There are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.
The modeling that comes closest to being correct is that which underlies the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This modeling was based on physical quantities of resources, with no financial system whatsoever. The base model, shown here, indicates that limits would be reached a few years later than we actually seem to be reaching them. The dotted black line in Figure 1 indicates where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on the limits we already seemed to be reaching at that time.
The authors of The Limits to Growth have said that their model cannot be expected to be correct after limits hit (which is about now), so even this model is less than perfect. Thus, this model cannot be relied upon to show that population will continue to rise until after 2050.
Many readers are familiar with Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) calculations. These are favorites of many people following the Peak Oil problem. A high ratio of Energy Returned to Energy Invested is considered favorable, while a low ratio is considered unfavorable. Energy sources with similar EROEIs are supposedly equivalent. Even these similarities can be misleading. They make intermittent wind and solar appear far more helpful than they really are.
Other modeling, such as that by oil companies, is equally wrong. Their modeling tends to make future fossil fuel supplies look far more available than they really are.
This is all related to a talk I plan to give to energy researchers later in February. So far, all that is pinned down is the Summary, which I reproduce here as Section [1], below.
[1] Summary: The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different.
The way a person views the world economy makes a huge difference in how one models it. A big issue is how connected the various parts of the economy are. Early researchers assumed that oil was the key energy product; if it were possible to find suitable substitutes for oil, the danger of exhaustion of oil resources could be delayed almost indefinitely.
In fact, the operation of the world economy is controlled by the laws of physics. All parts are tightly linked. The problem of diminishing returns affects far more than oil supply; it affects coal, natural gas, mineral extraction in general, fresh water production and food production. Based on the work of Joseph Tainter, we also know that added complexity is also subject to diminishing returns.
When a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition.
A second effect of added complexity is growing use of long-lasting goods available through technology. Many of these long-lasting goods are only affordable with financial time-shifting devices such as loans or the sale of shares of stock. As non-elite workers become increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy, these time-shifting devices provide a way to raise demand (and thus prices) for commodities of all types, including oil. These time-shifting devices are subject to manipulation by central banks, within limits.
Standard calculations of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) ignore the fact that added complexity tends to have a very detrimental impact on the economy because of the diminishing returns it produces. To correct for this, today’s EROEI calculations should only be used to compare energy systems with similar complexity. The least complex energy systems are based on burned biomass and power from animals. Fossil fuels represent a step upward in complexity, but they still can be stored until their use is required. Intermittent renewables are far ahead of fossil fuels in terms complexity: they require sophisticated systems of storage and distribution and therefore cannot be considered equivalent to oil or dispatchable electricity.
The lack of understanding of how the economy really works has led to the failure to understand several important points:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices,
(iii) The economy is experiencing the historical phenomenon of collapse, rather than peak oil, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
[2] The world’s energy problem, as commonly understood by researchers today
It is my observation that many researchers believe that we humans are in charge of what happens with future fossil fuel extraction, or with choosing to substitute intermittent renewables for fossil fuels. They generally do not see any problem with “running out” in the near future. If running out were imminent, the problem would likely be announced by spiking prices.
In the predominant view, the amount of future fossil fuels available depends upon the quantity of energy resources that can be extracted with available technology. Thus, a proper estimate of the resources that can be extracted is needed. Oil seems to be in shortest supply based on its reserve estimates and the vast benefits it provides to society. Thus, it is commonly believed that oil production will “peak” and begin to decline first, before coal and natural gas.
In this view, demand is something that we never need to worry about because energy, and especially oil, is a necessity. People will choose energy over other products because they will pay whatever is necessary to have adequate energy supplies. As a result, oil and other energy prices will rise almost endlessly, allowing much more to be extracted. These higher prices will also enable higher cost intermittent electricity to be substituted for today’s fossil fuels.
A huge amount of additional fossil fuels can be extracted, according to those who are primarily concerned about loss of biodiversity and climate change. Those who analyze EROEI tend to believe that falling EROEI will limit the quantity of future fossil fuels extracted to a smaller total extracted amount. Because of this, energy from additional sources, such as intermittent wind and solar, will be required to meet the total energy demand of society.
The focus of EROEI studies is on whether the EROEI of a given proposed substitution is, in some sense, high enough to add energy to the economy. The calculation of EROEI makes no distinction between energy available only through highly complex systems and energy available from less complex systems.
EROEI researchers, or perhaps those who rely on the indications of EROEI researchers, seem to believe that the energy needs of economies are flexible within a very wide range. Thus, an economy can shrink its energy consumption without a particularly dire impact.
[3] The real story seems to be that the adverse outcome we are reaching is collapse, not peak oil. The economy is a self-organizing system powered by energy. This makes it behave in very unexpected ways.
[3a] The economy is tightly connected by the laws of physics.
Energy consumption (dissipation) is necessary for every aspect of the economy. People often understand that making goods and services requires energy dissipation. What they don’t realize is that almost all of today’s jobs require energy dissipation, as well. Without supplemental energy, humans could only gather wild fruits and vegetables and hunt using the simplest of tools. Or, they could attempt simple horticulture by using a stick to dig a place in the ground to plant a seed.
In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure, which is a self-organizing structure that grows over time. Other examples of dissipative structures include hurricanes, plants and animals of all types, ecosystems, and star systems. Without a supply of energy to dissipate (that is, food to eat, in the case of humans), these dissipative structures would collapse.
We know that the human body has many different systems, such as a cardiovascular system, digestive system and nervous system. The economy has many different systems, too, and is just as tightly connected. For example, the economy cannot get along without a transportation system any more than a human can get along without a cardiovascular system.
This self-organizing system acts without our direction, just as our brain or circulatory system acts without our direction. In fact, we have very little control over these systems.
The self-organizing economy allows common belief systems to arise that seem to be right but are really based on models with many incorrect assumptions. People desperately need and want a “happily ever after” solution. The strong need for a desirable outcome favors the selection of models that lead to the conclusion that if there is a problem, it is many years away. Conflicting political views seem to be based on different, equally wrong, models of how world leaders can solve the energy predicament that the world is facing.
The real story is that the world’s self-organizing economy will determine for us what is ahead, and there is virtually nothing we can do to change the result. Strangely enough, if we look at the long term pattern, there almost seems to be a guiding hand behind the result. According to Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee in Rare Earth, there have been a huge number of seeming coincidences that have allowed life on Earth to take hold and flourish for four billion years. Perhaps this “luck” will continue.
[3b] As the economy reaches limits, commodities of many types reach diminishing returns simultaneously.
It is indeed true that the economy reaches diminishing returns in oil supply as it reaches limits. Oil is very valuable because it is energy dense and easily transported. The oil that can be extracted, refined, and delivered to needed markets using the least amount of resources (including human labor) tends to be extracted first. It is later that deeper wells are built that are farther from markets. Because of these issues, oil extraction does tend to reach diminishing returns, as more is extracted.
If this were the only aspect of the economy that was experiencing diminishing returns, then the models coming from a peak oil perspective would make sense. We could move away from oil, simply by transferring oil use to appropriately chosen substitutes.
It becomes clear when a person looks at the situation that commodities of all kinds reach diminishing returns. Fresh water reaches diminishing returns. We can add more by using desalination and pumping water to where it is required, but this approach is hugely expensive. As population and industrialization grows, the need for fresh water grows, making diminishing returns for fresh water a real issue.
Minerals of all kinds reach diminishing returns, including uranium, lithium, copper and phosphate rock (used for fertilizer). The reason this occurs is because we tend to extract these minerals faster than they are replaced by the weathering of rocks, including bedrock. In fact, useable topsoil tends to reach diminishing returns because of erosion. Also, with increasing population, the amount of food required keeps increasing, putting further pressure on farmland and making it harder to retain an acceptable level of topsoil.
[3c] Increased complexity leads to diminishing returns as well.
In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter points out that complexity reaches diminishing returns, just as commodities do.
As an example, it is easy to see that added spending on healthcare reaches diminishing returns. The discovery of antibiotics clearly had a huge impact on healthcare, at relatively little cost. Now, a recent article is entitled, The hunt for antibiotics grows harder as resistance builds. The dollar payback on other drugs tends to fall as well, as solutions to the most common diseases are found, and researchers must turn their attention to diseases affecting only, perhaps, 500 people globally.
Similarly, spending on advanced education reaches diminishing returns. Continuing the medical example above, educating an increasing number of researchers, all looking for new antibiotics, may eventually lead to success in discovering more antibiotics. But the payback with respect to the education of these researchers will not be nearly as great as the payback for educating the early researchers who found the first antibiotics.
[3d] Wages do not rise sufficiently so that all of the higher costs associated with the many types of diminishing returns can be recouped simultaneously.
The healthcare system (at least in the United States) tends to let its higher costs flow through to consumers. We can see this by looking at how much higher the Medical Care Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises compared to the All Items CPI in Figure 2.
The high (and rapidly rising) cost of advanced education is another cost that is being passed on to consumers–the students and their parents. In this case, loans are used to make the high cost look less problematic.
Of course, if consumers are burdened with higher medical and educational costs, it makes it difficult to afford the higher cost of energy products, as well. With these higher costs, young people tend to live with their parents longer, saving on the energy products needed to have their own homes and vehicles. Needless to say, the lower net income for many people, after healthcare costs and student loan repayments are deducted, acts to reduce the demand for oil and energy products, and thus contributes to the problem of continued low oil prices.
[3e] Added complexity tends to increase wage disparities. The reduced spending by lower income workers tends to hold down fossil fuel prices, similar to the impact identified in Section [3d].
As the economy becomes more complex, companies tend to become larger and more hierarchical. Elite workers (ones with more training or with more supervisory responsibility) earn more than non-elite workers. Globalization adds to this effect, as workers in high wage countries increasingly compete with workers in lower wage countries. Even computer programmers can encounter this difficulty, as programming is increasingly moved to China and India.
Individuals with low incomes spend a disproportionately large share of their incomes on commodities because everyone needs to eat approximately 2,000 calories of food per day. In addition, everyone needs some kind of shelter, clothing and basic transportation. All of these types of consumption are commodity intensive. People with very high incomes tend to buy disproportionately more goods and services that are not very resource intensive, such as education for their children at elite universities. They may also use part of their income to buy shares of stock, hoping their value will rise.
With a shift in the distribution of incomes toward those with high earnings, the demand for commodities of all types tends to stagnate or even fall. Fewer people are able to buy new cars, and fewer people can afford vacations involving travel. Thus, as more complexity is added, there tends to be downward pressure on the price of oil and other energy products.
[4] Oil prices have been falling behind those needed by oil producers since 2012.
Back in February 2014, Steven Kopits gave a presentation at Columbia University explaining the state of the oil industry. I wrote a post describing this presentation called, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Oil companies were reporting that prices had been too low for them to make an adequate profit for reinvestment, back as early as 2012. In inflation-adjusted terms, this was when oil prices were about $120 per barrel.
Even Middle Eastern oil exporting countries need surprisingly high oil prices because their economies depend on the profits of oil companies to provide the vast majority of their tax revenue. If oil prices are too low, adequate taxes cannot be collected. Without funds for jobs programs and food subsidies, there are likely to be uprisings by unhappy citizens who cannot maintain an adequate standard of living.
Looking at Figure 4, we see that there has been very little time that Brent oil prices have been above $120 per barrel. Even with all of the recent central bank stimulus and deficit spending by economies around the world, Brent oil prices remain below $60 per barrel.
[5] Interest rates and the amount of debt make a huge difference in oil prices, too.
Based on Figure 4, oil prices are highly irregular. Much of this irregularity seems to be associated with interest rate and debt level changes. In fact, in July 2008, what I would call the debt bubble associated with subprime housing and credit cards collapsed, bringing oil prices down from their peak abruptly. In late 2008, Quantitative Easing (QE) (aimed at bringing interest rates down) was added just prior to an upturn on prices in 2009 and 2010. Prices fell again, when the United States discontinued QE in late 2014.
If we think about it, increased debt makes purchases such as cars, homes and new factories more affordable. In fact, the lower the interest rate, the more affordable these items become. The number of purchases of any of these items can be expected to rise with more debt and lower interest rates. Thus, we would expect oil prices to rise as debt is added and fall as it is taken away. Now, there are many questions: Why haven’t oil prices risen more, with all of the stimulus that has been added? Are we reaching the limits of stimulus? Are interest rates as low as they can go, and the amount of debt outstanding as high as it can go?
[6] The growing complexity of the economy is contributing to the huge amount of debt outstanding.
In a very complex economy, a huge number of durable goods and services are produced. Examples of durable goods would include machines used in factories and pipelines of all kinds. Durable goods would also include vehicles of all types, including both vehicles used for businesses and vehicles used by consumers for their own benefit. As broadly defined here, durable goods would include buildings of all types, including factories, schools, offices and homes. It would also include wind turbines and solar panels.
There would also be durable services produced. For example, a college degree would have lasting benefit, it is hoped. A computer program would have value after it is completed. Thus, a consulting service is able to sell its programs to prospective buyers.
Somehow, there is a need to pay for all of these durable goods. We can see this most easily for the consumer. A loan that allows durable goods to be paid for over their expected life will make these goods more affordable.
Similarly, a manufacturer needs to pay the many workers making all of the durable goods. Their labor is adding value to the finished products, but this value will not be realized until the finished products are put into operation.
Other financing approaches can also be used, including the sale of bonds or shares of stock. The underlying intent is to provide financial time-shifting services. Interest rates associated with these financial time-shifting services are now being manipulated downward by central banks to make these services more affordable. This is part of what keeps stock prices high and commodity prices from falling lower than their current levels.
These loans, bonds and shares of stock are providing a promise of future value. This value will exist only if there are enough fossil fuels and other resources to create physical goods and services to fulfill these promises. Central banks can print money, but they cannot print actual goods and services. If I am right about collapse being ahead, the whole debt system seems certain to collapse. Shares of stock seem certain to lose their value. This is concerning. The end point of all of the added complexity seems to be financial collapse, unless the system can truly add the promised goods and services.
[7] Intermittent electricity fits very poorly into just-in-time supply lines.
A complex economy requires long supply lines. Usually, these supply lines are operated on a just-in-time basis. If one part of a supply line encounters problems, then manufacturing needs to stop. For example, automobile manufacturers in many parts of the world are finding that they need to suspend production because it is impossible to source the necessary semiconductor chips. If electricity is temporarily unavailable, this is another way of disrupting the supply chain.
The standard way to work around temporary breaks in supply chains is to build greater inventory, but this is expensive. Additional inventory needs to be stored and watched over. It likely needs financing, as well.
[8] The world economy today seems to be near collapse.
The self-organizing economy is now pushing the economy in many strange ways that indirectly lead to less energy consumption and eventually collapse. Even prior to COVID-19, the world economy appeared to be reaching growth limits, as indicated in Figure 1, which was published in January 2019. For example, recycling of many renewables was no longer profitable at lower oil prices after 2014. This led China to discontinue most of its recycling efforts, effective January 1, 2018, even though this change resulted in the loss of jobs. China’s car sales fell in 2018, 2019, and 2020, a strange pattern for a supposedly rapidly growing country.
The response of world leaders to COVID-19 has pushed the world economy further in the direction of contraction. Businesses that were already weak are the ones having the most difficulty in being able to operate profitably.
Furthermore, debt problems are growing around the world. For example, it is unclear whether the world will require as many shopping malls or office buildings in the future. A person would logically expect the value of the unneeded buildings to drop, reducing the value of many of these properties below their outstanding debt level.
When these issues are combined, it looks likely that the world economy may not be far from collapse, which is one of my contentions from Section [1]. It also looks like my other contentions from Section [1] are true:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
Regarding (iv), the available energy supply from wind and solar (net or otherwise) is tiny relative to the total energy required to operate the world economy. This issue, alone, would disqualify a Great Reset using wind and solar from truly being a solution for today’s problems. Instead, plans for a Great Reset tend to act as a temporary cover-up for collapse.
