|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Recently, I explained the key role played by diesel and jet fuel. In this post, I try to explain the energy bottleneck the world is facing because of an inadequate supply of these types of fuels, and the effects such a bottleneck may have. The world’s self-organizing economy tends to squeeze out what may be considered non-essential parts when bottlenecks are hit. Strangely, it appears to me that some central governments may be squeezed out. Countries that are rich enough to have big pension programs for their citizens seem to be especially vulnerable to having their governments collapse.
This squeezing out of non-essential parts of the economy can happen by war, but it can also happen because of financial problems brought about by “not sufficient actual goods and services to go around.” An underlying problem is that governments can print money, but they cannot print the actual resources needed to produce finished goods and services. I think that in the current situation, a squeezing out for financial reasons, or because legislators can’t agree, is at least as likely as another world war.
For example, the US is having trouble electing a Speaker of the House of Representatives because legislators disagree about funding plans. I can imagine a long shutdown occurring because of this impasse. Perhaps not this time around, but sometime in the next few years, such a disagreement may lead to a permanent shutdown of the US central government, leaving the individual states on their own. Programs of the US central government, such as Social Security and Medicare, would likely disappear. It would be up to the individual states to sponsor whatever replacement programs they are able to afford.
[1] An overview of the problem
In my view, we are in the midst of a great “squeezing out.” The economy, and in fact the entire universe, is a physics-based system that constantly evolves. Every part of the economy requires energy of the right types. Humans and animals eat food. Today’s economy requires many forms of fossil fuels, plus human labor. This evolution is in the direction of ever-greater complexity and ever-greater efficiency.
Right now, there is a bottleneck in energy supply caused by too much population relative to the amount of oil of the type used to make diesel and jet fuel (Figure 1). My concern is that many governments and businesses will collapse in response to what I call the Second Squeezing Out. In 1991, the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed, following a long downward slide starting about 1982.
All parts of economies, including government organizations and businesses, constantly evolve. They grow for a while, but when limits are hit, they are likely to shrink and may collapse. The current energy bottleneck is sufficiently dire that some observers worry about another world war taking place. Such a war could change national boundaries and reduce import capabilities of parts of the world. This would be a type of squeezing out of major parts of the world economy. In fact, shortages of coal seem to have set the stage for both World War I and World War II.
Each squeezing out is different. When there are physically not enough goods and services to go around, some inefficient parts of the economy must be squeezed out. Payments to pensioners seem to me to be particularly inefficient because pensioners are not themselves creating finished goods and services.
World leaders would like us to believe that they are in charge of what happens in the world economy. But what these leaders can accomplish is limited by the actual resources that can be extracted and the finished goods and services that can be produced with these resources. When there are not enough goods and services to go around, unplanned changes to the economy tend to take place. These changes work in the direction of allowing parts of the system to go forward, without being burdened by the less efficient portions.
[2] The importance of diesel and jet fuel
Diesel and jet fuel are important to today’s industrial economy because they fuel nearly all long-distance transportation of goods, whether by ship, train, large truck, or airplane. Diesel also powers most of today’s modern agricultural equipment. Without the use of modern agricultural equipment, overall food production would decline drastically.
Without diesel, there would also be many other problems besides reduced food production. Diesel is used to power many of the specialized vehicles used in road maintenance. Without the ability to use these vehicles, it would become difficult to keep roads repaired.
Without diesel and jet fuel, there would also be an electricity problem because transmission lines are maintained using a combination of land-based vehicles powered by diesel and helicopters powered by jet fuel. Without electricity transmission, homes and offices without their own solar panels and batteries wouldn’t be able to keep the lights on. Gasoline pumps require electricity to operate, so they wouldn’t operate either. Without diesel and electricity, the list of problems is endless.
[3] Green energy is itself a dead end, but subsidizing green energy can temporarily hide other problems.
Green energy sounds appealing, but it is terribly limited in what it can do. Green energy cannot operate agricultural machinery. It cannot make new wind turbines or solar panels. Green energy cannot exist without fossil fuels. It is simply an add-on to the current system.
The reason why we hear so much about green energy is because making people believe that a green revolution is possible provides many temporary benefits. For example:
- The extra debt needed to subsidize green energy indirectly increases GDP. (GDP calculations ignore whether added debt was used to produce the added goods and services counted as GDP.)
- Manufacturers can pretend that their products (such as vehicles) will operate as they do today for years and years.
- The educational system is given many more areas to provide courses in.
- Citizens are given the hope that the economy will grow endlessly.
- Young people are given hope for the future.
- Politicians look like they are doing something for voters.
Unfortunately, by the time that the debt comes due to pay for subsidized green energy, it will be apparent that the return on this technology is far too low. The overall system will tend to collapse. Green energy is only a temporary Band-Aid to hide a very disturbing problem. Its impact is tiny and short-lived. And it cannot prevent climate change.
[4] Energy bottlenecks are a frequent problem.
Energy bottlenecks are a frequent problem partly because the human population has tended to increase ever since early humans learned to control fire. At the same time, resources, such as arable land, fresh water supply, and minerals of all kinds, are in limited supply. Extraction becomes increasingly difficult over time (requiring more inputs to produce the same output) because the easiest-to-produce resources tend to be exploited first. Extracting more fossil fuels to meet the energy needs of a growing economy may look like it would be easy, but, in practice, it is not.
As a result of energy bottlenecks, civilizations often collapse. Sometimes war with another group is involved. In such a case, the population of the losing civilization falls.
[5] The standard supply and demand model of economics makes it look like prices will rise in response to fossil fuel shortages. The discussion in Section [4] shows that energy supply bottlenecks often occur. When they do occur, the response is very different.
The model of many economists is far too simple. Based on the model shown on Figure 2, it is easy to get the idea that a shortage of oil will lead to a rise in prices. As a result, more oil will be produced, and the problem will be solved. Or perhaps efficiency changes, or substitution for a different type of fuel, will fix the problem.
When bottlenecks appear, the real situation is quite different. For example, increases in oil prices tend to cause food prices to rise, and thus increase inflation. Politicians know that citizens don’t like inflation and therefore will not vote for them. As a result, politicians tend to hold down prices. The resulting prices tend to fall too low for producers, and they start producing less, rather than more.
Energy products of the right kinds are essential for making every part of GDP. If there is not enough of the right kinds of energy products to go around, what I call some kind of “squeezing out” is likely to take place. Early on, there may be changes that reduce energy consumption, such as cutbacks in international trade. More businesses may fail. Eventually, some parts of the world economy may disappear, such as the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. Or war may take place.
[6] When there is not enough energy of the right kinds to go around, spreading what little is available “thinner” doesn’t work.
As an example, if people need to eat 2,000 kilocalories per day, and if the food supply that is available would only supply 500 kilocalories per day (on average), giving everyone the same quantity would lead to everyone starving. Similarly, if a communist government gives every worker the same wage, lateness and “slacking off” become huge problems. Experience in many places has shown that equal pay for all, regardless of native abilities, responsibilities, or effort, simply doesn’t work. Somehow, diligent work and greater responsibility needs to be rewarded.
When an energy bottleneck occurs (leading to too little finished goods and services in total being produced), what I call a “squeezing out” takes place. Such a squeezing out may be initiated in many ways, including a war, angry citizens overturning a government, financial problems, or a shift in climate. The winners in a squeezing out end up ahead; the losers see collapsing institutions of many kinds, including failing businesses and disappearing government organizations.
[7] Most people do not understand the interconnected nature of the world economy, and the way the whole system tends to evolve.
The Universe is made up of many temporary structures, each of which needs to “dissipate” energy to stay away from a cold, dead state. We are all aware that plants and animals behave in this manner, but businesses of all kinds and government organizations also require energy of the right kinds to grow. They get much of their energy from financial payments that act as temporary placeholders for goods and services that will be made in the future using various types of energy, including human labor.
Strangely enough, because of the physics of the situation, business and government organizations are also temporary in nature, and in some sense, they also evolve. In physics terms, all these structures are dissipative structures. Physicist Francois Roddier writes about this broader kind of evolution in his book, The Thermodynamics of Evolution. In fact, economies themselves are dissipative structures. I have written about the economy as a self-organizing system powered by energy many times, including here, here, and here. All these self-organizing structures eventually come to an end.
History is full of records of economies that have collapsed. The book Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Serjey Nefedov analyzes eight of these failed economies. Populations tend to grow after a new resource is found or is acquired through war. Once population growth hits what Turchin calls carrying capacity, these economies hit a period of stagflation. This period lasted 50 to 60 years in the sample of eight economies analyzed. Stagflation was followed by a major contraction, typically with failing or overturned governments and declining overall population.
[8] Logic and some calculations suggest that the world economy is likely to be reaching a major downturn, about now.
One way of estimating when a major contraction (or squeezing out) would occur would be to look at oil supply. We know that US oil production hit a peak and started to decline in 1970, changing the dynamics of the world economy. This started a period of stagflation for many of the wealthier economies of the world. Adding 50 to 60 years to 1970 suggests that a major downturn would take place in the 2020 to 2030 timeframe. Since it was the wealthier economies that first entered stagflation, it would not be surprising if these economies tend to collapse first.
There have been several studies computing estimates of when the extraction of fossil fuels would become unaffordable. Back in 1957, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a speech in which he talked about the connection of the level of fossil fuel supply to the standard of living of an economy, and to the ability of its military to defend the country. With respect to the timing of limits to affordable supply, he said, “. . .total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.”
