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The world economy is an amazingly complex, physics-based, self-organizing system. The three major elements are extracted resources including energy resources, human population, and demand coming through the financial system.
All three of these elements tend to increase over time, but both population and extracted resources tend to hit limits because the world is finite. Financial demand is emphasized by politicians because it seems to increase without limit. The extraction limit is not obvious: It is the amount that consumers can afford to pay for resources and the products they create. This limit cuts off resource extraction at amounts that are far below the amounts that geologists calculate are available for extraction.
In this post, I will offer some insights into how the world economy actually operates.
[1] There is a close relationship between world energy consumption and economic growth.
The fitted years are 1965 to 2023. The R2 =.98 tells us that there is a close relationship between energy consumption and GDP.
[2] There is a physics reason why energy consumption and economic growth are related. The economy requires energy for a similar reason to the reason why humans require food.
Physics tells us that every action, even the movement of molecules, requires energy dissipation. Within the economy, this energy can be human energy, energy from the sun, or energy from sources such as burned biomass or fossil fuels.
In physics terms, the world economy and many structures within the world economy are dissipative structures. These structures are self-organizing, and they often grow over time. Examples are plants and animals, hurricanes, and businesses.
Dissipative structures require energy of the right kinds for their continued “life” and for growth. Animals require food for their continued life and growth. Hurricanes get their energy from warm sea water. The fact that the economy is a dissipative structure has been known since 1996 and is written about today.
[3] Starting long ago, humans became adapted to eating some cooked food. This change led to humans being able to outcompete all other animals. Eventually, this change led to populations outgrowing available resources and collapsing.
According to Discover Magazine, pre-humans first began to build fires to cook food at least 800,000 years ago. The consumption of cooked food allowed early humans to have bigger brains, smaller teeth and jaws, and more time for activities other than chewing, such as making crafts.
Humans are now adapted to having some cooked food in their diets to get adequate nutrition. (A few people today try to consume a raw food diet, but they often use a food processor or juicer to break down cell walls.) As a result of the adaptation to eating some cooked food, two major changes took place:
(a) Humans were able to achieve dominance over other plants and animals. They could use fire directly to scare away other animals, and they could use fire to help make better tools for hunting and agriculture.
(b) Because of this dominance, the population of humans has tended to grow until some kind of limiting condition is hit. The resulting pattern is often called overshoot and collapse.
History shows a repeated pattern of overshoot and collapse. A population would grow until the carrying capacity of the local area was reached. Food surpluses would become lower and lower, so less food could be saved up for fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. Eventually, civilizations would succumb to one or another problem: disease, attack by a neighboring group, climate fluctuations, or governments overthrown by unhappy citizens.
We tell ourselves that overshoot and collapse cannot happen now, but human population is high relative to fossil fuel resources, and intermittent wind and solar are not working out well as substitutes.
[4] The financial system provides growing demand through debt and many other financial promises. An important aspect of this financial demand is its time-shifting ability.
Figure 3 shows my view of how the economy works. Debt is indeed important because it helps pull the economy forward. For example, it helps an entrepreneur afford to build a factory and hire workers. As long as the investment pays back well enough to repay the debt with interest, the system seems to work. GDP tends to grow. (Figure 3 also shows five other parts of the system, but I am leaving these to the reader to review.)
Debt is not unique in pulling the economy forward. Shares of stock issued with the promise of dividends act similarly to debt because they allow investment before a new product is made. Pension plans, even if not funded, stimulate the economy because citizens decide that they don’t need to save for the future (or have children), if they can depend on the government pension plan to take care of them. Even inflation in the price of a home or shares of stock can have the effect of adding to demand. For example, a person owning shares of stock can sell some appreciated shares of stock and use the proceeds to build a new factory.
It is the time-shifting aspect of debt and related promises that is important. With the help of debt and its equivalents, people can spend today to build a road or factory that will provide a long-lasting benefit. The hope is that the total return will be high enough that the debt can be repaid with interest, or that dividends can be paid on the shares of stock.
If the economy is growing quickly, interest rates can be quite high without slowing the economy. If energy costs are very high, or if all industries are stagnant, it may be difficult to get any payback at all from a debt-related investment. Instead, interest rates may need to be very low, or debt defaults become likely. Economic growth is likely to be low, or even negative.
In one their analyses of borrowing by governments over eight centuries, Reinhart and Rogoff unexpectedly discovered the phenomenon of low defaults among rapidly growing countries. They reported, “It is notable that the non-defaulters, by and large, are all hugely successful growth stories.”
[5] Models become very important in today’s economy. They often are misleading, even if they are supposedly scientific.
The easiest models to build are ones that assume the future will be very similar to the past, or that the trend from the past will continue. These models tend to be popular with citizens because they suggest that good times will continue indefinitely. Such outcomes are what everyone would like to see, so these models tend to be accepted as “scientifically valid.”
In a finite world, many kinds of patterns are constantly changing. Depletion of resources and rising population are particular stressors. Figure 4 shows the base scenario of a 1972 computer model of resource depletion, population growth, and pollution growth.
The model used was an engineering-type analysis of the physical quantities involved. This approach did not show growth continuing indefinitely. Instead, it showed a major downturn about now.
I have looked at the model myself, and I have talked with Dennis Meadows, who oversaw the analysis. The model looks at resources used in each six-month calendar period. The share of these resources needed for getting these resources out and transformed into usable work cannot be too high, or the economy tends to collapse. (Nature doesn’t use accrual accounting!)
In such a calculation, quick payback of an energy investment becomes very important. Also, the amount of supplementary equipment, such as electricity transmission lines and batteries required, becomes important. I would expect that wind, solar, nuclear, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) would do relatively poorly in such a calculation. Oil, coal, and burned biomass would do much better because their energy payback is immediate–when they are burned. Furthermore, oil, coal and biomass require relatively little specialized equipment for transportation and storage.
[6] Narratives are created to accompany the questionable models that have been developed.
One popular narrative is that Financial Demand is all that really matters. Politicians have significant control over the Financial Demand shown in Figure 1. They can see that if they can create more debt, they can perhaps get some of the money that the debt makes available down to ordinary citizens. With more money, citizens can perhaps buy more goods and services from the world economy.
Historically, raising financial demand has worked well because the extraction of fossil fuels and many other resources were well within physical extraction limits. Higher demand would lead to higher prices, which in turn would lead to more extraction. But as we get closer to the physical extraction limits, this approach works less well. The problem is that at some point, finished goods (such as automobiles and groceries) become too expensive for consumers if prices rise high enough to satisfy producers.
Because we are now reaching extraction limits, the added debt approach works much less well, as the short tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister of the UK in 2022 shows. The problem for countries other than the US is that with added debt, their currencies tend to drop relative to the US dollar. Thus, while perhaps their citizens can individually buy more, the cost of imported goods and services, especially energy, tends to rise. Overall inflation tends to be higher. This causes citizens to become very unhappy.
The US is in a unique position because it is currently the holder of the “reserve currency.” Its currency can’t drop relative to the US dollar. However, since 2020, the US has added huge amounts of debt, as have other countries around the world. Asset prices have also risen because of temporarily low interest rates. Newly made goods and services don’t increase in proportion to the rapidly growing debt and other financial stimulus. What tends to happen instead is inflation, as we have recently witnessed.
[7] One popular narrative is that if enough demand can be added to the economy through financial manipulations, energy prices will rise sufficiently to allow the needed amount of energy to be extracted.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. Affordability is important to the consumer, so oil prices can’t rise too high. At the same time, prices cannot fall too low, for too long, or producers will stop extracting oil. Instead, oil prices tend to spike and then fall back. They are to some extent not very acceptable to either buyer or seller. Whether the buyers or sellers are more disadvantaged varies over time. A similar pattern holds for other resources, as well.
[8] A third narrative is that climate change caused by excess CO2 is the world’s worst problem, and that the world can voluntarily move away from fossil fuels and fix this problem.
Unfortunately, the world economy can no more move away from fossil fuels than humans can move away from eating food. In fact, moving away from fossil fuels would likely lead to starvation for a large share of the world’s population. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote about his concern that population was growing too fast relative to food supply. The timing was shortly before fossil fuels began being used very widely. World population at that time as only about 1 billion. World population today is over 8 billion.
In part, the climate change narrative seems to be an excuse to move manufacturing from Advanced Economies to economies that make extensive use of coal, as it tends to be a cheap fuel. The latter economies also tend to have lower wage and benefit levels, so there is a definite cost advantage. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The result is easy to see in Figure 8 below. The US now exports coal to India and China, among other countries.
As a person might expect, world CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use have soared.
[9] The truth is that there aren’t enough resources to go around to support a growing world population. We are reaching a turning point where the total amount of goods and services that the world economy can produce will soon turn down. (This is not unlike the situation modeled in Figure 4, above.)
While the narrative we hear endlessly is “We are moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change,” I believe the real issue is that fossil fuels are leaving the world because we are hitting extraction limits. No one wants to hear such an awful story, however. The climate change narrative is a “sour grapes” version of the story that is more palatable to listeners.
Figure 8 below shows that the year 2020 should have been a wake-up call that the world needs to cut back on diesel and jet fuels. Diesel fuel is heavily used by agricultural machinery, large trucks, trains and boats. Of course, jet fuel powers jets. With rising world population and a growing economy, it would be expected that their consumption would continue to grow. Diesel and jet fuel are both “middle distillates,” which are most abundantly supplied by heavy oils such as Urals oil from Russia and oil from the Oil Sands in Canada .
