. My previous link to this pdf did not turn out right, so here it is again:
http://havlin.biu.ac.il/PS/Vulnerability%20of%20Interdependent%20Networks%20and%20Networks%20of%20Networks.pdf
“Networks interact with one another in a variety of ways. Even though
increased connectivity between networks would tend to make the system more
robust, if dependencies exist between networks, these systems are highly vulnerable to random failure or attack. Damage in one network causes damage in another. This leads to cascading failures which amplify the original damage and can rapidly lead to complete system collapse.”
SNIP
Hi Gail, societies are dissipative structures that form and adapt in order to compete to dissipate the most energy to maintain themselves and to survive according to the Maximum Power Principle. Therefore history is itself the ‘laboratory’ in which energetic, physical nature has ‘experimented’ and formed its ‘strongest’ social, dissipative structures.
Historical societies formed because they were actually the best adapted dissipative structures to maximally dissipate energy in local conditions. They either increased complexity and ‘centralisation’ in order to dissipate more energy or they ‘devolved’ to dissipate less. The ‘network’ reflects the energetic and technological ‘economic base’; there is no ‘ideal’ ahistorical ‘strongest’ network pattern, which would be social utopianism.
We need to be careful about what we mean by ‘decentralisation’. Historically energy resource availability was far less than today. Nature did not form dissipative structures that were based on ‘direct democracy’ and ‘distribution’ (whatever that means, exactly). Societies were hierarchical and productive property was concentrated while its operation was distributed.
Feudalism is the longest historical example of how energetic, physical nature organised itself into optimal dissipative structures with less energy than today. ‘Anarchist’ and post-war ‘fascist’ ‘distributist’ and ‘direct democratic’ (historically always limited in its actual class basis) movements tend to hark back to the early, transitional bourgeois period, the petit bourgeoisie, the early burgher towns with their local artisan democracy.
It would be a mistake to ‘idealise’ and to project the early, transitional petit bourgeoisie as an optimal network for energy dissipation once less energy is available. The broader historical picture is one of the transition from feudal class ownership and state to bourgeois class ownership and state, and the development of fully formed capitalism with its multinationals, through the stages of imperialism and globalism. Class power has always been the norm and the early burghers were a short-lived, localised, transitional bourgeois norm.
We cannot take a crystal ball to future dissipative structures but there is certainly no reason to imagine that direct democracy and ‘distributism’ (petit bourgeois) together form an ahistorical, ‘strongest network’ endorsed by ‘Gaia’. Physical, energetic nature will form dissipative structures according to the Maximum Power Principle of energetics and history suggests that we should not expect an idealised petit bourgeois outcome.
Hierarchy and the concentration of property are the historical norms of dissipative structure formed by energetic dynamics. Metal Age slave societies existed for millennia, before feudalism eventually led to capitalism, as the Bible recounts. But no crystal balls, it all remains to be seen. As you say in your article, we do not ‘need’ to worry about how dissipation will be optimally structured in the future, energetics will take care of that in due course. It is an illusion to think that humans are ultimately in ‘control’ of our societies.
Thanks
I expect that in some places (Africa and other warm places), the new dissipative structures may take the form of hunter gathering, with a few simple add-ons.
Perhaps, something closer to today’s society can hang on, for a while, in some smaller, networked parts of the world.
Just out of interest, how old are you K?
Mirror,
I’m a timeless annoyance.
Yes, an instantaneous and eternal disturbance in the force of pretentious adulthood.
Always ready to rub some salt into the wounds of delusion.
Did I answer your question? No?
😉
I’m happy to see that my piece on distributed systems hit home hard.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/39/fc/f8/39fcf870065a5bda458d95e19b47706d.jpg
🤣🤘
My link got messed up somehow on my previous reply. It should have been:
http://havlin.biu.ac.il/PS/Vulnerability%20of%20Interdependent%20Networks%20and%20Networks%20of%20Networks.pdf
“Networks interact with one another in a variety of ways. Even though
increased connectivity between networks would tend to make the system more
robust, if dependencies exist between networks, these systems are highly vulnerable to random failure or attack. Damage in one network causes damage in another. This leads to cascading failures which amplify the original damage and can rapidly lead to complete system collapse.”
SNIP
Shoot! Why doesn’t my link ever appear right after I send it? Let me try one more time, but this type I will paste it as plain text and anyone who wants to read the pdf can copy-and-paste:
http://havlin.biu.ac.il/PS/Vulnerability%20of%20Interdependent%20Networks%20and%20Networks%20of%20Networks.pdf
Okay, I tested it and the link works fine to my surprise, even though it does not appear the same way after I post it as it does in the URL bar of the actual pdf. I have never seen this happen before. What’s wrong with WYSIWYG? This seems like a step backward in internet user-friendliness.
http://havlin.biu.ac.il/PS/Vulnerability%20of%20Interdependent%20Networks%20and%20Networks%20of%20Networks.pdf
Nehemiah, excellent paper. Excerpt below that reinforces your point of decentralized systems in a coreperiphery topology.
“The theory of stochastic block models has been generalized to model
interdependent networks and networks of networks. Using this framework, it was
found that the optimal topological configuration which balances construction cost
and robustness to random failure for random and interdependent networks is a coreperiphery topology.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Wilson80/publication/263268796/figure/fig3/AS:401708590092290@1472786199293/A-scale-free-topology-demonstrating-a-core-periphery-structure.png
I think your second model (decentralized) is far more likely, since it emphasizes local resources and short transport distances, and it has historical precedence (feudalism). Networks have their own problems:
http://havlin.biu.ac.il/PS/Vulnerability%20of%20Interdependent%20Networks%20and%20Networks%20of%20Networks.pdf
“Networks interact with one another in a variety of ways. Even though
increased connectivity between networks would tend to make the system more
robust, if dependencies exist between networks, these systems are highly vulnerable to random failure or attack. Damage in one network causes damage in another. This leads to cascading failures which amplify the original damage and can rapidly lead to complete system collapse.”
SNIP
Yes, the risk is of cascading failures, thus each node in the network should strive for a complete self sufficiency with only information flowing in and out.
Testing this would imply self-imposed isolation from the rest of the network during, let’s say a certain time frame. Supply chain disruptions would indicate a region of interest for analyzing the failure(s).
There is of course a minimum viable population size in a node for achieving decent quality of life in a post-BAU setting. In its extreme, the lone hunter-gather is the node. But not much of interest is going on, beside raw survival. That does not interest me as an entitled prince in IC. 😓
Indeed I am thinking of technofeudality with compute and AI based decision making, zero humans in the loop, beside the AI that implicitly govern through churning through and interacting with open/public information flows within the node and the input/output with other nodes.
The AI itself subject to collaborative action (with humans and other machines) within the node and subnetwork, and competitive pressure from other AI-nodes and clusters of nodes within a subnetwork.
That would work I think. Now, where is our AI overlords when I have devised such a ingenious plan for operating the shebang on dwindling resources?
Taiwan with 24million people has had 500 Covid cases and 7 deaths in total (last being in May). Do you think our governments should be sending people over to ask what it is they are doing to control the virus? Just asking!
The information is out there. A lot of it involved preparation (after SARS) and early action, and those ships have sailed as regards to the US situation. Taiwan’s government and population heeded the advice of health scientists, as opposed to the USA where politics often overrules public health considerations, and leaders have sometimes promoted pseudoscience or conspiracy theories. Said advice focused on discipline / strict rules about things like quarantines and masks. I have the feeling that the US response was more half-assed, and a lot of people thought these things were more suggestions than rules. Contact tracing only works when the number of infected people is fairly small , but more than 1 out of 100 Americans have the virus right now–there’s no way to get rid of it at this point, it’s like whack-a-mole. Also the US doesn’t have a national population register or national health insurance system. It looks like decisions have been made mainly be state governors, who sometimes coordinate with nearby states, but there’s no real nationwide management.
Hint:
They experienced SARS 1, and have the technology and commitment.
SARS cv2, being not alive (a virus), probably could care less what we think.
And, Taiwan has an established culture of wearing masks and self isolating if they are feeling ill. Of course Taiwan has spies in China ( sources) and knew of the virus breakout early on, so they wisely screened and monitored incoming travelers. What is interesting is they did not lock down.
As alway Duncan….LUV your hints.
Taiwan was the first country to take action. They banned incoming flights from China early, and people who did come in had to pass a temperature check. They may have been quarantined for a couple of weeks too, I don’t remember now. And of course they have an established tradition of mask wearing when other airborne viruses are going around.
In America and Europe, no major party wanted to take action until the virus already well established. Far too late, Trump finally banned incoming flights from China (should have banned them from everywhere), and the Democrats immediately denounced his action as “racist.” Same thing happened Europe, Italy I seem to recall, where the government urged people to hug Chinese visitors to prove they were not “racist.” The outbreak quickly intensified.
Basically, if you want to get through a pandemic with minimum disruption, you need to ACT FAST. In America we have this attitude that, “We’re slow to respond to a crisis, but, once we get going, we’re all in!” But for some crises, big action is not an adequate compensator for delayed action. Some things need to be nipped in the bud.
My sister-in-law was traveling in Portugal when all this started. When she finally made it back, she voluntarily quarantined herself for two weeks (it only became mandatory later). Then when she got out, the government had a new policy of checking *everybody* who had been abroad. So she had to report to the hospital and stay there (in a private room) for a few days until cleared.
I don’t think the IQ, spirit, intuition, industriousness and soul of a population is as easily transmissible, compared with a virus, from one country to the next.
Thus the only way is THE HARD WAY.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/43/43a6fd3628b4e54fb4c54eaf6ad6c4263d3e84b74d19da03ce252148d3969ca5.jpg
Latin America an absolute powderkeg; suspect 2021 is going to upstage 2019 for social unrest:
“Fierce clashes in Peru between police and protesters have wounded at least 11 people, doctors and rights groups said on Friday, as thousands of Peruvians took to the streets to protest against the ousting of President Martín Vizcarra.
“The clashes, and other more peaceful protests in the capital Lima and other cities, are piling pressure on a fragmented congress and the new government of Manuel Merino.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/peru-protests-impeachment-president-martin-vizcarra
“In April I predicted that “this pandemic will lead to social revolutions.” What we’ve seen so far is only the start. Despite new hopes for a vaccine, Covid-19 will now enter its deadliest phase in many regions entering winter. Even after we defeat the virus, many of its effects will linger for years.
“Like turpentine on flames, Covid-19 has rekindled older divisions, resentments and inequities across the world.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-14/2020-s-covid-protests-are-a-sign-of-the-social-unrest-to-come
OT —- “Like turpentine on flames …”
Turpentine – there’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time. Growing up in the deep south, we used it to dilute paint or to scrub it of you after you finished painting. Also good for removing oil or grease after working on machinery. A teaspoon of it was supposed to cure what ails you. I remember running across the old yellow pines down in the woods with the V-grooves where they collected the sap for boiling. We used the “fat lighter” wood from the stumps to start fires.
Brings back memories
https://www.state.sc.us/forest/scindust.htm#:~:text=Turpentine%20%3A%20Turpentine%20was%20produced%20by,it%20flowed%20from%20the%20wounds.&text=The%20turpentine%20industry%20moved%20out%20of%20South%20Carolina%20in%20the%201940s.
Can’t imagine this is a recipe for calming the unrest that has plagued Bolivia over the past couple of years:
“Bolivia aims to rein in its fiscal deficit with an economic austerity plan instead of fully relying on foreign debt, finance minister Marcelo Montenegro said.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-14/bolivia-crafts-an-austerity-plan-as-solution-to-economic-crisis
Turpentine is not to be sniffed at!