Confusion arises because some people would like to believe that fossil fuel prices can rise to extraordinarily high levels, and this will somehow permit more fossil fuels to be extracted. However, as I discussed in Section [5], the problem is really a two-sided one. Politicians want to hold fossil fuel prices down to prevent inflation, while oil producers (such as those in OPEC+) choose to reduce production if prices are not sufficiently high to meet their needs.
An easily missed point is that tax revenue from the sale of oil is often a large share of the total tax revenue of oil exporting countries. Because of this issue, in order for prices of oil to be adequate for oil exporters, they must include a wide margin for payment of taxes. These taxes are used to support the rest of the economy. For example, in Saudi Arabia, taxes provide support for huge building programs that provide jobs for citizens, but are of questionable long term value. These projects keep citizens happy, at least temporarily. Without adequate subsidy from tax revenue, citizens would want to overturn governments–a form of collapse.
[9] Energy problems are easily hidden because “scientific models” are considered to be important in forecasting the future. These models tend to be misleading because they leave out important elements regarding how the economy really works.
The easiest models to make are the ones that seem to say, “the future will be very similar to the recent past.” These models miss turning points. They assume that growth will continue even though resource extraction can be expected to become more difficult. Some examples of overly simple models include the following:
- Money is a store of value. (Not if the economy has stopped functioning properly because insufficient energy resources are available.)
- Forecasts of Social Security payments recipients will be able to receive in the future are overstated. (It takes energy of the right kinds to produce the goods and services that the elderly require. If the economy is not producing enough goods and services because of energy extraction limits, the share that pensioners can receive will need to fall so that workers can be paid adequately. Inflation-adjusted benefits to the elderly must be much lower or disappear completely.)
- Climate models give high estimates. (These models miss the real-world difficulty of extracting fossil fuels. They also assume the economy can grow indefinitely, greatly overstating future CO2.)
- Future energy supply based on “Reserve to Production” ratios give high estimates. (Reserve amounts are often puffed-up numbers to make an oil exporting country look wealthy.)
- Energy Return on Energy Invested models greatly overestimate the value of intermittent wind and solar energy. (It is easy to assume that all types of energy are equivalent, but intermittent wind and solar cannot replace diesel and jet fuel.)
[10] Added complexity is not a solution to our energy problems.
Many people believe that if we can just be smarter, we can solve our energy problem. We can add more fuel-efficient engines, more advanced education, and more international trade, for example. Unfortunately, many things go wrong, leading to an upward energy complexity spiral. Difficulties include:
- The complexity changes with the best payback tend to be discovered and implemented very early.
- Added complexity may lead to higher energy consumption if cost savings result. For example, more vehicles may be sold if reduced fuel consumption makes their operation more affordable to a wider number of users.
- Wage disparity results because the wages paid to highly educated employees and those in managerial positions leave little funding available to pay less-skilled workers.
- Less-skilled workers indirectly compete with similarly skilled workers in low-wage countries, further holding their wages down.
It is clear that we are now moving past the limits of complexity. For example, international trade as a percentage of GDP has been falling for the world, the US, and China.
Countries are now actively trying to bring supply lines back closer to home. Trips for goods across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans are being reduced, saving diesel and jet fuel.
[11] Repayment of debt with interest acts like a Ponzi Scheme if there is inadequate growth in the energy supply.
Most people today do not realize the extent to which the entire financial system is dependent on growing inexpensive-to-produce energy supply of the right kinds. It takes physical resources of the right kinds to produce goods and services. Resources such as fresh water, copper, lithium, and fossil fuels require more and more energy consumption to produce the same amount of supply because the easiest-to-extract resources are extracted first.
When the economy is far from limits, adding more debt (or other types of promises, such as shares of stock) does seem to increase “demand” for finished goods and services, and this, in turn, tends to increase the production of fossil fuels and other commodities. Thus, for a while, increased debt does indeed increase energy supply.
But when we start reaching extraction limits, instead of producing more fossil fuels and other commodities, higher debt tends to produce inflation. (In other words, more money plus practically the same amount of finished goods and services tends to lead to inflation.) This is the issue central banks are up against today. Central banks raise interest rates in response to the higher level of inflation, partly to compensate lenders for the inflation that is taking place, and partly to make their own economies more competitive in the world economy. The combination of higher interest rates and higher inflation is problematic in many ways:
(a) Ordinary citizens find that they must cut back on discretionary goods and services to balance their budgets. This tends to push economies in the direction of recession and debt defaults. Some citizens find they need to apply for government assistance programs for the first time.
(b) Businesses find it more difficult to operate profitably with higher interest rates and inflation. Businesses increasingly expand in programs supported by government subsidies, such as those for electric cars and batteries, as it becomes increasingly difficult to make a profit without a subsidy. In the US, defaults seem especially likely on commercial real estate loans.
(c) Governments become especially squeezed. Many of them find that their own tax revenue is falling at precisely the time when citizens need their programs most. Governments also find that with higher interest rates, interest costs on their own debt rises. Subsidized programs increasingly seem to be needed to keep the economy operating. The number of retirees also grows year after year. Government debt levels spiral upward, as shown for the US on Figure 6.
With all these issues, the world becomes increasingly prone to war. Political parties, and even groups within political parties, find it increasingly difficult to agree on solutions to problems. The stage seems to be set for an array of worrisome outcomes, including major debt defaults, failing governments, and even widespread war.
[12] The world economy was able to grow rapidly in the 1950 to 1980 period because of a rapid rise in energy consumption. Now, there is an energy bottleneck. The recent increases in interest rates seem likely to burst debt bubbles. They may even squeeze out some major economies with pension programs for their citizens.
On Figure 4, the significant increases in interest rates up until 1981 corresponded to a huge increase in world energy consumption in the 1950 to 1980 period (Figure 5).
The rapid rise in fossil fuel consumption in Figure 5 was the reason why the economy was able to grow as rapidly as it did in the 1950 to 1980 period. Raising interest rates acted like brakes on the economy and lowered oil prices. The Soviet Union was the economy most harmed by these low oil prices. It also had a communist form of government that did not work well, compared to capitalism. Ultimately, the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Now, the rise in interest rates during 2022 and 2023 on Figure 4 correspond to a very different situation. Extraction of fossil fuels, and in particular the heavy oil used to produce diesel and jet fuel, is no longer growing rapidly. Instead, what has been growing is debt, especially government debt. Figure 6 shows US government debt through April 2023. US government debt spurted upward in 2020 and is still rising rapidly.
The business closures in 2020 and interruptions in travel reduced oil prices and provided a good excuse for more government debt. All this debt added buying power, but it didn’t actually produce very many goods and services. Instead, it added a debt bubble. Similarly, investing in close-to-useless green energy temporarily added GDP, but it mostly added a huge debt bubble. Raising interest rates is likely to burst these debt bubbles.
The US and other rich countries have also put in place pension plans for the elderly. These are not treated as debt, but they depend upon resources of all kinds being available to feed, clothe, and provide shelter to a growing army of retirees. If there is not enough diesel to allow as many goods and services to be produced as are produced today, there is likely to be a huge problem if payouts to pensioners aren’t significantly reduced. Other citizens will be unhappy if retirees get a disproportionately large share of the reduced supply of goods and services. Some will say, “Why work if retirees on pensions get more than those of us who are still working?”
Thus, the world seems to be increasingly in a situation where more squeezing out will take place. Major governments, especially those with pension plans for their citizens, seem especially vulnerable. No one understood that there had been a temporary rapid rise in energy consumption per capita in the 1950 to 1980 period (Figure 5) that led to a temporary spurt in interest rates on bonds. This temporary rise in interest rates made pension programs look far more feasible than they really are for the longterm.
[13] How does the problem resolve itself?
It seems to me that the problem of debt bubbles and of unaffordably generous pension plans is very widespread. Analysts of all kinds have missed the hidden brakes on economies caused by inadequate energy resources of the right kinds, relative to rising populations. Collapse of at least some central governments seems possible. Perhaps some of these collapses can be postponed by rollbacks in government-sponsored programs, particularly those for the elderly and for those who are not working.
But even aside from the pension problem, there is a problem with many debts not being repayable in an economy that is forced to slow, as described in Section [11]. Many other promises become iffy as well. For instance, derivatives may not be able to pay as planned.
If there are problems with inadequate supply of essential materials, they are likely to spill over to asset values. For example, a farm that cannot purchase fuel for its agricultural equipment is, in some sense, not worth very much, since workers with simple tools like shovels cannot produce very much food. Likewise, a factory with permanently broken supply lines is not worth much.
I wish I could provide a happy-ever-after ending. The closest I can come to such an ending is to say that it appears to me that there is a literal Higher Power that is somehow providing an enormous amount of energy in a way that allows the Universe to continually expand. This literal Higher Power is, in some way, influencing the world today, through the self-organizing nature of the economy. The book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, by Ward and Brownlee, explains that life could not have happened on the Earth, as quickly as it did, by chance alone. Perhaps things will turn out differently than we expect.
https://www.francois-roddier.fr/blog_en/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Thermodynamics_of_evolution.pdf
This is really good stuff. Thanks for sharing .
Great find. From this article;
‘One can estimate the rate of energy dissipation for different structures in the
Universe: galaxies, stars or live beings. Clearly, a star dissipates more energy than an animal, but which one dissipates the energy the most effectively?