Between 1990 and 2018, consumption of diesel and jet fuels increased by an average of 1.7% per year. Between 2018 and 2023, there has been no increase at all–in fact, world consumption for 2023 is slightly lower than in 2018. If the 1.7% per year growth pattern had continued, consumption of this combination of fuels would have grown by 8.8% during the five-year period from 2018 and 2023.
In a sense, there is a shortfall of approximately 8.8% of the diesel and jet fuel combination. Some airline schedules (especially in Asia) have been cut back. Farmers in Europe are protesting because the selling prices for the crops they grow are not high enough to cover today’s diesel and fertilizer costs plus other costs of production. Diesel is a problem fuel and fertilizer is very energy dependent. If the price of groceries rises high enough to cover the costs of diesel and fertilizer for farmers, grocery costs become unaffordable to many citizens.
[10] Added complexity looks like it would be a solution to inadequate energy and other resource supplies. Instead, added complexity leads to wage and wealth disparities and frequent system breakdowns.
Complexity can take many forms, including greater specialization; more education for some of the workers; larger, more hierarchical businesses; greater globalization; and ever more complex devices. Such devices can often use energy products more sparingly. Because of these potential energy savings, many people assume that such devices can allow the energy supply that is available to be stretched to cover all the economy’s needs.
In practice, it doesn’t work this way. Instead, added complexity often adds to energy demand instead of reducing it. For example, moving significant manufacturing to China starting in late 2001 was a type of added complexity. This change added to world coal demand and increased CO2 emission because the goods produced in China and shipped elsewhere were cheaper and therefore more affordable than goods made in the US or Europe.
Another issue with complexity is the susceptibility to breakdowns it produces. Just this past week, there was an example of this with the update of CrowdStrike computer software that took down computer networks around the world. Another example is the problem Kia is having with engines shutting down unexpectedly. Nature uses complexity, but it also incorporates redundancy so that unexpected breakdowns are not a frequent result.
A third problem with complexity is that it leads to supply chains for practically everything manufactured in the US or Europe needing to go through China. This makes the US and Europe dependent upon suppliers in China. Even military goods have supply chains running through countries that we are at odds with, including China. This means that China can, in many ways, “hold the US hostage,” by refusing to sell the US rare earth minerals, or by refusing to provide parts of supply chains needed for military armaments.
Perhaps the most important problem of all with added complexity is the wage and wealth disparities that it leads to. With added complexity, there is more specialization. A few workers with considerable training and advanced degrees get high paying jobs. The wages for these workers, plus the wages for managers, leave little funding left over for less trained workers. Also, competition with workers in low wage countries tends to hold down wages for less-skilled workers.
Besides the wage disparities, some people, mostly those who are already high-wage earners, become owners of these companies. If stock prices rise, this increases the wealth disparities between the rank-and-file workers and those at the top of the hierarchy. The higher-wage people also tend to purchase homes, and the price-appreciation on their homes adds to their wealth.
Physicist Francois Roddier, in his book The Thermodynamics of Evolution, explains that this growing wage and wealth disparities are to be expected when energy supplies are short, and added complexity is attempted as a substitute. Already wealthy people tend to get a disproportionate share of the goods and services produced by the economy, while poor people increasingly get squeezed out because of the physics of the situation.
[11] Ultimately, not enough goods and services to go around leads to conflicts of many types. These include conflict within political parties, within countries, and among countries.
I believe this issue is behind the conflict we are experiencing today. I will leave this issue for another post.
[12] Slowing growth is likely to lead to bankruptcies and financial collapse.
This is another issue that I will leave for another post.
[13] Conclusion
I hope these thoughts are somewhat helpful. I have only touched on a few aspects of how the economy really works. Perhaps I can offer more ideas on this subject in the future.
It is all ultimately about finite resources….
Battle for Donbass coming to an end
“Well the thing that supporters of the war in the west never address, they’ve never addressed it at any point during the war, is the fact that resources are finite.
“There isn’t an indefinite number of patriot missile interceptors or Abrams tanks or Bradley infantry fighting vehicles or artillery shells or any of the things that Ukraine would need in order to win the war.
“Ukraine does not have an infinite reserve of manpower that it can use to fight.
“So this is what this is all about ultimately: it’s about resources. There aren’t the resources to beat the Russians, it’s as simple as this.
“And, well, obviously you have to address the lessons of that, you’ve got to work to try to get your defense plants and industrial base sorted.”
[I am not sure who I ‘want’ to win the presidential election. The world is a complex place, it is very difficult for anyone to control or predict outcomes, let alone us, and I am not entirely sure that I ‘want’ any outcomes anyway. It is all just so entertaining to watch everyone at it, humans doing what they do, and the world doing what it does. USA has its own issues, and where all of this will leave Europe and NATO?]
Alex and Alexander give their analysis of the situation. The Ukrainian army is doing much worse than before. Russia will be advancing more.
I was looking at an anthology about pandeism (Pandeism: An Anthology – Knujon Mapson) . I found an interesting comment by a reader:
The thinking behind pandeism is like this: We can see intelligent design in the Universe and on Earth, but there is no evidence of a “designer”. There is no consistent and unmistakable communication from a Divine Being who might have designed the Universe. Pandeism has an answer which to me seems rather obvious. The Designer became the Universe, and hence ceased to be a fully conscious being with the ability to communicate. It is likely that every conscious being currently existing is a fragment of the original designer.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
if i take a bucket of loose dry sand, and pour it slowly and steadily onto the ground, the result will be a perfectly formed cone
at which someone might say
oo look, a perfectly designed cone of sand
when it is nothing of the kind
I might have guessed that YOU would reply, and in that vein.
OK, take another example. Look at Darwinism – biological and evolutionary changes, happening bit by bit in response to the environment. I have a lot of respect for Darwin.
Then look at metamorphosis. Look at the caterpillar, which turns into a pupa. I opened a pupa when I was nine. It was full of biological goo. Had I left it, it would have turned into a butterfly. Now just how did the butterfly evolve, bit by bit? Just exactly how did its life cycle evolve? Darwinism doesn’t begin to explain it.
But Norman is incurious and has a closed mind, so he never considers such questions.
Look up DNA and how it transcribes.
you seem determined to be affronted zemi
easiest way to an early grave, if i may say so. (free advice there)
its precisely because i am curious that i can fill a hall with fellow curiousers.
Gives one a kick, I must confess.
now why dyou think that is.?
Elixir of youth maybe.
what i never do however, is try to prove the unprovable with the unproven.
for weeks after you were thought of, you too were little more than gloop—as was i.
how we became what we are is a biologal function, nothing more.
why—is anybodys guess.
what i dont do is add divine intervention to that unknown equation.
curious, yes—but not about divinity, gods or unnatural beings, other than in the way they make rational men do irrational things in their holy name of righteousness.
And get angry when their certainties are questioned.
The ultimate sign of weakness–whatever activity you are engaged in.
You can answer that question yourself I think.
because such things cannot be proven, i do not fill my numerous knowledge gaps with divine interventions—and offer them as ”truths”. Or get annoyed when my truth is spurned.
one day the actual truth might be presented—in what way we cannot know..
btw, nothing annoys me in this context–but keep trying.
You sound like my Jwitness uncle—misguided but harmless pain in the proverbial.
I was affronted by your facile example.
Metamorphosis presupposes intelligent design and intelligences that are higher than ours. Some may wish to call them “God” or “gods”, but religion has never appealed to me. However, you are making assumptions about “unnatural beings”. It may be that higher intelligences exist that some would call gods, though I don’t like that terminology, and no doubt they would not be as simplistic as the religious imagine them. Your dislike of the idea cannot rule them out. More than once in my life I have been in ontological shock because I have experienced or encountered things that shouldn’t have existed.
But instead of acknowledging that there may be things beyond our ken, you see fit to insult me with reference to body parts and by comparing me to your Jwitness uncle. I have nothing in common with Jwitnesses. I cannot however rule out higher intelligences, nor can I assert that they do exist – though the fact of metamorphosis suggests to me that they may well do. Or did metamorphosis just design itself and come into being? That in itself would be miraculous. Your glib certitudes and facile preaching do nothing for me.
There are probably lots of bacteria called Norman living inside Norman’s body. Being Normans, they would of course ridicule the idea of a higher being and would refer to the concept as a belief in unnatural beings, all while living inside one! Though of course we OFWers would not normally think of Mr. Pagett as a higher being.
reading back—i didn’t mention body parts.
but i do take pleasure in writing something where meaning is assimilated indirectly
as intended.
You’re wrong there, Norman.
I can’t be bothered to explain why in detail.
But the fact that you admit that you don’t know (gaps in your knowledge) means that you can’t say for sure there is no such thing as divine intervention.
Anyway, So two Jehovah’s Witnesses walked into a bar…..
Just kidding…… They knocked on the door and waited.
You’re wrong there, Norman. As my grandad used to say.
By pouring the loose dry sand slowly and steadily onto the ground, the artist, who has a good practical grasp of the behavior of loose dry sand, produces a perfectly designed cone of sand.
It’s the same principle as taking a bucket of thick wet paint, dipping a brush into it and applying it slowly and steadily onto the canvas. The result could well be a perfectly formed Rembrandt or Gainsborough if you’re very good, or a Jackson Pollock if you are sloppy.
The artist applies their artistic skills and techniques to produce works of art. Among those artistic skills and techniques is the ability to make use of natural effects and processes including materials like sand or paint and such phenomena as friction, adhesion, and gravity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/vfdckd/yay_isaac/
Why does sand forms a cone rather than a pyramid or a cube?