WP is acting up let me try this a third time
https://humansarefree.com/2021/02/alberta-canada-premier-great-reset-not-a-conspiracy-theory-has-no-place-in-our-province.html
FE, for you
https://humansarefree.com/2021/02/alberta-canada-premier-great-reset-not-a-conspiracy-theory-has-no-place-in-our-province.html
FE, Alberta’s Kenny says
instead of “exploiting the crisis to impose on democratic societies a whole bunch of failed socialist policy ideas,” political leaders should focus on “generating economic growth, on recreating some of the trillions of dollars of wealth that will have been destroyed, on restarting some of the hundreds of thousands of businesses that will have gone under, on obsessively focusing on getting the tens of millions around the world back to work.”
https://humansarefree.com/2021/02/alberta-canada-premier-great-reset-not-a-conspiracy-theory-has-no-place-in-our-province.html
The thing is…. Kenny is not being told what the Real Plan is… there ain’t going to be a reset…
If he knew the Real Plan… he’d initially be angry … but then like all the people who do know the Real Plan… he’d accept that a gentle mass extermination of humans … is the only good option.
I honestly don’t think it’s going to be that gentle. Not that that changes anything. The end result is still crispy radiation rat burgers for the lucky remainers. I wonder if they’ll still have masks on…
I agree — there will be extreme violence…. I think when the PMO (leak) says ‘what we are doing is in the interest of everyone – it is not up for debate or even discussion’ what they meant was — take the Trojan Horse vaccine…. feel free to not take it but we’ll make your life miserable in the final months of BAU…. and when collapse hits… you will wish you had taken the vaccine because instead of a peaceful death… you will live out your final days dealing with extreme violence… hunger….cannibalism… rape… and if you are a ‘tough guy’ and survive that… there’s those 4000+ spent fuel ponds…
Resistance is Futile. Resistance is actually a bad idea… go softly into the night.
That said… I don’t see myself being poisoned with a vaccine… I want to be lucid to the bitter end… when the internet goes down then we go looking for the rock cut….
BTW – I have been practising … top speed so far is 200km per hour (with radar detector…) — I understand red line speed is 300km per hour…. nobody survives that into a cliff… I will spray paint various slogans on the car before the final mission … Good Riddance Humans… F%$k Humans … stuff like that….
Eternal Lockdowns? https://lockdownsceptics.org/ (again this is EXACTLY what the leak out of Canada said would happen)
On the eternal lockdowns scenario, yes it is certainly a possibility, I’d place it way on Top3 or so..
However, there is still a maneuvering space as to whether this is ultraschnell depop plan or more structured one.
For example, one option is sort of “rolling” lockdown with sort of pulsating up/down freq, e.g. 1/2yr total lock incl. restricted stateside movement followed by few months of eased regimen, rinse and repeat. This could be played up and down for ~5-10yrs easily (in ~core countries with docile bamboozled pop)..
Why we do not have inflation?
Because of the rising complexity.
That which does not exist isn’t available for purchase at any price. Furthermore, once basic needs are covered, and superficialities removed. What is left is just numbers in your bank account.
Try buying the millennium falcon. Or perhaps a ticket out of an unwinding IC and collapsing ecosystem. Priceless stuff, like existence itself.
It is the declining energy of the ageing humans that requires lower and lower prices. Including the prices of energy. Is that not so?
Old people consume very little. So do young(er) people. Both of those two age groups are mostly busy on the internet and with video games. Have a good long look at the OFW crowd, mostly middle aged to senior men with a few women sprinkled in here and there. As for my own experience from my rather old parents; Internet-o-holics. Dad in front of his computer and mom with her smartphone.
It is quite hard to form the herd “dynamics” when young (and old) people don’t give a flying fuck about the MSM sanctimony perpetrating the smoke and mirrors. Yes, the sleaze is going out of work at an alarming rate.
What does spur consumption is of course mass immigration into the first world, which of course have been fully operational while you and I are under lockdown.
However, nothing wrong with poor schmucks from the exploited third world, as we are all guilty to a certain degree of their misery. Yes, that includes me and you. But at the planets expense, I think it’s rather reprehensible.
We gotta cut down on the crazy for them to have a decent existence. Now, tell me, how many km’s have you cranked out on your bicycle this week? 😉
Wanna get rid of mass immigration? Be prepared to cut your own consumption. I’m sure the capital will find other countries and regions to industrialize. But you won’t do that, right? Which means perpetual lockdowns and mass immigration.
Now, tell me: When will those cranks start spinning and that plant based diet consumed?
Yes, right. That will never happen and now you should prepare to reap what you sow.
🤔
You need more warmth for the elderly in colder countries that require energy.
We could start with well insulated houses, yup it works. We aren’t exactly running out of wood, nails and insulation materials anytime soon. If we want to play it cool, let those unemployed frackers start to drill holes for heat pumps.
Better houses + bicycles for the entitled princesses.
Let those drill bits, saw blades and TIG welding machines rip.
Heat pumps seem to need a lot of repairs. At least that has been our experience with the one we have that serves the basement of our house, and the one that serves the apartment of my son nearby. My son has had problems with a refrigerant leak, both this year and last year. I am not sure the latest one is fixed yet. The temperature needs to be above 55 degrees F. to recharge the device, which means a wait of several weeks in a very cold apartment. We have had problems with the outdoor unit “icing over,” in rainy cold conditions. This is a list of common repairs:
https://www.bartelsheatingandcooling.com/blog/here-are-your-most-common-heat-pump-repairs/
Of course, we need the whole system operating to get the repair people out to fix the units. And if the electricity is down for long periods, a heat pump is not of much use.
I was thinking of the technology, not a shoddy cheap implementation that easily breaks.
The repair people who come to my home to fix washers and driers explain that the new “efficient” approaches are a whole lot more repair prone.
A long time ago, I learned that ocean wind turbines often have housing for repair staff right on site, because repairs are needed so frequently. Sometimes helicopters are required.
No one thinks about the whole system: what all is needed to keep these systems operating (including spare parts, repair people, trucks and roads) and how frequent repairs are likely needed.
We’re not talking about super sophisticated gear needed to compress a refrigerant and send it down the pipe again once the heat has been extracted.
I just don’t see the problem with building stuff that last and is serviceable without specialized gear.
I never had a microprocessor break down on me, and those are one of the most complex devices of mankind. How come those ultra complex devices are way better than shitty cars, hat pumps and laundry machines? Now think about that for a moment.
The problem is indeed the resilient systems engineering not being part of the loop. 100 years warranty for all parts, properly installed, with a BOM clearly defining the consumables, complete with blueprints for manufacturing spares at your local workshop.
Every goddamn physical thing produced should be open sourced. It is a matter of liberating product manufacturing from the shackles of bean counters and focus the competitive aspects to the emerging complexity of software. I.e, going from tangibles to intangibles economy.
For example, ask your local workshop to produce part/apparatus X supplied with the blueprints you find on the internet. Then you receive the bill from the workshop defining the raw material cost, work + margin.
Who produces those blueprints you might ask, well, ask yourself, who produces the free and open source kernel Linux? For the most part, the same corporations that got an interest in supplying software/services/product/raw material to the customers. I.e, plastics, aluminum, microchips, refrigerants and computational platforms.
I just don’t see the problem. It is entirely contorted out of idiot.
Kowalainen
Your microprocessors don’t have moving parts as is the case with most computer components.
Wind turbines and compressors etc are prone to break down. Constantly need replacement of moving parts.
Not really a good comparison.
I agree about freeing up all the patents and blueprints though. We really could do with a revolution in that respect, a great leap forward in human colaboration, but somehow, I think human nature will continue to put a spanner in the works.
Once the produce becomes unaffordable and cheaply built enough, it will simply be abandoned, since the margins will evaporate and the cost cutting efforts will be futile because nobody can afford the cheaply built expensive crap anymore.
For example, the market for cheap radios barely exist anymore, people are rather restoring the old (good quality) ones. The same goes for classic computers and video games. HiFi equipment too. Old cars indeed.
Look at what the internet did to traditional media. I basically read and scoff at the headlines these days. Won’t bother with the cheap, cut and pasted narratives outputted by algorithms and badge engineered by “journalists”.
The US Navy is employing metal 3D printers to cover for spare parts during deployment.
The reason why microprocessors don’t fail is that they are of extremely high quality. There are other forces that eventually wear down semiconductors, such as electro migration and charge build up in the materials.
The solar system got plenty of moving parts that seem to last for an awful long time. A properly designed electric motor, ball bearing and gearbox got no MTBF, they are eternal for all practical intents and purposes.
Yes, open source all physical items. Bulk produce the construction materials and manufacture products locally. It’s basically a few companies that makes a profit from selling mass produced items anyway. Apple and Samsung for example. The rest; barely scraping by. It won’t get any better.
As for the bulk component/producers, it’s heyday as usual. TSMC running wild with profits. AMD is making a killing. I’ll bet the suppliers to those companies isn’t complaining.
It’s about to finalize the transition from the tangible to intangibles. The kids these days care more about video games than being taught how to compete with the joneses. Old people is on the bandwagon, perhaps not with video games but sites like this and Facebook.
What is left are the large swaths of useless eaters stuck in an obsoleted paradigm. They will be the ones taking the hardest hit as they will see their “prosperity” evaporate. But hey, who cares. It was a lie anyway.
You seem to talk past each other it seems.
Gail assumes the ordinary addon air heat pump setup, prevalent in the NA, which is usually cheap junk aircon derived unit, while Kowalainen talks about the water-water heat pump systems (more known in EU/Scandinavia) which are easily proven ~20-30yrs of longevity, no service, but the purchasing price per unit is exponentially higher, they can utilize existing suitable water sources (lake, abandoned mining shaft, new / old well etc). But again that goes back into the whole calculation about life time expenses, income, priorities, gov policies / taxation etc..
Even the water-water heat pumps require electricity for operation, I believe. So if you lose electricity completely, the heat pump is of now use.
One son pointed out to me at dinner tonight that air source heat pumps tend to be used only in the South of the US, because many cold parts of the country have a requirement that apartments be kept above a certain temperature in the winter (for example, 64 degrees F = 18 C). Air source heat pumps don’t work well enough to reliably do this, especially in parts of the country where it gets very cold. The Atlanta area where we live is relatively warm compared to most of the US. Europe tends not to get very cold, compared to, for example, the US Midwest.
Correct, these water-water heat pump systems need electricity. But it seems nowadays are all installed in combo with large(ish) accumulation tanks say at least .75-2k liters per household (which then distribute the heat through house zones and hot water boiler) – so it must be all very ~efficiently synchronized, i.e. the electric input doesn’t necessarily run 24/365 non stop, off peak tariff / rates ready..
Today, there could be quality brands for the air based heat pumps as well, haven’t looked into it that much. Again you are right about the needed audit to match such unit for particular prevailing climate – weather in the area when choosing the unit.
1. make your house small
2. insulate it based on climate zone
2a r40 walls r60 ceilings minimum anwhere in usa
3 large amount of south facing glazings with curtains
4 supplement with pv dc dropped across resistance loads into 55 gallon barrels of water
4a no refrigerant
4b no pump.
4c no evaporator
4d no condenser
4e no leaks in a line with refrigerants that are crazy expensive and suck because we got rid of the flurocarbons.
Not much sun in the winter? Not much heat in the ground for the evaporator to suck up either.
If you cant make a HA work in georgia your sure not going to make it work in ohio.
Im not sure anything north of bama will be viable one the solar minimum we are entering kicks in.
Also, huge fence to keep away those who would break the south facing glazings or steal the pv.
Miraculous supply of food and fresh water arrives at the door every day, without the use of energy.
I can’t see that this arrangement would really work for long.
Well, you have to cross-compare nominal and real stats.
For example, in constant money (say EUR) there is definitively a combo of effects: deliberate product shrink-flation (g / volume) and pricetag inflation even in various foodstuff categories, so in aggregate it could be ~25% per half a decade for the item. Not the end of the world but annoying. And for low(er) income segments that’s starting to be very noticeable given other outlays after a while..
Obviously this could be temporarily “offset” by low energy price or some ad hoc political tax deduction, and other action and segments etc., so not all people register it firstly.
How timely, Kunstler’s latest piece, called “Baseless”
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/baseless/
You can apply this to anything being spewed by the government and or media today:
““If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels, Reichsminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”
Yes, and the latest Kunstler podcast ft. Greer is top notch..
@worldofhanumanotg,
I enjoyed reading Greer for a long time and I always appreciate his historical parallels.
Unlike Kunstler, he seems to have dropped most discussions about current events (Covid, elections, crises) and any attempt at prediction (unless you pay for the astrological one).
I am curious if that is because he knows what the future holds (censorship and cancellation for anyone questioning the official story) or is he simply being taken by surprise by the events and unable to keep up?
Either way, his current post (with the eternal complaint about socialism) is so out of step with the reality it is painful to read.
Maybe Greer hates the socialists so much that he has become like one of the old pensioners parading in Moscow on Mayday, still carrying Stalin’s portrait?
Well, frankly I’m more regularly lurking into Kunstleriana stuff than Greer’s material, but the last podcast with him was interesting-refreshing in terms of going into the subconscious undercurrents of the situation, that’s why I put the highlight as the over focus on the elections lately in Kunstler’s writing was getting almost unbearable (not disputing all his analysis).
On your concluding part, not sure why are so many otherwise seemingly intelligent people fixating hate on Stalin? Without him (meaning incl. pre WWII forced industrialization and kicking out the zealot ideology first Trockites) the Third Reich would have clearly established (upgraded) itself up with most of the Russian oil and other resources – that’s profoundly worse historical scenario in my book. Unfortunately it all boils down to national survival and geopolitics realm with inevitably megatons of victims in the wake of key historical crossroads – most people are unable to process this sad reality and they wish upon the stars ala “good” people delivering “good/optimal” results, that’s not how it works..
The question is if the necessary evil has to exist. Perhaps, perhaps not. It could all be unavoidable stages in the process.
But as any rational being knows, there is not only one way to pursue “Lebensgefahr”.
In search for the optima, one is most likely to end up searching in perpetuity. There is a trade off between optimality and action. Haste makes waste, so does inaction.
Aside from the philosophical discussion (which I enjoy) my point was that worrying about socialism in USA today is equivalent to worrying about the Mongol hordes invading Europe.
We can write post after post decrying the Mongol’s beheadings and the danger they pose to the Christianity but is that relevant to Europe today?
The same with socialism in US. It never was a problem and today you have to be blind to pretend that any of the power centers is socialist in any shape of form.
Or you can do what Greer does and redefine socialism as anything you don’t like and presto! the Davos crowd have become socialists.
Yes, plus it’s all nonsense anyway NOW.
As the EU became effectively Reich ver_4.0
..now after UK is out, FR is almost on the knees, Scandinavians are mostly hauled in psychiatric ward, and western Slavs jockeying to first seat by self immolation again, ..
HummusDeus> my take on Greer in this angle is that he sort of files himself in the traditional – conservative rural – agrarian folder. And this is declamatory “anti socialist” by default, even if folks like him are then in practice willing and able to put together some loose co-op sharing agri tools, machinery, org. buyers club etc. Strange, but that’s my interpretation.
Co-op? Why? I guess a traditional market economy would come out just fine.
The agri crowd operates the machinery on their fields and artisanry keeps the junk operational while buying and selling stuff among each other and producers.
Big petrochemical and bulk manufacturing (of raw materials) from finite resources supplies them with whatever traditionally priced at cost of production, investments + margin.
The rest with some useful brain capacity and novel ideas tries to figure out how to keep the shebang operational with new tech and improvements in the existing processes.
In the mean time, the useless eaters simply has to go. There is no alternative as I see it. However I’d like to be wrong since it will be quite a disruption until we are there.
50,000 adverse events from mRNA vax in UK
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/958616/COVID-19_mRNA_Pfizer-_BioNTech_Vaccine_Analysis_Print.pdf
But look on the bright side. There’s only been 107 fatalities! Or 108 if we count Captain Tom.
Critical Flaw Found in Lab Models of the Human Blood-Brain Barrier
https://neurosciencenews.com/bbb-lab-model-flaw-17692/
Infographic: How COVID-19 affected transport fuel and refineries in Europe
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/videos/market-movers-europe/020821-oil-results-jet-gas-winter-heating-france-nuclear-plastics-polyethylene
‘Jab for a job’ is LEGAL: Ministers believe companies that force their staff to get the Covid vaccine in order to work would be protected by health and safety laws
Bosses can legally demand employees vaccinated against Covid, say ministers
Under existing health and safety laws staff must protect themselves and others
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9235025/Bosses-legally-demand-staff-vaccinated-against-Covid-health-safety-laws.html
It seems like the use of this kind of thing will vary by country. The article makes it sound like such a plan would not be imposed in the UK.