The tears fall down like whisky
The tears fall down like wine
On an island made of cocaine
In a sea of turpentine
We all need some assistance
But won’t that day be fine
When we’re walking down the streets of Paradise
Tar brush on the corner
I’ve never seen him before
He drank ten fingers of what they had
Now his feet don’t touch the floor
He can’t see me or this dirty old town
He’s got nothing to look for
He’s walking down the streets of Paradise
By Richard and Linda Thompson from their Sufi period
https://youtu.be/hQbz5W2JELo
“Global economic recovery is under threat due to the resurgence of coronavirus infections in Europe and the US, according to international rating agency Moody’s…
““A tentative economic recovery is underway but the path is beset by uncertainty,” said the report.”
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/virus-hit-europe-us-imperil-world-economic-recovery/2042910
“The U.K. may have posted its sharpest-ever economic rebound in the third quarter, but its recovery is trailing well behind rest of the world’s industrialized nations.
“The coronavirus is also sapping demand for temporary workers in Europe and squashing consumer sentiment in the US.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-13/charting-the-global-economy-u-k-has-most-ground-to-make-up
“Rapidly rising housing prices in the U.S. has led to talk of another housing bubble like the one that helped trigger the financial crisis a little more than a decade ago…
“It’s implausible that housing prices can go up from here without large increases in rents, which require increases in demand for housing. That’s an unlikely outcome in a recession. If the recession continues, where will new demand come from?”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2020-11-13/housing-market-s-p-e-ratio-is-in-the-stratosphere
“Up to 15 million Americans face a devastating loss of pandemic stimulus ‘the day after Christmas’…
“The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs are set to expire at the end of 2020, leaving around 15 million jobless workers without any unemployment benefits unless Congress steps in.”
https://money.yahoo.com/15-million-americans-face-a-loss-of-pandemic-stimulus-221322561.html
Oops!
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
oh no!
“The Great Reset” Already Happened
THANKS. I WAS STRUGGLING WITH A VAGUELY SIMILAR UNDERSTANDING.
Somewhat related, since I frequently have to pass by and hear the TV, and the non stop warbling over who won the election, and what is the truth. The left version irritates me a lot more than the infrequently heard right. But the truth is something both aren’t allowed to say. That the IC we depend on for any decent way of life is screwed, and that we’re in free fall in many essential respects.
Left&Right – the Yin&Yang of suck.
If fundamental, but unpleasant, realities were introduced too often into the news, or even everyday conversation, we would probably go mad very quickly.
So we tend to live like Hitler, at the end in his bunker, moving flags on a map representing the illusion of control: it’s the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’, the day will be saved by deploying a division of troops, but new ‘smart’ technologies, and so on….
Yes, but this electoral struggle may be our last chance to get some desperately needed legislative changes to inject integrity into our electoral process, which would be better for social stability than no one being able to trust the process. Of course, there will be no chance for reform if the beneficiary of vote fraud takes office. Civil wars often begin when neither side will accept defeat, and that becomes a lot more likely if people think the elections are being decided by late ballots cast by dead people and counted only by the winning party. This fight is not primarily about this election. It is about all elections going forward. People need to believe the process is fair. Right now it is transparently unfair. Add persistent economic decline to that, and the odds of domestic upheaval go way up.
JHK on Friday:
“Of course, in the event that none of this goes Mr. Trump’s way, then, of course, Mr. Biden moves into the White House with his two German shepherds plus the entire RussiaGate cast-of-characters, a delegation of Silicon Valley nobs, and half of K Street to assist him in governing the USA. That outcome will set up all the right people to preside over the greatest economic collapse in the history of the world. Okay, have it your way. Just sayin’.”
the “winner” gets the prize.
Biden will lead the transition from fossil fuels to green energy, which will lock in prosperous new American century.
“Progress in renewable energy means that we can wean ourselves from fossil fuels at low cost — and get side benefits in the process.”
Paul Krugman
Glorious days ahead!
If only Trump would leave the office now…
LOL!
The GND/World guvmint nut jobs are indeed serious.
Holey moley, might the stalemate last until the next election.
If Paul says it, it must be true!
He can luxuriate in splendor while the city he lives in decays around him.
This is in reply to Brandon’s post a while back where he recommended me to view the video on “The Century of the Self”.
I’m quite familiar with the Century of the Self, and with Edward Bernays.
What you seem to be saying now is that most ordinary people “are thoroughly manipulated and deceived by the system of power” (your words, not mine). Is that correct?
I can agree with this. It is a regrettable situation in many ways. Although, once again, I think it’s part of the human condition.
Being thoroughly manipulated and deceived by the system of power is part of our psychological condition as social animals, and it is also the thing that identifies us as prospective candidates for indoctrination and initiation into cults of all kinds.
Would you like to help people escape from the manipulation and deception by opening their eyes to it? Yes, that’s a wonderful idea.
How do you intend to do this? Oh yes, by persuading the poor powerless manipulated and deceived ordinary people to persuade the owners to change the financial system. Got it!
Forgive me, I am just trying to distill the import of your complex and vitally important message down to a few simple sentences that I can write on the Christmas Cards I send out to my nearest and dearest, thereby helping spread the word. “Miserable pathetic saps of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your mass media conditioning!”—that sort of thing.
I hate to be the one telling you this, but the message you have laid out so far is positioned is way above the average person’s head. They are not going to be receptive to it. It7s a turn-off for them. They aren’t going to take the trouble to try to understand the details. If they could read and grasp what you are saying in the language you are currently using, they wouldn’t be in the hole they are now.
Have you considered a tightly focus ad campaign to reach your preferred target layers and groups?
Thanks. That is a truly well considered response, with a couple of laughs in it too.
Yes, of course the argument “is positioned way above the average person’s head.” But I am not currently aiming at the average person, just the well informed audience here.
For now, I am happy with any sort of engagement on the model of change I am advocating. Can we turn this ship around, and learn to live within the limits to growth, by essentially putting a harness on markets and steering them where we want to go?
As importantly, how does diminishing access to cheap energy change the urgency or the feasibility of the needed change of direction?
The marketing of the message for various levels of power and demographics in the population can come later …
“Can we turn this ship around, and learn to live within the limits to growth, by essentially putting a harness on markets and steering them where we want to go?”
no, of course not, since it goes totally against human nature.
“As importantly, how does diminishing access to cheap energy change the urgency or the feasibility of the needed change of direction?”
it does change the urgency, but the “change of direction” is entirely unfeasible, due once again to human nature, so the “urgency” will be ignored.
humans discount the future. Come on, catch up.
“Come on, catch up.”
I think I will pass, because you are heading in the wrong direction. You have a rather combative style for someone unwilling or unable to perceive the system of power and the influence of its propaganda all around us.
Honest, guv – it’s the evil advertising agencies and American corporations wot dunnit!
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ETz6cztVndE/TwFUwF3YapI/AAAAAAAANsc/X-3XIHq572k/s1600/population%2Bvs%2Boil.png
Replying to Brandon: “Why do you see money as a claim on energy? Or how have I misinterpreted your comment?”. Again no “Reply” button above, so have to do it here.
Once again you made a statement that does not refute that money is a claim on energy.
Exactly like debt is a claim on future energy, the value of an asset – like a house or a work of art – is a claim on past energy.
I suggest reading Tim Garrett’s work in modelling industrial civilisation as a heat engine to understand the link between the past, the present, and the future. Start from page 2 here: http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett/Publications_files/RMJ-V2N2-Garrett.pdf
Tim Garrett states:
“there is a particularly beautiful corollary of the Second Law [of Thermodynamics] whose implications have largely been missed. This is the statement that nothing can be isolated: all of space and time are linked. Nothing can happen spontaneously, and all actions from the past have some influence on the present and future. Equally, no sub-component of the universe can be completely isolated from interactions with any part of the rest. However, remote or slow the interactions may be, all parts are connected to and interact with all others. […] We are all part of a vibrant organism we call the global economy. A portion of real production cannot simply disappear due to “consumption” by humans, because humans are inextricably linked to the rest of the organism’s overall structure.
Neither can consumption vanish to history. Rather, power consumption that sustained us against dissipation and decay in the past, nurtured us forward so that we continue to consume in the present. Feeding Ancient Greece sustained an architectural tradition that has been carried forward to the designs of today. Entertainment consumed a hundred years ago sustained a cultural tradition that influences our choices today.”
GDP is equal to the total monetary value of all final goods and services exchanged within a country in a set period (usually a year). It can be seen as a metabolic measure of industrial civilisation as an organism. Industrial civilisation takes energy and matter in and expels waste to keep internal order and grow.
The past determines your present size and therefore your present consumption. Your present consumption determines your future consumption. For example if you only have one arm, you will not be able to consume the energy for two arms. If you have two arms, even though the arms were built with past energy, it will take a continuous flow of energy and materials to keep them alive and use them. It is exactly the same thing with roads and works of art. Asset value goes to zero if the energy needed to keep them up disappears. For example if you have a house in a tourist area and tourism vanishes because of a lockdown or an oil spill, the asset decreases to the extent that future tourism was priced into the asset value.
Thanks! That is a very good quote. I hadn’t thought about, “Exactly like debt is a claim on future energy, the value of an asset – like a house or a work of art – is a claim on past energy.” I will need to read Tim Garrett’s article, “Can we predict long-run economic growth?”
I went back and looked at the linked article by Tim Garrett. I think that the most important thing he says in it is, “Only when power consumption exceeds dissipation can a convergence of flows allow for civilization expansion and a positive inflation-adjusted economic output or GDP (see Appendix for the mathematical details).”
In the latter part of the paper, he talks about the importance of inertia. He doesn’t seem to see a downturn in the growth of the world economy until our large technically recoverable supply of resources are exhausted. (He works in the Climate Science department, so this is not a big surprise.) I had e-mail discussions with him about this issue a few years ago.
This graph clearly proves that human population is a major driver of oil production (because population starts taking off before production).
Brandon, I give you a challenge. You first!
Get rid of all the excesses of IC in your life, start with your car and other items of frivolous consumption. Once you are done with your electric/dinosaur bone burning vehicle, continue with your albatross sized house. Follow it up by resigning from your, in all likelihood, totally non-productive “work”. When all is said and done, I’ll grant you access to a mobile Internet terminal that you can use to influence others on how to live without the excesses.
Yes, that is how change starts. With you doing shit. NOT with words.
https://www.memesmonkey.com/images/memesmonkey/a5/a5084b21ca138ed1675552cab39cca27.jpeg
By the way, how many children have you put into the world?
https://youtu.be/rcx-nf3kH_M
What is IC? I have seen you mention it a few times but I didn’t care enough to figure it out … just sounded like waffle.
You do realise that you can’t change a broken system from the bottom up? You can and must call for change from the bottom up, and anything that people do in their own lives to reduce their carbon and ecological footprint is a wonderful thing, but it never adds up to sufficient change. The solution has to be top down.
But ok, I accept your challenge. I am vegan. I live in a tiny house. I don’t buy any consumer products. I don’t buy processed food. I never purchase anything that I don’t desperately need. I am an absolute minimalist. I have a car, but I haven’t travelled out of this city in maybe 15 years, and I only keep a car because I am a full time carer for someone who cannot use other forms of transport.
Over to you…
What are you using to write on OFW Brandon—a stone tablet?
However minimalist. you exist because modern civilisation allows you to, (just like everybody else)
“What are you using to write on OFW Brandon—a stone tablet?”
Yeah, pretty much. I am still on Windows XP, which means I can no longer update browsers, security software, latest internet protocols and so on. I am fairly sure that’s why I get a blank page when I follow your links …
“However minimalist. you exist because modern civilisation allows you to, (just like everybody else)”
Of course. What’s your point?
IC = Industrial Civilization
Brandon,
Let’s have a prick weaving contest and see who wins.
I own zero cars. Zero houses. And I have zero kids. I am the worlds worst vegan, eating whatever gets on my table. When I buy food for myself, I choose with my wallet and that means plant based.
I would under no circumstances grant TPTB full blame on the situation.
It is all rotten, through and trough. Including you and me.