One might say it is the rule of physics. But who creates this rule?
you cannot form a freestanding cube from loosely poured materials
some things just ”are”
why not ask why you walk on your feet, and not your hands.
or why tea doesnt pour from the mug back up into the teapot
daft
When she was unable to answer a “why? question from the kids, my paternal grandmother, who was married to my grandfather, used to say, “because y is a crooked letter.”
So why things just “are” this way but not the other?
Again it is the law of physics as some will say. If we keep asking the questions, it will come down to the sub particle level of quarks, muon, tau and so on.
But still the question remains of who or what gives those sub particles those properties and not the others, otherwise we would walk on our hands or the tea would come back up the pot.
Just some thing to wonder on a sunny day under the apple tree.
some things just are
without an inconvenient why
if things fell up instead of down you would not exist, and neither would i.
neither would abstract thought such as this
I wouldn’t put it in quite the same terms as Norman, because I think for every “why?” there is a “because” and for every “because” there is another “why?”
But “some things just are” is a good answer for us English-speaking humans.
Almost half a century ago, Van Morrison sang much the same thing:
“It ain’t why why why why why why why why why, it ain’t why, it just is.”
The song is also very apt for this time of year. It’s called “Summertime in England.”
though if eveyone lived in an upside down world,—how would we actually know?
Norman, Diana Ross has answered that question.
Good questions. Damn good questions. I wish Norman would come up with questions this good. But he only ever gives answers and opinions.
The reason why dry sand poured carefully from a bucket tends to form a cone rather than a pyramid or a cube is related to the properties of granular materials and the principle of angle of repose.
When dry sand is poured from a bucket, the individual grains interact with each other through friction and contact forces. As the sand grains fall, they begin to accumulate and form a pile. The shape of the pile is determined by the angle of repose of the sand.
You are doubtless gearing up now for your next question. “What is the angle of repose?”
Glad you asked.
The angle of repose is the maximum angle at which a granular material, such as sand, salt, sugar, cereal grain, powdered almond, or grated coconut, can be stacked without sliding or collapsing. For dry sand, this angle is typically around 30-35 degrees.
My own angle of repose in the bar depends on how many beers I’ve had this evening.
When the sand is poured from the bucket, the grains start to accumulate and form a conical shape, as this is the shape that allows the sand to maintain the maximum angle of repose. A cone is the most stable configuration for a pile of dry sand because of two factors:
1. The Angle of repose: The conical shape allows the sand to maintain the optimal angle of repose, where the sand grains can remain in a stable, non-sliding arrangement.
2. Load distribution: The conical shape distributes the weight of the sand evenly, with the grains at the top supported by the ones below, creating a stable structure.
In contrast, other shapes such as a pyramid or a cube would result in some of the sand grains exceeding the angle of repose, causing the pile to become unstable and collapse.
Thus the tendency of dry sand to form a cone when poured is a common observation and is a direct consequence of the angle of repose and the way granular materials interact with each other when dropped onto a roughly horizontal surface in the presence of a gravitational field.
But don’t try this while orbiting the Earth under “Zero-G” conditions or you will get a very different result.
As to the question “But who creates this rule?”, I’d say it was an emergent property of the way the physical Universe is set up, and therefore nobody in the Universe created this rule. But if we postulate the existence of a Creator of the Universe, we can credit it this Creator with the creation of all the physical rules that people have discovered up to now, and a lot more that remain unknown to us.
not sure i ever knew your grandad tim
on the other hand a 5 yr old knows instinctivly that dry sand cant make a sandcastle, you need wet sand—no art training involved.
the sandcone is a combination of gravity and friction in opposition.
I understand where you are coming from, Norman.
No art training is involved in making a sandcastle either. Just a bucket, wet sand, and a surface to dump it on.
The sand cone and the sandcastle are both the result of human action employing a bucket and natural phenomena including natural materials, gravity and friction. Use wet sand or add water to get a bucket-shaped sand castle. Use dry sand to get a perfect cone with a slope equivalent to the materials angle of repose.
You probably know this from your own grandfather, who explained why all those mountains of coal-mine tailings around your way were perfectly conical while the natural mountains were not.
mountains end up as sandcones
just a matter of time
I expect that more LNG capacity will be built than will ever be used. A lot of the capacity being built will end up bankrupt (or their suppliers will end up bankrupt.) This article is saying that the EIA needs to update its cost benefit analysis.
https://ieefa.org/resources/even-lng-pause-ends-doe-still-needs-update-costs-and-consequences-export-surge
Even as “LNG Pause” ends, DOE still needs to update costs and consequences of export surge
It points to this report (by the same organization in April) saying that there will be massive oversupply, relative to world demand, in the near term.
https://ieefa.org/resources/global-lng-outlook-2024-2028
——
IEEFA is “Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.” Its slogan is “Accelerating the transition to a diverse, sustainable and profitable energy economy” so I would not expect the organization to understand much about energy economics.
Matt Mushalik latest . NGL’s .
https://crudeoilpeak.info/peak-oil-update-2023-part-1-ngls
A big issue is that NGL’s are not worth very much. They don’t replace diesel or jet fuel. Some of the supply can replace gasoline, particularly in winter, but not in hot weather.
You do seem to ruffle the feathers of many commenters on Zerohedge…
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read from someone that doesn’t even know how to grow a carrot.”
There are a few that get it though…
“Energy is the Economy.
Without energy, you have no productivity, no excess capital, no economy!!”
Still others…
“The finite world folk have never learned or understood the law of conservation of energy.
They think when you ‘use’ something that it is gone.
Nothing was ever gone. Nature is the ULTIMATE recycler.
When you ‘use’ something, it becomes something else.
If you decide instead to let it be and not use it, it will still become something else.
Your ‘consumption’ in the big picture simply does not matter.
On the other hand, fostering the innovation and knowledge to be able to use what you have rather than weep about what you don’t have is an indispensable activity.
Either you do it, or you die.
The world will continue to change either way.”
Funny.
On an unrelated topic but information worth spreading…
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/former-pfizer-vp-michael-yeadon-explains-why-theres-no-evidence-for-the-existence-of-any-viruses/
did they publish this article on ZH and some of the free market fundamentalists got triggered? link?
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/how-does-economy-really-work
Thanks. Posted today but was already in third page!
(2 soldiers receive a bullet skimming the head)
Here you can find a couple of examples of the hit a bullet makes on the head (and the soldiers had helmets)…the shock is clear
This is in relation to the lack of shock described in the article by former US intelligence posted here:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/07/22/how-does-the-economy-really-work/#comment-463709
Example 1) https://www.cbsnews.com/video/u-s-marine-survives-snipers-bullet-to-head/
Example 2) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11975705/Russian-soldier-shot-head-snipers-bullet-survives.html
Having said that, I’m not an expert of bullets.
Another strange thing of the event was that after the hit, Trump felt sure (and his guards too), to indulge on the stage and cheer everybody with his fist high, although the perimeter had not been cleaned yet and dangers could be still present in the area (it was not clear yet how many people were shooting).
Anyway, this attack is by now in our history, as moon landing…
The narrative has changed and another chapter has been opened 🙂
We cannot do anything about, except understand.
The circumstances are certainly strange.
And the 20 year old doesn’t seem to have any particular motive for killing Trump. According to the WSJ, a fellow math book club member wrote to him at the time of the shooting, something like, “Imagine, some people think you had something to do with the shooting of Trump.” Other reports are that Crooks was checking into sites of Democratic speeches, as well as Republican.
You have to understand that Donald Trump has a very unusual head.
After he’s no longer with us, I hope it will be donated to science.
Once 70 % profit margin of the ore mines, now the declining region of Slovakia, as the ore extraction became unprofitable
https://youtu.be/APSCbvjfnyQ?si=nLGr9Hw5Jby2lrUD
Extraction costs caused the fall of the Soviet Union
https://youtu.be/4JY99s9MpH0?si=nIHyF8i4JxieG0EK
The first video nicely lays out the way extraction works favorably at first. But as the mines get more depleted, the cities that grew up around it fall into disrepair. I know that this pattern takes place everywhere in the world. It sounds like the way dissipative structures work. And the sum of dissipative structures is again a dissipative structure.
The second video discusses history, plus the narrator’s view of what happened. It is interesting, but I found myself in disagreement with some of what the narrator said. I didn’t make it to the end of the video. I felt that low world oil prices (indirectly related to very high interest rates in the US and around the world) played a role as well. The West squeezed out the Soviet Union, since it was the high-cost oil producer. The government of the Soviet Union had financed most of the industry that had been built. When economic growth faltered, the Soviet Union defaulted on its debt. (Big surprise!)
Maybe the narrator says this.
can never figure out why there is a problem with all this.
a resource is discovered
it gets dug out and sold to the limit of its viability
then its game over—move on.
we now seem to have reached the endgame worldwide on this caper
The humans at zerohedge seem to be in denial. The slow burn of decreasing energy availability and increasing population size has been incurring a slow decline in standards of living since the 1970s and yet they seem to forget the energy fluxes responsible for geological processes do not operate on human time scales. Those mines are not going to replete themselves nor the tectonic shelves going to spontaneously do work to convert depleted waste materials dumped into the ocean back into high-density high-purity ores and minerals. Are these people actually stupid and unintelligent? Even if a human spawns services, you still need resources to keep those humans alive and to move food and whatnot over long distances. Conservation of energy does not mean high availability of high density usable energy; proof of peak stupidity and denial. Innovation is ”finite”; no innovation is dependent on the population’s qualities. Humans did not practice enough eugenics, and then these people offshore the problems of ”innovation” onto others without considering that added complexity just adds energetic costs and unless a new theoretical physics field opens up that allows us to harness energy from some alternate dimension or some unknown mass, then all is for naught. Why are there so many people like this in the world?