One way to estimate the efficiency with which a structure dissipates energy is to measure its rate of production of free energy in Watts per unit mass, for
example in Watts per kilogram of material. This is what did the American astronomer Eric Chaisson. Fig 4, due to Chaisson (2001), shows the efficiency with which various structures dissipate energy in the Universe, depending on the age at which they appeared during evolution. One can see
that this efficiency grows faster and faster over time. It started to grow particularly rapidly after the onset of life.
Able to move, animals dissipate energy more efficiently than plants. Because of his brain, a man dissipates
energy more efficiently than any other animal. It is impressive to see that, per unit mass, a man dissipates ten thousand times more energy than the Sun.
Men create societies that dissipate energy even more efficiently. Their production rate of free energy is constantly growing.’
Maybe thats why EV’s are so bad; they evolved lately to dissipate more greatly!
Thanks,
Dennis L.
“Clearly, a star dissipates more energy than an animal, but which one dissipates the energy the most effectively?”
To do what? if you measure a star by shining, it’s 100% efficient. By information processing, 0%.
Assuming we are looking at the shadows of alien megastructures at Tabby’s star, they seem to have backed off about 7 au to build data centers 400 times the area of the Earth.
People deep into the physics of computation say that’s the optimal place to do computation (low temperature makes the computing more efficient). That’s a lot of computation. Scaled to guesses about humans some high number of trillions living in a simulation.
Laugh along with Fast Eddy
https://dailysceptic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/image-83.png
Somehow, all of the other diseases, including Covid, have reduced the number of Dementia and Alzheimer’s deaths.
What’s Behind the 26% Rise in Heart Failure Deaths, 22% Rise in Cirrhosis Deaths and 19% Rise in Diabetes Deaths?
In previous articles I’ve highlighted the worrying rise in deaths from heart failure. This article adds deaths from both cirrhosis (liver damage) and diabetes to the ‘watch’ list.
Using data from the Department of Health Improvement and Disparities (DHID) website I’ve compared the expected number of deaths from the end of March to the end of September 2020, with the registered number of deaths for the commensurate 28 weeks in 2023.
The data cover 14 causes of death. In Figure 1 you can see that the increase in deaths from heart failure at 26% leads the field, but it’s closely followed by cirrhosis and other liver diseases at 22% and diabetes deaths at 19%.
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/25/whats-behind-the-26-rise-in-heart-failure-deaths-22-in-cirrhosis-and-19-in-diabetes/
There is only one solution to this …. https://indi.ca/western-moral-authority-is-dead-and-buried-in-palestine/
Extinction.
A war is coming. The questions how prepared is Iran? will Russia fire Kinzal’s at US carriers? will Turkey help remove US from Syria? will Egypt fight Israel? I just saw pictures of the most massive display of tanks I have ever seen by the Egyptians.
The region in Middle East does not have a large natural carrying capacity. Israel manages well with a lot of international business contacts and great creativity, the pelestine areas get 20% of their GDP as transfers from abroad family members. In the moment the world economy declines this must lead to conflict. Taking into account the claims and demands of the people and what should be possible it is highly unrealistic. The region is overpopulated.
The larger region is also full of oil. Any conflict is a great cover for interests in the field of oil. And be it only to secure the status quo. A war is also in the interest of the oil countries as an excuse for lower living standards.
A war could cost a lot of diesel. But done in the right way, a war could even help to lower the price for oil.
On the other hand a war might interrupt oil supply for some countries very suddenly.
I am assumed by Sweden’s new settler issues. Here we have used poor new settlers for the past 300 years. When times get tense I see the gates of the estates closed and the two blacked out Suburbans parked in the driveway facing outward.
Madonna says she’s not feeling well seven days into global Celebration Tour
https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/madonna-illness-celebration-tour-infection-antwerp-belgium-b1115526.html
‘The Late Show’ Pulled Until Next Week As Stephen Colbert Continues To Recover From Covid
https://deadline.com/2023/10/the-late-show-stephen-colbert-covid-1235577195/
Pink forced to cancel concerts due to illness
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/pink-cancels-concerts-respiratory-infection-i-am-deeply-sorry
Hey FE.
We should make our own schad TV show. “Dancing through the graveyard with stars”
Soooo great that they are leading by example and took the pfizzy goop hook line and blinker.
Convid IQ test result; Fail
‘Legally Invalid’? Its anything goes time now methinks…
‘Pfizer was always nothing more than a front company for the DEATHVAX™ patent holders in the DoD, Pentagon, NIH, et al. As such, all of the agreements that Pfizer was signing with captured governments around the world were always legally invalid, and those dark forces behind the democidal “vaccines” were only ever indemnified under color of law. In other words, there are no liability protections nor EUA protections for those involved in these slow kill bioweapons.
And now we have further evidence of the illegitimacy of these BigPharma DEATHVAX™ “agreements,” which were all made unconstitutionally, and thus willfully subverted both informed consent and natural rights:
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/breaking-secret-deathvax-purchase
Fake … orchestrated https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-hillary-clinton-snaps-heckler-who-blasts-her-support-war-mongering-joe-biden
I am proud to say that student was a Columbia University student. She was speaking at Columbia University’s school of International Affairs. You see the crown on the wall paper for King’s College the original name.
Excellent https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-just-added-600-billion-debt-one-month-and-what-comes-next-will-shock-everyone
Looking forward to the first trillion dollar month!
Saw that, anyone have a summary of what is behind the paywall?
Dennis L.
Amazing the clips you get when you have a real war:
https://t.me/leaklive/16322
https://t.me/leaklive/16323
https://t.me/leaklive/16324
https://t.me/leaklive/16341
https://t.me/leaklive/16342
https://t.me/leaklive/16346
https://t.me/leaklive/16349
https://t.me/leaklive/16351
https://t.me/leaklive/16371
https://t.me/leaklive/16368
https://t.me/leaklive/16373
https://t.me/leaklive/16374
https://t.me/leaklive/16383
https://t.me/leaklive/16386
https://t.me/leaklive/16387
https://t.me/leaklive/16396
https://t.me/leaklive/16403
https://t.me/leaklive/16422
https://t.me/leaklive/16423
https://t.me/leaklive/16438
https://t.me/leaklive/16457
https://t.me/leaklive/16458
https://t.me/leaklive/16459
https://t.me/leaklive/16470
https://t.me/leaklive/16471
https://t.me/leaklive/16519
https://t.me/leaklive/16520
https://t.me/leaklive/16521
https://t.me/leaklive/16525
https://t.me/leaklive/16526
And like that … the UKEY war is gone. And .. it’s gone
Biden hahaha https://t.me/leaklive/16352
Russian President Vladimir Putin suffers heart attack, found lying on floor: Reports
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly suffered a heart attack and was “resuscitated” after collapsing in his bedroom in Moscow, reports the mirror.co.uk.
A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been fuelling speculation about his health after eagle-eyed observers noticed a scar on his neck, the media reported.
The clip began circulating online before reports emerged claiming the President had suffered a heart attack and had to receive intensive care, Express UK reported.
The footage shows Putin speaking at an unspecified public event, a scar clearly marking his neck — with some analysts suggesting it might be the result of ‘resusciatation’ procedures.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/trending/russian-president-vladimir-putin-suffers-heart-attack-found-lying-on-floor-reports-556147
” eagle-eyed observers ” ROFL . The Empire of Lies continues its work . The source is Express , UK . OMG .
They try so badly, don’t they. Over the last couple of years Putin has been dying of so many things it’s a true miracle that’s he’s still walking around. I can only assume that Russian health and science is like their military tech. Light years ahead, or he’d certainly be dead😂
Maybe the real issue is what he says and then does. Here’s a few lines from 2015 that seem relevant today.
“
I appear to have posted without Putin’s words from 2015.
Let’s try again.
“State institutions were unceremoniously destroyed and human rights, including the right to life, nothing is put into it.
So I want to ask. Those who created such a situation.
Do you even understand what you have done?”
Understandable that they wish him dead, I suppose.
This puts the MOREONS on edge…
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/multiple-mass-shootings-maine-town-suspect-large
There always seem to be massive inconsistencies in these things. Not enough info yet. Apparently the guy is a shooting instructor for the US army. I guess he is good at it.
Does the vax have any impact on fertility male or female?
some calculations say that more than half of all adults will have “long covid” within the next few years.
that’s a big impact on all fertility.
Rene Girard wrote extensively on mimetic violence. We are at the end of a mimetic cycle when mob violence breaks out and food energy supplies are not enough. Just the way it is and has been. That the peaking of energy occurs in sync with migrant invasions is a bit of a head scratcher. Or not. If one knew of mimetic cycles…
Your idea sounds like something I should look into.
The migrant invasions seem to be related to how badly the poor people in poor countries are doing today. Many of them cannot afford adequate food supply. At the same time, the well-off employers in rich countries are happy to get a lot of immigrant workers because adding these workers tends to hold wages down. It is better than having to move a farm or factory to a poor country to get low-paid labor. Also, the birth rates in rich countries are so low that there are not enough workers to do the work that needs to be done.
The Romans didn’t want to be soldiers, so they invited in various tribes to function as mercenaries. It didn’t work out very well for them.
I have seen a YouTube video of a large farm family in MN where there are prayers for labor reported in the local church. Watching a number of channels, this seems to be an issue on a number of farms.