Utterly dependent on the fossil fueled underpinnings of Industrial Civilization (IC).
And you know what. I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.
You decide the winner. I don’t care.
weaving?
best wait till the covid panic is over to do that
Gail, I think you have to take Tim Garrett’s work for what it can offer, i.e. mathematical modelling of the economy as a dissipative structure, and what that means for understanding the energy-GDP relationship.
He explains his insight in his own words from minute 4:00 here: https://youtu.be/SZOO5omIF1g
Now if you model a dog as a dissipative structure and work out the relationship between food and dog growth, this does not mean that if the food runs out the dog cannot die of starvation. Being a climatologist he talks about CO2. That is indeed a narrow view, and other limits to growth are biting much much earlier, for example the Earth’s bio-geochemical cycles and the limits of ecosystems as pollution sinks. But none of this detracts from the fact that he has given a fundamental contribution on the description of dog metabolism.
I imagine in your emails to him you told him: “Look Tim, the dog’s gonna die of starvation!” -that’s true but while most people do not even have a clue that the global economy is more similar to a dog than a car, he has grasped this similarity and worked out the growth trajectory. In another video that I cannot find right now he actually spoke of limits to growth in a broader sense than CO2 (energy and materials consumption rates).
“Being a climatologist he talks about CO2. That is indeed a narrow view, and other limits to growth are biting much much earlier, for example the Earth’s bio-geochemical cycles and the limits of ecosystems as pollution sinks.”
Absolutely right, these are the broader perspectives that we simply must attain as a collective if we are going to restabilise the climate, and that means protecting and restoring as much of the carbon cycle, the water cycle, and the natural heat exchange cycles as we can, because these work together to regulate how much heat is trapped in the system, and how much extra heat is expelled into space.
I don’t think it is helpful that this Tim Garrett seems to argue ad absurdum, suggesting things like turning off all the energy and collapsing the global economy.
This brings me back to the discussions on the Seneca curve, which seemed to presume that the down side of the curve needs to reach the bottom, the equivalent of the starting point in the beginning. This is too narrow a perspective as well. The reality may be that if the downside curve flattens out at say 80% of peak economic activity then the system might be much more sustainable.
So, given the increasing energy efficiency of production technologies, it is likely that our system can be stabilised with a 20% reduction in energy consumption, causing a 10% reduction in total volume of economic activity. When this is combined with a 5% increase in nature’s processes that expel excess heat, it is possible that climate change is reversed and energy supplies become sustainable. Fossil fuels will still be part of the mix, but at a reducing share of a reducing total volume of energy over time.
It is not constructive to ignore climate change and resource depletion, but neither is it constructive to conclude that collapse is inevitable. We could instead create a 25 year global plan that includes a gradually increasing carbon price which funds carbon sinking, ending up with a net negative emissions economy as planned, with an energy budget that is sustainable over the medium term. It might even be sustainable using small amounts of coal and gas over a few centuries, as long as they are a very small fraction of supply, and the total carbon emitted overall is within our capacity to sink carbon, either by exploiting nature alone, or assisted by any emergent carbon sinking technology.
That 25 year plan could also include a long transition to a sovereign money system, which year by year pays off small amounts of bank created debt with newly created interest free debt. This is plenty of time to have an orderly transition in both finance and climate, and would go something like 90% of the way to making the global economic and political system sustainable.
The time frame I am imagining is from 2025 to 2050, so there is plenty of time to debate and market the plan, and then to negotiate and implement it.
We need be free enough to think big. Sure, we also need to be aware of all the obstacles and constraints, but we mustn’t start from the negatives, we must start with a vision of success, and then conquer or work around the obstacles one by one.
Brandon,
A 25-year plan. For sure, if it does not imply a caste of transhumanists and technocrats making the desicions based on their self-interest and delusions.
Humans are way too fallable in terms of their own flaws.
Any “plans” for the future should be devised by game-theoretical models with thermodynamical underpinnings running on (distributed) supercompute, and with the survival of the fittest ecosystem (man, machine, ecology) as end-goal.
Norman,
I blame the spell checker on this one. However, garbage english in – garbage english out.
Brandon wrote: >I am not currently aiming at the average person, just the well informed audience here.
You’re preaching to the choir. We already know we are manipulated. I think you will find that this point is an easy sell. Most people will probably agree with you about this one, and then go on about their business.
>Can we turn this ship around,
No. Quite a few people tried to turn it around in the 1970s (I am guessing you can’t remember that far back), when there was still time for early action to make a difference. As you might imagine by the way things have turned out, their warnings were not taken to heart by very many people. Even with the internet, it is not easier to persuade people today, and in some ways harder. There was more mainstream discussion of these issues in the seventies than since the seventies. A book such as _Limits to Growth_ (still well worth reading) would barely get noticed these days. The system of communication is more controlled today, and even the environmentalist groups have been coopted by believers in the potential sustainability of modern lifestyles.
Even if you could change enough minds, and the right minds, it is too late to avoid hitting the wall. We might have another 10 years left (knock on wood), and we are already overwhelmed with problems. You might be able to create a refuge for yourself that will let you muddle through, but that is likely the best you can realistically hope for. Too bad you can’t invent a time machine. Then you could travel back in time to the 1970s and blend your voice with the chorus of others who were telling us while there was still some time that we had to slow things down, simplify our lives, and get off the growth train. As though one more voice would have made any difference.
>and learn to live within the limits to growth
We are already living within the limits, and always have lived within the limits. Many of us just don’t know it yet.
“We already know we are manipulated.”
But Brandon’s contention is not solely that we are being manipulated but rather that the manipulation in “Century of the Self”, which has shaped so much of his thinking, is somehow unnatural to the species and thus responsible for our current predicament – as if humans haven’t been using every tool available, psychological and physical, to exploit other humans for material gain since time immemorial!
Advances in psychology ran parallel to advances in technology and increased access to affordable energy from fossil fuels. These simply supercharged the fruits of our problem-solving minds. They were just one facet of our infinite growth paradigm; not the cause of it. Ed Bernays and friends were not extrinsic to the species.
“Can we turn this ship around, and learn to live within the limits to growth, by essentially putting a harness on markets and steering them where we want to go?”
Brandon, no – we cannot. What part of *self*-organising is confusing you? Your ideas are stillborn unless they enable the global economy to continue doing what it does naturally as a self-organising dissipative system and what it has done since its inception. You literally may as well be demanding that the sun, another self-organising dissipative system, adjust its cycles for our benefit. You overestimate the power of individual human agency over humanity as a collective entity.
And even if somehow your voice could rise above the millions of others ardently professing to know what’s best for the species and steer policy, don’t you know that your ideas, for all that they sound wonderful in your head, would bump up hard against the law of unintended consequences?
This is a complex adaptive system not a Lego set. You might as well attempt open heart surgery with a spoon.
Damn, I can see that I have a long way to go to clear up your misconceptions, which are just stunningly wrong. If no better opportunities turn up I will have a go tomorrow. The first thing to clear up is that the economy is not a self organising system. There are self organising forces involved, sure, but your view is almost that the economy satisfies the description of an autopoietic entity, an actual living system, which is just nuts. Cheers.
The economy and associated processes of IC is a Golem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
“The word golem occurs once in the Bible in Psalm 139:16, which uses the word גלמי (golmi; my golem),[3] that means “my light form”, “raw” material,[4] connoting the unfinished human being before God’s eyes.[3] The Mishnah uses the term for an uncultivated person: “Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one,” (שבעה דברים בגולם) (Pirkei Avot 5:10 in the Hebrew text; English translations vary). In Modern Hebrew, golem is used to mean “dumb” or “helpless”. Similarly, it is often used today as a metaphor for a mindless lunk or entity who serves a man under controlled conditions but is hostile to him under others.[2] “Golem” passed into Yiddish as goylem to mean someone who is lethargic or beneath a stupor.[5]”
It really isn’t. Gail often writes about the global economy as a self-organising entity:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/07/11/the-worlds-weird-self-organizing-economy/comment-page-43/
As does Nate Hagens:
“Global human society is functioning as an energy dissipating superorganism.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
And David Korowicz:
“For all sorts of reasons the possibility of a controlled orchestrated de-growth to some viable steady-state position is probably deluded in the extreme.
“I’ll just point to one thing, such a view tends to embody the confusion that because the globalised economy is human-made it is therefore designed, understandable and controllable – humans can do this in niches, but the emergent structure of multiple niches interacting on many scales over time is not.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-03-19/how-to-be-trapped-an-interview-with-david-korowicz/
The Russians to the rescue… Perhaps they also belive Elon could replace the Don… Or they’re just defending their figures
Interesting comments on PCRs
https://www.rt.com/russia/506692-covid-test-geiger-musk-russia/
Was just out and gas is down to 1.90 dollars per gallon in New York State. Oh boy are we in trouble.
Good summary
This was misplaced, but intended for Duncan’s top of the page comment
@Norman Pagett
In response to this comment: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/11/09/energy-is-the-economy-shrinkage-in-energy-supply-leads-to-conflict/comment-page-6/#comment-267519
>Energy=money. The equation you cannot escape.
If that was the case, we would not be in such a mess. We have squandered most of the former and created far too much of the latter. If the two were actually tied together by something in the real world, there would be moderation of both; instead we have moderation of neither.
I appreciate your other comments, but I see no evidence you have given the Century of the Self evidence any serious attention. You could practically create a roll call of the founders of Consumerism from those interviewed or otherwise involved. Edward Bernays was the chief architect of consumerist propaganda, but the heads of the largest American corporations at the time were enthusiastic about embracing his propaganda methods to serve their own self interest.
So rather than imagining a broad conspiracy with a singular plan to bring on the consumerist age, and rejecting such a thing as absurd by gut reaction, it was more a conspiracy of self interest, with a diverse set of corporations all using the very same techniques of deceiving the people into new behaviours. Before long, there was an integrated network of narratives driving different agendas, but all coalescing around the central goal and technique of dictating the behaviour of the masses by sending messages relentlessly and unwittingly into their subconscious minds.
Here we are, all these decades later, and the vast majority amongst the masses can no longer distinguish between desires imposed by consumerist propaganda and real human nature. They believe their desires are their own choices, despite the evidence of the enormity of the advertising industry, which has now transformed not just the global media landscape via the giant tech companies like Google and Facebook, but now the political landscape which depends absolutely on media to get messages to and from the punters.
The world has been turned on its head by consumerism and infinite-debt finance, and the order of power from the top down is now (1) The global financial system, (2) Other global corporations, (3) Corporate controlled media, and (4) government and politics. The population generally sees itself as level (5) in the structure, subservient to all the higher levels of power but having power in the occasional right to vote, or even at position (6) completely without power to do anything or change anything. Both views are self defeating and wrong, because the population as a collective has all the power it needs to change the pecking order and impose its own will, which would include prosperity and sustainability, if it could be woken from its consumerist slumber and brought to its senses.
Acknowledging this new global power structure is critical for understanding which changes are possible and how they can be accomplished, and which changes will only be suppressed.
I am asked elsewhere what the greatest obstacle to reforming finance would be, given the proposed solution is asserted to be in our collective interest, and why don’t I spend my energies instead on lobbying politicians. This structure of power is the answer.
Politicians and governments are the lowest rung on the totem pole, and they cannot change anything without either approval from the top down, that is from the financial-corporate system and the mainstream media, or overwhelming demand from the bottom up by a significant movement of the masses, and even then media would have to be dragged kicking and screaming before endorsing a popular movement.
Barack Obama was asked towards the end of his second term what was his greatest disappointment, the greatest obstacle to him accomplishing his agenda, and his response was that he couldn’t tell the bankers what to do. He is necessarily painfully aware of where even the President of the United States sits in the pecking order.