Right now, there are not enough immunization shots available to make such a plan workable.
If it turns out that there are a lot of bad long term effects, or if it becomes clear that the immunizations work poorly against all of the new mutations that are cropping up, such plans will not be very helpful.
There are no new mutations Gail.
Stop believing everything the big pharma mafia put out to swindle people.
Unless you mean the modifications to the computer model that is sars cov 2?
Again, no virus has been isolated. All freedom of information requests around the world have come back negative. No one has a sample of the virus including the cdc and chinese equivalent.
And no… a synthetic recreation in the lab doesn’t count.
interesting conundrum:
it is your human right to believe that Covid doesn’t exist therefore presents no risk
therefore——
it is your human right to not get vaccinated
But it is my human right to believe that Covid does exist and does present a risk
Therefore——
it is my human right not risk infection by you, and by definition those around me
sooooooo—-
is it your human right to be allowed into a communal workspace, (or any other space where I might choose to be)
While my human rights are restricted/ignored by not being able to be there? I too have a human right not to be put at risk.
Your disbelief that there is a risk does not negate that.
************
Suppose an employee showed up with obvious symptoms of straightforward influenza, or something worse
Then pulled the ‘human rights’ card, that the employer had no ‘right’ to prevent him coming to work (or whatever)
seems to me that a prudent employer would not want to put his other employees at risk, so is entitled to refuse.
There are dozens of more dangerous contagious diseases than this Wuhan flu—Viral hepatitis (which caused a 1.34 million deaths worldwide in 2015 alone), MERS (which has had a mortality rate as high as 37.2% compared with the current estimated mortality rate of 2% to 3% for COVID-19), Ebola (which has an even higher mortality rate of about 50%), influenza (which causes about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 deaths each year). If we are going to insist people be vaccinated against one, why not against all of them?
Avian influenza is is 20 times more dangerous than COVID-19 — if you’re a chicken. Fortunately it doesn’t often infect humans, but you can’t be too careful. Better insist on a jab for that too.
Moving on, there’s tuberculosis. A total of 1.4 million people died from TB in 2019. Worldwide, TB is one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause from a single infectious agent. In 2019, an estimated 10 million people fell ill with TB worldwide. TB is the cause of or contributes to about 500 deaths in the US and 350 deaths in the UK each year.
Then there’s our old friend HIV (which by some accounts has caused the deaths of 32 million people worldwide over the past 40 years and has no vaccine and no cure). Why not force all HIV positive people to live in HIV colonies, just to be on the safe side? You know it makes sense, Norman.
Seems to me that a prudent employer would not want to put his other employees at risk, so should be entitled to refuse to employ anyone who hasn’t been jabbed so much that they can’t drink a cup of tea without it pouring out of them as if through a sieve, just in case.
in my initial version of my comment, I put down tuberculosis, then deleted it
I was making a point…. rabbiting endlessly on about a lot of infectious diseases and copy/pasting details here would not have strengthened it, only made it more tiresome to read
Oh boy
I’ll give you TB.
I don’t mean the disease. I mean I’ll let you off for thinking that one actually exists in the real world.
All the rest are sketchy at best. In that there’s NO real evidence in the real world that they actually exist.
Most are computer model creations drummed up to create fear in the general public and sell vaccines and antivirals.
Some animals get sick or are poisoned. A farmer gets sick. The CDC or the WHO send idiots in hazmat suits to scrape some samples. They then create a novel virus genome using a computer program and hey presto – money to be made!
https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-COVID-19-Hepatitis-Billion-Dollar/dp/375194253X
Aids was and still is a huge scam – very well documented over the past 30 years. Fauci was involved of course, Kary Mullis called him out on it.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/08/the-shaky-science-behind-the-deadly-new-strains-of-sars-cov-2/
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/03/covid-a-disease-in-name-only/
Louis Pasteur was a fraud.
Long live Terrain Theory!
I am not convinced it is as bad as you say.
Word of the Day
Germaphobe: a person with an extreme fear of germs and an obsession with cleanliness; a person suffering from germaphobia.
Synonyms of germaphobia include germophbia, mysophobia, verminophobia, bacillophobia and bacteriophobia.
Germaphobes are obsessed with sanitation and feel compelled to clean excessively, but they’re really suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
https://img.ifunny.co/images/d2983b46f5f0d803cddfe340d886b9128a246485b9227be7a360026af87a9af4_1.jpg
you forgot doomophobia, collapsophobia, hoaxaholism, plotalia.—complaints little understood by medical science yet. Hence no known cures.
I sense a Nobel prize in this somewhere
maybe even commentophobes—really suffering from
an overwhelming need to comment obsessively and compulsively.
I think it’s time for my meds.
I particularly like the term you coined the other day—conspiraciitis, or was it conspiratitis? Regardless of the spelling, I think it should be classed as a genuine psychiatric condition. And you could pick up a Nobel Prize in Medicine for being the first to describe it clinically.
if you agree to be my nominee Tim, I will see to it that you get a cut of the prize money
1-0 to Norman for turning the savagery of Tim into comedy for me.
glad I raised a smile somewhere
contrary to popular opinion, that is usually my intention—the opposite is too awful to contemplate.
I don’t even take myself seriously–let alone anybody else
Judo with with prose cracks me up.
🤣👍
Do try to stop being such an ass, Norman.
There are some – possibly very many – who while recognising that some sort of novel disease exists, presenting with unique symptoms at hospitals, but who do not wish to be forced to participate in what amounts to a global experimental drug trial which might prove very prejudicial indeed to their health.
Or did you stop reasoning when you were vaccinated?
I was merely presenting what human rights means in easy to understand form
if that is still beyond your limited comprehension, its not my problem
Get vaccinated, and let Darwin eliminate the less fit—
We have way too many homo sapiens.
Be good for the population.
(This is what is happening anyway)
He insults people all the time, it is likely some sort of mental disturbance.
So does he. I think the clinical condition is called exasperatitis—defined as the chronic inability to suffer fools gladly.
I point out what is possibly the truth –I freely admit to being wrong some of the time. When my error is pointed out, I check and counter it.
a lot of people find that insulting
because it conflicts with their own concept of reality. But even Tim will accept that I never ‘lose it’ under any circumstances. And we are always insulting one another.
I might refer to trump as an idiot, but in terms of insults, thats as far as it goes—might be other odd instances—feel free to bring them to my attention.
other than that, ‘limited comprehension’ sounds quite polite.
other people might use other words—up to them really
words should be used like a scalpel, not a blunt axe.
I thought my definition of human rights presented both sides with equal merit. if you can’t recognise both sides of a viewpoint, best not to present any at all, because your bias will not allow you to accept that there is any opinion other than your own.
If a concept doesn’t make sense, I’ll say so. I think I usually explain my contrarianism
if it offends some deeply held beliefs, tough.
Fear not Norman, they have been preparing the ground to dismiss annoying inconveniences like the Nuremberg code , informed consent and the right to respect for private and family life for some time now.
You’ll be thrilled to learn that it will probably be done under the Mental Health Act 1983.
Which would make sense when you consider the lengths they have gone to demonising anyone that raises any of the irregularities in their narrative, with the usual catch all, say nothing terms like “conspiracy theorist”, “antivaxxer” or my personal favourite “denier”(so much scope with this one).
Troublesome times at present, so caution is probably the safest path.
“Equivalence and proportionality have ever been the excuses of dictators seeking to justify the means of their present dictatorship by the purported ends it serves, and these arguments for what the authors of this response euphemistically call the ‘harms’ of compulsory vaccination are no different in kind, if they are in degrees of violence. Behind their claims to address compulsory vaccination as an abstract question of law, the neuro-interventionists at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics are in the line of those doctors and judges who, not so long ago, prescribed chemical castration for homosexuals, lobotomies for social misfits and sectioning for women who didn’t obey their husbands. The exact degree of violence, however, to which the authors of this response are prepared to find equivalence, proportionality and benefit only becomes clear when they go on to argue the second of their parity arguments. This is the equivalence they make between mentally unstable patients unable to consent to medical treatment and British citizens who refuse a vaccine for COVID-19.”
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/01/08/our-default-state-compulsory-vaccination-for-covid-19-and-human-rights-law/
Dictators! Shmators! Hah!
The Great Mussolini ended up hanging upside down in the town square along with family members.
Invincible Emperors get stabbed in the back by their loyal bodyguards.
What do you think’s gonna happen to the current medical mafia dictatorship when the masses realise they have been scammed and they are now destitute and have nothing to lose?
Xabier, please reflect that it is impossible to be insulted by one who cannot frame a proper argument. And thank you for your many wise words.
ah yes
remind me again of the genius who insisted that Hero’s steam turbine device had ‘no moving parts’, and could not be an energy converter
and that a ‘numbing injection’, was not a form of anaesthetic
I dislike cutting and pasting, but in this instance it seems critical :
noun: anesthetic
1.
a substance that induces insensitivity to pain.
Similar:
narcotic
soporific
stupefacient
painkiller
sedative
anodyne
analgesic
opiate
general
local
I particularly liked the word ‘stupefacient’
Alas, there is one area of my body on which your version of anaesthesia has no effect whatsoever.
No doubt I shall learn to live with it, as others will have had to do over the years.
And as I recall, I replied to that comment, which of course you did not acknowledge. Hero’s engine had no moving “part”; it moved as a whole. It seems the distinction between “whole” and “part” escaped you. And an “anaesthetic”, as its name would tell you if you had a word of Greek, is something that suppresses sensation. My injection suppressed motion, which again is a distinction that escaped you.
Or did they? Perhaps I was over generous, attributing your nonsense to simple ignorance, rather than a desire to insult and denigrate people at the expense of the truth. I shall rethink.
I did not see your response….they sometimes get lost in the general melee
you must let me have details of your hair splitting implement
I need to get one
and if the alternative to ‘denigrating others’ is tacitly agreeing to endless conspiracy theories, as opposed to actual information, and puncturing them with a little humour, then I must plead guilty.
but if you care to analyse my comments, the contrarian barbs are I think almost always pointed in that direction
Conspiratitis?
https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-cult/
Initially I meant it as a joke.
Norm … you are like the crazy old man who gets locked in the attic whenever there are visitors…
Can you tell us again the tale about the end of more… those were the days weren’t they!
@Norman
“interesting conundrum”
There is no conundrum.
If a vaccine works then those who choose to receive it are protected and thus not placed at risk by those who choose not to receive it.
If a vaccine doesn’t work then there is no reason from a health perspective in anybody receiving it.
To my way of thinking, the argument that one must get vaccinated in order to protect others is a tacit admission that vaccines do not work.
Precisely.
But all the same, I do thank Norman for getting vaccinated in order to protect us refuseniks. He’s a courageous man and it’s a very commendable act. Indeed, I think we should all clap for Norman as a gesture of gratitude for his willingness to sacrifice himself for the common good.
Over the next few months we may see a lot of vaccinated people dropping like flies OR we may see a lot of unvaccinated people dropping like flies. By then we should have a better idea of how well the things work.
60 years ago I was dedicating my life tirelessly to make sure the human race didn’t die out
now here I am dedicating my few remaining years to do the same thing all over again
and what thanks do I get
Turn to the dark side!
http://www.vhemt.org/
What? There are sides to human affairs?
A bunch of rapacious primates rummaging around on earth. Dictated by god only knows what kind of absurd shenanigans.
What difference does it make? It is what it is.
shenanigans are indeed absurd
but the the human mind is programmed not to think so at the time
The news from South Africa fully supports your position. They are suspending vaccination because the vaccine seems mot to protect people with “mild” forms of the disease. But if the disease is mild, what is the point of a vaccine?
They also will not vaccinate people over 65 because there is no evidence the vaccine will work. But if you do not vaccinate people over 65, you will *never* have evidence the vaccine works.
These are the increasingly absurd rationalisations of governments that have no idea what they are doing. Just like the US, the UK, and the EU, except that the last seem to cover up the fact by busily doing nothing.
I think that it is the right of the employer to ask employees to get vaccinated. I also think that it is the right of the employee to sue the employer for all damages occurring from vaccination if there are any. Since one can not sue the vaccine makers.
you may be right
seems like life was just not meant to be easy
You’re partly right.
No employer has the right to force vaccines on their employees. Not a private company, not the government, not the military, not medical services.
It’s against the law.
In fact, it’s against every law. Common law, constitutional law, international human rights laws, the Nuremberg code and of course God given inalienable rights.
No one can use coercion to make you take a coctail of ingredients into your bloodstream. If anyone tries this you can legally take them to court and they can be charged with a serious crime carrying a prison sentence.
Anyone trying to force you to do such a thing – including wearing a face muzzle – is attempting against your health, again, a serious crime with a heavy penalty.
All goverment workers including police and doctors can be sued for criminal acts against your personal health integrity.
I can hear the lawyers rubbing their hands together already. Another thing is for the courts to process these cases legitimately. If they don’t, then they can be replaced.
We are all protected by these basic laws and the politicians and employers know it. That’s why they resort to coercion which only works because people don’t know the laws!
Anyone wanting to take these genetic modification products voluntarily is clinically insane or absurdly ignorant. Unfortunately, many are running headlong towards their demise. So be it.
Force majure.
Forget about those laws. Start vaxxing the guvmint employees.
👍
If it comes to that… I’m all for it!
In fact, the next part of the law states very clearly that we all have the right to defend oursleves with deadly force if anyone insists on treating us like slaves. So yes, I expect that it will come to this at some point soon.
No.
Bosses cannot legally demand employees get vaccinated. They can’t force them to wear masks either.
Honestly, I wonder if people think they are literal slaves even today!
You have rights gordammit!!
Some judges have mandated that a resident of a care home be vaccinated against their will and that of their family. These judges have broken the law and should be prosecuted.
No one can be held in a home against their will either. All the centres doing this are breaking the law.
There is no pandemic, no national emergency, just a criminal mafia exploiting a bunch of dumb sheep that don’t know basic biology and basic laws.
Unfortunately, I believe most human beings are actually walking bags of shite that repeat whatever they hear on the tv to each other as they slosh about.
There is no hope for this species. They have proven once and for all that the manipulators can run rings around them using simple psychological tricks that shouldn’t fool a child.
The masses will drag the whole species down into the abyss.
Lockdown is set for prolongation in UK as the UK vaccine does not stop the spread of the SA strain.
The Daily Mail has not mastered paragraphs yet, either that or it concludes that its readers cannot handle more than a sentence at a time.
> Ursula von der Leyen lashes out at Boris Johnson’s ‘space race’ approach to vaccines as bitter German minister points to UK’s higher death rate and ‘endless suffering’
Meanwhile, German minister Peter Altmeier has dismissed comparisons with the UK’s faster rollout, saying Mr Johnson’s handling of the crisis had resulted in a higher death rate and ‘endless suffering to tens of thousands of families’.
However, there are rising concerns today that mutant coronavirus strains could derail the huge push – with research suggesting the AstraZeneca jab is less effective against the South African variant.
And speaking to the summit on Saturday she said: ‘When I was your age the world was still divided into two blocs.
‘The superpowers fought to expand or maintain their sphere of influence. This world is long gone… yet the old confrontational mindset is back.’
‘Some countries view the search for a vaccine as a race among world powers, like the race for space in the 1960s.’
She added: ‘This is not a competition between Europeans, Russians, Chinese and Americans – this is too serious.’
‘Their number of infections is far too high to this day. The death rate is significantly higher than ours.
‘This has brought endless suffering to tens of thousands of families. So far we have come through the crisis much better in Germany.’
Preliminary research has suggested that the AstraZeneca vaccine might only reduce severe illness from the South African version, rather than blocking it altogether. South Africa has suspended rollout of the jabs until the situation becomes clearer.
A SAGE expert warned today that the UK could face lockdown restrictions for longer if the South African Covid variant becomes more widespread.
A study yesterday found the Oxford University jab had ‘minimal effect’ in preventing mild disease caused by the strain, suggesting vaccinated people may still be able to catch and spread it.