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read from someone that doesn’t even know how to grow a carrot.
Totally ignores Hayek’s spontaenous order. Smells of Malthus/Marx.
The finite world folk have never learned or understood the law of conservation of energy.
They think when you ‘use’ something that it is gone.
Nothing was ever gone. Nature is the ULTIMATE recycler.
When you ‘use’ something, it becomes something else.
If you decide instead to let it be and not use it, it will still become something else.
Your ‘consumption’ in the big picture simply does not matter.
On the other hand, fostering the innovation and knowledge to be able to use what you have rather than weep about what you don’t have is an indispensable activity.
Either you do it, or you die.
The world will continue to change either way.
“But as we get closer to the physical extraction limits”
I’m getting tired of that nonsense. I watched a oil history documentary some years ago and the first “peak oil” scare was in the 1920’s if not sooner. The finite world clowns keeping thinking that innovation is apparently finite as well.
I am an economist. This article does not even make it to kindergarten level on explaining how the economy works.
If you want to try something simple on how things work, Frank Night drew a model on a napkin at a restaurant a century ago, input (resource) and output (products and services) markets with exchange of resources for mainly labor income spent on outputs in exchange for business revenue, now called circular flow model.
I stopped at physics.
Economics is not based in physics.
Nor is it based in any hard science.
Even the economic math is nothing but rainbow colored unicorn farts.
We seem to run into a whole lot of comments like this with all of my posts. Yet at least one of the editors at Zerohedge seems to like my posts. Zerohedge republishes a lot of them. (So does TalkMarkets, and to some extent Oil Price, which republishes some posts under different titles.)
People don’t understand enough about the system to understand how it could possibly produce “sour grapes” types of narratives, rather than the truth.
yes, the earth is the ultimate recycler—small problem is, you have to wait around for 100 m years for biomass to reform itself into an oil/coal field.
Or maybe you know another way?
you may not like it, but our ”economics” is controlled by the laws of physics.
economics means that money is merely a unit of energy exchange.
if you doubt that, next time you go to buy a loaf of bread, eat a coin instead of buying bread.
let us know how you get on.
zerohedge readers are evidence of the perils of knowing, and believing, half truths.
I really enjoyed this comment.
Reading it makes me feel so much better.
There are lots of good throw-away lines in there.
My main gripe about it is that the author stands in the shadows and thrusts out criticisms like the assassins who stabbed Julius Caesar in the bathhouse.
What I would like to see is a complete article in which they lay out their argument idea by idea as a coherent whole, rather than just presenting a string of slogans.
Not that I expect to get it. The author is probably an intellectual drive-by shooter, observing that other people are stupid or unintelligent, but unwilling or unable to order their own thoughts methodically and present them to the public for the latter’s edification.
“Economics is not based on physics?”
Well, if it isn’t, then whatever is it based on?
Last time I looked, economic activity was taking place in the physical world and was subject to physical laws and limitations, such as resource scarcity, and the laws of supply and demand, thermodynamics, mechanics, and even good-old gravity. Has the economy moved into some kind of Loonytuniverse in which the laws of physics no longer apply?
Looking at the national debts of most G7 nations, this may well be true. But even in the Loonytuniverse, that coyote is an almost infinitely innovative beast, but he always ends up on the canyon floor of with his fur burned black in the end.
Ít is the age of contradictions; think peace-keepers trapped in endless wars, climate change; hasn’t it always?, freedom of speech; but not that speech, etc etc. Blocking other peoples narratives is the main role of the legacy-lamestream media these days.
‘In the words of the Palestinian writer Edward Said: “As one critic has suggested, nations themselves are narrations. The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.”
It is much harder by the day because language has been radically reduced to slogans and words to images of images. Artificial Intelligence is further reducing all reality to illusions. We are caged in a system of contradictions, a narrative of contronyms through which we must see.
……..
It is time for us to leave as well, to abandon a way of thinking that offers us the false choice of the evil of two lessers in a corrupt system. We have been sold a counterfeit bill of goods, one forged in the devious minds of deans of deception who make Stephen’s interlocuter look like an obnoxious amateur.’
https://off-guardian.org/2024/07/21/caged-in-oligarchic-contradictions/
What I am writing about seems unbelievably hard to grasp.
As this article says:
” It involves grasping the presuppositions of a counterfeit system.”
I came from inside this system, as an actuary. I know that actuarial models assume the future will be like the past. I know that pretty much every other model makes a very similar assumption. They assume that supplies needed to make end products will never run out. Financial models are similar. A person has to come from inside of the system, and be able to look out.
People cannot believe that what their national leaders + mainstream media is telling them is false. No one can imagine that we are seeing a lot of sour grapes stories and other rationalizations.
people ignore the fact that the most important factor of any high office, is holding onto it.
“The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them.”
Disagree. The world is self organizing and that is a series of trial and errors overseen by a supreme being who is generally right, but not always, 80/20.
We live in changing times.
Some may find this of interest:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-odds-great-conflict-america-ray-dalio-pwype/
Ray Dalio, he has been right more than wrong hence he is a billionaire.
Dennis L.
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Were Harris’ parents US citizens when she was born? If not, is she a natural born citizen? Is she eligible to be president.
she became VP no problem, so it doesn’t really matter.
Her mother was a scientist
Shyamala Gopalan[a] (December 7, 1938 – February 11, 2009) was a biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,[5] whose work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast biology and oncology.[6] She was the mother of Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris and Maya Harris, a lawyer and political commentator.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyamala_Gopalan
And I bet she picks “Mark Kelly” as VP. And then he can become president in 2028 after the great reset..
Video is unavailable. More like the great hunger games.
and Norman will tell you all about how she rapidly rose up in CA politics by “sleeping around” with established CA politicians.
right Norman?
Ah, l’ amour.
you know nothing of what you speak david
that much is obvious
success can never just be due to inherent talent—can it?
Kamala has a lot of inherent talent, Norman.
She knows how to please the folks who can give her a helping hand up the ziggurat. She has a great talent for that.
But she has issues too. For instance:
Kamala Harris’ office has had a staggering 91.5 percent turnover rate since she became vice president, an investigation revealed on Monday. Of the 47 staff members hired when Harris took office in 2021, only four reportedly remained in her employment as of March 2024.
Staffers in Harris’ office have reported a toxic work environment since 2021, when The Washington Post spoke with 18 individuals in Harris’ orbit. Descriptions ranged from “uncomfortable” to “soul-destroying.”
“One of the things we’ve said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it’s her,” former Harris aide and Democrat strategist Gil Duran told the Post. Back in 2013, after just five months of working for Harris, he quit. “Who are the next talented people you’re going to bring in and burn through and then have [them] pretend they’re retiring for positive reasons.”
“It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” a former anonymous staffer told the Post. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.”
Note: that report also detailed how Kamala was the least transparent figure in government with her expenditures (e.g., she would not disclose staff salaries, while outside accounting showed millions her office had received was unaccounted for).
•She has failed to accomplish anything noteworthy as Vice President, but has simultaneously had numerous gaffes which demonstrate the poor preparedness her staffers alluded to (e.g., when visiting Korea’s demilitarized zone she gave a speech where she mixed up North and South Korea). Likewise, she had been responsible for many of Biden’s policy failures (e.g., she was the Border czar tasked with addressing the wave of illegal migration to the United States).
https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/23/92-percent-of-kamala-harris-staff-left-in-her-first-three-years-as-vp/
Tim, why not write about the fact that she won a local election while presenting herself as indian (not a bad strategy in the Bay Area), but switched to black soon after. That’s talent in this day and age. At any rate her gravitas is peerless.
Presenting herself as an Indian?
Puts her right up there with Elizabeth Warren.
What a great ticket they would make.
Indian from India, like her mother. Pocahontas is an indian from the great plains, or at least 1/16.
So?
Don’t talk to me like that, Norman. i am a lesbian and deserve r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
best not reveal too much in that respect on ofw, no matter what your orientation happens to be
not that crap again
we had all that nonsense with Obama
Obama wasn’t natural born, Norman.
No, quite the contrary.
Word on the Internet is that he was hatched out of an egg.
https://starryai.com/app/user/Afredheath/creation/1016887893
tim
as ive posted in a previous comment
do try to come up with something worth at least an eyeroll
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Art Berman is always interesting since one of the few to connect energy and economy .
https://medium.com/@alysion42/art-berman-on-our-metacrisis-801ea6b16e0f
This seems to be a write-up by Eric Lee of a recent post/talk by Art Burman. Art is quoted extensively throughout.
‘At four-and-a-half years of work per barrel, that means that society has 378 billion fossil energy slaves working for us all the time.’
We have moved quickly from slavery to indentured slavery to fossil fuel slaves to whole-nation debt slavery and will complete the circle to slavery/indentured slavery again…… including press gangs to fulfil military quota’s as per modern Ukraine.
for now, those energy slaves continue to work very well for most of us who comment here.
they won’t work so well in the 2050s, but this is the 2020s after all.
Peak oil demand is a fantasy . An update on the EV industry .
https://anasalhajjieoa.substack.com/p/while-the-writing-was-on-the-wall?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1222998&post_id=146778184&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Anyone who thinks that we in the Advanced Economies have sufficient electricity to power EVs (plus AI, too) is dreaming.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Electricity-Generation-Advanced-Economies-Other-2.png
Total electricity generation for Advanced Economies not grown since 2006-2007. Population has grown, meaning electricity per person has fallen.
Instead, the price of electricity has been rising, as wind and solar have been added. As a result, more industry has moved offshore. Other than Advanced Economies are seeing rising electricity generation/consumption.
La La land . Nothing happens .