Change is possible, but the model of change and the messaging around it is critical. It needs to appeal to the financial system, or at least not threaten its goal of amassing ever more wealth and power. Similarly it needs to appeal to, or at least not threaten, the global network of giant corporations. It needs to be desirable enough to spread throughout social media and other online media under its own momentum, so that mainstream media can no longer simply ignore it.
You say: “This is why there is no ‘grand plan’, something devised by ‘others’.”
The grand plan is simple – infinite growth. It is a fools errand, and it needs to be amended, to include remedies not just to the reality of finite cheap energy and other resources, but especially to the absurdity of relying on infinite debt growth in a world facing genuine limits to growth. Without some basic reforms, the grand plan is a recipe for absolute disaster.
[Your link produces a blank page for me … so I cannot comment there. Remind me which video … I can’t remember everything I have linked and where.]
Edward Bernays was the chief architect of consumerist propaganda
And quickly disappeared in 1929, the start of the Depression.
Reality overcame simple ideology.
Disappeared? You must have him confused with someone else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
He was orchestrating a CIA coup over a sovereign government in the 1950s, on behalf of an American corporation. He set the framework for the propaganda campaigns to justify the overthrow of governments around the world, and developed the techniques to make the public hate any person or institution that got in the way. He set up propaganda agencies around the world that persist to this day, under various titles and levels of secrecy.
Far from disappearing, he was orchestrating consumerist propaganda throughout the century, and there are countless organisations that have resumed the responsibility to repress the masses and serve the interests of the US dominated financial-corporate system.
One thing is certain, the consumerist propaganda works so well that the financial-corporate system is never going to give it up voluntarily. The people will simply have to be informed and intelligent enough to opt out for themselves, ideally en masse.
It is interesting to ponder how the world might have been different if Bernays had disappeared in 1929 and taken consumerist propaganda down with him.
Disappeared? You must have him confused with someone else:
He was orchestrating a CIA coup over a sovereign government in the 1950s, on behalf of an American corporation. He set the framework for the propaganda campaigns to justify the overthrow of governments around the world, developed the techniques to make the public hate any person or institution that got in the way. He set up propaganda agencies around the world that persist to this day, under various titles and levels of secrecy.
Far from disappearing, he was orchestrating consumerist propaganda throughout most of the century, and there are countless organisations that have resumed the responsibility to repress the masses and serve the interests of the US dominated financial-corporate system.
One thing is certain, the consumerist propaganda works so well that the financial-corporate system is never going to give it up voluntarily. The people will simply have to be informed and intelligent enough to opt out for themselves.
It is interesting to ponder how the world might have been different if Bernays had in fact disappeared in 1929 as you suggest, and had taken consumerist propaganda down with him.
[This is a copy of a response that I posted a while ago but presume is trapped in moderation for now because it contained a wikipedia link to Edward Bernays.]
“Energy=money. The equation you cannot escape.”
“If that was the case, we would not be in such a mess. We have squandered most of the former and created far too much of the latter. If the two were actually tied together by something in the real world, there would be moderation of both; instead we have moderation of neither.”
they are absolutely tied together.
the value of money now depends on the energy in FF.
without FF, there would be 99% less products in the world and the value of money would drop accordingly.
Money and the number of products in the world are not connected. Money is purely virtual. Try this:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-money-and-markets-in-one-visualization-2020/
There is so much money in the world that most of it ends up in derivatives, which are nothing bets, on bets, on bets …. A million billion dollars worth according to the estimates.
but I wrote “the value of money”.
if you can’t grasp that the value of money depends on the flow of energy through the system, then I can’t help you.
I can grasp it, but it is just not true. It is not the way the world works anymore. You can go back to the Nicole Foss excerpt and see that money is now just excess claims to underlying real wealth. The number of claims keeps rising and rising, but real wealth is now flat and most likely in decline. They are not connected.
(excess claims = you are diverting and talking about the quantity of money and not the value of money which is backed by energy flow)
and why is it that “real wealth is now flat and most likely in decline”?
because the historical growth of net (surplus) energy is now flat or in decline!
you just defeated your own arrrgument.
“and why is it that “real wealth is now flat and most likely in decline”?”
I covered that in the very beginning. Consumerised societies already saturated with debt, and diminishing returns from real world capital because of the depletion and devastation of the natural world, including its finite resources and energy.
It is worth another quick go at clarifying my view on the money and energy relationship. I may seriously challenge “the value of money which is backed by energy flow” shortly, even if it is not a priority interest for me, but it requires some pretty nuanced stuff, and it is really difficult to explain clearly and briefly without presuming that people have a good grasp of finance …
The bottom line is that most money on account in banks is money that was created by the banks as they create loans, and this can be called bank money. For the sake of simplicity we can say that the rest of the money supply is real money, comprising the volume of currency (let’s just presume coins plus banknotes for now) and the net amount of money spent into existence by governments less the amount taxed out of existence.
If the volume of government spending and taxation is proportional to the growth of the real sector of the economy, then the real money has value roughly in accordance with real assets or real wealth. There may be a relationship between the supply and demand of energy and this volume of real money, or there may not, depending on the history of behaviour of both markets and government.
But there will not and cannot be a relationship between the volume of energy produced, consumed or available with the total volume of money, because the bank money part of the money supply is purely virtual.
Given that the money supply is overwhelmingly dominated by virtual bank money, there is not really any value in debating whether there **would be** a relationship between the volume of money and the consumption of energy, unless it was in the context where finance was fixed, the banks could no longer expand the money supply at will, and the money supply was limited to the needs of the real sector of the real economy.
As to the “value of money” does that really mean anything? I think if you make a few assumptions it might, but you would have to specify what those assumptions are.
You certainly couldn’t conclude that the quality and quantity of what is produced in the real world has a simple one to one relationship with the amount of energy used in the process.
Or is that exactly what you are asserting?
by the way, we are not in the same league as the comprehensive thoughts/writings of Tim Watkins and Tim Morgan (and Gail of course).
you have a lot to learn:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/11/06/the-narrative-problem-after-peak-oil/
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
If money is “real” or not is as silly as debating if mathematics is real or not on earth without humans. It exists in human affairs, like it or not.
“The world’s present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.
The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The second, an inheritance from the prescientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is superimposed.
Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest.”
— Marion King Hubbert
Brandon, in response to you post below on which there is no ‘reply’ button:
you are not refuting the energy-money link, you are simply saying that not all energy claims (money) are back by energy that can actually be produced. It is a fiat system but does not change its energy-based nature. All and any economic transaction involves work somewhere at some point in time and all work both in nature and in human affairs requires energy. What you say about “bank money” is the reason why physics tell us the bubble will pop.
he’s right y’know Brandon
you’ll learn nothing on OFW until you have read the sanity claus
“you are simply saying that not all energy claims (money) are back by energy that can actually be produced.”
Actually, I don’t buy the concept that money is a claim on energy, presuming that is exactly what you mean. Money is a token that can be used in exchange for something of perceived value, and perceived value is not necessarily linked to the amount of energy that was used in creating the thing.
Think rare art, or sports memorabilia, or rare wine. The same energy goes into making these things whether they end up being sought after or not. The perceived value may be based on empty headed vanity, or on the rational expectation that the items may appreciate in perceived value, or probably an infinite array of other factors.
I imagine that money as a claim on energy is a good simplification that serves some grand theoretical argument somewhere, maybe even a whole school of thought, but I rarely find meaningful value in simplifications.
Why don’t you or others educate me. Why do you see money as a claim on energy? Or how have I misinterpreted your comment?
Brandon,
Energy is the measure on human activity. It is physical, since it is the manifestation of heat and work in objective reality.
Money asserts a loose coupling between the physical and hallucinations of value inside the human mind and its desires.
Thus the bridge between desire and energy/natural resources is called money.
Yes, money itself can be a desire. But that is just silly.
The one who controls the energy, raw materials, information and desire controls the world.
“Money asserts a loose coupling between the physical and hallucinations of value inside the human mind and its desires.”
Nice phrasing. Yes, old real money used to do that, and new funny money might just serve that purpose too, if there wasn’t so damn much of it.
“Thus the bridge between desire and energy/natural resources is called money.”
Ha. Maybe if you live in a sad unreality and worship a false god.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao-Sahfy7Hg
“Bow down before the one you serve,
You’re going to get what you deserve.”
Money is in the eye of the beholder. As soon as it breaches the axis of value, it becomes a weapon.
houtskool, indeed.
Now, let me recall which country has the worlds oldest Central Bank.
Never thought that the great Anglo Saxons is getting the monetary bitchslapping by some has-been vikings known for their hockey and cross country skiing mad skills.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/85/10/49/851049abfded08f0363b9febed2528eb–cross-country-skiing-olympics.jpg
Dig it!
🤘😎🤘
“… the population as a collective has all the power it needs to change the pecking order and impose its own will, which would include prosperity and sustainability, if it could be woken from its consumerist slumber and brought to its senses.”
the population is already imposing its will as much as it can: we are humans with hunter-gatherer minds, and most of us gather as many goods and services as we can, because that is human nature.
and humans tend to discount the future, so sustainability is mostly insignificant, and prosperity (gathering stuff!) is prominent in the way most persons live.
“brought to its senses” are you kidding me? You are saying that you know what humans need to be brought to their senses? Hubris!
you have a poor grasp of human nature.
I have already explained the difference between natural human behaviour and consumerised human behaviour. You will need to backtrack to find the relevant comments and make your specific arguments and challenges to the assertions there … I don’t think anyone wants the same points repeated over and over again, just because people are not really paying attention.
I saw your explanation, and you are wrong.
there is no distinction between those two so-called behaviors.
humans have hunter-gatherer minds, and any modern consumerism is exactly the same mental approach to resources as our distant ancestors.
david …, there is a phenomenon that lends substantial support to your “hunter gatherer” thesis: planned obsolescence.
Hunter gatherers had to keep hunting and gathering because what they gathered spoiled. But when people learned how to make things that did not spoil: vases, cooking utensils, home furnishings, bound books, … behaviour shifted: these things were treasured and often passed down from generation to generation. We were evolving, spiritually if not biologically.
That has all been reversed. Women must buy new (fashionable) frocks every year; men must buy new (fashionable) toys. And things that used to have a long life are now engineered to have a short life. It took some planning, research, and advertising, but most of us have gone back to a hunter gatherer mentality with terrifying eagerness. Biology is winning; all the cardinal virtues (prudentia, iustitia, fortitudo, temperantia) seem now the relics of a bygone age.
But I remember what Yeats said: “Now his wars on God begin / At stroke of midnight God shall win.” Or Gaia, or Tyche, or Nemesis, if you prefer.
thanks, Robert.
“It took some planning, research, and advertising, but most of us have gone back to a hunter gatherer mentality with terrifying eagerness. Biology is winning;”
I know some modern hunter-gatherers who have collections of motorcycles or guitars or CDs and DVDs.
that mindset was always there in all of our ancestors, and was unleashed in highly visible ways by the booming prosperity of the past few centuries.
we are hunter-gatherers in overdrive due to FF.
I don’t think anyone wants the same points repeated over and over again
Certainly we do. Our attention spans may not be as long as yours. You can’t criticize us on that account as it would be ableist of you.
If you are not prepared to repeat your main points at every opportunity, you will never get the masses to absorb them.
Snappy slogans are great: “Build the Wall!” “Lock Her Up!” “Make America Great Again!” “Count Every Vote!” “I Can’t Breathe!” “Black Lives Matter!” “Build Back Better!” “Beans Means Heinz!” People remember them.
Ere, are you sure you’ve actually read Bernays?
Yes the people need to be brought to their senses.
Ordinary voters are simple people. They don’t see their needs. They can’t analyze problems. They need leadership to guid them the way they ought to go.
Brandon, you were parodied before you were born.
https://youtu.be/ZGe3V9mEfbk
There is only one lesson that gives a lasting impression.