Professor Mike Tildesley, an infectious disease expert at Warwick University and member of SAGE, said the finding could have ‘significant implications’ on Britain’s lockdown-easing plans.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: ‘It means that even with high levels of vaccination there will be a lot of people that could potentially get infected and could potentially pass it on and it may mean that more restrictions might be needed for longer if we can’t get on top of this.’
Despite the concerning new finding, UK ministers have urged Brits to keep faith in the British-made vaccine, saying there is ‘no evidence’ it will not block severe disease.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9235961/Ursula-von-der-Leyen-lashes-Boris-Johnsons-space-race-vaccines.html
Confusion prevails!
As James Kunstler so eloquently calls it: “a mind f#ck” because that’s exactly what this has become. The Plebs are being fed scripted misinformation and propaganda regarding the mfg’d Covid hysteria.
It didn’t become a mind f#ck.
It was a bold faced lie from the very get go!
Big pharma have been testing the ground for this hoax for a very long time.
Louis Pasteur was a horrible fraud.
Fauci is a degenerate demon that should be in prison along with Bill Gates for crimes against humanity.
What i can’t understand is why the media studios haven’t been invaded by protesters. Are they so heavily defended?
Never has the human race been subjected to so many outrageous lies and fraud for so long.
The punishment for this heinous crime should be swift and severe. Most govt workers – politicians, doctors, scientists, police, teachers – are all complicit.
Even the whole pushing of bioweapon lab nonsense is suspect now. There is no reason to believe that such weapons are even feasible. But the myth must be kept alive so that it can be used as a tool of terror again at some later date.
Viral contagion has never been shown to exist. All area effect disease can be explained by other causes.
Oh come on, the whole shebang is a lie from the get go. Really; infinite growth on a finite planet. What an oxymoron.
Nobody longer works in the “press”, it is auto generated narrative that gets pushed out and perpetrated by the (few) mouthpieces in synchronization.
What did you expect? I’ll bet you wanted truth when things went from worse to awful? How would that pan out for people vested in their “future”? Yes, their offspring, pension plans, you name it.
Look, the oil party is over. Face it instead of chasing scapegoats, it was a good run. You got opulence, but unfortunately got blindsided by thermodynamic reality while indulging in the comfortable myopia of the ordinary.
In your heart, oh yes indeed, you knew it was coming to an end, just not now, sometimes later. However, that later is unfortunately now.
But don’t get me wrong, I’d like that hopium to be torn to pieces watching the despair ravage through the sanctimonious hypocrisy.
I’m glad to be of assistance.
☺️
Your answer says a lot more about your personal state of mind than make any attempt to address any of the points I made in my comment!
But it’s all good.
Let me summarize that paragraph.
lashes out Boris Johnson vaccines bitter German death ‘endless suffering’
I read that as we still hate the Germans.
This is not a hate forum!
Regards from Germany.
el mar
el mar, I am commenting on the emotionally hysterical article in the dailymail. I am not agreeing with it.
thank you!
“Germans want our jabs, they are criticising our jabs, they are mocking our dead; support your country, support your government, get jabbed, and tell the SNP to get stuffed.”
Daily Mail is obviously a TP government state propaganda outlet. Judging by the DM comments, that is exactly how a sizable number want things to be.
ALL newspapers are propaganda outlets.
ALL mainstream media tv news shows are propaganda outlets and hypnotic mind control delivery systems.
Unfortunately…
MOST alternative media on the internet are also propaganda outlets steering the curious down endless rabbit holes to keep them occupied.
If you want the truth you’re probably best off walking outside and connecting with nature.
The internet does have a lot of truth tucked away in its corners but people end up spending most of their waking hours staring at screens chasing some golden nugget of information that only exists inside you and in nature.
Many governments are falling in Africa.
Revenue from raw material exports, including oil exports, is too low.
“Rising poverty and falling incomes fuel Russia’s Navalny protests: Living standards slide amid stagnant growth, weak investment and government austerity…
““People are really at the end of the rope . . . [They] are reaching breaking point,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance.”
https://www.ft.com/content/24b45679-ed22-4df7-89ab-f3d5fad71c95
“Algeria’s energy exports are plunging, threatening more financial suffering for the OPEC member and a potential repeat of the mass demonstrations that toppled the president two years ago.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-08/an-oil-country-no-more-algeria-s-energy-exports-sink-rapidly
“Tunisians defied a police lockdown and blocked roads on Saturday to take part in the country’s largest protest in years.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1804901/middle-east
“Several demonstrations organized by opposition parties and civil society groups were dispersed Saturday in Chad by police with tear gas, according to media reports.”
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/chad-protests-against-debys-sixth-term/2136393
The issue isn’t really “mismanagement” as the article claims. The problem is chronically low prices that have provided too little funds for reinvestment. At current and recent prices, not much oil and gas production is profitable.
“Unrelenting bird flu spread sparks egg shortages in South Korea:
“South Korea is among the worst hit in the world, but it’s not alone in its struggles. New infections of H5N8 and H5N1 have been found in at least a dozen countries in Europe, where more than 3.5 million birds have died, including ducks used for France’s famed foie gras. India, the second-biggest egg producer, reported cases in 13 states and territories.”
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/consumer/unrelenting-bird-flu-spread-sparks-egg-shortages-in-south-korea
All we need is yet another pandemic. The hog virus is finally letting up, in China, at least.
Japan was culling chickens back in December, after concern about H5N1 flu.
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3113375/bird-flu-outbreak-japan-worsens-over-2-million-chickens-culled
“If it’s not compared to gold (Bitcoin) or oil (solar) then it’s probably not worthy. The “new oil” in the tech world is semiconductors.
“China’s “Greater Bay Area” is where all the new drilling will happen. Right now, it’s where the demand is coming from in a world facing chip shortages for car makers.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2021/02/07/china-turns-semiconductors-into-the-new-oil-while-gm-runs-out-of-chips/?sh=375dcf2620af
“Japan said Monday (Feb 8) it has protested to China over two incursions into Japanese territorial waters that come after Beijing enacted legislation toughening its response to violations of its maritime territory.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japan-protests-over-china-ships-off-disputed-isles
“Biden said his administration was prepared for “extreme competition” with China but that his approach would be different than his predecessor.
““I’m not going to do it the way Trump did. We are going to focus on the international rules of the road,” Biden told CBS in an interview.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/07/biden-will-compete-with-china-but-wont-take-trump-approach.html
I’m sure that the conflict isn’t about the islands themselves. It is about related things, such as oil and gas exploration and fishing rights. Even control of ships from other countries.
China’s “Greater Bay Area” is down along the southeast coast. It includes Hong Kong and Macau and the area around it.
“The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) Christine Lagarde has rejected calls to scratch debts of eurozone member states who used the money to support their economies amid COVID-19.
“Responding to calls made on Friday, Lagarde told France’s Le Journal du Dimanche weekly, that cancelling that debt is “unthinkable.””
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/european-central-bank-christine-lagarde-rejects-cancelling-coronavirus-debt-eu-economy-154337783.html
“Italy’s central bank has called for cohesion as the country battles a government crisis, saying it is imperative to revive growth and reduce an ever-increasing public debt.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Italy’s debt to levels last seen in the aftermath of World War I.”
https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-07/Bank-of-Italy-says-national-unity-needed-to-cut-spiralling-debt–XFwYmKOJZS/index.html
“For how long can Europe keep businesses from going under? Small and medium-sized companies call for more help as coronavirus curbs hit revenues…
“In the centre of Florence… Pasquale Naccari has serious doubts about whether the seafood and pizza restaurant his family has run for more than 50 years can survive much longer.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f769f70b-f6e8-485f-892b-435d3ec125b7
Virtually none of the debt is repayable. Of course, this makes a lot of future promises (like pension plans, the value of bank accounts) of little true value, unless governments can figure out a way to equalize the loss everywhere. Then everyone comes out badly.
Of course. The centre always consumes the periphery.
“Freedom and fairness: Covid vaccine passport plans cause global unease:
“Schemes are in development from Sweden to China, but there are fears around transmission and social unrest.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/07/freedom-and-fairness-covid-vaccine-passport-plans-cause-global-unease
“Hundreds of people took to the streets of Copenhagen on Saturday night to protest Denmark’s Covid-19 restrictions and the country’s plans for a digital vaccination certificate.”
https://www.thelocal.dk/20210207/hundreds-protest-covid-restrictions-in-denmark
People won’t necessarily put up with Covid restrictions and vaccination plans.
“The world’s largest independent oil trader, Vitol SA, joined rival Gunvor Group Ltd. in expressing caution about the recent surge in crude prices.
““The market is getting ahead of itself in terms of a post-vaccine euphoria but also continued belief in the ability of OPEC to manage supply,” Mike Muller, head of Vitol’s Asian operations, said Sunday in an interview with Dubai-based consultant Gulf Intelligence.”
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/2/5/world-s-largest-crude-trader-sees-post-vaccine-euphoria-in-oil-prices
“Big oil’s huge losses raise prospect of mega mergers: Finances in tatters as demand crash and rise of clean energy force existential reckoning…
“Reports last week that Exxon and Chevron discussed what would have been the biggest industrial merger in history during the depths of last year’s market bust are a measure of the panic that swept through the sector.”
https://www.ft.com/content/179e64c9-a264-4a06-811f-b1d07d90fbd0
“Big oil’s huge losses raise prospect of mega mergers …” Ah yes: a drowning man clutching at another drowning man. Couldn’t they at least clutch at deck chairs, like the (short term) survivors who jumped off the Titanic?
There is a definite limit to how high prices can go, before a crash is likely occur.
Good news on vitamin D! Our old friend Dr. John Campbell analyzes a study that concludes that people who habitually take vitamin D supplements have 34% less risk of coming down with the ‘rona.
The study also looked at other vitamins and minerals and didn’t find any correlation between taking any of them and being more protected against COVID-19 infection. S on this basis, if you are just going to take one supplement, medical opinion recommends that you make it Vitamin D and make it at least 3,000 IU per day.
I’m afraid this particular study won’t impress anyone. (Campbell may have discussed a second study, but I didn’t get that far.)
The benefit, using the unadjusted ratio, is 22%. This is with a sample showing a strangely high number of COVID-19 positive tests during a three month period early in the pandemic in the UK.
Then, some magical adjustment is done, to adjust for all kinds of things. This adjustment brings the expected benefit up to 34%.
Except, I would expect the vitamin D users to be from a higher socioeconomic group. They likely are not cab drivers, for example. My intuition would say that the adjustment should reduce the benefit, not raise it. There were lots of adjustments, but not for socioeconomic group. I forget whether there was an adjustment for race/skin color.
Sars-Cov spread naturally? Sars-Cov-2 spread naturally too. The problem is over population?
I guess we will never know.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9
This is a link to at 2017 article. It says:
Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus — and suggests new outbreak could occur
Chinese scientists find all the genetic building blocks of SARS in a single population of horseshoe bats.
people intrude on the bat’s territory—ie eat them
the microbial life dependent on the bats senses a threat to their existence and releases a virus
the virus mutates and jumps to humans.
We think we can overcome all other species and remain ‘top predator’ here. We can’t and never were.
Our industrial complexity looks all powerful, but it is too fragile to withstand the backlash of the other species we thought we could control
M2: China vs US
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtqpVglXcAExldh?format=jpg&name=medium
That is a big difference recently for M2 growth recently. Of course, the US was suffering from a lot more shutdowns, so needed more. But a person would expect more rise in China, I would think.
Something that may be of interest that was removed from the comment section of a Yooby dooby dooby toob channel.
Research paper: (Notice author and lab.)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209347/pdf/zjv12201.pdf
Also another research paper:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/
Video from controversial vaccine specialist:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/nMKgSHse6MTp/
The first one, from 2011, is scary if true:
A Double-Inactivated Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Vaccine Provides Incomplete Protection in Mice and Induces Increased Eosinophilic Proinflammatory Pulmonary Response
upon Challenge
Meagan Bolles, Damon Deming, Kristin Long, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Alan Whitmore, Martin Ferris, William Funkhouser, Lisa Gralinski, Allison Totura, Mark Heise,and Ralph S. Baric
The authors are all from the University of North Carolina.
The abstract reads:
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) is an important emerging virus that is highly pathogenic in aged populations and is maintained with great diversity in zoonotic reservoirs. While a variety of vaccine platforms have shown efficacy in young-animal models and against homologous viral strains, vaccine efficacy has not been thoroughly evaluated using highly pathogenic variants that replicate the acute end stage lung disease phenotypes seen during the human epidemic. Using an adjuvanted and an unadjuvanted double- inactivated SARS-CoV (DIV) vaccine, we demonstrate an eosinophilic immunopathology in aged mice com- parable to that seen in mice immunized with the SARS nucleocapsid protein, and poor protection against a nonlethal heterologous challenge. In young and 1-year-old animals, we demonstrate that adjuvanted DIV vaccine provides protection against lethal disease in young animals following homologous and heterologous challenge, although enhanced immune pathology and eosinophilia are evident following heterologous chal- lenge. In the absence of alum, DIV vaccine performed poorly in young animals challenged with lethal homologous or heterologous strains. In contrast, DIV vaccines (both adjuvanted and unadjuvanted) performed poorly in aged-animal models. Importantly, aged animals displayed increased eosinophilic immune pathology in the lungs and were not protected against significant virus replication. These data raise significant concerns regarding DIV vaccine safety and highlight the need for additional studies of the molecular mechanisms governing DIV-induced eosinophilia and vaccine failure, especially in the more vulnerable aged-animal models of human disease.
At least just one unpronounceable name. So it looks good
The second one, from 2012, is much the same:
Immunization with SARS coronavirus vaccines leads to pulmonary immunopathology on challenge with the SARS virus
Chien-Te Tseng, Elena Sbrana, Naoko Iwata-Yoshikawa, Patrick C Newman, Tania Garron, Robert L Atmar, Clarence J Peters, Robert B Couch
And the abstract:
Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in China in 2002 and spread to other countries before brought under control. Because of a concern for reemergence or a deliberate release of the SARS coronavirus, vaccine development was initiated. Evaluations of an inactivated whole virus vaccine in ferrets and nonhuman primates and a virus-like-particle vaccine in mice induced protection against infection but challenged animals exhibited an immunopathologic-type lung disease.
Design: Four candidate vaccines for humans with or without alum adjuvant were evaluated in a mouse model of SARS, a VLP vaccine, the vaccine given to ferrets and NHP, another whole virus vaccine and an rDNA-produced S protein. Balb/c or C57BL/6 mice were vaccinated i.m. on day 0 and 28 and sacrificed for serum antibody measurements or challenged with live virus on day 56. On day 58, challenged mice were sacrificed and lungs obtained for virus and histopathology.
Results: All vaccines induced serum neutralizing antibody with increasing dosages and/or alum significantly increasing responses. Significant reductions of SARS-CoV two days after challenge was seen for all vaccines and prior live SARS-CoV. All mice exhibited histopathologic changes in lungs two days after challenge including all animals vaccinated (Balb/C and C57BL/6) or given live virus, influenza vaccine, or PBS suggesting infection occurred in all. Histopathology seen in animals given one of the SARS-CoV vaccines was uniformly a Th2-type immunopathology with prominent eosinophil infiltration, confirmed with special eosinophil stains. The pathologic changes seen in all control groups lacked the eosinophil prominence.
Conclusions: These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.
And you could also add this other concern to your list, James: ADE.
Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease is a general concern for the development of vaccines and antibody therapies because the mechanisms that underlie antibody protection against any virus have a theoretical potential to amplify the infection or trigger harmful immunopathology. This possibility requires careful consideration at this critical point in the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here we review observations relevant to the risks of ADE of disease, and their potential implications for SARS-CoV-2 infection. At present, there are no known clinical findings, immunological assays or biomarkers that can differentiate any severe viral infection from immune-enhanced disease, whether by measuring antibodies, T cells or intrinsic host responses. In vitro systems and animal models do not predict the risk of ADE of disease, in part because protective and potentially detrimental antibody-mediated mechanisms are the same and designing animal models depends on understanding how antiviral host responses may become harmful in humans. The implications of our lack of knowledge are twofold. First, comprehensive studies are urgently needed to define clinical correlates of protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2. Second, because ADE of disease cannot be reliably predicted after either vaccination or treatment with antibodies—regardless of what virus is the causative agent—it will be essential to depend on careful analysis of safety in humans as immune interventions for COVID-19 move forward
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2538-8
This article is from July 2020. It would seem like we should soon be getting information on whether the disease is made worse by ADE. Treatment with antibodies seems to have started before vaccines, so information on the effect of these would perhaps give indications. And of course, the vaccines are now going out in large numbers. If there are problems, we will find out, it seems like.