What I see is the very large farms are “family” farms, senior partners a couple of brothers and then their sons, yes sons not daughters. Farms in one family over 100 years are not uncommon.
It seems that in these families, there is involvement in their community, church, school boards, etc.
A man must do three things well: first chose his parents wisely, second chose his career wisely, and third chose his wife wisely.
Personal communication: a farmer in SW Minnesota tests prototypes for JD, one is an autonomous grain cart. It is not used that way, concern for multi million dollar combinations of combines, carts going over rough, muddy ground with spouts only a few feet from the cart.
Dennis L>
Would like to read your research in to mimetic violence; appreciate all the effort.
Dennis L.
I am not certain how well this study is done, but clearly it is in the right direction.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-unmasks-true-costs-electric-080016541.html
Fox News
New report unmasks true costs of electric vehicle mandates: ‘Remain more expensive’
Laughing quietly, what I do learn here; another blind alley avoided.
You have convinced me that even with local sourcing of solar electricity and storage on a tractor it is an idea not ready for prime time.
Hacking my way through a community college EE curriculum, leaning toward small, autonomous machines, but with diesel electric transmission. We use what we know, making a good gear is hard.
There is a substantial DYI RTK community: so when done I could find myself calling my neighbors and asking, “Anyone seen my tractor?”
Serious about my thank you. I remain the optimist.
Dennis L.
There still seems to be some mileage to be had for financialising of the third world. This article follows on nicely from your previous one about ‘maybe’ India coming out ahead in a financial sqeeze.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/10/24/farmers-struggle-far-from-over-corporate-capture-of-indias-agri-sector-continues/
‘The stated aim is to use digital technology to improve financing, inputs, cultivation and supply and distribution. The unstated aims are to impose a certain model of farming, promote profitable corporate technologies and products, encourage market (corporate) dependency among farmers and create a land market by establishing a system of ‘conclusive titling’ of all land in the country so that ownership can be identified and land can then be bought or taken away.
The plan is that, as farmers lose access to land or can be identified as legal owners, predatory institutional investors and large agribusinesses will buy up and amalgamate holdings, facilitating the further roll out of high-input, corporate-dependent industrial agriculture (and the massive health and environmental costs that it entails).’That much has been made clear by the Research Unit for Political Economy in the article ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece states that current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.
Shifting people to the cities…hmm not going to end well.
‘That much has been made clear by the Research Unit for Political Economy in the article ‘Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington DC’. The piece states that current agricultural ‘reforms’ are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy.
A 1991 World Bank memorandum set out the program for India. At the time, India was still in its foreign exchange crisis of 1990-91 and had just been subjected to an IMF-monitored ‘structural adjustment’ program that involved shifting 400 million people from rural India to the cities and corporatising agriculture.’
Agenda 2030 is to have all the people all in the cities just like those rat experiments it will not end well
Guess:
Above is a post regarding biology being more efficient at dissipating energy than stars on a per mass unit basis.
With fewer people, the process becomes inefficient, the fabric of the universe is not written that way. Conclusion: we will be around for a long time.
Learn a lot here; my goal is to avoid mistakes, not smart enough to always do it correctly.
Dennis L.
China is all in on EV’s while the Japanese automakers are saying, now hold on. Toyota’s chairman looks to have made the right call regarding EV’s. New car prices for ICE cars are pricing the average consumer out of the market unless they want to take out a 10-12 year loan. Last year I noticed that the Jeep Grand Wagoneer has an average asking price of over $100K. EV’s tend to carry higher prices over the equivalent gas powered model. Then you have to factor insane prices for battery modules when they need to be replaced, plus higher insurance costs because of the potential for fire and chemical risks in vehicle accidents.
https://jalopnik.com/toyota-s-chairman-is-having-his-i-told-you-so-moment-1850958887
“Akio Toyoda, chairman of the world’s largest automaker, Toyota, took a stubborn stance on EVs. While other automakers have been pouring billions into developing EVs, Toyota was still betting on hybrids and PHEVs while selling just one EV in the bZ4X. After a relatively hot last couple of years, EV sales have cooled off. A lot of American buyers don’t want them and things like un-affordability and high interest rates haven’t helped things. And it looks as if Akio Toyoda may have been right to take the stance he did.”
One issue seems to be that materials to make batteries for EVs and hybrid cars seems to be limited. Battery material goes a whole lot further in a hybrid car. Also, cars that carry big batteries with them are very heavy. This isn’t efficient at all.
Japan doesn’t have extra electricity. I can see why Japan wouldn’t want automobiles plugged into the grid. Japan has to import all of its fossil fuels.
It’s even worse than that because Japan isn’t even interested in building EV’s for export purposes.
They can see that they make no sense.
Back in Oil Drum days, commenters there were saying that they make no sense. It also seems like we had a speaker from Toyota talking about the fact that EVs make no sense at one of the ASPO conferences, quite a few years ago.
Yes, I was at that conference. His main recommendation was not to use the brakes on a Prius.
Dennis L.
Regardless of EV materials, no one seems to mention the building and maintenance of roads, all of which is massively fossil fuel reliant.
China just pulled the plug on EV manufacturing in ROW . 90% of the Tesla’s sold in Europe are from the Shanghai plant ,
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2023/10/graphite-new-energy-economy-resource-is.html
Thanks! This is Kurt Cobb writing this report, whom I remember from ASPO days. He is a good researcher. I had heard about China cutting back in graphite exports, but I hadn’t read about the likely serious follow-on effects for the EV industry.
With complex technology it seems like there are a whole lot of tiny inputs that could put an end to the technology.
We are kidding ourselves on scaling up all kinds of things. The whole article is worth reading.
Forgot about Kurt, he wrote a book, “Prelude” which was interesting, probably should read it again, skip a few of your posts? Nah, it all happens right here.
Dennis L.
25/10/23
Middle East oil supply situation as Gaza war brings world into unknown territory (part1)
http://crudeoilpeak.info/me-oil-supply-situation-as-gaza-war-brings-world-into-unknown-territory
Thanks for the charts. I noticed this background information on the EIA site regarding Iran’s oil. It supposedly was updated in 2021.
https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/countries_long/Iran/background.htm
I noticed that Biden has taken tariffs off Venezuela. I suppose he figured out that the world needs more heavy oil from some part of the world.
The Tanker Trackers: “In other news, a million barrels of Iranian crude oil shipped past the US Navy earlier today, heading to Syria. Are we the only ones seeing this?”
Still no email to confirm alerts for new comments
One of the latest proposals in Slovakia is to provide the state pensions similar to the retired army and police personnel also to the medical staff, whivc is in shorter and shorter supply.
If you compare the Deagle forecast of 2017 with the # vaxxed in America.
It’s a perfect match.
The comparison only works in America, then? Do you have any comparisons?
We were aware:
that the government wrote in Feb 2021 that it was expecting 1.1 % of vaccinees to have a serious adverse event that would necessitate time off work,
that Medsafe only expect 5% of adverse events to be reported,
that Medsafe usually expects 3000-5000 reports per year for ALL medicines,
that in the first year of covid vaccination there were over 58,000 reports for ONE medicine,
that there were 3,688 SERIOUS adverse events documented in Medsafe’s final Safety Report at the end of November 2022 when they stopped reporting numbers publicly,
that there have been over 13,000 serious adverse events reported according to an OIA response from April 2023.
https://nzdsos.com/2023/10/23/nzdsos-response-liz-gunn/
“Poster Boy for COVID Vax Dies Suddenly”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/poster-boy-for-covid-vax-dies-suddenly/
NZDSOS Response to Liz Gunn’s 21 October Horrific Whistleblower Claims
https://nzdsos.com/2023/10/23/nzdsos-response-liz-gunn/
Rates for residential properties here have just increased 14%…
The pressure is building… this is 2019 … on steroids… inflation is out of control (OOC)
It does seem a bit too fantastic that complex life just started by itself. Even with all our technology we couldn’t make a simple organism from scratch.
Anyway thanks for another timely article.
I was thinking this morning about debt and pensions. I came to the conclusion that govt debt is irrelevant as central banks can always print more. This will though create inflation.
Pensions are the problem. Every public pension I’ve looked at is in deficit when you include future promises. Literally billions and billions here in the UK.
Birmingham City Council(the second largest in the UK) has just declared bankruptcy but there was no mention of the pensions and the fact that for decades receipts that should have been used to pay for public services have been top sliced to prop up the pensions.
As services get cut the number of employees gets smaller and smaller so the number paying into the pension pot gets smaller and smaller. This is obviously unsustainable.
I read somewhere that by 2032 all US tax receipts will only cover entitlements and interest. Something major is going to happen between now and then(that’s assuming we get through the current El Niño of course!!)
cities can only exist on the surpluses of the land that surrounds them
when that surplus is no longer there, cities go bankrupt
its possible to disguise this for quite a while, but eventually financial reality catches up
Good point.
Land is basically a solar collector. An Aha moment. Amish are much more solar than one might think, a horse is a solar power implement, less NPK, etc. It is also self replicating.
Dennis L.
“..the food of the State is all the small towns within it…”
nope
towns consume food
they do nor provide food
Many thanks Gail for your new article.
Reading it, what has immediately come to my mind is that the decision taken by almost all Western-governments to warmly suggest or even oblige elder people to get the so called Covid vaccines, was a decision in line to potentially (and hopefully) reduce pension costs.