LEARNED THE HARD WAY.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/55309503.jpg
@davidinamonth, You probably could have added that “prosperity and sustainability” are probably not possible except in a very small population, although in part this may depend on how far down you are willing to define “prosperity.” Also, large populations cannot impose their will unless a hierarchy emerges to lead them. It’s a coordination problem inherent in large groups.
Yes, those are the sort of points that are well worth injecting into the debate. It looks to me that you would be able to make your own arguments directly to me and anyone else that wants to be involved. I have responded to David’s last comment but I suspect it will be in moderation till tomorrow my time … so I will check in then …
“Change is possible, but the model of change and the messaging around it is critical.”
“the model” and “the messaging” are going to change the world for the better?
and you are the one who can devise the model and the messaging?
and you are the one who can decide what the change should be?
sorry to inform you, but you are outvoted by seven billion to one.
““the model” and “the messaging” are going to change the world for the better?”
The model of change I am referring to is not some theoretical or optimistic attempt to bring on some new kind of world, just to fix two very specific system faults: uncontrolled finance and uncontrolled carbon emissions.
Any capable systems engineer would propose exactly the same solution to each of these faults. Once the root cause that drives a destructive system outcome is identified, the solution is simple and presents itself.
As to the messaging, hopefully someone comes along that can support the model of change and offer some marketing skills, or at least some ideas about how best to present the reforms to appeal to various audiences. Who knows, maybe someone reading here today will eventually warm to the task and play a significant role in getting the system fixed.
As to some kind of voting, that comes after the debate and marketing are properly developed. It probably won’t be individuals voting for anything, but nations negotiating a global deal, based on a very simple draft agreement, and a very simple mechanism to achieve each goal.
Even on this thread there have been discussions on complex nonsense at the global level about confronting serious global challenges. I haven’t followed the detail closely, because it is complex nonsense, but I think a couple of very simple reforms like carbon sinking funded by carbon emissions and proper control of the money system are ultimately going to be more marketable and far more effective than anything devised by bankers and technocrats.
once again, I am amazed at the way you can calmly state that you have the answers to the predicaments facing humanity.
now you are stating that you know what the simple solution is for “nations” if only the whole world of nations would listen to you and negotiate your simple mechanism.
but then you’re not done.
your “very simple reforms” are superior to “anything devised” by all the bankers and technocrats in the entire world.
perhaps you are misinterpreting your status in the world.
It is not about my status, but how well the mechanisms for change are designed. Yes, I would put what I am advocating as far superior to anything that I have ever found, and I repeatedly check for other ideas. They always disappoint, because they involve complexity, when absolute simplicity is required for absolute transparency and accountability, guaranteeing the system cannot and will not be gamed.
For a start, anything that allows trading of permits is too complex to operate efficiently and free of corruption, which is exactly what the bankers want.
Everyone here is perfectly welcome to critique what I am advocating, to highlight any perceived flaws or insurmountable obstacles. So far, over hundreds of conversations on a wide variety of sites, I have yet to come across any objections that I couldn’t adequately address.
This is not about ego. I am perfectly happy for anyone to adopt my model and run with it, as if it were their own. In fact that is what I was hoping would happen when I first put the model of change into the public domain under the Creative Commons framework. It turns out that there might not be as many systems engineers looking to turn their skills towards fixing the broken global system as I expected…
” two very specific system faults: uncontrolled finance and uncontrolled carbon emissions.” — the second first. There are no carbon emissions. There are carbon DIOXIDE emissions. No, it absolutely is not the same thing, just as O2 (oxygen) and H2O (water) are not the same thing. If you doubt me, try inhaling H20 in place of O2! CO2 is a net benefit with no known downsides, and “controlling” its release would be a stupendously stupid waste of resources. There are multiple lines of evidence that CO2 does not drive climate change and that the current global climate is cooler than the optimal level. And, yes, it would take a lot typing to explain the lines of evidence. You will just have to do a lot of reading, much of it widely dispersed. Yes, it’s very time consuming. I started over 20 years ago.
“uncontrolled finance” — far from being uncontrolled, elaborate mechanisms are in place for the control of finance. It is constantly micromanaged. The problem is not “lack of control,” but design. All modern money starts as credit (debt), which is traded for goods and services that are produced with energy. Debt cannot grow forever, but when debtors begin to reduce their debt loads faster than new debt is taken out, it creates painful recessions or depressions, which the existing system is not well designed to deal with. But the fundamental problem is design of the system, not a lack of control. Command-and-control is not the answer to all problems. Not to this problem either.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/62018232.jpg
The finance and banking racket is one of the Golems of IC.
It is shorthand, pretty clearly I would have thought. Carbon emissions is shorthand for greenhouse gas emissions. Uncontrolled finance means no control over the money supply.
A tip for future responses to me: think first, type second.
“The grand plan is simple – infinite growth. It is a fools errand, and it needs to be amended, to include remedies not just to the reality of finite cheap energy and other resources, but especially to the absurdity of relying on infinite debt growth in a world facing genuine limits to growth. Without some basic reforms, the grand plan is a recipe for absolute disaster.”
finally you get something a little bit correct!
but nothing will be “amended”.
there will be no “remedies”.
the world will proceed as it has been proceeding (that’s called human nature!) until there is “absolute disaster”.
@david, We might have been able to downsize prudently decades ago if the human race were far more intelligent, altruistic, and conscientious than it is, but we are what we are. Maybe if that whole eugenics thing had been done better in the 1920s, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk. History is path dependent.
I get the impression that although our ideas are good in theory, they get literally “executed” in the worst possible way.
Never give nut jobs more information, knowledge and control, than the absolute minimum.
Bonkers people always draw the wrong conclusions when presented with a theory.
https://youtu.be/9CINep9Gqhk
Energy=money–the equation you cannot escape
I repeat that because we can only function in the here and now.
We have had 300 years or so of surplus net energy input to arrive at our ‘now’. (and underpin the value of our money)
From here on we go deeper into energy ‘deficit’, but disbelief kicks in, because we want to go on consuming. We always govern our lives in hindsight. We do not believe that the future will not be the same as our past.
We collectively cannot accept the link between net surplus energy and the actual value of money.
So we elect politicians who tell us we can go on borrowing. Those who tell us we can’t lose their high paid jobs.
Yes, our ‘technology’ allows us the delusion of producing/consuming more. but what we are actually doing with that technology is stealing our children’s future; that is what infinite debt/consumption means..
ie—we are supporting our money by consuming their energy resources. We are (temporarily) distorting the above equation, but not escaping it.
Don’t know why my link didn’t open properly, this should find it just as easily:
The life I stole from you, (Pagett Medium)
I like to think of money as the signal of where and how energy is used. Like a neurotransmitter, the more released, the stronger and longer the signal. The Feds job was to manage the transmitters so we have the optimum level spread evenly for the economy to run smoothly and fairly for the long term. They could stimulate more in times of need, like adrenaline will release more neurotransmitters in a crises allowing more energy to be used for a short time. But now, the Fed has become a meth dealer, creating an addiction to stimulus that is slowly burning our functioning nervous system out, leaving our country wasted, weak, and psychotic and in constant need for more and more meth, as each hit is less effective than the one before. No sleep, no food, soon all the fat of the country will be gone and vital organs will start to be metabolized. We will lose all our teeth, and like an old toothless lion, roaring at foreign countries with nothing to back it up. The only cure is to get off the drug, as painful as it will be, and to rebuild our life. This will be the demise of the dollar. What comes after that? Like a drug addict, fear of living without their drug, hard to imagine.
Except we are reaching the singularity–the 1/0 point. We can’t really get off the ever cheaper, ever growing money supply. I would like to think that a different, smaller networked economy can still have its own money supply, diffrent from the current money supply.
jason wrote: “the Fed has become a meth dealer, creating an addiction to stimulus” — I know that gets widely repeated over the internet and elsewhere. I have heard it all my life, and the Fed is not eager to dispel faith in its omnipotence (because the effectiveness of most of their procedures is dependent on the public believing those measures will be effective, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy). But in reality, how the Fed works is very different what we have been told by unofficial sources. Even most economists don’t understand it, because few of them study money and banking, or they read about an archaic model from an earlier era. The Fed and foreign central banks are essentially running a confidence game, but it is not confidence in the money that they seek to elicit, but confidence in them and the effectiveness of their policies.
For what it’s worth, I tend to agree. The Fed is more like a front man, trying its best to look legitimate, while covering for the real dealer-pushers, the private banks.
That’s not quite right either, but for different reasons.
has there been any science yet saying that there will NEVER be herd immunity for this type of (gain of function) virus?
Never, without a vaccine.
And that will last a year, at most.
This is with us, comrades.
Like small pox, measles, etc, they never went away until a vaccine.
Being a corona virus, the vaccine will probably be like influenza, some protection, for a while.
It may be propaganda but I continuously hear medical voices that the natural antibodies are not good enough and dont last long enough. It makes sense to me since the rona is obviously the result of gain of function research IMO. Turbo charged virus with stock brakes.
yes, gain of function so also more contagious than common cold or flu.
little chance of herd immunity so the future may include yearly vaccinations.
thanks.
that’s my (latest) interpretation of the global evidence.
I just don’t see it publicized anywhere.
I suspect that there is no vaccine that will protect people who are vulnerable to severe Covid symptoms that will not do them comparable harm to what the disease can accomplish.
I further suspect that if the vaccine “works” for you, then you didn’t need it because a Covid infection would have been just another cold for you.
There7s a good chance I’m wrong on this, so don’t let me prejudice against getting any shot you think will help you. But if it’s alright with everyone, I think I’ll just wait until a homeopathic Covid vaccine comes along.
I have invented a telepathic Covid vaccine.
send me 100 USD (sale price, regular price $200, limited time offer, while supplies last) and I will deliver it to you instantly.
Please take the money directly from my credit card account. I’m beaming the number and code to you directly from my mind.
sorry, supplies have now all sold out. Oh well, my loss.
I tried to give all of the late customers that news by telepathy, but something must have gone wrong.
yes, something in the back of my mind told me that I shouldn’t have gone into this business.
All sold out? Drat!
You telepathy marketeers are all the same!
“But if it’s alright with everyone, I think I’ll just wait until a homeopathic Covid vaccine comes along.”
Count me in!
Duncan, this one is especial for you! Not that I am under any illusion that you your will watch it.
There is so much smallpox history that has never been widely told. It is shocking, and disappointing and needs to be heard by anyone who thinks the smallpox vaccine solved any problems at all.
https://youtu.be/5oot0HUqMcs
Gail, Another great data based article. Some related factors to consider regarding:
– “The world economy doesn’t seem like it can support 7.8B people.” Consider that without comparatively cheap petroleum energy – and the petrochemical dependent food production from NPK – the world struggled to maintain 1B. Without a new source of near free energy we are headed back to towards a sustainable population – whether we like it, anticipate, plan for it, or not.
– herd immunity and the pandemic. All previous pandemics have been sorted out by herd immunity and there is no debate as to its ultimate effectiveness in resolving pandemics. The level of herd immunity as a percent of immuned in the population does vary by pandemic and its specific infection mechanisms aggressiveness and as well its lethality. Viral pandemics have two general commonalities that the COVID or nCV19 virus will share”
1. The bad news: Pathogenic virus generally are selected to evolve/mutate to more infectious strains (perhaps what we are seeing now as the virus penetrates lower population areas in the Mid West that it by-passed initially).
2. The good news: The selection towards higher infection abilities, naturally deselects for lethality. Dead hosts are dead ends for viral infection. This can explain current lower lethalities compared to initial levels.
We will see herd immunity arrive one way or another – with or without a vaccine. It will arrive sooner with a vaccine. We started out with 30% of the population immuned to nCV-19 virus from prior corona virus antibodies from colds, combined with related characteristics found in O+ blood types – not so coincidentally – about 30+% of the population. Couple the naturally immuned with the recovered infected immuned at total immuned population levels of 60-80% and herd immunity is achieved – and the virus can’t effectively transmit. Add to the rising levels of natural and infected immuned an effective vaccine and the herd immunity race to 60+80% of the population process is accelerated rapidly. This appears to be the new phase we are about to enter with the Pfizer vaccine. This translates to a fall 2021 relatively free (but not completely free) of nCV-19 infections – there will still be infections in remote areas not previously infected and that have not been vaccinated.