One would think it would be a simple matter in forthcoming months to compare covid-19 mortality rates of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. But given a study has never been (openly) done to compare the health outcomes of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, can we hope that governments will be honest with their populations this time around?
are both of these irrelevant because they are not mRNA vaccine studies?
(of course the mRNA vaccines could be worse.)
The big controversy –can the vaccine make later cases worse?
and/or lead to autoimmune disease in later months or years?
time will tell.
Anthony Fauci: We’ve Got to Get the ‘Entire World Vaccinated’
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has insisted people should continue to adhere to stringent public health measures even after getting vaccinated, said the Chinese coronavirus will remain a threat, which is why officials need to ultimately get the “entire world vaccinated.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/06/anthony-fauci-weve-got-to-get-the-entire-world-vaccinated/
Ho! Ho! Ho! Getting the whole world vaccinated won’t happen.
Of course it won’t,and he knows it: therefore, we can look forward to Planet Lockdown……
If this is “force majeur” type of event the system must at least pretend some counter action to the “natural” or “sabotage” kind of pandemic outbreak. Hence real or imagined efforts toward massive vaxism out there must and will be televised some more..
If you boil it down it’s just Roman law (-yerly) trick of liability = proclaiming: Oh so sorry for the fin system, savings, jobs, .. just collapsing all around you – but we tried really hard to stop it (evidence here there), don’t you know it (dare to question it).
Its only a sin to not get vaccinated in the first world yet a pandemic is by definition a global event. Yes those who choose not to get vaccinated are guilty of a unspeakable sin yet others who share the same world are ignored.
Innate intelligence in a manner not demonstrated in IQ tests is demonstrated in not letting some alien from outer space do the same thing as a venomous snake does in the manner it administers by third world inhabitants. Additionally some vaccination programs did not go so well in the third world. Perhaps their attention span is longer than the west.
This article is MAGNIFICENT!
The day traders liberated from their brick-and-mortar jobs by the Covid-19 pandemic have become a legion of army ants, swarming into whatever stock Elon Musk might have mentioned in a tweet. Gamestop now has a market capitalization of $24 billion, against projected 2021 earnings of negative $126 million. There’s no rational calculation involved.
https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/dont-stop-game-stocks/
This is terrible. Chris Chan had been calling for a boycott of GameStop due to their trans-and autism-phobia and complicity in the lie that Sonic the Hedgehog has blue arms.
Great fun for some. Sort of like a game.
The stock market “guilds” are taking shape. It is the MMORPG crowd getting tired of playing World of Warcraft and EVE Online and want something more exciting than a virtual raid/space battle.
I’ll bet the real action takes shape in Telegram, Discord various excel sheets and AI models running bonkers.
Watch the old money evaporate.
🤣👍
The inevitable happened.
They already tried to choke the infrastructure knots so the “activist” little ant investors won’t be allowed to access trading aka “vandalizing en masse” the good old game for the big boyz casino.
Lets watch it together how this evolves..
China Turns Semiconductors Into The ‘New Oil’ While GM Runs Out Of Chips
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2021/02/07/china-turns-semiconductors-into-the-new-oil-while-gm-runs-out-of-chips/?sh=6f73bd6720af
330,000 Chinese facing drinking water shortages as drought hits south
Rainfall since October in regions south of Yangtze River down 50 to 80 per cent on normal levels, water ministry says
About 2.4 million people in Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian already affected, concerns growing in Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan, it says
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3120898/330000-chinese-facing-drinking-water-shortages-drought-hits
This will not be good for crops next year, either.
While European (as well as NA?) aquifers keep replenishing this winter, hopefully this won’t be rolled over by another long heat wave for the Q1-2 growing season though as often happened in recent decades. It’s still somewhat big planet.
Zero Covid is a mirage, says JONATHAN SUMPTION – the virus is here to stay and we all (even Sage scientists) need to learn to live with it
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9231807/Zero-Covid-mirage-says-JONATHAN-SUMPTION-virus-stay.html
Hey Gail, not sure if you’ve heard of Rod Swenson before. He has discussed the view of economies and complex systems through the lense of thermodynamic dissipative structures for quite a while now, with a particular focus on entropy and what he terms the “law of maximum entropy production” as a means of understanding high level behavior of these systems.
https://youtu.be/YUx_aDxTJe4
https://youtu.be/500QAKfTDpE
Yay, AI’s to the help combatting the pesky pathogen. What could possibly go wr…? Oh, well, if a swearing GPT-3 isn’t enough. AI initiated zombie apocalypse perhaps. Why not, sounds like a lot of fun. Put ‘em useless eaters to work for once in a while.
https://www.contagionlive.com/view/novel-artificial-intelligence-prevents-covid-19-mutations
“Investigators from the University of Southern California have created an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that is able to counter emergent mutations of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), while also quickening the development of vaccines, potentially aiding in putting the ongoing pandemic to an end.”
I think governments Will fall down in next 6 months in all world. In Italia Just did) Mario Draghi have now
Italy is a mess and is now a much bigger headache for the Eurozone than Greece ever was.
Why?))
Because in 2010 Greece’s debt to GDP was 146% and almost caused chaos around the world and more so in the Eurozone. Cyprus debt to GDP was 56% and caused bank runs, bank holiday’s and bank haircuts.
Italy, Spain, France are all in big trouble and now Germany is hemorrhaging with government mandated lockdowns. Eventually the global economy will collapse.
You don’t need to be a world economist or a math genius to figure out that on its current course the global economy is headed for a massive collapse. Because in math 1+1 still equals 2. Our governments are making us believe that 1+1=12.
The United States is printing worthless money at a feverish pace since the “Plan-demic”. They are adding another $1.9 trillion to the other trillions to try and keep the US and World economies from collapsing.
So the $1 trillion dollar question is now a matter of “WHEN” and not if?
Right! Also, does it happen all at once, or are there stages to the financial collapse?
problem is getting people to accept understand and believe that.
It can’t be believed because it flies in the face of the entire spectrum of human history
i.e.–there has always been ‘more’ of everything, (for most of us) therefore there will always be more of everything,
Whereas in reality, we’ve just about reached the end of more, in’t that right Norman?
where did you find my old skool photo Tim? I don’t remember you as one of the urchins in that workhouse.
I came up with that title in 2012—do I at least get a G for ‘good’ for that?
Italy has a bigger population than Greece for one thing.
Italy population 60.5 million
Greece population 10.4 million
Italia 160 % deficit GDP
Things seem to happen more slowly than the pieces we see would suggest. It seems to me that whatever happens in the next six months will not be worldwide. We could some governments fail, but probably not the majority. We could see some electrical power outages, but probably not everywhere simultaneously, yet. We likely will see a lot more empty shelves in stores of all kinds.
The system seems to stick together, even when it looks like it won’t.
Of course, anything that cannot continue indefinitely, will eventually fail.
Time really matters if it’s decades away well then most people on here will be dead anyway. But if it is 2to 4 years away then.,. Uh oh… I think the U.s is 5 years or less from failure. 95 percent can’t fathom that
yes, 4 or 5 years until big trouble.
Well the problem that you have is when you start pulling out certain certain cards out the whole house falls….it looks like it is teetering to me. We are seeing resource shortages already not sure how this can go on for 5 years more….if the real numbers were reported we would be in a great depression right now.
energy is the base of the house of cards.
energy was down about 9% in 2020.
energy usage will continue be the key leading indicator for economic activity.
each month/year, the reported data will be very revealing for where we are headed.
I not agree 5 years. If Wall street start fall down in some weeks everything can change
Agreed. At the current rate of printing fiat currency we will be lucky to manage another 5 months without a black swan of some sort.
Financial troubles can be masked with dollar printing. I feel a reasonable assumption is a decrease in dollar buying power by 15-20% this year. The Fed seems unwilling to admit inflation. If it gets to where its so bad even their bogus official numbers show 6-8% they might have to act. Even they dont want runaway hyperinflation. They also know to stop printing is to end the financial system due to contagion. My guess is they will print until the dollar is worthless. Countries will exceed 200% GDP I think a decade optimistic before money stops working. I dont see 5 years as unrealistic although its obvious dystopia will be increasing.
Hyperinflaction i mean
many smaller weaker countries already have hyperinflation.
is Italy smaller and weaker?
Italia and euro are normal
Italia (govs) recently = strange country!
Lets recap the “drone war” over Libya ~2019-2020. If I recall it correctly bellow you can see the peculiar list of countries which supplied armaments, advisers & mercenaries on the ground or facilitated hardware contractors for the battlefield in the conflict. As you can see the split even goes across NATO block or Gulfies, perhaps it reveals something important and more of general importance for the future as well.
—
US, Turkey, Qatar, Italy, ..
vs
Russia, France, Egypt, Saudies, Emirates, China, ~Germany, ..
—
How do you define this breakdown?
Meaning what the nascent breakdown of the past alliances (e.g. displayed on Libyan theater – yes tactical only in some respect in this case) means for the overall future?
Well, I guess it shows strengthening progress of recent trends in geopolitics. Namely, Europe is getting relatively weaker projecting power to the point of embarrassing visibility (both on the EU as well as individual core nation’s level).
While Russia is for the n-th time in history trying to offer the concept of “greater” Europe continental-wide truce self included in the scheme. That’s very hard to accept to incumbents, so it will be perhaps tolerated to some degree only momentarily, or perhaps even actively cooperated upon if populists movements gain even more in FR, DE, IT..
In terms of ME, the loose alliances of Gulfies has been mostly dismantled, the antagonistic relations among the various states there was super charged by the wars of choice and low oil price (and now new format OPEC+ deals).
The Gulfies have been blocked from building land based energy transit route to ClubMed.
In essence, speaking of the region, we are back to the situation Saddam flirted with re-balancing out of USD into EUR / .. int basket two decades ago. But this time the Europeans will be out of this deal for the most part.
From more zoomed out perspective, there is a big realignment in the making as these relations ought to be realized in not so distant future also on the field of dividing / allocating the tribute from surplus on commerce and energy deals. In short Russia-China demands bigger “justice” slice from the global % pie, which is sliding from plateau into decline already.
And if they get it the former top dogs will be drastically inconvenienced on the home front – in some instances likely to even loosing the keys for the home turf property. That could be accepted or not in some capacity, and if not accepted = “mere” regional / proxy wars are not enough to solve the conundrum. Some sort of abandonment and block enclosure is also a possible scenario, but not long term viable to more likely escalation or “amicable surrender” options mentioned before.
Hyperion can start in next 6 months?
I’m afraid I don’t understand.
A major change affecting the economy may indeed start in the next six months (perhaps related to debt defaults and a few overthrown governments) but I expect that it will take longer than that to play out.
What can happen if Will be riots in china and gov fall down in china ?
All centralized humanoid guvmint will eventually fail. As it always has.
A pack living species of primate origins simply cannot sustain as populations of herds and herders. Primate shenanigans simply doesn’t scale very well. Shit will go crazy quickly and then we end up killing each other because some herders like to feel special and drag the herd along pursuing folly.
The only form of large scale ‘government’ that would work is of hive like origins, or endings.
https://www.litkicks.com/sites/default/files/boschfools.jpg
The metaphor is taken from Book VI of Plato’s “Republic” (‘Πολιτεία’)
gov survives, and lots of dead rioters.
LOL
Sad but almost certainly true.
According to Wikipedia, China is organized into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, and two Special Administrative Regions. The status of Taiwan is disputed.
In theory, as with other areas, the central government could be dissolved, and the individual provinces could go there separate ways, or be grouped in some way, to hang together.
My impression is that the provinces in the Southeast are doing better economically than those elsewhere. A lot of the new coal resources are in the North, as are the wind and solar. The North tends to be very dry, however, and even desert-like. Perhaps some trade would continue among the various parts.
Picking up the Hongkongers theme and tying it in with other themes…
British State presumably wants to increase productivity, which is what capitalist states generally want to do, even if they are not very good at it. UK productivity growth has declined toward zero since the 1970s, like all ‘mature’ capitalist economies, and it is now flatlined at near zero. The UK rate of profits has been declining since the 1850s; it has risen a bit since 2008, presumably because of QE and ZIRP, so it is likely a ‘fake’ profitability based on state support.
BS seems to want to use HKs in the financial sector, which BS ‘is’ strong at and which has a higher profitably than the rest of the economy (I think, without googling the facts on that). But BS has not yet got a deal with EU to continue the access of its financial services to EU, so that sector could actually be about to shrink rather than expand, simply for want of access. BS wants new trade deals but other countries are unlikely to open up to BS services, which BS does well at and makes a surplus, rather only goods which would suit them.
Any tax gained from HKs would be a drop in the ocean compared to the structural debt. The only real potential beneficiary is the private sector, organised capital. BS is a capitalist state that exists, along with BS political parties, to represent the interests of organised capital.
Anyway, HKs have a higher average IQ than Brits – and those who resettle are likely to be drawn from among the highest IQ sections of HKs. Thus another higher IQ population is introduced to the island – which is a ‘good’ thing.
Chinese, Indians, Asians and other Europeans all do better on average in UK schools than native Brit kids, who perform below the average overall. Legal, economic migrants now tend to be drawn from among the higher IQ sections of other populations, so they are liable to, and in fact do, have higher average IQs.
Population X can have a lower average IQ than population Y. But population section Xx can still have a higher average IQ than Y. Indeed, populations S, T, U, V, W can all have lower average IQs than Y but population sections Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv and Ww can all have higher average IQs than Y. So, while Y may have the higher average population IQ, if various population sections are drawn onto island Y then Y(native) is rendered the lowest IQ population section of Y. The global population IQ relations are then reversed on the island.
Legal immigration can be seen as a form of ‘eugenics’, the selective introduction, and thus breeding, of more ‘desirable’ members for the benefit of a society. It is kind of the reverse approach of the traditional eugenic approach, which sought to make the native population the higher IQ through closed, selective breeding. Rather than make the native population the ‘better’, it renders them the ‘worst’ relative to the rest of the population that has been formed. The end result of British State selective immigration policies is to render the native Brits the least intelligent and fit of all on the island.
Which is all ‘good’, it will produce a ‘better’ population. But ‘good’ is obviously relative – it is not going to help native Brits to compete in the future. There is a trade off with the short term interests of organised capital.
I don’t believe high iq is the most important trait to render succes through the coming bottle neck. Most of my career has been spent among high iq people, they aren’t survivors. Most of them are quite hopeless in a sharper situation…. Endurance, health and of course practical experience from for instance low input farming or military training etc.
Christopher, I have had military training, and observed a lot of low input farming in Africa. Even tried some myself, with a pair of gloves and a trowel. Raised some of the biggest moonflowers in Kaduna. But no, I’m not a survivor; too dependent on books, poetry, music, grand opera, trips to Renaissance cities, and so on.
“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art
I warmed both hands before the fire of life
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”
I’m ready to sink too. Got little worldly attachments except for my aging parents and a run of the mill mate (apparently of distant ancestry to Japanese royalty) that mostly serve to annoy and amuse me with primate shenanigans.
However, I’d like to entertain the thought that I haven’t been completely useless in human affairs. As for the ego, not much left except for that which is mandated by Mother Earth being her son and errand boy.
😊
Those look like the dying words of one Walter Savage Landor, who I have not heard of before, died when he was 89 in 1864. I think I might pinch them for my epitaph, at least the first two lines anyway.
What a lifespan 1775-1864, from nascent industrial age and trimmed down old school ver_ feudalism towards proto corporate globalism.
The UK’s big problem is more lack of physical resources than it is lack of intelligent people. It needs more arable land, more oil, gas, and coal, and perhaps other resources as well.
Financial time-shifting services work well when the economy is growing; they are a disaster when the economy is shrinking. It will take a magician to fix this problem, not someone with a high IQ. Financial services are not likely to do well in the future. This will not be a growing area in the future.