In other words, to take the risk that many elder people could have died as a result of this emergency and risky ‘health program’ (made of repetitive doses) was actually a ‘positive’ decision for politicians.
In first phase one avoids conjestions in hospital (for the short-time effectiveness), in second phase one has many deaths on elder people (very positive for pension costs).
P.S.
Then, the decision to convince also young people and children to get the vaccine was:
1) a perversion created to spread problems on all population (so they can say: ‘health problems are here now, due to Covid or vaccines, but who knows which one of the two’).
2) a way to obtain certain authorizations and covers that only vaccines for children can give.
The self-organizing system certainly works strangely. If it is necessary to get some of the old people out of the way, the system seem to mysteriously provide this service. Pension and healthcare costs for the elderly are very high.
For those of us who are old, that is not a problem but a feature.
Dennis L.
i have my annual fitness test booked at the gym on monday
but i had a double jabbarama at the clinic today
so i may not live that long
This is a tour de force article…. well done!
This slaps the green grooopies in the face:
[3] Green energy is itself a dead end, but subsidizing green energy can temporarily hide other problems.
Green energy sounds appealing, but it is terribly limited in what it can do. Green energy cannot operate agricultural machinery. It cannot make new wind turbines or solar panels. Green energy cannot exist without fossil fuels. It is simply an add-on to the current system.
The reason why we hear so much about green energy is because making people believe that a green revolution is possible provides many temporary benefits. For example:
The extra debt needed to subsidize green energy indirectly increases GDP. (GDP calculations ignore whether added debt was used to produce the added goods and services counted as GDP.)
Manufacturers can pretend that their products (such as vehicles) will operate as they do today for years and years.
The educational system is given many more areas to provide courses in.
Citizens are given the hope that the economy will grow endlessly.
Young people are given hope for the future.
Politicians look like they are doing something for voters.
Unfortunately, by the time that the debt comes due to pay for subsidized green energy, it will be apparent that the return on this technology is far too low. The overall system will tend to collapse. Green energy is only a temporary Band-Aid to hide a very disturbing problem. Its impact is tiny and short-lived. And it cannot prevent climate change.
I was hoping something short would sort of sink in.
Ding Ding Ding…
Round 3!!!!
By now I sincerely hope that you have all been watching the exposure of the #PlasmidGate scandal unfold on twitter and various other platforms. If you haven’t I’m going to summarise it for you as briefly I can:
When Pfizer and Moderna said that they produced an “RNA vaccine” and that an “RNA vaccine” meant that anything they injected into you would have a short lived (days) effect at most, it was a lie.
When the media, the regulators and the government said it “isn’t gene therapy” without knowing what was actually in the product, that was also a lie.
The primary reason that this is now proven to be a lie is that multiple laboratories around the world have proven that those COVID vaccines contain therapeutic levels of plasmid DNA. DNA lasts for ever and if it integrates into your genome, you will produce its product forever. There is no definition of gene therapy anywhere in the world that this process would be excluded from.
This is #PLASMIDGATE
Just for background, it’s important to know what plasmid DNA is – it’s the lab-based circular DNA particles that is replicated in big vats of poo and then used to create the mRNA that goes into your “short lived” vaccine.
It’s a lab tool so should never be in a drug injected into a human. It’s not allowed to be there. It’s like having a drug that requires arsenic as a substrate to make it, and then throwing the leftover arsenic into the actual drug that gets injected into you.
But this article is not directly about the discovery of Plasmid DNA in the Pfizer and Moderna jabs (that has been now verified by 6 labs worldwide).
https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/5-ways-to-skin-a-genetically-modified
So you see… this is no accident… not incompetence… not stooopidity…
It is INTENTIONAL.
intentional /ĭn-tĕn′shə-nəl/
adjective
Done deliberately; intended: synonym: voluntary.
“an intentional slight.”
Similar: voluntary
Having to do with intention.
Done by intention or design; intended; designed. Opposite of unintentional or unintended.
“the act was intentional, not accidental”
Now why would they do this to 6 Billion MOREONS?????
Yes of course …. https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=220
Is it beginning to sink in???? Who has reached the stage of grief referred to as … acceptance?
6 billion will die from pneumonia … apparently not such a bad way to go…
The rest of us… well… we will suffer before we die… likely starve…
BTW – had a cousin visit with an American friend… the friend is boosted to the roof and was bemoaning the fact that the new booster ain’t free… it’s USD180 bucks… so she’s not getting it…
Mission Accomplished…. they don’t care if anyone takes more boosters… the explosives are already embedded in 6 billion.
How did ya’ll think this was gonna end… did you think they’d just run BAU hard right till the end … and when the oil ran out the pistons would burst the engine, smoke would billow out and thousands of pieces of metal would be hurled everywhere?
And then ROF (cannibalism… corpse eating … murder … https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/great-famine-of-1921/#Cannibalism)
come on man…. why would they allow that if they had decades to think about this moment … to plan…. to put us down with the least amount of suffering…
One hell of a plan… as the unvaxxed should be shuddering in fear… I ask:
https://youtu.be/L-l6tHeseDY
You’re such a boring airhead cunt …
Whoa! Surprised Gail let that one through. First time I’ve seen the c word used on here. Someone must be p–d off.
Anyway are we all dead yet and actually just AI bots talking at each other, or do we still claim to have biological forms away from this virtual space?
Do AI bots dream about BAU party time?
Gail thank you for continuing to research, produce and publish your work.
You our welcome. It takes me a while to put then together.
Health Care Costs Are Soaring, So Why Does the CPI Show Falling?
https://mishtalk.com/economics/health-care-costs-are-soaring-so-why-does-the-cpi-show-falling/
Ed Dowd has detailed the disabilities… millions.
Anyone think this might be impacting health care costs?
hands up
Wow…. I am amazed…. they are attributing this to incompetence… hahahaha…
You’d have to be mentally re tar ded to think that… or maybe the doc’s comment gave them a peak behind the curtain and they saw the devil himself… and their minds could not handle it so they are looking away and pretending they did not see this.
Yes of course it’s all about $$$ hahaha…. Duh so they hijacked and damaged the immune systems of 6B … for $$$????? Now why would they do that … if they wanted money just tweak the flu vaccine and inject that into the 6B…. useless… and for the most part harmless…
But nope…. they inject Rat Juice that destroys the immune system as the main with a side order thousands of debilitating often deadly side effects… Duh on steroids.
Can it not be more obvious what they are up to?????
Don’t look away … don’t be a coward… Fast Eddy is pulling you by the hair… look… look at this … look at the devil… here he is… it’s not $$$ or Great Resets…
It is …. say it with me … it is … extinction … it is … UEP.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/cliffs-notes-remember-those-for-yesterdays/comments
working rich
4 hrs ago
Pinned
So, we didn’t know WTF we were doing and we are finding out after the fact.
LIKE (64)
REPLY (3)
SHARE
author
Alex Berenson
4 hrs ago
Author
This is an even more succinct and equally accurate summary
LIKE (30)
REPLY (2)
SHARE
Alex recognizes the importance of this as well:
Cliffs notes (remember those?) for yesterday’s article about the mRNAs and IgG4
The science can be confusing, but it’s vital. A reader did a great job explaining it in a few sentences. I’ve cut and pasted his comment below. (Plagiarism? I prefer to think of it as homage!)
Anyway, if you found yesterday’s piece tough sledding, this comment from Dr. Kevin McQuaid may help. (And yes, someone by that name is a pathologist AND an Unreported Truths subscriber.) He offers a great succinct summary of why IgG4 levels are rising and what that that rise may mean – though, again, as long as Omicron remains mild, the risks are mostly theoretical.
—
From Dr. Kevin McQuaid:
Although I am a pathologist and not an immunologist, everything in this article is perfectly logical from an immune system perspective. IgG4 is a subclass of gamma globulin [Note: gamma globulin is a medical term that essentially means antibody] that rises with repeated antigen exposure. In a sense it turns down the immune system to repeated antigen exposure. That is an adaptive mechanism for something like exposure to pollen, or tropomyosin, or legumes.
But it is maladaptive when that antigen (in this case spike protein) comes along with a pathogenic virus attached. Colbert’s immune system has habituated to the COVID spike so, along with the damage done by the vax to the interferon system, he can’t clear the virus. [Note: I mentioned Stephen Colbert’s new case of Covid in the article.] All of that is bad enough, but if the virus were to mutate into a more virulent strain he and all the others like him are going to be in serious trouble.
—
In case you missed the piece, or want to read it again now that Dr. McQuaid has explained it:
More proof the mRNAs rewire the immune system with unknown long-term effects
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/cliffs-notes-remember-those-for-yesterdays
Ding Ding Ding… Round 2:
https://drkevinstillwagon.substack.com/p/the-mechanisms-of-two-types-of-antibody
Fast EddyAug 24
This is the smoking gun that confirms that mass murder was carried out for the purpose of frightening people into injecting the covid ‘vaccines’… as we can see – the deaths were caused by Midazolam — https://theviraldelusion.substack.com/p/the-great-lie-and-the-data-that-shows/
This establishes malicious intent.
Concurrent infections of cells by two pathogens can enable a reactivation of the first pathogen and the second pathogen’s accelerated T-cell exhaustionhttps://hiddencomplexity.substack.com/p/the-intricacies-of-t-cell-exhaustionIgG4, on the other hand, responds to allergens. If you get stung by a bee for example, your body might react with IgG3 or other antibodies and cause you to have an allergic reaction. To avoid this, your body learns how to recognise relatively insignificant foreign objects by switching to IgG4.