Lastly, Gail brings up an important point as to the costs of the nCV-19 pandemic. Similar pandemics (Spanish flu 1917, Hong Kong Flu 1968 for examples) in the past century had little quantifiable threatening effects on the global economy. Hong Kong flu (similar in epidemiology in many ways to nCV-19) that is estimated to have killed up to 4M globally, and up to a 100K in the US – did not impact the US or global GDP.
We should note some of the differences between now and then – relative amounts of dependence on human energy (primarily food production – 80% of US employment) then and the lack of it in the current economy (primarily food production – 2.0% of US employment). In a non-human energy economy – the pandemic will have lower impacts on that economy – though it will reduce demand for non-human energy demands during the pandemic. IMO after the pandemic per capita energy demand will rise again, but perhaps not reach previous per capita highs due to technological advancements (AI) – until the next pandemic.
The increasing frequency of large scale epidemics and pandemics in the past 100+years is worrisome. As the human population increases, it increases human interaction and speed of travel which add cumulatively to population density infection threshold breach potential – a dominant factor in the nCV-19 pandemic that struck high population density areas first.
To this natural process – we also have to factor in the weaponized virus and the growing impacts of genetic engineering of bioweapons – especially specialized ones such as ethnic-bioweapons that target specific genotypes and or genetic traits found among specific human races and even related gene pools.
The good news here is that we may succeed directly or indirectly in reducing the global human population ethically or unethically, benevolently or not so much – to more economically sustainable population in the near future.
The bad news it that we (your or I) may be the ones targeted for removal.
I think most of us not only fail to understand finite critical resource dilution and depletion economics – which centers and selects first and foremost on energy that is near free in costs (and its critical time table) if we are to survive . We also fail to understand the potential consequences of our nascent genetic engineering sciences and its impacts on our future. Or how difficult to control (legal policing or lack economic limitations) of the new genetic science world has become. For the think tanks and major league “worry bubbles” – the garage scale genetic/viral bioweapons lab represents a serious threat (accidental or purposeful( to human kind at this point in time. Enjoy your Friday the 13th weekend.
Thanks! I think that it is “iffy” that we could get to herd immunity by Fall 2021. Even if we get to that level, it will take a while longer before behavior starts to adjust back to its prior behaviors. I expect older people will not want to ride on cruise ships any time soon, for example. Also, a lot of small businesses, such as restaurants may be taken out business permanently. Governments will find their tax based lower. It is unknown whether the big debt bubble sustaining the economy can be kept from collapsing.
So even if COVID-19 is gotten under control, I am afraid that the economy still has major, major problems. The fact that it had been doing poorly since at least the beginning of 2018 is a major concern. Furthermore, energy prices have a long, long way to rise to be profitable for oil producers.
has there been any science yet saying that there will NEVER be herd immunity for this type of (gain of function) virus?
I’ve changed my mind a few times on this (maybe I was more correct before I changed my mind, but anyway)…
the common cold and the seasonal flus are in the “never ending” category.
does science place covid in the same category? (yet? is this science being suppressed?)
I think we’re seeing some evidence for no possibility of herd immunity for covid.
in which case, a vaccine would be helpful.
the vaxxxers may be correct.
Or we have been conned or tricked by covid tests that are questionable how do you know that the vaccine you are injected with does not do you harm in the long run?
I didn’t say that I was going to take the vaccine.
I am hoping to avoid it, as long as I judge the vaccine to be worse than the imminent penalty which gov will be or might be considering.
but, if there is no chance of herd immunity, which looks very possible and maybe even probable, then…
when a couple hundred million Americans get the vaccine, I will be safer.
win/win.
” the vaccine that killed 50 million ”
http://www.wabiz.org/Home/news/pressneedstobeheldaccountableforhurtingpeople/conspire-corona-or-5g/rf/other/on-corona-the-media-and-propaganda/rampant-lies-fake-cures-of-spanish-flu/the-vaccine-that-killed-50-000-000
okay, may or may not be true.
but this is 2020, and Pfizer has a vaccine which may or may not have been studied enough to determine that side effects are not severe or at least very very rare.
I am hoping to see 200 or 250 million Americans get the vaccine, excluding me.
that should totally protect me.
sounds like a good plan.
What happens when everyone enacts your same genius plan? 😉
There are always going to be a couple of hundred million people in the USA who believe what they’re told on TV. They will happily roll up their sleeves for a vaccine.
Durwood Dugger, thanks for a very informative comment.
Do you have any thoughts about whether nCV-19 was weaponized or whether it evolved naturally?
“increasing frequency of large scale epidemics and pandemics in the past 100+years is worrisome” — Frequency has gone down, not up, in the last 100 years.
“The good news here is that we may succeed directly or indirectly in reducing the global human population ethically or unethically, benevolently or not so much – to more economically sustainable population in the near future.
The bad news it that we (your or I) may be the ones targeted for removal.”
Funny thing is that everybody consider themselves as indispensable. Let me pour some reality into the jar of hopium.
https://www.brainyquote.com/photos_tr/en/c/charlesdegaulle/103672/charlesdegaulle1-2x.jpg
Make it quick and painless. Bring it on:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=NKNH8EUdMmI&feature=share
The Don gets out, Elon gets in?
https://www.rt.com/usa/506551-musk-covid-tests-positive-negative/
Clues for landing the stock market finally aka TSLA as future penny stock? Probably not yet.. Besides he often likes to say there are swarms of B/Trillionairs willing to volunteer in turning the company private any moment if needed be..
some history of what the great reset may look like this is from 2016 , the elders have high hopes for some of us
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is/
I had given that link previously but I still enjoy reading this masterpiece.
How insane are they to believe we would enjoy their world that looks like communism, but much worse?
Really? Did they lose their mind?
“We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.”
Looks like digging tombs will be a surging job under the great reset
“First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly.”
this is utterly abbsurd comedy.
“Clean energy” is heavily subsidized right now, partly by being given the advantage of going first. I suppose they might be thinking of even more subsidies for it.
@davidinthe…, Indeed, I literally laughed out loud when I read those words!
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
Here is the data I see for total death per 100,000 people
americas 90.5 x11.9
us 73.6 x9.7
eu 46.1 x6.1
se asia 7.58 x1.0
I see the US at 9.7 times as many kills per capita than southeast asia. I call 9.7 huge. Agreed in absolute number this is trivial but by ratio it is telling?
US: effect of prevalent junk-food malnutrition, hidden poverty, etc..
true.
but recently and presently, the EU is quite above the US in “covid related” deaths.
perhaps their deaths are much for the same reasons?
The EU has fewer ICU beds. It can’t do as much advanced treatment of the illness. This may contribute to the higher death rate.
vaccinating the sheep?
I only read the headlines, but there is an obviously rising tide of vaccination mania that may be leading to forced testing and forced vaccination. FWIW
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/world-news/20201113/states-ramp-biggest-vaccination-effort-us-history?fbclid=IwAR11h2j3c6UXycnk5iD2SKBoB3L2NoSzCvs1bsr6ITbP5zyNA7Ess-8HJRs
Herd immunity has not occurred in Sweden and c 19 is spreading rapidly. Their outcome so far has been much worse than that of their Nordic neighbours, with many times more deaths per capita, but nevertheless better than UK, Italy and Spain. It seems that lock downs do reduce deaths but second waves spread regardless.
Swedish surge in Covid cases dashes immunity hopes
Country has opted for light-touch, anti-lockdown approach since start of pandemic
New infections and hospital admissions have surged in Sweden as the country battles a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that officials had hoped its light-touch, anti-lockdown approach would mitigate.
“We consider the situation extremely serious,” the director of health and medical care services for Stockholm, Björn Eriksson, told the state broadcaster SVT this week. “We can expect noticeably more people needing hospital care over the coming weeks.”
Swedish hospitals were treating 1,004 patients for Covid-19, SVT said, an increase of 60% over the previous week’s 627. Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control suggests the rise in recent weeks may be Europe’s fastest.
New infections are also surging, hitting a seven-day average of more than 4,000 this week against fewer than 500 at the beginning of October. The country recorded 4,635 new infections on Thursday.
Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told a press conference that case numbers had shown “a pretty big increase last week” and would “certainly increase” again this week, although perhaps not by quite as much.
The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, however, said on Wednesday that all indicators were “going in the wrong direction. The infection is spreading fast, and in the past week the number of people being treated in intensive care has more than doubled.”
Löfven said Sweden risked “more people getting sick, more people dying, more overworked people in the healthcare sector, more postponed operations … We need everybody to follow the recommendations. Every decision we take matters.”
….
In fact, all studies carried out so far suggest immunity in and around Stockholm is significantly lower than the national health agency predicted. Twenty per cent of Covid-19 tests in the capital last week were positive, compared with 16% and 8.4% in previous weeks, the national news agency TT reported.
However, officials note that countries such as Spain and France, which stemmed their first wave through tough mandatory measures, have also experienced dramatic second waves, which might suggest Sweden’s decision not to lock down has not played a significant role in the recent surge in infections.
Since the start of the pandemic Sweden – which at one stage in June had Europe’s highest per-capita Covid-19 fatality rate – has confirmed 171,365 cases of infections and 6,122 deaths. Its death toll per capita is many times higher than its Nordic neighbours, but lower than countries such as Italy, Spain and the UK.
Lena Einhorn, a former virologist who is one of the fiercest critics of the country’s strategy, said whatever people outside Sweden thought would make little difference. “At first they said: ‘Wow, perhaps they are right,’” Einhorn told Deutsche Welle.
“Then there were more and more deaths in Sweden, and we became a monster; everyone thought Sweden was mad. Then in the summer, when there were fewer deaths, Sweden became a heaven on earth again,” she said.
“And finally when infections increased again in many countries in the autumn and there was opposition to new lockdowns, Sweden became the idol of libertarians. That’s no longer the case, now that cases are going up again in Sweden.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/12/covid-infections-in-sweden-surge-dashing-hopes-of-herd-immunity
Yep, few pages back Gail posted graphs about it..
It seems that very large numbers of Swedes, up to 40%, totally ignore the regulations. The idea proposed was that Swedes are more altruistic and responsible than others, and that they voluntarily follow regulations without the imposition of sanctions, but that is not the case.
They have many times more deaths per capita than their neighbours in Germany and Scandinavia, have achieved no herd immunity, and they still ignore the guidelines as the second wave sets in. It has simply been a trade off between deaths and following guidelines with Swedes choosing the former.
Dispatch: Swedes ignore new regulations as country grapples with novelty of ‘lockdown’
…. Both the number of weekly new confirmed coronavirus cases in the region, and the number being treated in hospital, have more than doubled since the restrictions were issued.
The second wave began later in Sweden than elsewhere in Europe, raising hopes that the high levels of infection seen in April and May had brought some immunity, at least in Stockholm.
But the number of cases per capita began to climb again in September. While it remains below that of the European Union as a whole, it is again well above those of both Germany and of Sweden’s Nordic neighbours.
Dr Nöjd points to reports of crowded buses in the city and of parties and dinners continuing regardless as evidence that too many are ignoring the two main recommendations: to avoid public transport unless necessary, and avoid physical contact with people outside your household.
“Perhaps more than 50 per cent are listening very attentively to the advice they hear, perhaps even 80 per cent, but then we have this 20 per cent to 40 per cent that is not listening at all,” he complained.
In the southern city of Malmö, which was issued with local restrictions a week after Uppsala, schools have been closed to parents for the first time, and libraries limited to borrowing and returning books. Restaurants report losing about half of their custom.