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/07/22/financial-conditions-in-la-la-land-loosest-since-nov-2021-but-cre-gets-strangled-and-corporate-bankruptcies-highest-since-2010/
Extend and pretend are popular approaches in commercial real estate. Extend the term of the loan, and pretend the value is as high as it was in the past.
It would seem like prices of mall space should have fallen greatly. Too many empty spaces. Too many renters with low daily sales.
In my small city of around 30k people there are 65 different outlets that sell coffee taking up possibly 35 premises as coffee shops and 30 odd other locations as part of a petrol station, restaurant/bar and tourist operation.
There are already plenty of empty shopfronts here (overpriced based on an economy that no longer exists) and so without the coffee economy things would be even worse.
Interfering with the coffee trade would be 2nd in line for calamity after the oil economy.
Don’t tell the Houthis or coffee will be their next target.
I remember watching a program about the rise of the British empire saying that the British takeover of Jamaica (from the Spanish?) was pivotal in the industrial revolution. In the program they said imports of coffee, tea and sugar from Jamaica was responsible for a decline in alcohol consumption among the working classes and lead to an increase in productivity. So, the trade of things like coffee can be more important than one thinks.
Interesting!
Yes, the gin palaces of the 18th Century, as famously depicted by Hogarth.
Work was the curse of the drinking classes.
“What for example Arab Countries could think of their assets in Europe”
https://x.com/business/status/1810670001642176601
I doubt they will, but I’ll keep hoping.
Dmitry Orlov: The Precipitous Decline Of America’s Global Empire
Duh’merica’s Service Economy is huge
Duh’merica make very little products of any type.
The majority of the economy is monkeys scratching each other’s backs for incredibly high prices.
Medicine, finance, education, all over priced song and dance.
No industrial capacity
It makes virtually zero everyday essential consumer goods.
Like close to zero
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/forums/topic/debt-rattle-july-22-2024/#post-164505
Dmitry Orlov understands the situation. He has understood it for a very long time. He spoke at the very first “peak oil” conference I attended (New York City in 2006, I believe), before I started writing about the subject myself.
Latest from Mr B— The Honest Sorcerer . Pack up time . 9 min read .
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/time-of-troubles-ddaa2143907f
I liked this paragraph in the post:
Sounds a whole lot like what I am seeing. B also quotes from Tainter. This is part of the Tainter quote.
The first paragraph sounds like what we are undergoing now. I think that homesteaders and others trying to prepare for the future tend to miss out on the issues in the second paragraph.
The last part of the article I didn’t particularly care for.
” With disintegration, central direction is no longer possible. ”
The centre cannot hold . David Korowicz lecture 9 years ago .
One reason not to worry about the World Economic Forum taking over, or NATO, or even Beijing
“The centre cannot hold. David Korowicz lecture 9 years ago.”
thanks for pointing out that the centre has held for the past 9 years!
9 more will be 2033.
I bet there’s a good chance this discussion here and now will be ongoing then.
que sera sera.
I disagree with the timeframe, I believe the elders know this too as evidenced by this mere scrap of information posted on a peak oil news forum back in 2020. I now believe that the elders did not want to use this option so tried the lockdown option which thankfully failed . Now they are about to use the restructuring option or the ‘ fast eddie challenge world’. Dennis Meadows stated in one article I read that we as the world had two options one was a population of under 1 Billion with a technological civilization or the current population of 8 billion with a much reduced standard of living.
“I know someone… ministerial advisor… attends Davos and they spooked me 2 weeks ago… they said they’re going to let the banks fail… and they’re trying to work out which industries to save. I was told to get out of the stock market, get out of debt and buy property so you survive the coming currency reset. I don’t believe the currency is going to be convertible. They said we’re going back to a “more Bear Grylls” way of living… The time frame I’m working to is March – November ’21”.
there is no cabal of elders
just people trying to turn the world into a cash asset
which, if you think about it, includes about 95% of humankind
Maybe all of new arrivals/immigrants from the global ‘South’ have made a big mistake?
The pendulum seems to be swinging away from the over-financialised resource-poor West back towards the places where some resources remain intact and debt to western elites is a burden more easily defaulted on as/when the BRIC’s alternative begins to consolidate.
The Western versus Eastern Roman Empires re-heated.
I think we are always dealing with the pendulum swinging back and forth.
Also, Biden perhaps went too far in some directions, such as war in Ukraine. Trump might have a better chance of keeping the US out of war with Russia/China.
all wars are over resources
whenever or with whoever it comes, the next one will be no different.
and no one will be ”kept out of it”
it is naive in the extreme to imagine otherwise.
Maybe but he just might attack Iran. Then what? It’s probably already written up
Complexity and connectivity are efficient , but fragile . A problem at Crowdstrike and all businesses were stuffed . Imagine what it will be like when AI collapses . The centre will not hold .
https://indi.ca/ai-is-a-sign-of-collapse/
I personally cannot wait for the 100% digital “currency”.
What is the difference between than and a cc?
Dennis L.
I think that the Central Bank Digital Currency (= 100% digital currency?) is intended to be a government controlled way of dealing with not enough goods and services to go around. It may be implemented when today’s banks fail in large numbers. The Government will decide who gets what based on how well they like you = social credit score or something similar.
I hope that we don’t get to this approach. Of course, I have some money in the bank now. If I was penniless, I might prefer taking my chances on the government distribution.
” . . . hang on we’ve been using digital currency for a long time
30:20 central bank money is only around three percent of the money supply the paper money the cash
30:26 97% is digital money created by Banks and
30:31 we’ve been using this for decades so we actually have been using digital currency for a long time and it works
30:36 very well and there’s no problem with it but now central banks will come to that
30:42 they’re saying hey we need Central Bank digital currency well”?
I like your articles. Diesel and jet fuel are middle distillates, not heavy oil.
I probably should say, diesel and jet fuel are middle distillates, coming most abundantly from heavy oil. But such subtleties are beyond most readers. I have a hard time knowing how much explaining is useful to people who have no idea what middle distillates are.
With a post, it is possible to go back and change articles. I added a little more:
“Diesel and jet fuel are both “middle distillates,” which are most abundantly supplied by heavy oils such as Urals oil from Russia and oil from the Oil Sands in Canada .”
A similar description to your bike analogy is that the economic system (debt, capitalism, politics, etc) is responsible for making decisions but the available options (i.e. the constraints) are provided by physics. We humans often get caught up on the former.
Practically no one wants to think about the physical constraints on growth. Their jobs depend on a “happily ever after” narrative, even though they don’t think about this issue.
‘”We can develop large projects that will really move the needle on climate change,” said Tim Latimer, the CEO of Fervo Energy, which is partnering with Google to boost geothermal power.
Geothermal energy accounts for less than 1% of electricity in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy.
Fervo wants to change that. Latimer said the company think geothermal energy can be as much as 20% of the U.S. electricity grid.’ ?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-surging-demand-for-energy-and-rise-of-ai-is-straining-the-power-grid-in-u-s/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6j&linkId=514312370&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0N7nTrCIkeCEux82XkkzHRIQ9IO6PKsgQJKSIMVT1Ut5wkCqksQJzjOXE_aem_-3w7sL_6Gt1Scs_A9cDwYg
Geothermal is another type of electricity with a huge front-end expenditure of fossil fuels, and a hoped long-term payback period. It requires big front end debt and a very low interest rate. Geothermal energy used to generate electricity requires water and turbines that produce the kind of electricity used on the grid.
In the past, there have been two kinds of geothermal energy:
(1) Geothermal near volcanos. These seem to be sustainable, except for the problem of the volcanos erupting and ruining the infrastructure. Long transmission lines may also be required to where the electricity is actually used.
(2) Geothermal away from volcanos. The problem that I am aware of is that in the past, the output of these devices has tended to fall too quickly to cover the high cost of all of the infrastructure. The infrastructure can provide direct heat, say to building on a university, or it can be set up to provide electricity. But again, electricity generation tends to require water supply.
Electricity the US and other Advanced Economies has not be growing for years. I don’t see any way either AI or electric vehicles, in quantity, can be added to the electric grid. Getting the cost of geothermal energy down is likely to be a problem. We probably need to import much of the piping and other material from China and other poorer countries.
That is changing the heat flow from the earth’s core. Personally don’t care for that experiment.
Dennis L.
I didn’t get that point. I agree with you–this doesn’t sound like a safe experiment.
we got to where were are by digging holes in the ground
need i say more
Has the falling rate of population replacement been factored into future collapse scenarios? Here is two articles discussing this future calamity.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform
https://www.ft.com/content/318ff981-d189-4bd6-b608-a9709097eedc
It would be interesting to see the “limits to growth” models rerun with this new population contraction added in. How does this affect your modeling Gail.
Doesn’t matter since the surviving pop will continue to consume resources for a long time, especially when they grow older .
There are a couple of issues:
1. Our problem is an immediate one. It involves the people who are alive now, not particularly those who will be alive in 2050. The too-low resources per capita problem has already begun.
2. A major issue behind rising population is people living longer. Fewer babies doesn’t address this issue.
This is a chart of world population, divided between Advanced Economies and Other than Advanced Economies. People tend to underestimate how huge the population of Other than Advanced Economies is to Advanced Economies. Population growth is still advancing.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Population-by-Part-of-the-World.png
What do the forum participants think? Trump attempted assassination staged or not? It seems like we have seen this movie. Dimon at Treasury, an arch-zionist at VP, fully expect to see Pompeo and others back… of course the US is hardly the only country where these things happen. I note that the italian press is on a full court press to beatify the sainted Kamala. Sometimes I wonder why they do these things. It makes no sense, given that Euros will do what told regardless.
i seem to recall certain parties on ofw stating that the ukraine war was being staged by crisis actors
It’s a big stretch to for me see the Trump attempted assassination as staged. Yet why did his protectors not act when prompted by members of the audience that there was a gun man on a nearby roof?