Instead of increased inflammation to fight the foreign object, your immune system recognises that this is nothing major. Long term exposure, for example in bee keepers, produces this response. Immunotherapy also works this way by training your body with the foreign object you are allergic to until it is trained to produce an IgG4 response.https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/igg4-antibody-class-switch-good-news
So what would happen to the Vaxxers if a lab-made pathogen was released that was designed to exploit the above situation as well as what you have discussed in the presentation?Would it be possible to spread such a pathogen and severely sicken/kill most if not all Vaxxers due to their damaged immunity?
Dr. Kevin StillwagonAug 24Author
Yes it is possible. There are elites among us that think the world is overpopulated. The easiest way to reduce that population is to convince people to willingly inject something that they think will protect them, but it does the opposite.
The elephant is dancing… look – can you see him dancing???? No don’t turn away and pretend he’s not there… he’s there… dancing … be careful… he might trample you.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/more-proof-the-mrnas-rewire-the-immune/
Kevin McQuaid2 hrs ago
Although I am a pathologist and not an immunologist, everything in this article is perfectly logical from an immune system perspective. IgG4 is a subclass of gamma globulin that rises with repeated antigen exposure. In a sense it turns down the immune system to repeated antigen exposure.
That is an adaptive mechanism for something like exposure to pollen, or tropomyosin, or legumes. But it is maladaptive when that antigen (in this case spike protein) comes along with a pathogenic virus attached. Colbert’s immune system has habituated to the COVID spike so, along with the damage done by the vax to the interferon system, he can’t clear the virus.
All of that is bad enough, but if the virus were to mutate into a more virulent strain he and all the others like him are going to be in serious trouble.
Or what if… a new pathogen made in a lab .. designed to exploit the damaged immune systems… for the purpose of killing 6 billion Vaxxers…. is released?
This is the genius of what they have done …. they have altered the Vaxxers by implanting their potion using LNPs directly into the cells of the MOREONS… this alternation is PERMANENT. It is at the DNA level 🙂
Because it is PERMANENT… they choose the moment of detonation …
When they conclude that their efforts to keep BAU on the rails are failing… all they have to do is release the cannisters of the lab made pathogen… and the die-off will begin…
Enjoy your time in the eye of the storm.
I theorize or speculate that lack of sufficient fossil fuels was the reason for the Covid lockdowns. The lockdowns literally changed society and people’s lives for ever. I will never go back to pre covid in my business. I’m a zoomer for good now. Whereas before Covid, I traveled around north central florida on a daily basis, and frequently transacted while I drove around making a stop here, a stop there, running errands while driving around for work. Most of those transactions have stopped.
I would say my fossil fuel consumption has been permanently lowered since covid, but my fuel consumption reduction started earlier. I stopped flying when I got sick of the TSA. Was that the point? To discourage flying? Because, jet fuel?
Am heading out to my garden now. It’s the best time of the year to garden in Florida.
Thanks, Gail, once again, for a sobering analysis.
Hey, where’s FastEddy?
I also theorize that the lack of sufficient fossil fuels was ultimately the reason for the Covid lockdowns, but I am doubtful that many people actually made this connection. I couldn’t write about that is this post–too much other stuff to cover.
Simon Michaux does a good breakdown on the size of the ‘QE’ used in the Covid operation as compared to previous bailouts. He does this with graphics and shows how the Covid bailouts were orders of magnitude bigger than all the others… I guess we should be grateful that they(meaning we) are capable of wringing one more drop out of an almost dry towel…😊
I should look his analysis up. Or write to him about it. We have corresponded in the past.
Link?
Better still… having selected the option to receive comment alerts instantly… the confirmation email has not arrived.
Word Press sucks
Chart Of the Week
Pioneer Natural Resources owns the largest contiguous acreage block in the four core counties of the Midland Basin; it is the largest producer in the entire Permian Basin and the most active with regards to drilling new wells. In this acreage block it is approaching 4,000 active, producing wells in three primary benches, the lower Spraberry and Wolfcamp A and B.
In 2022, 23% of the 549 wells Pioneer completed in “Saudi America” contained lateral lengths of 15,000 feet or greater.
In spite of these longer laterals in 2022, Pioneer’s initial potentials declined significantly. It would be wise not to assume this is intentional reservoir management to increase recovery rates. In 2023 its guidance calls for 26% of its drilled wells to be over 15,000 feet long. Thru April, its 2023 initial potential rates are even lower than they were in 2022.
As you can see in the chart above, after initial potential its ensuing decline rates for 2022 wells were steeper than wells drilled since 2016 thru 2021. In fact, it’s twelve month weighted decline rate for its 2022 wells is an astounding 74%. This would naturally translate to lower Estimated Ultimate Recoveries (EUR’s).
Liquids productivity of Permian Basin tight oil wells is declining, significantly now. Most of this is a function of over drilling core areas and pressure depletion. It will likely only get worse and more wells will have to be drilled for less production. D&C costs are going up, again, in 2024.
When the Permian Basin peaks production volumes, and starts downhill, that is all she wrote for our nation and we are back begging the Middle East for help.
https://www.oilystuff.com/single-post/chart-of-the-week
The faster state-level society collapses, the better for the environment and the remaining humans.
There won’t be any remaining humans
A book recommendation.
Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith, and Resistance in a New Dark Age
Paperback – November 9, 2023
by Naomi Wolf
Home/contents insurance increased 25% a few years back — when I questioned that I was told this was because they were anticipating earthquake activity… and all the insurers were increasing premiums similarly….
NZ is f789ed… as is the world. Something is gonna snap.
During the cyclone event earlier this year, many vehicles were flooded and deemed total losses. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in insurance costs, particularly in the property and motor vehicles line. It is likely that home insurance costs have also gone up, regardless of any changes or claims.
In terms of payment options, it’s important to note that monthly payments incur interest and setup costs, so it may not be the most suitable option in this case.
Any queries, pls let me know, thanks
Last year’s premium is $928.49 incl GST and this year is $1210.46
The pricing, you will notice a jump of 30% in the year on year premium (comparing the 2022-2023 to 2023-2024 premium). This increase is not so much a targe
I have the same experience with State insurance in Kerikeri, NZ.
28% rise for Nov2022-2023.
When I called to ask, no one had a good answer, One even said GST had caused most of the price rise. I had to calmly explain how that was clearly not the case.
A dozen e-mails later, with standard corporate B.S, inflation, floods etc.
I asked the question at every e-mail and phone call. ‘Am I the only one or is this a general price increase?’….I NEVER got a straight answer.
Seems business just want to tick the box of ‘we answered’ a query, rather than we honestly answered.
So seemingly NZ inflation is about 20+% p.a, even though Govt lies (CP Lie) say just short of 6%.
Food inflation seems to be 10+% for the last 3-4-5 years.
just never bother with insurance. Save thousands. Just fear milkers anyway
Just this…
https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1715059205558743058
https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/1715059974072631370
https://twitter.com/amjad_time/status/1715137577001361429
It is not AI that lies it is humans.
The stage of the airport is fantastic, thank you Fast Eddy 😀
Maybe WW3 will be a mostly peaceful WW due to a lack of fuel?
I am wondering about this, also. I first was going to write about war as an outcome, and I realized that it would be awfully hard to have much of a “hot war.”
napoleon marched and fought all over europe without fuel
He and his troops still needed food. Which is a very essential kind of fuel. Fuel for the human body.
i think the comment to which i responded suggested the need for supplies of fossil fuels
i took that as obvious
we all need food-fuel to engage in any activity, invading russia, or more menial activities
and food for the horses
another interesting post—ty
Martin Armstrong posted an article in which he asks if Green Energy will have the opposite desired effect on the environment. No one in their respective governments are willing to consider.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/japan-and-denmark-collaborate-on-floating-wind-turbines/
The article says
“This fishing industry has warned that this technology [offshore wind] will prevent them from yielding the same amount of fish each year.”
And if the plan is to ramp up wind and solar to 10 of more times the current level, the results will be many times worse.
This is all craziness.
Maybe good for the fish.
Dennis L.
I think the vibrations are causing ocean life lots of problems.
“No happy ending.” As the Honest Sorcerer stated, “we have outcomes not solutions.”
I say, we have CONSEQUENCES, not solutions, as one can have a favorable “outcome.”
Consequences imply an unwanted or unanticipated result.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/collapse-is-an-outcome-not-a-problem?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=16win7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The article says,
“What we, and by the way our pet bacteria, experience in such a situation is a switch from feckless exponential growth to a much lower rate of expansion, accompanied with an ever more efficient use of the priceless master resource.”
I am afraid that the Honest Sorcerer doesn’t understand the issue. When there is not enough to go around, there need to be a lot fewer inhabitants of the petri dish.
If it was not for the US federal governments deficit spending the US economy would have shrank by ~5% this year.
But, more debt can temporarily make things look better.
Watch out below, when the debt bubble collapses!
Questionable logic. The deficit is a large part of GDP every year, so you really need to look at the change in deficit from trend and treat only that as the aberration.