As you say, it seems that UK is simply increasing its future population burden. Perhaps TP really does think that BAU is going on indefinitely; or else they think that they have to keep it going for the time being, and that means more workers to grow GDP, and that they can all die when the time comes the same as everyone else? If financial services are due to collapse then HKs would probably end up dead wherever they are anyway? So it kind of makes ‘sense’.
China’s digital currency will help CCP punish or coerce citizens with social credit system: CNAS report
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) published a report last week detailing China’s ambitions for an authoritarian Digital Currency / Electronic Payment (DCEP) system in which the State aims to process and support over 300,000 financial transactions per second, with the data feeding the Communist Party’s social credit system in real-time.
https://sociable.co/government-and-policy/chinas-digital-currency-help-ccp-punish-coerce-citizens-social-credit-system-cnas/
A social credit system is a strange way to do things. If everyone can be coerced to do things the same way, it does make the population easier to control. It makes people unhappy as well. It is hard for me to see this approach to operating an economy can last very long, however. Eventually, something goes wrong, and there is a revolution, for example. China has been tested by weather fluctuations recently–floods in the fall, very cold weather during the winter. And now it seems to be very dry in some areas that were quite web before, if I understand the news right. Or there is a major problem with the electricity, and the system cannot really track quite a few of the people.
I don’t mean to sound anti-Chinese, or over-critical of them. But reading the history of that country, it emerges that coercion has always played a major role in the lives of the Chinese people. The punishments for not obeying the law or one’s superiors could be out of all proportion to the offence. Confucianism can be seen as developing as a way of ingraining morally commendable behavior into children so as to train them to avoid them getting into situations where they would be subject to punishment.
The social credit system seems to fit in nicely with the Confucian mindset developed by Chinese society over at least two and a half millennia. I may work well in China as it was designed by Chinese people for Chinese people, and they may be quite happy to live under this system as it makes sense and it may be judged as fair or socially beneficial by them.
But it probably won’t work nearly as well for Western peoples. I would expect a lot of teething troubles if it was introduced in the US, for example, where the police in some cases literally have to taser people in order to get their attention.
“The punishments for not obeying the law or one’s superiors could be out of all proportion to the offence”
Just like Victorian UK. Steal a piece of bread and your off to the penal colonies in Australia for a few years, if you get there alive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia
“Between 1788 and 1868, about 162,000 convicts were transported from Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.”
We did manage to get over that phase. Although who is to say in a world of increasing shortages and way too many people, extreme punishments will not make a come back.
“I would expect a lot of teething troubles if it was introduced in the US, for example”
In the UK, the govt has a solid track record of large IT / technical projects going way over budget and way behind schedule. Really large IT projects are sometimes run so incompetently they get abandoned. But not before the relevant cronies have pocketed their huge fees of course. The CCP seem to be naturally good at this sort of thing, the UK govt are naturally not very good at all.
Sigh. I remember several such projects. One was by International Computers Limited (ICL), a fake company cobbled together by politicians in the belief that bigger meant better (the same attitude that created British Leyland).
Of course, the incompetent people climbed to the top, and the competent were kept down. The former then commissioned Britain’s world beating mainframe computer, the ICL2900, which was a hardware nightmare, the CISC’est of CISC machines.
No hardware nightmare is complete without a software nightmare, and the company duly provided VME (Virtual Machine Environment). This was a stupifyingly brilliant resource scheduler, with four different levels of scheduling, from macro (which program do I run) to micro (when do I handle this interrupt request).
A colleague and I benchmarked it: 93% of the processor time was spent running the scheduler, with 7% left for useful work. On that basis, we rejected the company’s bid to replace our ageing mainframe, and ordered a Vax 11/780 instead.. The company threatened to take us to the European court; my advice to the management was “call their bluff”. They folded.
Ah in search of perfection one are bound to be completely useless.
Like the “perfect” scheduler which only becomes busy with itself.
A reflection, a “Mirror in the Wall” of themselves. Useless. Tragicomic.
“Meeting and parting are constant in this inconstant world,
Where joy and sadness alternate like night and day;
Officials come and go, but justice and righteosness remain,
And unchangeable remains forever the imperial way.”
Not a real poem, from “The Chinese Gold Murders”, by Robert van Gulik.
For the regional Alpine state Tyrol of Austria/Europe the government demands a complete lockdown because 8 people are infected with a virus mutation. Even if you have 750 thousand citizens only that looks a bit exaggerated.
Catherine Austin Fizz speaks of a “virus fraud” to cover up the cash outflow for the criminal part of the economy, used for bribery, maintaining power and secret projects in outer space.
In Germany due to a remark of journalist Paul Schreyer people puzzle over whom the FED has rescued in autuum 2019. I guess that might be someone involved with fracking.
Whatever is hidden from us the pandemic leads to official 5-10% of gdp shrinkage (called a “shrink cure” in the press) and is mainly paid by small and middle sized companies. People expect that the virus will be used as excuse for denying pension claims. Schools and universities practically dont exist at the moment, social welfare and child protection is suspended, the elderly die from neglection. The police stopped catching criminals and concentrates on arresting “denyers”, mask refuseniks and distance violators and huge detention camps are build. European grand dame Merkel announces forced vaccinations and all civil rights including rule of law have been suspended for 10 months already.
To me it looks as if those with power are squeezing out the poorer parts of the societies and try to end democracy and state of justice as it is clear that a societal consensus on politics will be impossible soon.
From my point of view we should lower the complexity of our economy and goods, focus on goods with a long lifecycle (like the singer sewing machine or the old 2CV), simple solutions, less international integration, we should give gardens to the people (gardens compete with immo speculations), build up soil with biomass, use traditional forestry (coppice) and secure our nuclear waste. We need simple basic knowledge that can be maintained under bad circumstances, and it could be great to make a few needed inventions before it is too late. Perhaps how to clean water with simple methods or how to gain chlorine from material in your garden.
That will not happen.
It is a religious thing. People want their kids and grandkids to grow up in a nuclear contanimated area like street dogs fighting for the last blueberry. They somehow believe the Gods would intervene such a desaster, show mercy and solve all man has fucked up.
That will also not happen.
One has to realize that, if we couldn’t be bothered to solve the nuclear waste problem when we were fat and sassy, we’re unlikely to solve it in a time of deprivation and energy constraints.
I disagreed on the spent fuel problem with FE and others for long time.
Chiefly, it depends on the time and observer perspective, in diluted world from today’s ~8b pop to 1/10 – 1/25 inhabitants (optimistic) – it becomes a non issue or more precisely it’s becoming very localized – regional issue inside the new paradigm. However, from long term perspective as we know the “correct” radioactivity exposure pulse (not too strong or weak at certain place) tends to force expedient species selection – mutation. Hence one can expect rather profoundly terraformed planet in terms on new / altered fauna and flora in relatively short order (in geological time). Obviously, there are also valid outlier scenarios of making this place (or banner-regions above / bellow equators) completely inhabitable for larger species (e.g. hard freeze out, largely damaged UV shielding etc).
Reminds me of all the oil and gas platforms in the North Sea. I think that there are hundreds. In the UK sector, the oil companies were supposed to fund half the expense of removing these platforms once they have closed down, and the UK tax payer the other half. I suspect that the vast majority will never be removed.
When de-greased and caped-sealed sea bottom piping, let them stand rotting out for as long as possible: anchoring see life in the area.. nurseries for fish and critters, fly over stops for birds etc.
Also great for human imagination and formation of new myths should they still stand there in scenario of fast collapse into pre industrial age reality..
Sort of like shitty ‘pyramids’ that won’t last the wheel of time.
Nah, just dry cask the rods and dump them in the Mariana Trench if a fast and hard collapse can be avoided. Cheaper even, just plainly dump the bundles there complete with zirconium cladding and everything. The pressure down there will seal them up like sausages, sedimentation and plate tectonics will take care of the rest.
I have no problem with the platforms being left behind, as long as they are plugged properly. As you say, they will present an opportunity for other life forms. But once they topple over and lurk just below the surface, they will become extreme hazards for fishermen of the future, if there are any,
No pain no gain..
As poachers and high risk reward fishermen knew – understood outlier opportunity for ages..
Secret projects in outer space?
Space rock hurled our way perhaps?
Aliens?
Tell me more, I’m intrigued.
Fertilizer costs climb
https://www.producer.com/news/fertilizer-costs-climb/
Urea can be made using either natural gas or coal. In the US, we use natural gas; China uses coal. If the price of fossil fuels has been too low, it affects supply of these fossil fuels. I imagine the recent run-up in prices of fossil fuels affects these fertilizers as well
Phosphate fertilizer is available because of extraction of a rock that provides this material. A while back, we saw that China was’t exporting this any more. The “too low price for producers” problem affects commodities of all kinds, including the rock that phosphate fertilizer comes from.
Gail, urea can be made using people. Indeed, that’s how the Romans and Japanese did it. In the Middle Ages, they used animals. And the sea would be an inexhaustible source of phosphorus, because that’s where it all ends up anyway. And there are many small creatures that sequester oceanic phosphorus: that’s where the rocks came from.
it’s not that simple and remember the second law, about entropy increasing. even oil will concentrate again in usable form if we wait long enough.
but perhaps you jest.
I do not jest. I once designed a phosphorus farm, to be deployed in the Strait of Malacca. It came out at about 50 km long, 10 km wide, and a couple of hundred metres deep. Nets full of phosphorus capturing algae.
The energy, of course, came from the Sun, and the whole farm could have been worked by manual labour. Pull up the nets, empty the algae on the strand, let them dry, bag them, and sell them as fertiliser. No need even to extract the phosphorus,
I calculated it could supply the whole world with phosphorus, forever. Of corse, I cheated: the waters of that Strait are rich in phosphorus, because they are largely fed by the runoff from Indian agriculture.
urea can be made using people
This puts a new twist on the expression “Soylent Green”.
Human poop can be turned into fertilizer. The medieval Japanese managed to do it in a low tech fashion.
I believe the Chinese still do it today.
This article talks about the use of human waste in agriculture,
The Stink About Human Poop As Fertilizer.
Class A biosolids almost certainly require the use of fossil fuels.
The article reports that the Sierra Club and the Organic Consumers Association, at least back in 2009, warned against them. The article reports:
“A study out of Finland has found that plants fertilized with urine performed four times as well as nonfertilized plants and just as well as plants given commercial mineral fertilizer.”
https://insteading.com/blog/human-urine-fertilizer/
As long as the provider of urine is not eating a salty diet!
Salt builds up in the soil over time. It seems like too much salt in the diet, and thus the urine, would affect the salinity of the soil over time. The excess salt would make the soil unable to grow many types of crops that are sensitive to salt levels in the soil.
Exactly. As happened in North Africa, thanks to the Roman’s flair for irrigation. The simplest cure is to recycle the land into mangrove swamps, which perform desalination; the downside is that it takes a couple of centuries.
There are ways how to accel ecosys healing, repair, biodiversity build up even for tough biomes such as (semi) deserts.
Basically, at start it concerns providing islands from which pilot plants can sustain themselves, later they support more fragile yet plentiful life forms around.
There are many such success stories around the globe already. Obviously, it takes time to achieve some at least limited (no inputs) stabilization phase. But it doesn’t have to be measured in centuries by a long shot..
In your particular case at hand, the way forward would be to test and estimate the levels and depths of salt deposits and not rejuvenating near the worst spots. In such fashion the worst spots will be delegated – deferred for the long time horizon regen while the more promising areas start to turn around ~immediately (way sooner).
.
Supply chain costs are mounting in all sorts of ways
Expect to see more inflation in producer prices in the months ahead.
https://www.ft.com/content/65d62e18-41db-4664-b136-81ee9e994675
Ivory tower watchers anonymous need to look towards the ground, make an estimated guess of who’s going to be able to pay more… and more. “Ask and you shall receive” can only go so far. 🙂
How Will Chinese New Year Impact The Global Supply Chain Bottleneck?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenshoulberg/2021/02/04/how-will-chinese-new-year-impact-the-global-supply-chain-mess/?sh=1bc6ee8c5993
Sorry, I am out of free Forbes articles (and too cheap to subscribe) right now.
try archive.vn – copy and paste the URL of the article you want to view into the search box. it works to get articles behind most paywalls. Here’s the rusult:
https://archive.vn/2HmOY
also outline.com works the same, but is not supported on all websites.
The money quote:
“Chinese New Year has always been a great disrupter in global supply chains as thousands of factories in the country shut down for anywhere between one and four weeks to allow their employees to return to the home towns to celebrate.”
This is not a black swan; it has been a custom for centuries. And in all that time, companies dependent on Chinese suppliers have never learned to prepare by keeping four weeks’ inventory? That is truly insane. And these people are paid tens of millions to manage factories needlessly closed for lack of simple forethought?
Anyone that deals with China know that they take the new year very very serious in terms of defining that time for themselves. Whatever other obligations they have during the rest of the year and the degree to which they commit themselves to them is not applicable during the Chinese new year. They enforce that tradition with enthusiasm that borders on fanaticism. The new year is the time when they celebrate their existence as humans and all other considerations are put aside. Non negotiable. Year of the OX.
No power, no water, no hope: inside Europe’s largest shanty town
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/canada-real-europe-filomena-settlement-madrid-covid-snow
“But no part of Spain has been hit quite as mercilessly as the Cañada Real, the shanty town 12km from the centre of Madrid that is home to Benayad and 8,500 other people, most of them of Moroccan or Roma descent.”
migration does not guarantee a better life.
The temperature in Morocco today is around 12C. Does that suggest a simple solution to this problem? And perhaps the wholesale (and dangerous) theft of electricity is not the action of good neighbours.
“The lack of electricity not only violates these children’s right to adequate housing, it is having a very serious effect on their rights to health, food, water, sanitation and education.”
We think we have these rights, but without enough to go around, the rights aren’t really there.
The name “cañada real” means that it is a cattle road. The people who live there live in illegal settlements, and the reason for the lack of electricity is the massive cultivation of marijuana. The main activity of these people is drug dealing.
It is easy to find in any newspaper that knows the place.
‘Rights’ are imaginary in so far as they are construed as ‘inherent’.
As the Declaration of Independence credo says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
In other words, they are baseless, indemonstrable and entirely made up. : )
Which is not to say that they are necessarily a ‘bad’ thing, which really depends on one’s perspective anyway.
‘Rights’ are best understood as ‘contracts’ or agreements within a society that are agreed upon and enforced by the state or some other social power.
And as you say, any right, even that to life, is contingent on whether the material conditions of the society allow it to be so.
States can also change their laws on ‘rights’ and allow these new ones and cancel those old ones.
Rights are accorded by society and subject to material constraints.
The idea that ‘rights’ are ‘natural’, ‘inherent’, ‘eternal’ or ‘self-evident’ is pretty naïve.
As I keep saying, all is contingent and fluid in this world.
The related social concepts of ‘merit’ and ‘deserts’ are also social constructs that allow society to function in a certain way.
The natural analogue is simply ‘ability’ in competitive action and attainment.
Animals get what they need and want in so far as they can and do, and that is underlying reality that humans have complicated, or complexified, and somewhat disguised through social constructs.
Quite possible social constructs will largely give way to natural realities after the collapse.
Arguably the human world is still largely based on natural realities anyway, certainly on a geopolitical basis.
Rights are a social construction, yes. There are two societies the secular and the religious. Each with its ideas of rights. “We hold these rights to be self evidence” was making reference to ideas of rights held by the religious society and imposing them on the government.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The ‘right to life’ is hedged by the ‘right to liberty and to pursue happiness’. In other words, no universal health care. You may have the ‘right’ to life but only in so far as you successfully pursue the ‘right’ to liberty and happiness – and others have the ‘right’ to do the same and to keep their money, their ‘property’ to themselves.
It is essentially a bourgeois perspective of free capital accumulation, of bourgeois property, productive and distributive relations. It is far fetched that the ‘founding fathers’ of USA dressed up bourgeois ideology as ‘unalienable rights endowed by the Creator, by Nature’s God.’
Historically property relations are contingent on the stage of development of the material base as Marx explained, on technological (and energetic) development and they are fluid through history.
The Declaration of Independence establishes a ‘foundational myth’ as Plato discusses it. Recourse was made to religious concepts.
In Europe in the Middle Ages it was also proposed that God had ordained the feudal social order, summed up in the notorious children’s hymn.