But Trump lived and Biden has withdrawn. Would Biden have hung on in, if Trump had been murdered? Trump is not a war-monger, but the US military-industrial complex lives for war-mongering. And war means lots of money for them and others, of course. Remember what Eisenhower said: “Beware the military-industrial complex!”
JFK was assassinated in suspicious circumstances. He was a peacenik too. After him came LB Johnson, and his terrible policy of “carpet-bombing” Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Given this, I believe the danger for Trump will persist if he becomes POTUS again.
maybe he shot his own ear off to improve the painting skills he will (hopefully) need in retirement
“Trump
1. Assassinated Soleimani and Mohandes. 2 icons of the Resistance who defeated US #ISIS proxies in Iraq and Syria
2. Scorched earth policy in Syria. Dropped thermal balloons on essential agricultural crops and forestry
3. Introduced Caesar sanctions. Unprecedented coercive measures designed to starve Syrian people
4. Stole Syrian oil depriving Syrian people of fuel, electricity, health care, water.
5. Supports Zionist genocide
6. Increased military footprint in Syria despite claiming he would withdraw
7. Recognised Zionist occupied Golan territory as Zionist not Syrian
8. Introduced Abraham Accords to normalise relations between Gulf states and the genocidal entity. This is Greater Israel in part.
9. He may not have “started” a war but he sure as hell didn’t end any.
Assassination of Soleimani wasn’t escalated into war because of Iran’s cool heads only.
Biden and Trump are on the same path.
Different methods, same destination.
A unipolar world with US cartel controlling all resources. “?
https://x.com/VanessaBeeley/status/1812738131726135645
For a long time, we have had difficulty with all presidents following close to the same path–generally, the path the powers that be would approve of. Also, the path that can be explained in a way that will look good to the majority of voters.
Drb753,
because Italy is a minor Country of the Kingdom and it has been walking the path that the only way to become important is to repeat the ‘Dem’ propaganda in an even stronger way than the core of the Kingdom.
We are inside a full mindset of enhancing gender equality (and so a woman as President), the importance of free abortion, the importance of taking care of migrants and refugees, the importance of LGBQ+ values and so on and so forth….
…except then for looking now for bad and strong male soldiers willing to fight for the homeland, when they have destroyed the concept of homeland, being homeland all the globe….
We are in a selfdestroying spiral which is whirling around fast and nobody is able to reverse or adjust, because people have started to help whirling it, as they have been convinced that is a correct sprial and so they consider that is good helping whirling around.
Today La Stampa opens saying that kamala is ahead of donald in the polls. Followed by an article about Kamala’s mom giving her whatever qualities she is supposed to have. I really do not understand it. what is the goal of this psyop?
I think the object is to make Italian people believe that Biden course on the war in Eastern Europe (Ukraine) will go on and so don’t stop supporting the sacrifice of war on the Italian economy (which is very hard).
I work in industrial sectors and I can tell you that our industry is dying heavily, mainly for high energy costs after Ukraine war, but also for distruption of business with Russia and its friendly Countries.
Our GDP is not showing this, partially because we are in summer season and we are earning a bit from holidays business and partly because I think ISTAT doesn’t clean numbers correctly by inflation, last point is also that we are receiving money from European PNRR (we have received so far 54 mld of Euro for non sense activities) and that also goes in to GDP calculation.
But we are destroying our industry and we are slowly dying,
“Trump Reveals All…Straight From the Horses Mouth”?
I wonder if this video is AI generated, or otherwise fake. It doesn’t look or sound very real.
I think that this event was captured on a huge number of cell phones of participants. It would be hard to stage. I could not imaging the Secret Service performing so poorly as we saw from cell phone evidence. I don’t see any way that this could have been staged.
I think a more likely explanation is that this is an example of divine intervention. How could a bullet from a would-be assassin get this close, without hitting Trump? I see the whole economy as being amazingly complex. It could not come into being by itself. Somehow, there is a Higher Power intervening, to tip the scale in the desired way, perhaps related to the Maximum Power Principle. This happens in many ways every day, we just are not aware of how this takes place.
Other people will no doubt think differently.
its obvious
the don was practising for one of those circus acts where the marksman fires over his shoulder at an girl assistant smoking a cigarette
I believe the deep state planned an execution. It failed by the hand of God.
The kid with radio controlled explosives, drones, ladders, a dad who will say nothing, encrypted foreign accounts, etc. that ALL is FAKE.
I could believe, “I believe the deep state planned an execution. It failed by the hand of God,” as well.
This article by Scott Bennett (former U.S. Army officer, psychological operations officer and State Department counterterrorism analyst) says that there is the possibility that he could have a small bag of blood behind his ear and he pressed in contemporary of the shooting.
Then it could be that one person was really shot to make it real.
The killer was involed probably saying that he would have been captured and changed identity but he was instead killed to delete any proof.
https://t.me/psyopofficer/101
Published also here
https://comedonchisciotte.org/attentato-a-trump-cosa-non-torna/
can always rely on the deep state to do the dirty work
gop or dem—so hard to choose
Norman, you really can’t figure this one out, can you?
You can’t accept the “official” story.
But at the same time you can’t touch conspiracy theories with a bargepole.
So you’re stumped.
I think that Trump was in on it and it was all planned. I think some in the deep state, that amorphous internally divided deep state, had decided awhile ago to reinstall Trump. The lack of ANY efforts by the Democrats for finding alternative candidates prior to now, the critical way Biden was lately portrayed by the media unlike previously, was odd. It seemed clear to me that the way was being paved for Trump and this event now was just a little bow on it all.
I think that shots were done by SS and Crooks never fired a shot. There was opportunity from a window just behind Crooks for SS to shoot into the crowd and at Crooks also. I think Trump was never in danger. The SS put a little goop on his ear after he bent over. I thought the color of the blood on his ear was wrong. In a fresh wound it should be bright red without any blackness as that would only come after it clots a bit. It didn’t look like fresh wound to me.
It’s my working theory at his point. It might be wrong but there is means , motive , and opportunity present. I’ve looked on youtube to try to hear any commenters saying this theory, but have yet to hear anyone.
I’ve always been suspicious of Trump. I had a hard time believing this predatory real estate developer and maker of Casinos of all things, is now a conservative valued MAGA citizen.
I’d be funny if he gets in and then once the economy crashes institutes martial law and he is the tyrant that I suspect him of being. Well, maybe not funny.
Your theory is new to me.
The thing that makes your theory hard to believe is that fact that the Secret Service is under Biden and the Democrats. They were confused and incompetent, but I have a hard time believing that enough of them would have been working in the direction of elevating the status of Trump. And the role of Crooks is strange, too, then.
Suppose most of the Secret Service was working against Trump, which pro-Trump forces discovered and allowed to proceed up until a certain point, then shot the shooter and staged the hoax. Even more far-fetched? Maybe. See the link I posted in reply to Late to the Party.
Yes, I saw no blood until he ducked under. Granted I have doubted the March 22 Moscow events in this forum as well. If trump will change absolutely nothing or make things worse when it comes to deep State, Middle East, and MIC, that would be another data point. In regards to Ukraine and Europe, the succession Biden-Trump would push a process of creating permanent conflict between rump parts of the EU and Russia, a desirable outcome for the US that would cost no money. The European energy future demands have already been reduced for good.
lololololol
sounds like another grassy knoll to me
sheeeeshhhh
ive decided to do a talk on conspiracytheories—guess where i get my material
pity u no hoo has absented himself
he would be foamng at the mouth with this conspironuttery
Yes, I like that theory. Mine is similar.
Probably planned by a team of psychologists who know how to stimulate the already pro Trump crowd with enough side tricks to make it sort of believable.
I.e. a few random gun shots. A couple into the crowd.
A bit of ‘collateral damage’ makes it sound genuine ( e.g blowing up a wedding party usually happens when killing ‘terrorists’).
Get the Secret Service to make ‘mistakes’. Looks good later when it’s all chewed over in the media.
The boss can be ‘compensated’ later for having to resign.
Trump in on the basics which will obviously boost his chances
(of winning the presidency, don’t know about other chances).
All he has to do is a bit of play acting and pull a tape off his (surgically ‘damaged’ ear lobe).
There never was a bullet anywhere near him, too tricky to manage reliably).
But he doesn’t know what the ultimate target is.
Maybe it’s to be a fall guy responsible for the American collapse (after a couple of weeks in office?)
pay crisis actors enough and one will always choose to get dead
From reading OFW for many months my impression of the American social setup is that anyone or everyone with some degree of power is already corrupt or open to it for the right money.
The political system ( if you can call it that!) has nothing to do with (innocent?) voting Americans, but is a turgid mess of schemes and counter schemes to get more money or more power.
Hence organisations are available for hire at the right price, thus ‘mistakes’ can be bought.
Apparently ‘opposition figures’ can be also be manipulated in convoluted ways to achieve
end results that can only be guessed at, seeing as the mouthpieces of the political parties and the media are apparently all part of the crooked system, with any disagreement in social media being screamed at as ‘misinformation’.
Sad to see it now.
Pity those there who do see it close-by but don’t do something about it.
But I guess that deer are easier game.
funny you should say that pedro
last year i had a first hand, and indisputable account of a discussion about Kavanagh’s price, between people instrumental in fixing it at the time.
I think the focus on financial profits has gotten stronger in recent years, with less concern about the welfare of people. Also, main stream media doesn’t have the staff to do investigative reporting. They seem to be more than happy to repeat the narratives handed down to them.