“In fiscal year 2022, the US federal budget deficit was $996 billion. The just-ended fiscal year 2023 saw that figure rise to $2.02 trillion. And while those figures explain why there is no longer a scarcity of safe Treasury assets, sending long-term yields higher, they also explain the US economy’s resilience. Deficits are effectively net financial transfers from the public sector to the rest of the economy. So the US economy in 2023 has been getting a huge trillion-dollar boost in financial wherewithal because of that deficit spending. This graphic from the Congressional Budget Office gives you a sense of the difference between 2022 and 2023.
Nothing the Fed has done will overwhelm this enormous transfer. So if you didn’t see the massive 2023 federal deficit coming — and I certainly didn’t — you wouldn’t have predicted the resiliency of the US consumer. “?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-25/the-2006-soft-landing-is-the-parallel-investors-must-fear?cmpid=BBD102523_everythingrisk&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=231025&utm_campaign=everythingrisk&leadSource=uverify%20wall#xj4y7vzkg
Who receives these fiscal transfers?
Hi Gail, thank for a new post! I’ve been hankering for your voice.🤗
Hello Gail, great post. My display has the diesel graph repeated at the very top of the display. It’s only a partial display. Thanks again for a great post. Clay
I will get rid of it now. WordPress has an author pick out a featured image to show when the post is shared with sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. I have to get rid of it later, so it won’t show up for commenters.
Solving these problems is a physics/chemistry/economics problem.
Intermittent solar works OK for driving the reaction between steam and coal to make syngas. It makes economic sense even for solar PV, 3 MWh of solar PV will make 16 MWh of syngas and that makes diesel for around $20/bbl. Direct heating with sunlight might work even better to heat coal dust in steam, but the physical layout is not yet obvious. (The sunlight would go through a sapphire window and be absorbed by coal dust in steam.)
We still have to do direct air capture of CO2 if we are going to use hydrocarbons for portable energy sources. That’s a project on a huge scale and hard to finance, but not impossible.
We need to pull about 70 cubic km of CO2 out of the air. About 10% of the US area has a deep layer of salt water which would accept the CO2. Injecting that much CO2 would raise the surface about 7/10th of a meter, which might be acceptable.
I don’t know if any of this will be done. However, millions of people dying of heat every year might provide the political motivation.
Suck it out of the air, eh? Let’s check out more of the Carbon Act 2023. Look at code 336 (currently adopted as 808 by half of states) and witness the subsidization. EQIP will pay $160/cuyd and up to 4 cuyd per acre to a farmer to get biochar into the fields. Nationally distributed Wakefield brand is the lowest bulk price in the midwest at $187.50/cuyd.
Benefits of amending field with biochar are decreased fertilizer use, increased soil water retention & soil microbiology & sequestration (preventing that bit of greenhouse gas to ever even form by pyrolizing and burying biomass).
Imagine Willy Loman selling Carbon Credits. Second prize is a toaster.
Biochar is a good idea in any case.
I have been scoping out direct air capture. The biggest problem there is handling cubic km of air.
Pingback: Today’s energy bottleneck may bring down major governments – Olduvai.ca
Excellent post, Gail. I’ve long believed that it will be Tainter’s diminishing returns on our investments in complexity that contributes to our decline/fall/collapse. Your post seems to confirm that further for me. How our ruling elite play this as it unfolds will be most ‘interesting’ (and likely terrifying) to observe/experience, and I also believe there is no ‘happy ending’ for us…
no ‘happy ending’
I can think of several. They require technology we don’t have yet but it is in sight. AI alone is a game changer.
keith
i’ve read up on some of your past academic work, so i respect your intelligent approach to stuff, in your particular field.
that said, Can you explain something in simple terms, that a simpleton of my level can understand?
what exactly, can “AI” do?
We are constantly told the “AI” is the future, that it will ”save humanikind”—or whatever.
But ”how” exactly?
WE live in a ”surplus energy” environment—that is what “modern civilsation “is”
we do not, and cannot, live in an “Artifificial intelligence” environment. (or economy)—sorry, it just cannot function.
i might be a farmer, with access to literally unlimited amounts of ”artificial intelligence”—but that ”intelligence” will not plant a single seed, harvest it, process it, or turn it into loaf of bread that someone can eat. Explain otherwise to me?
in other words AI can do nothing of itself. It needs machines. And machines are entirely dependent on the forces of exploding chemical compounds. (no meaningful exceptions)
Tell me another way–please? What are these things we do not have yet?—Give me some idea?
Might be as well to bear in mind that Da Vinci had all the intelligence. far more than most people.
So why didnt he do all the stuff we do?
Simple—he didnt have an engine.
Keith—this is a serious question—what can AI actually”do” if it lacks an engine?
and bear in mind that money is just a token of energy exchange. Without energy, you cannot ”finance” anything
“The solution” to a predicament (as opposed to an actual problem) is a non sequitur.
There is no escaping any of this. It is really hard for western trained, 1+1=2 mindsets.
Perhaps a viewpoint from a high plains frontier religious perspective will illuminate things for him.
Why would “God” who created such incredible beauty and complexity as the living planet, also design a world where there is so much suffering for the higher order conscious beings who live within it?
Simple really……..it was not designed for us……..
and there is no way out…..and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Why would “God” who created such incredible beauty and complexity as the living planet, also design a world where there is so much suffering for the higher order conscious beings who live within it?
Cro, God, or the fabric of the universe seems to be correct only 20% of the time. Something is better than nothing and perfection is the enemy of good enough.
Dennis L.
lol dennis
look what moses did for isreal–because god told him to
another fine mess he got them into
the paving over of the planet… is about to stop 🙂
“i might be a farmer, with access to literally unlimited amounts of ”artificial intelligence”—but that ”intelligence” will not plant a single seed, harvest it, process it, or turn it into loaf of bread that someone can eat. Explain otherwise to me?”
A form of facial recognition is beginning to be used to identify weeds and either spray the individual weed(JD), or zap it with lasers. Saves diesel.
Dennis L.
dennis
youve made this weed recognition nonsense before
i checked it out
the field traversing machine weighs about 7 tons, and has a large diesel engine–anyone can look it up.
as i said–AI is useless without machines, machines require energy input.
Norm,
Inputs are very expensive. Latest JD “remembers” where each seed is placed, when fertilization time comes the seed is fertilized, nothing else.
Last efficiencies being drained, maintenance costs of equipment are huge.
Dennis L.
“what exactly, can “AI” do?’
It’s a little early for plants designed with the help of AI to be in the construction phase, but that should happen within a year or two.
I have been using it to scope out a project to take 100 ppm of CO2 out of the air and another one I have talked about here of using intermittent solar and coal to make cheap diesel fuel.
keith
in order to use coal to make deisel fuel—you have to get the coal out if the ground
that requires machines and energy input
AI might suggest a way to do that, but AI cannot actually ”do” anything.–no matter how much AI you use.
i can read an intelligently written book, that ”tells” me how to become a best selling author.
i will never be one, because i cannot actually ‘do’ that, no matter how hard i try—or how much AI I have at my disposal
“in order to use coal to make deisel fuel—you have to get the coal out if the ground”
Absolutely.
“that requires machines and energy input”
Correct. But put numbers on it. A ton of coal makes over 4 bbs of diesel. That’s at least 20 times what it takes to mine and ship the coal.
AI won’t do this, but it will help design and cost out what it will take.
What’s kind of amusing is how much of the energy industry would be involved. Coal mining of course, railroads, pipelines for the gas, oil to make the synthetic diesel, vast construction projects.
Still working the numbers, but it looks like this may be a method to process coal with solar, make diesel and capture enough CO2 to have a net negative on global warming.
It captures intermittent renewables and makes season storeable and transportable energy. The gain from solar is between 5 (submerged arc) and 20 (for direct solar thermal–if that can be made to work)
I don’t know if this *will* be done, of course, but the physics, chemistry, engineering and economics makes it look like it *could* be done.
It will take thousands of engineers assisted by AI to see if it makes sense.
Some things seem to magically come along at just the right time; part of the fabric of the universe?
Dennis L.
That may be the way it works. Some high functioning autistic people may have just the skills needed today, for example. My son with autism can “read” computer code in a way that most other people cannot.
I seem to recall Aladdin having a lamp dennis
Maybe we should all give it a rub?
Sympathetic magic may in fact be a thing.
The plains tribes engaged in this phenomena as a method for drawing in bison herds. Comanche where known to engage in non stop ritual buffalo dancing for however long it took for the herds to enter their territory. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months……shamans starved and much peyote and praying took place.
When the herds were decimated and and almost entirely removed finally from the Northern Plains the Lakota, the Plains Cree, the Blackfoot, the Cheyenne, The Crow, The Mandan, The Arikaree, etc etc etc tried in desperation to dance the herds back from “the other side”………it appeared fruitless…….and the hunting horse culture it supported vanished.
But the bison herds are growing again and back to nearly a half million. There appears much evidence that industrial field agriculture and the cities its supports may collapse virtually in an instant.
Many old writings clearly state that cataclysm removes the cities and the farmers but leaves the shepherds of the wastelands.
Could it be that “God” was listening? Maybe gods timeline is different than modern industrial humanity can grasp?
there is a global timeline which runs at a differente rate to that of humankind
god has nothing to do with it
If modern industrial humanity can’t grasp it, then you can’t really say anything about it at all.
Hahahaha… now now keith … drink your cocoa and go to sleep
Somehow, the world economy has found its way around bottlenecks before, so there would seem to be some possibility that this will happen. There may be a significant “down” period before this happens. It seems unlikely to me that current green energy substitutes will be the solution, however.