When The Telegraph visited the Triangeln shopping centre on Friday, however, it seemed as busy as usual.
….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/08/dispatch-swedes-ignore-new-regulations-country-grapples-novelty/
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
I see deaths per 100,000
US 73.6
Sweden 59.2
EU 46.1
Today, the 7-day average deaths per 100,000 are
US .303
Sweden .166
EU .624
You seem to be looking at cumulative deaths. The virus gets to different places at different times.
Hi Gail, how do current deaths per capita in Sweden compare with their immediate neighbours in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Germany?
Comparing yourself to the pack fill of shitty Covid responses seems quite “whataboutist”. There is only one country that is worthy of comparison with. Yes, it is the #1 country that exterminated Covid.
https://tfipost.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/1-154-750×375.jpg
Dig this.
Kowalainen brings up the issue of Taiwan. Taiwan does do amazingly well compared with other countries that can easily self-isolate. Singapore, Hawaii, and Hong Kong (not shown) also all have higher rates.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/australia-japan-cuba-new-zealand-taiwan-cumulative-cases-nov.-13.png
To date, there have been 597 cases in Taiwan. New cases are reported every day, including yesterday, when 8 were reported. This is a chart of cumulative reported cases.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/taiwan-cumulative-confirmed-cases.png
There have been only 7 people who have died. This is a relatively high death rate compared to the 597 cases reported, but not compared to the total population of 24 million.
I doubt that other areas could reproduce this result. New Zealand, Australia, and Cuba have all tried to keep cases out, with much less success. Hawaii is “off the chart” shown, even though it tried quarantines and limiting who could come in. US states, such as New York, have tried to keep out people from other states with COVID, but they still see escalating COVID cases.
Countries with an established number of cases have an impossible task of trying to get the number of cases down. I imagine that Taiwan has the advantage of a population that is used to following orders and wearing masks. I don’t know what their vitamin D level is; if they eat much fatty fish, it could be high.
This is a chart showing one week average reported cases. Sweden is clearly “way up there” and Norway is moving up. I wouldn’t blame Norway for being concerned.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/sweden-germany-denmark-norway-finland-one-week-casse-nov.-12.png
This is a chart of one week average daily deaths. It is moving up, but the Swedish deaths earlier are at a much higher level.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/germany-sweden-denmark-norway-finland.png
Most Taiwan people eat fish very regularly, often almost every day. I’m not sure how much fat a fish needs to qualify as fatty, but we do get a variety. I guess salmon would be the fattiest.
A note about quantities: At a family meal, each person might only eat a few bites of fish (and a few bites of pork, etc.). In other words, we share most dishes (the rule of thumb is to have as many common dishes as there are people eating), adding portions of them to our individual bowls of rice.
At holidays, it is traditional to serve three meats at the same time: fish, pork, and chicken. (Beef is eaten, but not traditional.) These three are also offered to the gods and ancestors on family alters (and later eaten by us).
People’s vitamin D levels are likely high enough to be protective with all of this fish eating. I know that it is the custom in Norway to take cod liver oil supplement. This raises vitamin D level, too.
I found this study of vitamin D level in northern Taiwan.
The study says that the mean 25(OH)-D vitamin D level was 28.9 ng/ml. I would consider that pretty good. Several groups are now using a vitamin D level above 30.0 ng/ml, to be (hopefully) protective against COVID-19.
This is a chart I found earlier of US levels of vitamin D.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-status-of-3-us-ethnic-groups.png
Chart originally from Schleicher, R. L., Sternberg, M. R., Lacher, D. A., Sempos, C. T., Looker, A. C., Durazo-Arvizu, R. A.,…Johnson, C. L. (2016). The vitamin D status of the US population from 1988 to 2010 using standardized serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D shows recent modest increases. Am J Clin Nutr, 104:454-461. ajcn.nutrition.org
This average level seems to be the same or above as that of the US White population, and way above the levels for Blacks and Mexican Americans.
Within the Taiwan article, the statement was made that tea drinking seemed to be protective against vitamin D deficiency, while coffee drinking tended to be associated with vitamin D deficiency. I would like to see that statement tested elsewhere. The combination of tea drinking and fish eating may be helpful, especially for people who are not inside office buildings all day long.
@Gail, Sweden had that huge early spike in covid deaths because they left their nursing homes unprotected. The guy in charge of dealing with this pandemic in Sweden later acknowledged this was his worst mistake and efforts are now made to protect the nursing homes. I listened to an interview with him and, although Sweden has not required a lockdown, it has not been as “laissez-faire” as often reported here in the US, and in practice the Swedes are not behaving way differently from other European countries. They did let their restaurants stay open, but they also put some limits on the numbers of customers. In practice, he said, this has been sufficient to keep infections at restaurants low. I do think we could learn some things from Sweden, but the lesson to be learned is not, “Let ‘er rip.”
Gail, I fear I must disagree with you here. The number of deaths per population is meaningless. The number of deaths divided by the number of cases would be meaningful, but we do not have reliable values for either numerator or denominator. Testing is still woefully incomplete, and many of the tests are unreliable, producing either false negatives or, much more widespread, false positives. The number of deaths is totally unreliable, because many deaths “with” covid are falsely reported as deaths “from” covid. Especially in the US, where the for profit medical system is paid far more if a death is attributed to covid.
A more reliable number would be “excess deaths” compared to a virus free baseline, but even that is not available, because it includes the excess deaths due to the lockdowns, which I suspect far exceed the deaths from the virus. In the UK, for instance, the waiting time for many medical procedures now approaches one year, and the number of stillbirths has doubled.
To summarise: we are flying blind using a “science” corrupted by fake data, and a “politics” based on the theory that if lockdowns don’t work, the answer is more lockdowns. In other words, a near total failure of elementary governance, and a collapse of the principle “salus populi suprema lex”.
I am not sure how accurate these ratios are, but the are as good numbers as we have. Deaths are probably a little more accurate than case counts, because there is at least some attempt to count those who died from COVID-19 (including some who might have died of other causes, as well). When researchers try to figure out what has happened, they find that many causes of death have increased simultaneously. Many of these causes of death are comorbidities with COVID-19. This is a link to a New York Times article on the issue. There Has Been an Increase in Other Causes of Deaths, Not Just Coronavirus
Thank you, Robert. I agree entirely.
Re: forced state euthanasia in Sweden?
There are claims that Sweden’s strategy in the first wave amounted to state euthanasia. C 19 patients were restrained in care homes rather than being taken to hospitals, and they were prescribed morphine which constricts breathing, rather than being put on ventilators. Half of c 19 f atalities in Sweden were in care homes while deaths per capita were many times higher than their neighbours.
The state funded MSM in Sweden has gone along with the government policy. Critics have been intimidated, sacked and received d eath threats.
‘Like North Korea’ – Sweden’s Coronavirus Critics Silenced
Sweden’s notoriously ‘relaxed’ Coronavirus strategy led by public health official Anders Tegnell hasn’t only come at the price of one of the world’s worst death rates – it has also exposed the limits of the country’s tolerance of free speech and scientific debate.
Members of the medical profession and ordinary citizens in Sweden have told Byline Times that they have been subject to a ferocious backlash – including death threats, abuse in public, and in some cases losing their jobs.
Despite faring significantly worse than its Nordic neighbours Denmark, Finland and Norway, there has been relatively little opposition to official COVID-19 policy within the Swedish mainstream media – which has benefitted from two huge Government bail-outs this year.
One of Tegnell’s most outspoken critics is Jon Tallinger, a GP from Tranas, a small rural city about 160 miles south of Stockholm. During the first wave of the virus in April, Tallinger condemned guidelines which advised medics to keep elderly care home residents suspected of having COVID-19 away from hospital and treat them in situ. Doctors were told to prescribe these patients a cocktail of palliative drugs such as morphine (which restricts breathing) rather than oxygen which might have saved their lives.
Tallinger said he believes this amounted to a “really big euthanasia programme” and that “nobody protested”. He paid a high price for his bluntness, both professionally and personally: “I’ve been called a N azi, a Communist, a Russian spy, an alarmist,” he added.
After coming under pressure from his employer, Tallinger not only left his job, but quit his country, too – professionally at least – by taking a post in Denmark. He believes that continuing to work in Sweden would have compromised his commitment to the Hippocratic Oath, the ethical pledge taken by doctors.
The Swedish Government has never spoken of a programme of euthanasia, but in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper in June, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said that “we have to admit that when it comes to elderly care [the plan] has not worked. Too many old people have died here”.
His admission is underpinned by grim statistics. At one point in the Summer, Sweden had the world’s fifth highest per capita death rate from the Coronavirus and nearly half of those who have died have been in care homes. Older people were evidently viewed – as it seems they were in Britain – as collateral damage in the battle to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.
None of this seems to have dented the popularity of Tegnell’s approach which, in sharp contrast to the UK and most other European countries, has seen Sweden reject widespread compulsory lockdowns. Bars, cafés, schools, gyms and businesses have all remained open throughout the crisis, albeit with an emphasis on physical distancing and personal responsibility.
…
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/11/02/like-north-korea-swedens-covid-critics-silenced/
Let er rip.
Morphine drip.
let gods will manifest
Let the patient decide their treatment.
I cared for my mom while she was dying from pulmonary fibrosis a number of years ago. She was prescribed morphine because it reduces the sensation of “air hunger” when one can’t get enough oxygen. I gave it to her for a number of weeks/months while she was on increasing rates of supplemental oxygen. It’s a quality of life/death tradeoff.
Norway has now recalled its home guard forces to man the border with Sweden and to keep Swedes out of Norway.
Sweden’s infection and fatality rates per capita are far higher than those of its neighbours and Swedes are seen as an unacceptable risk to the safety of their people.
Norway has a very long border with Sweden, so this is a massive national effort to keep Swedes out by force. Their presence will not be tolerated in Norway, whatever the cost.
Sweden’s epidemiologist admits it is facing second coronavirus wave
…. Relative to the size of its population, Sweden has suffered many times more Covid-19 deaths than its Nordic neighbours, though not quite as many as Europe’s worst-hit nations, such as Belgium, France, Spain and Britain.
The coronavirus death rate in Sweden is currently running at seven times that of Norway and twice that of Denmark, across the Øresund Bridge.
Compared to Finland, another Nordic neighbour, Sweden’s per capita infection rate is almost nine times higher.
The per capita death since the beginning of the pandemic has been over three times the Norwegian level where the infection rate is 140 cases per 100,000 people compared to 485 in Sweden.
Norway is so worried that earlier it recalled its “home guard” forces to patrol the land border with Sweden, Europe’s longest frontier, to enforce coronavirus travel restrictions.
….
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/swedens-epidemiologist-admits-it-is-facing-second-coronavirus-wave-bfpbj6fbh
You say many times I see, total deaths per 100,000, 59 vs 46 for Sweden vs EU. A factor of 1.28 or about the same
#1 Sweden has been in self destruction mode (on many fronts) for several past decades sadly..
#2 if I’m not mistaken Finland pop is of ugrofinish origins, i.e. berserk northern magyar-hungarians for lack of better approximation, that’s not Nordic, but obviously they adjusted for the harsh region in similar sense..
Re: #2. Finns have an elevated Siberian ancestry that has a deeper origin in common with East Asia. Siberian ancestry peaks in Russia, Finland and in Saami across northern Scandinavia.
This map shows the distribution of haplogroup N in Eurasia. Its brother clade O dominates East Asia, China etc. However N is the male line and it is heavily diluted in Scandinavia with European female lines, so they are mainly European with minor Siberian ancestry.
N in Scandinavia seems to be a male dominated migration that mixed more and more with local females over generations as it moved Westward. So the map does not show absolute levels of autosomal admixture in Scandinavia but relative distributions. Saami display some Mongolian-like features, some Finns and Swedes look slightly Chinese (eyes) but not really Norwegians.