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
The Lord God made them high and low and ordered their estate.
The same doctrine is found throughout the theological works of the Middle Ages. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas is largely framed around the concepts of elite endowment and domination as intended and expressed through the ‘providence’ and ‘predestination’ of the Creator – God made it that way and keeps it that way. Aquinas framed the whole of RC theology within that feudal, hierarchical context.
(Even eschatology (‘salvation’) can be feudal (predestination), bourgeois (free will) or proletarian (universal salvation) in its structure. For Aquinas, as for Paul, ‘salvation’ was for the predestined ‘elite’ and not through self-sufficient action or for the ‘masses’ of humans. It reflected the socio-economic structure of the day.)
The ‘founding fathers’ have retained the theological aspect of the ‘foundational myth’ and re-used it to institutionalise bourgeois property relations rather than feudal property relations.
Property relations and ‘rights’ change through time as society develops according to its material development. There is no single ‘true’ way to order a society or ‘inalienable’ set of ‘rights’ – it all depends on the circumstances.
Either the ‘founding fathers’ were extremely naïve or else they were deliberately instituting a foundation myth – which would not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing. If ideology is to reflect the material development then a foundational myth can help a society to function.
Society and its needs are always changing however and the ‘principles’ according to which a society is structured are liable to change. Whether USA changed as much it should have done, with the ‘new liberalism’ of the early 20 c., is debatable. Certainly northern European countries took universal health care and welfare a lot more seriously than USA did. USA is an outlier on that count among developed countries.
It seems fair to say that the Declaration was one-sided and simplistic – as well as naively framed. What may have originally ‘helped’ the society to function may have become a hindrance to its social, material and ideological development.
If one were to take ‘well being for all’ as the measure of a society then USA has certainly proved wanting (no pun intended) with wide inequalities of wealth. It all depends on one’s perspective as well as on the policies that one sees as most conducive to the social good.
“There is no single ‘true’ way to order a society or ‘inalienable’ set of ‘rights’ – it all depends on the circumstances.”
Indeed, it depends on the species and its habitat. Now, since primate species all across the planet in all matters except for the most superficial aspects are clones of each other ‘liberty’ makes sense. It has nothing to do with bourgeoisie BS, rather psychosocial traits that were ground out from the evolutionary processes. The “leader” in pack settings are usually the most experienced one(s). It is not inherited, rather an earned status from merits.
The herd machinations, with all bells, whistles, regalia and pomp is a fairly recent phenomenon originating from god only knows where, and it sucks donkey balls in primate affairs since the status is inherited. It is not how primates work psychosocially. It for sure can be “made to work” with lots of uncalled for grief and suffering.
Assume, for the sake of argument, that humanoid shenanigans would be of hive like character. That bill of rights would not make sense. It would be totally incomprehensible gibberish. Imagine ‘liberty’ in a ant/beehive setting. It is a functional society where every individual has a role and everyone are siblings.
Yes indeed, liberty for all (specially for slightly genetically modified primates).
😉
The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
The Lord God made them high and low and ordered their estate.
Luke 16
19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; 23And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
God has ‘fixed’ the estates of men and determined their lot?
They made us sing that obnoxious hymn among others at primary school. It alludes to the parable of Lazarus at the rich man’s gate – which emphasises how state churches (C of E, RCC) use religion to promote a state ideology with complete contempt for the ‘sacred texts’. Modern liberal ‘Christianity’ is the same phenomenon, a ‘Sinicisation’ of religion to match the values and interests of the state of the day.
Arguably Jesus (if he said that at all, which is unverifiable) was all about the ‘critique’ of the socio-economic structure. Nietzsche questions the authorship and interprets early ‘Christianity’ as a slave revolt in the realms of metaphysics and morals. As it was, a ‘feudal Christianity’ went on for 1000 years, then a ‘bourgeois Christianity’, a Victorian ‘social welfare Christianity’, and now even a ‘liberal Christianity’ (freedom of conscience, minority rights and tolerance). CCP is even promoting a ‘socialist Christianity with Chinese characteristics’ – which seems fair enough really, all the other countries have used and re-used it to promote the dominant social order and ideology of the day.
I am always amazed at some ‘Christians’ who seem to have either never read the gospels or else assimilated nothing from them. They filter it through their societies and churches. But who am I to judge? Arguably the gospel ‘morality’ (eg. pacifism, non-resistance, love of enemies, sharing) is only workable if everyone lives like that – which they do not. And then problems of production and distribution have to be addressed. Arguably it is an ‘idealism’, a socialist utopianism that is detached from historical, material development. The disciples ‘had all things in common’ (Acts) though that does not seem to have lasted long. Some smaller Christian communities may approximate to the gospels and that is up to them. Good luck to them. I am not criticising anyone or endorsing anything. Things are what they are and people do what they do.
I was rather fond of that hymn. And, like most children’s hymns, it scanned properly and so was memorable:
“The rich man in his castle the poor man at his gate
God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate.”
I also suspect you have not actually read Aquinas, who wrote nothing resembling your commentary. And “eschatology” is not about salvation; it is a about the “last things” (Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell) From the greek ‘ta eschata’.
And state churches never showed “contempt” for the sacred texts. Indeed, they treasured them: the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Authorised Version: until liberal revisionists deliberately corrupted them (the New English Bible, Vatical II).
I still have my notes on Aquinas. He entirely approached eschatology (salvation and damnation in their actuality) through the lens of hierarchy, the ordering of the cosmos in its entirely, nature, society and humans in their destiny, according to inequality, to pre-ordained degrees of being. It is entirely reflective of the hierarchical, feudal socio-economic order of the day. I have a folder full of quotes from the Summa but frankly this one suffices and there is no need to multiply them as he tended to summarise what he had already explained elsewhere in the Summa before he added other stuff in the same vein. He was systemic and the parts follow from the central idea, which was a fixed hierarchy in the cosmos from God downward through angels to men and nature and men in their social relations and destiny; the hierarchy that persists in the end follows from the universal hierarchy that was intended in the beginning. All things are predestined for Aquinas, including social status and final destiny.
“ The reason for the predestination of some, and reprobation of others, must be sought for in the goodness of God. Thus He is said to have made all things through His goodness, so that the divine goodness might be represented in things. Now it is necessary that God’s goodness, which in itself is one and undivided, should be manifested in many ways in His creation; because creatures in themselves cannot attain to the simplicity of God. Thus it is that for the completion of the universe there are required different grades of being; some of which hold a high and some a low place in the universe. That this multiformity of grades may be preserved in things, God allows some evils, lest many good things should never happen, as was said above. Let us then consider the whole of the human race, as we consider the whole universe. God wills to manifest His goodness in men; in respect to those whom He predestines, by means of His mercy, as sparing them; and in respect of others, whom he reprobates, by means of His justice, in punishing them. This is the reason why God elects some and rejects others.” (ST 1, 23, 5)
zzzzzzz …thanks for reminding me why i didn’t finish my degree in philosophy (Porto University 1989-93 RIP).
Most Medieval Philosophy stinks and can easily be replaced by a course in Logic. All the rest of it is sheer metaphysical verbiage. Yuck!
(IMO of curse)
I kind of agree but it seems difficult not to feel the same way about religion, which is just metaphysics under the aspect of ‘revelation’. Nietzsche oft dismisses them in the same breath and he sees metaphysics as a whole as expressive of instinct and its deterioration; it tends to be an avoidance of reality, a falsification of the ‘real’ world. The ontology of Aquinas is interesting however and it is based on Aristotle, the same bloke who formalised Logic. I would not entirely dismiss Aquinas as a philosopher, he was important in the diffusion of Aristotelianism in the west as the Middle Ages prepared to give way to the Renaissance. The consensus seems to be that logic cannot really be ‘taught’ however, one is either good at it or one is not.
Fernando Pessoa on metaphysics:
There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
What do I think about the world?
I have no idea what I think about the world!
If I get sick I’ll think about that stuff.
What idea do I have about things?
What opinion do I have about cause and effect?
What have I meditated on God and the soul
And on the creation of the world?
I don’t know. For me thinking about that stuff is shutting my eyes
And not thinking. It’s closing the curtains
(But my window doesn’t have curtains).
The mystery of things? I have no idea what mystery is!
The only mystery is there being someone who thinks about mystery.
When you’re in the sun and shut your eyes,
You start not knowing what the sun is
And you think a lot of things full of heat.
But you open your eyes and look at the sun
And you can’t think about anything anymore,
Because the sun’s light is worth more than the thoughts
Of all philosophers and all poets.
The light of the sun doesn’t know what it’s doing
So it’s never wrong and it’s common and good.
Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
Of being green and bushy and having branches
And of giving fruit in their own time, which doesn’t make us think,
To us, who don’t know how to pay attention to them.
But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing what they live for
Not even knowing they don’t know?
“Inner constitution of things…”
“Inner meaning of the Universe…”
All that stuff is false, all that stuff means nothing.
It’s incredible that someone could think about things that way.
It’s like thinking reasons and purposes
When morning starts shining, and by the trees over there
A vague lustrous gold is driving the darkness away.
Thinking about the inner meaning of things
Is doing too much, like thinking about health when you’re healthy,
Or bringing a cup to a spring.
The only inner meaning of things
Is that they have no inner meaning at all.
[…]
Translated by Richard Zenith
Excellent, well done.
“Be true to the earth, my brothers”
Fernando Pessoa was indeed onto something.
Not only true to the earth but to yourself as well.
How hard is it to execute according to the plan set forth by whatever created life (random, Aliens, whatever) on earth. It’s evolutionary processes are easily observed.
It is simply self replicating, self modifying code. Simple shit that give rise to complexity in the truest sense. As with all true things, doesn’t impose anything. Just is. Itself.
Is there a plan? Perhaps, perhaps not. Doesn’t make one shred of difference. Wanna break free of the “plan”, then what? Like an ant going rogue from the ant hive (earth).
It is all right to feel special and unique, because as a matter of fact we all are to a certain degree. 50% Genetics (ancient history), 50% Experience (living history).
Indeed the earthly primate cloner shit-show of unfounded pretenses of being “better” than the next yahoo going about his life is the real problem here. However, it is just conditioned, brain washed, muppets well versed in the lie, the story they contort about themselves after being manhandled by the herders and among the herders themselves with all obnoxious pomp, regalia and delusions of “divine”/royal ancestry.
And get this, it’s all formed from a hallucination swirling about inside the slightly modified primate brain. How ridiculous isn’t that?
Freaking tree dwellers going snobs. 🤣👍
I’ll bet, oh yes, I could bash in that stone clad truth inside the head of every living human. I’d be going savage on their shallow surface, a reflection of everybody else (in the man handled cloner herd), and forge immutable truth, by mashing those silly shenanigans into a pitch black terra preta of being of earthly substance and little reflections.
However, I’m just a little ant princess, what do I know?
☺️
👍
I agree with Rober. This one is a classic. It really takes me back.
Also, I love the way it gets up the noses of anti-theists like Richard Dawkins. Perhaps they should get some of their own hymns to sing.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
The purple headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;−
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,−
He made them every one.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day;−
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who hath made all things
“… anti-theists like Richard Dawkins. Perhaps they should get some of their own hymns to sing.”
I think their big one is the lame song Imagine by John Lennon.
Non-theists are not necessarily committed to any particular social order, any more than Christians and their churches have been consistent through the ages.
(It is just sad that some of those who profess Christianity have to be so petty and vindictive all the time. I do not consider them to be Christians and I do not judge the religion by them. “By this you will be known…”)
According to Wikipedia, “All things bright and beautiful” is an Anglican hymn that has been picked up by other denominations.
I don’t remember it as something I learned as a child. At least the first verse of it is familiar, though.
It is just sad that some of those who profess Christianity have to be so petty and vindictive all the time.
This could be due to the well-known phenomenon of victims abused as children being more likely to become abusive adults. Religion can give abusers an excuse for acting out their sadistic fantasies, but it also tends to put limits on how far they can go.
They may have burned the odd witch in Jesus’s name, but his example and his teaching probably reigned in a great deal of cruelty.
A lot of evils perpetrated by Christians, including ways of putting the fear of God into children, are not among the essential teachings of Christ. The Gospels show Jesus to have been nonviolent, good tempered and gentle most of the time.
He did condemn the stoning of adulterers, a cultural practice that was endemic across the greater Middle East and hasn’t quite died out even in our own day.
He was also not a big fan of charging compound interest. So he might well have approved of today’s negative interest rates if they were available to mortgage and credit card holders.
Incidentally, Prof. Dawkins is still at it. Yesterday he tweeted:
“If you’re taught to believe Revelation you’re primed to believe anything. And anything includes Qanon, Jewish space lasers, H Clinton drinking child blood etc. All-of-a-piece with fundamentalist faith. Far right leaders are fundamentalist Christians.”
A thoroughly British eccentric, I grant you. But how does Dawkins know what Hillary Clinton drinks in her Bloody Mary cocktails? His old friend the late Christopher Hitchens insisted she had a lot of blood on her hands.
Tim, I agree. The first three stanzas set the mood: each is divided into two couplets with a caesura. The first couplet talks of things earthly and visible the second, after the caesura, reminds us of the implications, heavenly and invisible, of these earthly things.
Then the narrative broadens, until the theme is repeated at the close, with the emphasis not on discovery and wonder, but on worship and action.
And yes, a perfect hymn for a schoolboy just discovering the wonders of the world. Deo gracias.
That hymn is now censored in C of E. The fact that some old men are still openly attracted to kid’s hymns is seen as neither here nor there.
> The dark secret of a great hymn: ‘All things bright and beautiful’
However, it’s a hymn with a dark side that we don’t usually notice – and that date is the clue. Irish hymn-writer Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), who was to marry a Church of Ireland clergyman who became Bishop of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh. She was strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement, a High Church movement in England that was highly conservative and had no time at all for popular causes like political reform or the plight of the working classes.
Nowadays the idea that we should all know our place and defer to our betters grates on us. But that was the sort of message preached in many HIgh Church pulpits Sunday by Sunday.
The real tragedy behind that verse lies in when and where it was written. Mrs Alexander was rooted in Protestant Ireland, and a stalwart defender of the establishment. The ‘rich man in his castle’ was an English Protestant; the ‘poor man at his gate’ was an Irish peasant. The Irish potato famine killed a million people in Ireland between 1845 and 1852, and caused another million to emigrate, mainly to the United States. There were terrible scenes as tenants were evicted from their cottages, unable to pay the rent. Cannibalism was not unknown. The government’s response was completely inadequate.
All things bright and beautiful was written while this was at its height.
https://christiantoday.com/article/the-dark-secret-of-a-great-hymn-all-things-bright-and-beautiful/92034.htm
We have entered a time where the idea of rights is shown to be malleable. The idea of a right is that it is not granted. If it has to be granted its not a right. Ultimately this means rights are by definition determined by the individual. Countering this is what is apparent to all gentle good natured men. We live in communities and the communities needs are important as well as the individuals.
The child throwing a temper tantrum to get their way. We know what that looks feels and sounds like. What is that essence?
The communities needs have historically been used as a basis for actions including genocide that are the anti thesis to justice. This can only occur from a perspective of ignoring that individuals matter. This is IMO the ultimate desecration of the truth that communities as well as individuals matter. You can not value a community and violate its members.
What are known as rights are what is found to be a compromise in between honoring both individuals and communities. The establishment of this is no easy proposition. It can only be achieved where the majority are gentle individuals who value harmony more than wielding power and understand the true circumstances of both individuals and community.
The rights of the community or the individual have both been used as supposed absolute paradigms to justify actions that do not create harmony. Often they just create words to justify their temper tantrum. Not accepting their words is subject to violence upon your person. Not accepting their temper tantrum is subject to violence upon your person. The words are quickly abandoned as a manipulative tool because that was never the intent. Violence is actualized because the deception and threat created by their words does not hide their essence which is one of subjugation and fear creation.
To demand someone bow before words and ignore the essence behind them is the mark of a despot.
Ultimately either chaos or tyranny result if the majority of the people do not choose a calm essence that values gentleness and respect. This must be chosen and cultivated over the thrill of participating in gang mentality. All a calm and gentle individual may do in these circumstances is to avoid gangs and to protect himself and his loved ones from acts of violence to the best of his ability. He may fail but he has chosen his essence in his actions that can not be stolen from him only given. He will be judged by his community that knew his heart that reflected commitment to compassion as actualized in actions not words. The source of our actions is truly the essence of our legacy. Not one of us is perfect. We all are flawed. All we can do is our best.