The article was getting terribly long already, so I didn’t have space to write about how the ruling elite affect this.
Thanks for the article and all your time.
Waiting here for Starship to launch, best, last hope.
Dennis L.
Thanks for your new article. We are in a dangerous time, your article confirms our fears.
” ruling elite”
I could be wrong about this, but I don’t believe the “ruling elite” are any better organized than the rest of us.
At least I see no sign of it.
There seem to be a number of academic papers supporting the “ruling elite” issue.
This is a response I made to Fast Eddy when he asked about the book “End Times” by Peter Turchin.
I own the book and I have read parts of it. He talks quite a bit about his model and about history. He says that when there is too wide a disparity between the elite and the common citizens, societal breakdown is very likely.
One thing you might find interesting is when he talks about “America as a Plutocracy, pages 124-125.” He says he uses this term as a shorthand for a state dominated by its economic elites. (The literal rule plutocracy is “rule of wealth.”)
In his view, at the top of the pyramid power in America is the corporate community: the owners and managers of large income-producing assets, such as corporations, banks, and law law firms. Several corporate sectors are so influential and cohesive in their influence on public policy that, over the years, they have acquired such names as the military-industrial complex, the FIRE sector, the energy sector, Silicon Valley, Big Food, Big Pharma, the medical-industrial complex, and the educational-industrial complex.
These groups extend their influence partly by lobbying and partly by running for political office. He also talks about the revolving door of regulators moving fro industry to the corporate community and back. The corporate community also controls the ownership of the mass media corporations and a policy -planning network of private foundations, think tanks, and policy-discussion groups.
With respect to the military, he notes that they are indoctrinated into a culture of obedience to their commanding political leaders. At the highest levels, generals and admirals look forward to occupying well-compensated post-retirement positions on the boards of the companies that live off government contracts.
Conspiracy Versus Science (pages 126-129)
Turchin says that while there are some conspiracies, economic elites are organized far differently than military elites. They have a common interest in making money, but that is about all. There is no center of power. They work together on boards, so they become aware of what each other wants.
Affluence and Influence (page 129-131)
Turchin quotes a study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12. no. 3 (2014): 564-581, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592714001595. (Free online!)
This study looked at the relative influence of three different groups on proposed policy changes between 1981 and 2002: (a) The poor (the lowest decile of the income distribution, (b) the typical (the median of the income distribution), and (c) the affluent (the top 10 percent). In the analysis, the influence of various interest groups was also considered.
What was astounding was that the views of the poor and even of the typical person had no impact on policy changes. The main difference was the views of the affluent. He says, “Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
_____
I can provide additional information, but I will do it in another comment.
Unapprove | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | History | Spam | Trash
Stefeun back in 2015 provided this additional information:
Democracy is NOT what we’re told it is.
The rulers are Big Corp, and they certainly don’t defend the weak.
We already knew that, but here’s a “scientific” confirmation.
Some months ago a study was published, that showed that the US Congress “litterally doesn’t care what you think”.
A short presentation:
“Have you ever felt like the government doesn’t really care what you think?
Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?
Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.
This video gives a quick rundown of their findings — it all boils down to one simple graph:”
The 6 min video (15 more links if you open it in Youtube):
http://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig
The rest of the presentation, with the key-charts:
https://represent.us/action/theproblem-4/
Democracy does not exist
“This is complete misinformation. Vox’s Dylan Matthews explained why in a 2016 article, and I have little add to his masterful and succinct debunking, so I’ll just quote him here.
Since its initial release, the Gilens/Page paper’s findings have been targeted in three separate debunkings. Cornell professor Peter Enns, recent Princeton PhD graduate Omar Bashir, and a team of three researchers — UT Austin grad student J. Alexander Branham, University of Michigan professor Stuart Soroka, and UT professor Christopher Wlezien — have all taken a look at Gilens and Page’s underlying data and found that their analysis doesn’t hold up…
[T]he researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594…That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.
That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small…
Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant…
The researchers found the rich’s win rate for economic issues where there’s disagreement is 57.1 percent, compared with 51.1 percent for social issues. There’s a difference, but not a robust one.
Bashir’s paper prods at the Gilens data even more and finds a number of holes. Bashir concludes that strong support from the middle class is about as good a predictor of a policy being adopted as strong support from the rich. “In the original data set, change is enacted 47 percent of the time that median-income Americans favor it at a rate of 80 percent or more,” Bashir writes. “Yet change is enacted 52 percent of the time that elites favor it at that rate.”…
Bashir also notes that the Gilens and Page model explains very little. Its R-squared value is a measly 0.074. That is, 7.4 percent of variation in policy outcomes is determined by the measured views of the rich, the poor, and interest groups put together. So even if the rich control the bulk of that (and Bashir argues they do not), the absolute amount of sway over policy that represents is quite limited indeed.
There are many more problems with the paper, so you can go read Matthews’ entire article, and the three critique papers. But the statistics quoted in the excerpt above are already utterly damning for the Gilens/Page result. The whole model has almost no explanatory power at all — an R-squared of 0.074, for a model with that many variables, is nothing. And the fact that Gilens & Page’s data shows that policy outcomes tend to agree with the middle class as much as they agree with the rich completely destroys the claim in the tweet above — i.e. that “elected officials make policy to benefit the richest ten percent of the country to the exclusion of the needs of everyone else.”
In other words, if America is an oligarchy, it has not been demonstrated by Gilens & Page (2014), and all the people claiming that this paper is proof that America is an oligarchy are engaging in pseudoscientific mythmaking. Maybe in the future some research will show that super-rich people or big corporations really do pull the strings of American politics. And it’s sensible to worry about the influence of money in politics. But the exaggerated claims regularly made by the Left, based on a misinterpretation of this one very shaky paper, are a distraction from the real threats facing American democracy.”?
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-the-us-is-still-a-flawed-democracy?s=r
Federal Minimum Wage in the U.S. is currently $7.25 an hour.
That is “how much they care about us”.
I will take a look at postkey’s debunking. Even if the findings are somewhat overstated, it make not make much difference.
Whenever a controversial finding is made, such as the 1972 Limits to Growth study, there are debunkings and objections of all types. At the same time, very fanciful articles about how wind and solar can save us, so there is no problem ahead. These too get rebuttals. But the “Happily Ever After” versions invariably get more favorable press.
I wish that there were more studies of this type to show what is happening. Usually, scientific findings are supported by far more than one study. Of course, the outcome of this study would be very unpopular with the powers that be. Trying to get funding for any kind of similar study would likely be very difficult.
This is another link provided by Stefeun. (Stefeun died several years ago.) It is an article about the study.
… or the Gilens & Page study:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy
“academic papers”
Not all that impressed. There are papers on just about everything and some are just BS. I have a hard time defining who the “ruling elite” are. For example, is Musk one of them? If you say no, then what puts you in the group? If you say yes, it’s hard to imagine him cooperating with others.
“too wide a disparity between the elite and the common citizens, societal breakdown is very likely.”
The classic example is “let them eat cake.” Man did that cause a breakdown.
Of course the level above raw biology is the concept of property. This grew out of territoriality
“the military, he notes that they are indoctrinated into a culture of obedience to their commanding political leaders”
That’s probably better than the alternative of the military just taking over.
You mostly make good points. However, all of the underlying technology is rapidly changing. To mention just one, how will big pharma cope with a home machine that can make any molecule you want? How will the whole energy sector deal with a tree that makes gasoline? If you think things are weird now, just wait a few years.
The only part of the ruling elite that is well organized is the military, according to Turchin (and I agree). With Covid vaccines, it was the US military that led the way. The military was deeply into research on bioweapons and possible vaccines. The military in quite a few other countries were also involved.
The research was paid for by the US Department of Defense, IIRC. Ultimately, the cost was approved by the US Congress. Quite of bit of research was of joint interest with the medical community. In theory, getting drugs past the blood brain barrier might be helpful in medical situations, for example.
My observation has been that the military of all countries have been the most interested in resource shortages. All academic fields stay a very long way away from the issue.
there is no ruling elite, in the sense of global control
i keep saying that, but people somehow want to believe there is
Of course there is!. It’s our Norman overlords.
When they come into view, I generally doff my cap or do something poncey with my forelock in their general direction.
well tim
as long as you have a forelock—i think you should keep tugging it, and be grateful for the mud your betters splash on you as they pass by.
Of course not. The fact that there is not a single country in the world that has not ceded the right and power to issue money to private entities is just one of those coincidences. Or maybe it’s just dissipative structures doing their thing, as Gail prefers to put it.
issuing money is a means by which energy is exchanged
the true wealth of any nation will always, in the long term, depend on the surplus energy produced with its own borders.
Nations mask this in the short term by begging, borrowing or stealing from elsewhere, and in so doing call themselves ”prosperous”.
such ”prosperity” is always consumed, with the certainty that it will last forever.
Anyone doubting that should consult world history since 1900.—A dozen empires created by looting weaker lands, all have vanished. None believed it would happen. It did.
Only the American empire remains.
That too is now on the edge of collapse. MAGA insists it will last forever—it won’t.
Turns out Gail is right and Norm and I are wrong.
Got an email this morning telling me I have been added to the “ruling elite.”
It mentioned that there was nothing the “ruling elite” can do, but anything bad that happens is our responsibility.
(Joke)