The issues are related to “not enough to go around.” True financial returns are not high enough.
This is the other one I could not make sense of. One shot is millimeters from the head, but the other shots were meters away and well into the crowd. Excuse me while I call bull*hit. I have emptied many a cartridge at the range while in the US, and of course I was not under stress while shooting, but I never shot 8 shots with one on the bullseye, and the others not even hitting the shape. Mr Comperatore died an unhappy, high idiocy death, as meaningful as the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers. I guess evolution (where the stupid are killed) is still at work.
Interesting point!
when firing a rifle, the difference between drawing breaths can put a shot off by yards
especially with the raised heart rate after getting the first one off
emptying magazines on the range is a totally different matter to shooting the POTUS
(Yes, I have experience of the first—but not the second)
extremely unlikely distribution really.
Youtube is the wrong place to look for your sort of theorizing. How about this: https://kevinbarrett.substack.com/p/does-this-video-prove-the-trump-assassination.
there was somebody lying in wait on the grassy knoll
For those in the Climate Change Church some explaining to do; we were assured the planet was going to dry up and blow away so go buy a Tesla etc etc.
This is a new real estate opportunity; could be the final frontier!
‘…And Australia is far from alone. From Africa’s Sahel to arid western India, and the deserts of northern China to southern Africa, the story is the same. “Greening is happening in most of the drylands globally, despite increasing aridity,” says Jason Evans, a water-cycle researcher at the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
……….This increased C02 is not just driving climate change, but also fast-tracking photosynthesis in plants. By allowing them to use scarce water more efficiently, the CO2-rich air fertilizes vegetation growth in even some of the driest places.
As we pump yet more CO2 into the air, arid-land greening seems set to continue, according to two recent modeling studies. But ecologists warn that, despite appearances, going green may have downsides for arid ecosystems and for the people who depend on them. Desert plants and animals will often lose out, and the extra vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.’
https://e360.yale.edu/features/greening-drylands-carbon-dioxide-climate-change
The Religious Church had problems defending the Earth as the centre of the universe as technology and observation bought new information to bear. Now the Climate Change Church is having difficulty dealing with the greening of the Planet.
Face it, plants like us re-introducing previously ‘ lost carbon ‘ (buried) back into circulation.
‘ In a greenhouse supplemented with CO 2, a dramatic increase in the growth of plants can be observed with increasing temperature. Supplemental CO 2 increases the optimum temperature requirement of a crop. This increases production even at higher temperature, which is not possible at the ambient CO 2 level.’
Go goggle on google while you can.
‘
It is what some of us have been saying all along. CO2 is the gas of life.
The self-organizing system is constantly changing. With more CO2, a person would expect more plants and fewer animals. This is what a normal cycle would expect. Any imbalance in one direction is take care of by evolution and survival of the best adapted.
Researchers with what I have previously called “overly simple” models tend to miss what should be obvious. They run around saying, “The sky is falling.”
is Biden deceased?
Sure.
well that settles it then, quite nicely.
🤫
Indeed.
Conversation overheard at Democratic Party Headquarters:
He’s an ex-Biden.
He’s not pining’! He’s passed on! This Biden is no more! He has ceased to be! He’s expired and gone to meet his Maker! This is a late Biden. He’s a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! If Obama hadn’t nailed him it to the Oval Office desk he would be pushing up the daisies! He’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-BIDEN!!
– Well, we’d better replace him, then.
– If you want to get anything done in this country you’ve got to complain ’til you’re blue in the mouth.
– Sorry guv, we’re run out of Bidens.
– I see. I see, I get the picture.
– I-I’ve got a Harrris.
– Does it talk?
– Not really, no.
– Well, it’s scarcely a replacement then…..
you seem to be flailing around a bit Tim–determined to elevate your current point. (whatever that is)
All leaders and candidates for leadership now face the same problem, regardless of intellectual level and childish comments on OFW and elsewhere.
Such is the nature of the game.
Putin invades Ukraine (whatever happened to those crisis actors you were so certain of?)
Why did he do that?
Because Ukraine is a world breadbasket
Migrants pour over the USA southern border
Why?
Because they are doing what putin is doing, trying to ensure a food (energy) supply for the (short term) future.
yes, you can say daft things about Harris—that merely exposes yourself to ridicule.
She will face the same growing energy crisis.
Perhaps you advocate Trumps method of dealing with it—which would be martial law?
It might well come that in any event—hungry people are unpredictable.
We will see if Biden reappears this week. There have been audio clips, but these could have been faked.
Biden does seem to be alive. There is a video of him getting onto Air Force 1.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/president-biden-alive
All three presidential candidates supports genocide in Gaza. I will skip voting for the first time in my adult life.
But all US presidents either support or do genocide. Haven’t you noticed? They only stopped the moon landings because they couldn’t find anybody there to genocide.
”they couldn’t find anybody there to genocide.”
love your language mangle machine zemi
No. It was deliberate comic inventiveness on my part, Grasshopper. Now get back to your punctuation studies, LOL.
we need linguistic inventiveness
we will no doubt get that now the don is up against a woman with intellect.
”dumb as a rock”—from someone who suggested injecting bleach to cure covid, and changed the weather with his own sharpie.
i don’t recall Biden offering advice like that.
you find yourself in good company zemi—even without the help of the fakemeister.
“now the don is up against a woman with intellect”
Can I ask who this woman with intellect is?
I was under the assumption that the Democratic party would have some sort of democratic decision making process, about who they put forward to run. Maybe a vote or something similar. Do they not do things democratically?
obviously intellectual women exist in what is your personal blindspot
i can offer no further help in that respect
Did you not understand the question Norman?
I even explained that I understood no choice had been made yet, so getting all defensive about something in your imagination isn’t helpful.
Let’s try rewording the question, as repeating your own words appears to be some kind of trigger to you.
Norman, who do you think will be the Democrats nomination and do you believe this person will be up to the task, or just thick as mince?
Obviously there is a wide range between thick as mince and up to it, so call mince a 1(incoherent rambling about coconut trees) and up to it a 10(saves democracy and on the weekend, the planet).
Where would you put your choice?
a woman of colour, who gets to be California DA is not exactly thick.
but your defininition might be different to mine of course. Some people have a compulsion to denigrate others brighter or richer than they are. (not my problem)–we see it all the time on OFW.
When Biden was elected, I made a prediction (on OFW and elsewhere) that he would run for 2 years, then pack it in on the grounds of ill health, giving Harris time to bed into the job.
I was slightly off on that—but not by much. impossible to predict every circumstance.
(I also predicted, in 2011 that the USA would have a fascist leader by 2016 or 20, and in 2017, that Putin was going to go on the rampage)
What biden didnt foresee, neither did i, that the spectre of Trump would rise again.
if the don gets in again, he isn’t bright enough to be a dictator–but others are. he will be just a dopey figurehead. Others will run the authoritarian state—he will rubber stamp it.
He is immune from prosecition now—as well to remember that.
if there is financial collapse in mid 2020s, civil unrest is certain, and so is martial law.
If Trump loses there is also a strong possibility of civil unrest, because the current economic system is unsustainable (All the fault of the dems rigging the election)
The unthinking mob will demand their MAGA/holy rights—and blame others if they are not forthcoming.
If Jesus did return, he’d never get elected anyway.
10 years ago I spotted Buttgeig as likely for high office..even POTUS material—I’d put him as VP now—lets see what happens on that score. I have been known to be wrong.
Thank you Norman, for confirming that Harris is who you were talking about.
I agree that getting that position should lead us to believe that she is “not exactly thick” but then I also remember that it’s a political position and no matter where you stand(politically or geographically), there’s always a few that fit the term of thick to a tee. Unfortunately for Harris and anyone claiming that she doesn’t fit that role, I and millions of others have watched her talking and can confirm, it’s mostly gibberish spewing out of her mouth.
Maybe she’s saving all the coherent stuff for when she takes the top job, but looking at the two before her, why waste the effort, no one cares what they say anymore.
Almost forgot, when did she win the vote for nomination?
I thought it was near the end of next month, but either I’ve got that wrong or the word Democrat shouldn’t be anywhere near that parties name.
The positive for British people is that if she gets in Liz Truss won’t look like the most mental leadership decision ever.
“we will no doubt get that now the don is up against a woman with intellect.”
Norm, have you ever listened to Kamala speak?
“What can be. Unburdened by what has been.”
I take it that is a declarative sentence, yet she omits the subject (noun). Perhaps you can educate us all.
i watched her ask Kavanagh:
“can you give me any law that is specific to men’s bodies?”
she repeated the question, while he squirmed.
I am looking forward to a president that smiles, laughs and cackles all the time. This has been sorely missing in our presidents for 200 years.
Jesse, keep in mind that she will cackle intellectually. Her intellect surely charmed Willie Brown.
from someone who suggested injecting bleach to cure covid,
Oh, that’s very droll. And very rich too, especially coming from someone who actually consented to be injected with—how many of the Don’s warp speed Covid Snake Oil Preparations was it?
I’m really sorry Trump is running, because now Norman is going to go on and on running this site with inane and insane comments about the man until November and beyond.
You’ve had more shots than were fired at the recent assassination attempt, haven’t you Norman?
as i pointed out last years, to u no hoo—the well known and long lamented fakemeister, the covidrama has run its season, and the audience has gone home
the theatre is closed and shuttered.
not that that will stop your desire to perform tim
I for one would never seek to put down Kamala Harris’s intellectual achievements.
Surely we can all agree her IQ, her powers of logical deduction and her grasp of reality are all right up there with Norman’s?