JJ, I believe Immanuel Kant laid the foundation stone many years ago. A true right must be “compossible”; that is, it must be possible for everyone to exercise that right without damaging the ability of another to do so.
Free speech is just such a right: my speaking freely does not interfere with your right to speak freely. The private exercise of religion (as I believe Jesus advised) is another such right.
The communal exercise of religion was a right closely guarded in the Egyptian “Chapters of coming forth by day” (‘Reu nu prt m hru’), with the admonition “I have not denied God in any of his manifestations” (Ch CXXV); in other words, your public exercise of religion must not interfere with others’ public exercise of a different religion. It served the country well for millennia, until the abominable Amenhotep IV invented monotheism, perhaps the most evil dogma ever to infect the human mind.
Political “rights”, however, I believe are the creation of the ‘polis’, the community. They are therefore the subject of negotiation. But there is one that could be universal: the right to leave ones community and enter any other willing to receive you. That probably saved the Mediaeval feudal system from worse abuses and bigger rebellions; when the serfs were no longer ‘adscripti glebae’ there was a major improvement in society.
Right, ultimately Mother Earth will embrace those who execute Lebensstil (not “raum”) with grace and modesty.
The principle of evolution is non negotiable. Abandon that path and extinction ultimately awaits. Three simple rules.
1. Evolve
2. Accept imperfection, improve, don’t disrupt
3. Protect the biosphere
All else is more or less irrelevant.
“all is contingent and fluid in this world”
This is the thing that a lot of modelers miss. They miss the fact that the future will eventually be quite different from the past. They tend to miss turning points.
There is actually no such thing as a right.
What about might. I thought that was right.
Tim, the motto of England’s monarchs, ever since Henry V, has been “Dieu et mon Droit”. The right comes from God, and the monarch is invested with that right at his or her coronation, after they swear the Coronation Oath, one of the first examples in Europe of the “social contract”. It served us well, at least until that wretched James VI of Scotland brought South his person, his catamites, and his abominable arrogance.
Negtative rates are coming. Financial system terra incognita.
The Bank of England has told lenders they must be ready to introduce negative rates within six months if the UK economy takes a further turn for the worse, in a potential blow to millions of hard-pressed families.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/04/bank-england-puts-negative-rates-backburner/amp/
Perhaps the hope is that citizens will spend their money now, rather than “saving” for later. It is hard to see how banks make money. Doesn’t the availability of their funds to lend out decline over time as well, unless more money is printed?
I am already puzzled as to how my bank makes any money out of my mortgage. I currently only pay 1.61% interest, which is far less than the real inflation rate. Doesn’t this mean the bank effectively gets less money back from me than they lent me in the first place?
Plus they paid me £500 to take out the mortgage in the first place.
It seems too good to be true.
Its time to put these 911 fallacies to rest once and for all. Here is reporting from CNN that clearly shows the facts of the 911 terror attack. People really need to only get their information from reputable news sources.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/VwgWWkisWL47/
Covid denier mom banned from ALL HOSPITALS after repeatedly posting footage of ‘empty wards’
https://www.rt.com/uk/514486-hannah-dean-banned-hospitals-covid/
The ban was “except in an emergency.” In other words, when she really needed to be in the hospital.
COVID humour.
I just had a visit from the police, checking to see that I am still alive – the reason being that I’d turned my phone off this week in order to avoid constant nightly calls from relations pestering me to death, checking that I hadn’t died of one of those scary COVID UK mutations.
Some of them think that one can die 24hrs after exposure, having listened to the scare stories in the MSM…..
It is good you have relatives looking in on you. Maybe you should keep the phone on.
Yes. I’m trying not to stand out as much as I usually try to. 🙂 And humoring the relatives is not a bad idea either.
Not when they are brain-addled by COVID terror-propaganda, Gail!
They have been reduced to a state, locked in their homes and listening to MSM, of thinking that this is a kind of Black Death, which can strike one down in a matter of hours, and nothing I say can shake them out of that misconception – it’s shameful this has been done to people.
Anything I say to the contrary is dismissed because I am not a scientist.
Nor are the MSM propagandists, of course. I take my hat off to them, they know how to manipulate instinctual fears.
Scientist or not… it does not matter… I’ve shown this to CovIDIOTS and they dismiss it https://gbdeclaration.org/
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
The point is that even a mother (in this type of system) will turn against you, so deep and devious is the ongoing psychological manipulation. Maybe intuition can help you see who is the most likely to endanger you, and then you have to evade and avoid. Give them nothing to hold on to. Relatives are not necessarily your friends. You have to “read” them for your own protection.
Santa Klaus from was giddy like dr evil about a cyber pandemic last summer. You have already been forewarned, just like event201, wake up.
Various trigger events have long been gamed, the biggest was several years ago in China when they cyber tested using their 2 biggest banks in the world.
All major preparations have already been established via covid – tadaaahhh. And the FSB directing all govs, central banks, dealer and systemic banks have buildings with people and blueprints ready to manage it into the next reality. Otherwise they would be winding these down instead of topping up staff.
It will be spectacular.
Once you hear over a weekend that certain bank websites are not functional and spreading, then ya got 48 hours, maybe.
Opinion – so when? Yah everyone wants to know. After the bidet gov reorgs the orange man doings, anytime after that.
Banks? 48hrs for what action exactly?
Taking out a bit of cash, buying bulk food for few months, .. ? That’s silly.
Sorry, several people from this forum go back as early mid 2000s PO discussion boards and some perhaps even way back into the original LtG momentum many decades ago. As this “topic” has been thought through inside out already many times, and the over arching conclusion is you can’t meaningfully prepare or dodge such mega trend of “planetary” historical proportions.
Most likely the only “best” or rather “least worse” positioned people to weather such full spectrum discontinuity are both young and hands on type of characters be it from military or agri backgrounds, and the lottery factor even among these outlier minority to start anew ~living arrangement for the next and very simplified (atrophied) era would be immense anyway.
Besides, Russians and Chinese said it openly, you try some tricks and we are bashing the doomsday silo consoles, ..the world without us is not worth living..
If this is all you got after decades of thinking this through inside and out well… so long and thanks for all the fish.
42
Lets compare our notes in post ~2035 world then.
I doubt your juvenile over confidence about easy phasing in quasi BAU will last even beyond ~2025 threshold.
inner Core might retain bAU to 2025.
the outer Core small chance.
peripheral countries almost no chance.
Yes, that’s sensible differentiation.
Time flies fast, now we just “sort of” danced into reliving war occupation “like” curfews and gov mandates, people are adjusting and subjugating. Moreover, the world might change further exponentially and profoundly in just next 4yrs~
I think that while we were all enjoying the election fiasco the Core moved into QBAU, and parts of the outer Core have already reached TEOTWAWKI.
Pay no attention to that weightless feeling in your stomach and that whooshing sound in your ears, They are merely side effects of going over the edge of the Seneca Cliff and should disappear when you reach Ground Zero.
QBAU must be quasi BAU?
I think I’ll reuse that, and often.
Tim, could point about qBAU unfolding already..
Recently, I’ve seen some strange scenes in the shopping mall and parking lot, some people are evidently getting pressed against the wall pretty hard recently and are start lashing out madly as they sense even the faky BAU is no longer open for them individually..
Yes, I meant quasi, as in “being in many ways like something else, without actually being that thing.” And I think the system will go with QBAU for as long as it can, at which point it will attempt PBAU, where the P will stand for pseudo.
I think we are at the point alluded to Frank Zappa, who was a sort of Fast Eddy of Rock long before it became fashionable to regard our Western democratic societies as Hollywood stage sets.
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Regardless of whether we got to this point due natural disaster or to our own laziness or hubris, Frank seems to have been proven correct by recent events. Don’t you feel as if we have reached the place where they are starting to take down the scenery that represented the old normal—including what we were accustomed to consider our basic freedoms?
freedoms? this will continue to be tested through 2021 and much more will be known later this year after vaccines are more widely taken by perhaps the 50% or so who want them.
PBAU?
I like it, and will probably reuse that one early and often too.
World food prices continue to surge. Any thoughts on this? I would say situation starting to look a bit concerning: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
Matt – From what I read it is driven by the fact that around half the population of China is moving into middle class and able to afford more and better food stuffs.
This would be like adding twice the population of the US consumer putting huge demand on global supply. There are also some constraints on global foods but so far there is enough redundancies in the system to handle it.
“From what I read it is driven by the fact that around half the population of China is moving into middle class and able to afford more and better food stuffs.”
That is true but that process has been going on for decades. I would have thought the main reason China is importing record amounts of grains this last few months is because of the disastrous cereal harvests they had last year due the the historically bad flooding along the Yangtze basin, and the four hurricanes that came onshore along the East coast just before harvest time. Of course the CCP denies there were any issues with the harvests last year, but actions speck louder than words.
China had a bad harvest year with floods. They have bought up most of the world’s soy beans (cattle feed) and other grains. Looks like it’s gonna be trouble. Ice Age Farmer and Adapt 2030 on youtube are a little nutty with conspiracy theories, but I appreciate their objective coverage of food commodities markets. Check them out!
“Ice Age Farmer and Adapt 2030 on youtube are a little nutty with conspiracy theories”
I believe one point Ice Age Farmer made was that the USA was exporting so much of its soy bean stocks that it would not have enough left to see it through to the next harvest, and therefore shortages were unavoidable in the USA later in the year, unless it was able to import more supplies itself.
This article (09Nov2020) suggests Brazil has similar issues. Whilst USA soy bean stocks are ‘tight’, Brazil may have committed to supply more soy beans via contract than they have available, due to drought.
Is the US Out of Soybeans?
https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/news/article/2020/11/06/us-soybeans:
“… Given the active pace of exports in the U.S., USDA’s ending stocks estimate is probably too high and there is a legitimate threat soybean stocks could get even tighter — an extremely bullish possibility for soybean prices, which was unthinkable earlier this year.
Earlier this summer, China emptied the cupboards of the world’s largest soybean producer. USDA estimates Brazil will have only 82 million bushels (mb) on hand when the current season ends Jan. 31, 2021. The estimate is backed up by an FOB soybean price in Brazil for December that is at its highest level in six years and $1.45 per bushel above the comparable price at the U.S. Gulf. There is a lot of pressure on Brazil to come up with another record soybean crop this year, but that may be difficult with La Nina influencing drier weather in southern Brazil and Argentina.”
It’s hard to evaluate real prognostication, or speculative skills before hand. But as the time marches on, some claims pen out differently, formerly solid concepts are revealed as group think failures, or worse as probable cover stories and hoaxes. For example the often revered Dr. Smil has been outspoken active warmist for decades among other things (China limits bear for decades).
But the situation could end up differently as formerly unknown “out of the woods” characters like the IceAge guy providing eventually more correct assessment of the future (on climate and agri angle) – I’m not following him regularly and some of his tangents are not interests of mine.
Double masks…geez can’t breath with one on if I’m working!
Remember back with Gerald Ford and the Swine flu…nothing like this fake BS
From the History Channel
It was a presidential election year. “There was no way to go back on Sencer’s memo,” a presidential aide recalled. “If we tried to do that, it would leak. That memo’s a gun to our head.”
Knowing the greatest risk was doing nothing, Ford announced his support of the mass immunization plan at a press conference while flanked by polio vaccine developers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. “No one knows how serious this threat could be. Nevertheless, we cannot afford to take a chance with the health of our nation,” the president said. Although CDC officials voiced greater concerns of repeating the 1957 and 1968 flu epidemics, each of which killed approximately 100,000 Americans, administration officials repeatedly raised the specter of 1918.
“The scientists at the time are not saying this is necessarily going to be the Spanish flu redux,” says George Dehner, an associate history professor at Wichita State University and author of Influenza: A Century of Science and Public Health Response. “The way the scientists talked about it was more complex than political officials and the media, who were looking to make the analogy to the Spanish flu.”
Yeah, remember the buttons and billboards and news articles…they didn’t shut down the whole world s economy….
I posted this comment on Wolf Richter’s site which immediately went to moderation which means it has as much chance as seeing the light of day as it would on Facebook or Twitter. He keeps posting these financial articles such as “Three Months of No Jobs Growth, Labor Force Drops to July Level”. No sh*t Sherlock thanks for letting us know.
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/02/05/three-months-of-no-jobs-growth-labor-force-drops-to-july-level/
My comment follows:
“The is nothing more than “controlled demolition” by the Puppet Masters, the gang behind the “Build Back Better” movement. Klaus Schwab wants nothing more than to crash and burn the global economy so he can put in place his 4th industrial revolution. George Soros, Bill Gates, Christine Legarde are all behind this takedown. Conspiracy theory? Go to the World Economic Forum’s website for the details. They have laid out their plans and are using the Covid 19 hysteria as an excuse.”
A few years ago:
(Voice from offstage:) “Hey Klaus Schwab, the Davos website needs a vision statement.”
Klaus Schwab: “Don’t we already have one?”
Voice: “No, that’s our mission statement. Completely different.
Schwab: “Come on, what is there to say? We hold annual conferences where the rich and powerful schmooze.”
Voice: “Okay, but it needs to say something about sustainability, the environment, stuff like that.”
Schwab: (Sighs) “Fine, I’ll whip something up. It’s not like anybody reads these things…”
What, ~guiding and commanding voice off stage~ are you seriously trying to insinuate there is a super layer even above Klaus’ niveau? How that could be possible, when we have got free investigative press always on the trail, competitive political arena, and educated – democracy breathing population to begin with.
/norm off
I went to the mall today! It was open!! Normal for Saturday would have been 800 people today about 40. Food Court used to have 12 stores now one, the Chinese place, which happily is my favorite. Normal three large anchor stores and 80 smaller stores. Now zero anchor stores and about eight small stores. One store for smart phone cases, three stores for shoes, it seems shoe are still critical and a few down the way I did not check. Two young men sitting on the floor talking about getting down to Florida.
Hey, Ed, they’re still going to let you have shoes?!
They are all heart, I got them wrong…..
Shoe shops are shut here, online sales only.
Boo!😱
The pandemic could continue for seven years under current vaccination rate
By Gabrielle Fonrouge
February 5, 2021 | 6:57pm
https://nypost.com/2021/02/05/pandemic-could-continue-for-seven-years-under-current-vaccination-rate/amp/
NEWS
The pandemic could continue for seven years under current vaccination rate
By Gabrielle Fonrouge
February 5, 2021 | 6:57pm
Bloomberg has estimated that it would take seven years to achieve herd immunity in the US under the current vaccine distribution rates.
Bloomberg has estimated that it would take seven years to achieve herd immunity in the US under the current vaccine distribution rates
It’ll be a long, seven years before the COVID-19 pandemic is over worldwide, if vaccine distribution continues at its current rate, a calculation from Bloomberg shows.
The media outlet, which said it built the “biggest database” of COVID-19 inoculations given across the globe, crunched the numbers and found it could take most of a decade to reach herd immunity if distribution doesn’t ramp up for two-dose vaccines.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has said 70-85 percent of the population will need the vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity and while the US is on track to reach that goal by the New Year in 2022, it could take countries like Canada ten years at their current pace.
More than 119 million doses have been doled out worldwide but Bloomberg’s tracker shows some countries, mostly rich, Western locales, are reaching 75% coverage much faster than others.
Boy, they are really milking this crisis…. unbelievable….
Once we know how to produce the vaccine, we have the resources to increase the supply almost exponentially. With just one proviso: the vaccine must be put in the public domain. So do we let Big Pharma profit while people die for seven more years? I fear the question answers itself.
Double Face Masks? N95? Protect Yourself Against New Covid-19 Variants With These Mask Upgrades
The guidance around masks is changing. Here’s the latest that you need to know.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/double-face-masks-n95-protect-yourself-against-new-covid-19-variants-with-these-mask-upgrades-11612473349?mod=e2tw
I saw two Double-Maskers the other day: if only, as with deer having a fine display of antlers, one could mount them on the wall.
‘I bagged those in Cambridge, West Way, in 2021’, …..
They were cycling -what on earth did they think they were going to catch?