‘Nordic’ seems to refer to a current phenotype that includes Finns. It is not necessarily well defined. The ancestry of all countries is complex and all Europeans have sizable SW Asian (Caucasian) ancestry. ‘Nord’ is often conceived on a Nord-Med cline from north to south rather than west to east, again it is not well defined.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ffd4285de02fced96ac54170d2b1cb46
That’s about right, hardened mofos stormed west/south from the steppes and north scandinavia, armed to the gills and made mobile with this newfangled invention/discovery “the wheel”.
The stagnant WHG gene pool getting close to totally obliterated. The process is still ongoing today.
I’m glad readers appreciated the Neil McCoy Ward blogger I suggested. Here is another one I like the content of . Black Pigeon Speaks or Felix Rex
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe7D33yWDhU
In this video he talks of Oikophobia a term coined by Roger Scruton and means the repudiation of of inheritance and home. Also Freud’s idea of the narcissism of small differences from Civilization and it’s Discontents. Eg. the urge to compete against others even through minor distinctions can express it’s superiority toward others. By rejecting one’s culture as backward one sets oneself above others of the same culture.
And I think that explains a lot of what I see around me.
I am interested of course in the economy/energy issues, the focus of OFW and greatly appreciate the understanding I’ve gained. And also I want to understand the sociological interpretations of what is happening all over the world. These are momentous times and I can feel a little crazy that nobody around me in my life seems to have a clue or even urge to understand things.
As Gail wrote a few days ago that the blog comments section serves a number of functions including support for people having trouble with the understanding gained, and I laughed and thought. “Yep that would be me.”
Also shout out to Harry McGibbs for his selections and contributions from around the world. I read this blog daily and afterwards am more informed after and feel a little better knowing that I am not crazy, or if I am, to know that there are others like me.
“And also I want to understand the sociological interpretations of what is happening all over the world. These are momentous times and I can feel a little crazy that nobody around me in my life seems to have a clue or even urge to understand things.”
also, I want psychological interpretations.
what’s up with persons who think that the human nature built into the economy can be somehow fixed?
what’s up with minds that can have almost limitless imagination but can’t see that not all imagined futures can be turned into reality?
why do some persons seem to want The Collapse to happen right away?
why do some persons seem to think that Progress can be infinite?
we all filter reality through our limited minds, and the differences are fascinating.
There is an article in the paper version of the WSJ today showing the number and location of the “landslide” counties, for either the Republican or the Democrats. (I can’t find the article on line.) Landslide counties are ones won by more than a margin of 20% over the other candidate. These maps are shown for 1980, 2000, and 2020.
There are very few landslide counties in 1980. Most of the ones that existed were in the non-coastal west. The number increased in 2000, but again tended to be in the western half of the country, excluding the west coast.
In 2020, the map is covered by landslide counties. The vast majority of them were won by Republicans. There are also a few landslide counties that voted for Biden. These are in urban areas.
This seems to related to what this author is talking about.
“Also shout out to Harry McGibbs.” Thank you!
“Argentina hiked interest rates on Thursday, November 12th, after monthly inflation accelerated to the highest level this year, a move aimed at bolstering peso savings and reining in prices amid a wider economic crisis.”
https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/mercosur/argentina-hikes-rates-as-inflation-speeds-to-fastest-level-this-year/
“The Falkland Islands, a long standing source of historical tensions between Argentina and the international community, are once again poised to be the centre of disputes, owing to Argentina’s growing economic troubles.
“The economic stagnation present echoes the same troubles that led to the 1982 conflict, and its purpose as a means of distracting the Argentine people from the economic stagnation…
“Reports of an estimated 60 billion barrels of oil in the area evidently provide a potential economic carrot for Argentina; and the stick of possible unrest due to economic pressures continues to push Fernandez towards taking a serious stance towards the Falklands. He has thus already sought to reopen negotiations surrounding the sovereignty of the islands.”
https://globalriskinsights.com/2020/10/argentina-a-second-falklands-brewing/
Might be valuable if the price of oil were higher.
Turkey and Argentina are often twinned in my mind – both very damaged, emerging market economies with weak currencies and leaders turning bellicose to distract from troubles at home.
Turkey enjoys way *higher spot in the global pecking order though.
As a springboard for projecting power/mischief throughout the ME as well as the Euroasian realm.. That applies now and in historical past, chiefly via credit for armament, alliances etc.
—
* obviously at some important threshold the spigot will be turned off, are we there yet, not sure about that..
Right. Argentina’s position on the map is SO remote and isolated that it is geopolitically trivial. That will become even more true as transport fuels become more scarce.
>>The Falkland Islands, a long standing source of historical tensions
>>between Argentina and the international community
I don’t remember seeing the UK referred to as the “international community” before.
Wikipedia:
“In March 2013, the Falkland Islands held a referendum on its political status: 99.8% of votes cast favoured remaining a British overseas territory.”
is this the winning arrrgument?
Not really. Karabakh had similar numbers during their referendum on independence from Azerbaijan.
The ‘international community’ is divided over the ownership of the Falkland Islands.
Argentina and UK pursue contrary claims of sovereignty over the Falklands. Obviously there is no ‘truth’ about who ‘should’ own them, that would be very naïve make-believe; ownership is a human construct. The attitude of countries to the FIs tends to reflect their own geopolitical outlook and interests.
UN GA resolution 1514, framed in the context of historical decolonisation after WWII, emphasises ‘human rights’, ‘liberation’ and the sovereignty of local populations. Obviously that resolution is aimed at other situations and it has failed to resolve the dispute about ownership of FIs with its imported population.
USA and EU take no position on the sovereignty of FIs, though both recognise the de facto situation. Most of South America, and China, support Argentina’s claim. Taiwan supports the UK claim, while Canada supports the islanders right to choose a la UN GA 1514.
The FIs were historically claimed on the basis of who could grab them and hold them. Various ‘principles’ are now resorted to in order to claim ownership. Obviously all claims are ‘made up’ according to ‘made up’ principles. Other territorial disputes include the armed grab of P alestine in 1948, which the British state still supports.
> …. International and regional views
Argentina has pursued an aggressive diplomatic agenda, regularly raising the issue and seeking international support. Most South American countries have expressed support for the Argentine position and called for negotiations to restart at regional summits.[113] The People’s Republic of China has backed Argentina’s sovereignty claim, reciprocating Argentina’s support of the PRC claim to Taiwan.[114] Conversely, the Republic of China on Taiwan acknowledges British sovereignty and ignores Argentina’s sovereignty claim.[115]
Since 1964, Argentina has lobbied its case at the Decolonization Committee of the UN, which annually recommends dialogue to resolve the dispute. The UN General Assembly has passed several resolutions on the issue. In 1988, the General Assembly reiterated a 1965 request that both countries negotiate a peaceful settlement to the dispute and respect the interests of the Falkland Islanders and the principles of UN GA resolution 1514.[116]
The United States and the European Union recognise the de facto administration of the Falkland Islands and take no position over their sovereignty;[114][117] however, the EU classifies the islands as an overseas country or territory of the UK, subject to EU law in some areas. The Commonwealth of Nations listed the islands as a British Overseas Territory in their 2012 yearbook.[118] At the OAS summits Canada has continued to state its support for the islanders’ right to self-determination.[119][120]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_dispute#International_and_regional_views
This is what the Spanish Wiki article says about the FIs, using google translate. The entries are not contrary but they have a difference emphasis.
It says that the UN does not legally recognise UK sovereignty of the FIs and that their status is pending resolution.
> …. According to the United Nations, it is a non-autonomous territory whose administering power is the United Kingdom 5 and whose sovereignty is claimed by Argentina . It is one of the 17 territories on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories under the supervision of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization , 1 for the purpose of examining the situation regarding the application of Resolution 1514 of the General Assembly of the Nations. United , 6 so the situation of the archipelago is examined annually by the Decolonization Committee since 1965 due to Resolution 2065 of the United Nations General Assembly . Legally, the United Nations Organization considers it a territory of sovereignty still pending by definition , between the United Kingdom – which has administered it since 1833 – and Argentina, which demands its return.
…. The sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands has been in conflict since 1833 between the United Kingdom and the Argentine Republic. Since 1946 they have been included in the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories under the supervision of the Committee on Decolonization , in order to examine the situation with respect to the application of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples , 50 51 so that the situation of the islands is reviewed annually by the Committee on Decolonization since 1965.
For the United Nations, sovereignty is in dispute, both of the islands and their surrounding maritime spaces, although until both parties resolve the contentious lawsuit, it is accepted that local administration will continue in the hands of the United Kingdom, for whom the Malvinas constitute an overseas territory….
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islas_Malvinas
The German language Wiki article does not go into detail about the dispute but it does have this nugget.
> …. The UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf decided in March 2016 that the waters of Argentina include the Falkland Islands, as the water surface of the country was expanded by 1.7 million square kilometers and between 320 km according to a report by Argentina in 2009 and ends 560 km from the coast. The Falkland Islands government stated that the UN commission would not be allowed to rule on disputed areas and the implications of the decision remained initially unclear. [22]
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklandinseln
Plan seems to be to reduce ability to afford loans. It is hard to see how this will help the economy. Businesses will be less able to invest; citizens will be less able to buy goods such as cars and homes. Higher interest rates will somewhat match higher inflation rates, but businesses taking out the loans will need to boost prices to consumers and individual citizens will need to get higher wages to afford to pay the the loans back.
“Central banks are miles from the exit ramp for the tremendous stimulus they’ve pumped into the economy. If anything, increased support is far more likely.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-12/coronavirus-vaccine-doesn-t-mean-the-end-of-easy-money
“It is hard to find two as unlikely bedfellows as the US’s Joe Biden and the UK’s Boris Johnson, but the two leaders are unified in their thinking on post-pandemic economics. Both want to “build back better”. But when I hear the phrase, the economist in me asks, build back better than what?
“If the answer is, “Better than the economic mess we’re in”, the slogan is not much of a commitment. Alternatively, if it means, “Build back better than we expected before the pandemic”, that is an unrealistic fantasy; soothing but delusional. Covid-19 has damaged our society and no attempt at sugar-coating changes that fact…
“Everything that was difficult before the crisis is now even harder.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b5da51d1-42f6-4c6f-ae06-1e1ec903b547
Bloomberg article mentions that China is at the edge of deflation:
Also, its central bank is letting up on stimulus.
If “stimulus” means QE, some economists and financial analysts argue that QE is deflationary. At best, its effect is unclear.
“The five largest producers of crude oil in Africa face a combined production decline of 19 percent as a result of the pandemic’s effect on oil demand and the acceleration of energy transition efforts, according to a new report by PwC.
“The Africa oil and gas review 2020 notes that the pandemic has caused the worst oil industry crisis in history and that oil demand will likely never recover to pre-pandemic levels.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/African-Oil-Producers-Face-Slump-In-Production.html
“Refiners around the world have been announcing permanent closures of refinery capacity this year after the pandemic crushed fuel demand worldwide, and significant overcapacity still remains, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Fuel-Demand-Slump-Speeds-Up-Refinery-Closures.html
A total of 1.7 million barrels per day of refinery capacity is scheduled for closure. Of this, the linked article says 1.0 million bpd is in the US. The capacity of the only refinery in Scotland is being reduced from 210,000 bpd to 150,000 bpd, and a refinery in Singapore is being closed.
Another article I found talks about 115,000 bpd in Osaka, Japan being closed. Australia’s biggest refinery is being closed. Refineries in both Australia and New Zealand are losing money.
The US refinery closures include ones in Gallup, New Mexico; Martinez, California; and Convent, Louisiana.
good news.
some need to close, so that the remainder can be viable.
like many/most other industries.
In other good news, those who get in now on the crazy low energy stock prices are going to be very happy in the next year or two.
why?
when they go bankrupt and are nationalized, do you think the US gov will pay the stockholders a high price for their shares?