Norman, I beg your pardon, but I don’t think Covid and the Bioweapons have run their season yet.
Very probably, Biden’s cognitive decline was greatly exacerbated by his taking at least five jabs for Covid-19 plus what he took for the flu.
Likewise, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who like Biden was an authoritarian pro-vax zealot, was already suffering from cognitive issues when the jabs came out, but when down hill rapidly after a few shots, apparently unaware to the end what they were doing to her.
There have been countless other similar tragic cases, including quite a few among members of Congress in the US. Just because not many of them make it into your IN box doesn’t make them any less real.
You can move on, because it’s all a big joke to you, but the vaccine injured can’t move on, no matter how much you may mock them or pretend their injuries don’t exist.
tim
covid vaccine has, as ive always said, has had adverse effects on some individuals, to varying degrees, up to and including death.
no vaccine is 100% safe–i have never said it was.
neither is fauci a member of a death cult, intent on wiping out humankind.
that said, i believe injection of bleach into the human body, has a 100% death rate.
This from someone you obviously hold in high regard.
somehow equating the two, renders your constant covid bleating down to a level where further exchange on the matter will be futile.
give me something that is at least worth an eye roll.
Norm, cut it out with the Fake News “bleach” hoax. You are embarrassing yourself.
Trump never said anything about injecting chlorine bleach. He talked about *disinfectants*, such as intravenous Hydrogen Peroxide, which is actually an accepted medical treatment.
Similarly, exposure to ultraviolet light is also a real and effective treatment for some issues.
He repeated this completely factual stuff and the MSM made him out to be a crazy and evil loon, simply because (like you) they have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and on top of that they profit from creating counter-productive outrage and have financial incentives to make sure everyone has gotten their 10-12-18 boosters by now.
Every two months, Rochelle W. said, and surely she’s more attendible than the orange man, n’est-ce pas? Are you that up to date?
Norman just doesn’t get it, Zemi.
But I do.
So your comic genius isn’t totally wasted here.
If the world has too many people, somehow genocide starts to sound like a reasonable outcome.
Increasing population, decreasing resources… what is the island ? Ah… St. Matthew Island… playing out on a global scale…
The difference being the deer have nuclear ICBMs.
From Norman’s pdf, civilization made money from vast quantities of cheap energy, and because we worked out we could create money out of thin air, we are no trying to make energy out of money, but seem surprised it’s not working…
now; I’m having a w issue….
I will always be perplexed that so many people cannot understand that the economy is more than just labor and capital, that actual physical resources matter. I suppose the Upton Sinclair quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” holds true.
People today are terribly specialized. The people in economics departments don’t talk to people in the physics departments.
Even the EROEI researchers want to protect their territory. Once someone has made a model, there is a need to defend it. They tend not to understand enough of the overall system, either.
Trump reveals all Sam.
https://youtu.be/q0fRRm-U0SE?si=MkMhDobDZxyGacvL
“Unfortunately, the world economy can no more move away from fossil fuels than humans can move away from eating food.”
Why is it that Hawaii still imports lots of diesel to run its power grids, despite attempts on Kauai & Molokai to convert to such as wind/solar?
If running our complexity without fossil fuels is feasible, where/when has it been done?
Kauai has 70k people , while Molokai, condemned because of a crazy Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster, has 7k people
That is child’s play compared to the total pop of Hawaii state, about 1.44 mil, in a volcanic archipelago (read: no natural resources) and several thousand miles away from the nearest centers of civilization.
The residents of these islands can feel good about themselves with not using fossil fuels while everything they use comes from elsewhere, produced by using FF.
Running an electric grid without lots of diesel backup has not been done, as far as I know. Euan Mearns used to investigate these attempts, along with his assistant, who died. Even in areas near the equator, where there is little problem with length of day at different times of year, they do not provide much of the electricity supply needed.
You would think that thermal would be a good bet for Hawaii. Seeing all the broken wind farms on Big Island years ago made me wonder just how they were powering the whole operation.
I wonder if Hawaii will be the first, or the last to surrender its living arrangement.
The Big Island has some geothermal. It was taken offline for a while because a volcanic eruption damaged equipment, but I believe it is now back on line.
Wind energy is having problems.
An offshore turbine blade shattered and the entire project put on hold.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nantucket-beaches-closed-after-massive-wind-turbine-blade-fail-scatters-fiberglass-shards
https://futurism.com/the-byte/beaches-close-blade-wind-turbine-shatters
I would hope that this accident puts an end to the idea of installing ridiculously expensive offshore wind in the US Northeast.
https://youtu.be/sGySygy0LWs?si=W2RtP2COIv_CtIYK
Here is a link about Vance we are damed if we do…
I didn’t get all of the way through this video. It talks about JD Vance’s ties to billionaire Peter Thiel, among other things. The title indicates the video is about Vance’s deep ties to the surveillance state. I am hoping that a lack of electricity will put an end to a surveillance state, but that may not be a good outcome either.
In today’s world, I am not sure that we will get candidates without funding behind them. They may need personalities that would not work in a less competitive world. We will kind of have to take the package of candidates that is available to us.
Whitney Webb provides her take:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/07/investigative-reports/the-man-behind-trumps-vp-pick-its-worse-than-you-think/
No one should be surprised when the warmongering keeps on going. There is no alternative.
Thanks for the very long write up. After looking at it, it is not clear to me that JD Vance is doing much more than Trump was doing previously. They both seem to have the same mentor.
The ability to control opposition is, to some extent, temporary. Using the approaches they are using now, they need electricity. If electricity is lost, they lose this approach. If the federal government starts to fail, I expect they will also lose it.
I have not tried to gain a very high profile. Presumably, keeping my profile low keeps me out of trouble.
Trump has Palin’d himself.
Has he announced he’s pregnant with a Down Syndrome kid?
With the current political circus leading to a probable settlement in Ukraine, which will result in a significant border change to there, I have to reply David of many names
Me
“It is time to cancel Czechia, reduce Poland to the borders of the Duchy of Warsaw, and cancel the joke countries of Central Europe which should never have existed to begin with.”
David
if you’re going to daydream, at least you dream big.
their
My answer is the borders of the world will change , probably in favor of the hordes, significantly in the coming years.
I used Czechia as an example, a country created entirely because the beliefs of one person, Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to fk over Empires in Europe because of his stupid notion of democracy, combined with the US do-goodism which led to the strange idea that every ‘people’ on earth had to have a country of their own.
The artificial state of Czechia, which has nothing to do with the Germanic Kingdom of Bohemia during the Middle Ages, has contributed nothing to Civilization, other than the word Robot. None of its scientific nobel winners are whom we can call Czechs.
All it did with the richest province of Central Europe was drink beer for a century, get whipped by the 3rd Reich and then whipped by USSR in 1968 and that is about all we have to know about this not-too-great creation of Woodrow Wilson.
Virtually all of the famous beer producers in Czechia were there during the Austrian rule so even if Woodrow Wilson did not create this failed state the beer would still have been there.
I used Czechia, a stillborn son of Woodrow Wilson, as an example since there are a lot of countries on earth which have no business existing, and with US power getting weaker all around, countries which have no business existing will be ‘restructure’, just like companies are being restructured.
with all these circus going around to distract the sheeple, the general situation just gets worse with no sign of improvement.
all comments now appear in my inbox
but my own comments seem to vanish
I’m getting them now as well, but I didn’t receive Gail’s post, just started to receive comments.
i can’t understand it
i received my ”invitation to subscribe to ofw” after about 50 comments had appeared in my inbox
weird
If it’s too hard, Norman can’t understand it. He has clearly gone Biden. Time for him to stand down from OFW?
still missing your mentor zemi?
A genius like me has no mentor.
he will be missing you then
are you a member of the genius club?—i can find no record of you in our membership list
i do hope you are not faking it—trying to get in under false pretences.
you will be found out.
we have a scanner arch in the doorway—any iq below 150 sets off the alarms—annoying because it wakes up we senior members from well earned naps.
“are you a member of the genius club?—i can find no record of you in our membership list”
Then yours must be a fake “genius club”. After all, you only know one big thing and keep repeating it ad nauseam. Yawn!
could be
wannabe geniuses try to sneak in alla time
maybe there are so many fakes, that all the real geniuses have founded another club and not told me about it yet.
i wonder if theyll let me join that one
tell us all what the one big thing is zemi
everyone is eager to know
funny, i did a public lecture last week, called ”the arteries of industry”…covering exactly this subject matter, on the correlation between human arteries and the energy flow of ”industrial arteries”—and having the same reasons behind it as human requiring food.—
the alternative being death of course.
i’d like to post the link to it on ofw as a pdf or powerpoint, but cant figure out how to, some might find it interesting
Gail??
And wordpress seem to be working for me now
Anything you want to post as a PDF or Powerpoint needs to be put up on a server somewhere.
WordPress sells me space to put up images and other files on their server. If you email something to me, I can put it up on my space on WordPress’s server.
There used to be, and probably still are, places a person can start a blog and, within that supposed blog, put images up. In fact, sometimes this can be done for free. The post can be put in place and not published, but the link will still work. A person can then link back to the image on the blog. At one time, I did that on Blogger.
I think that there are other ways as well. I would suggest a PDF rather than a PowerPoint. Not enough people have PowerPoint software.
the originall thing is on keynote–which is mac software, i just save stuff to pdf or powerpoint for others to access if necessary
Lets’s see if this works:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Norman-Pagett-the-arteries-of-industry.pdf
thanks Gail
some readers might find it interesting
Excellent presentation Mr Pagett. As an enthusiast of the history of the development of the first steam engines and railroads, I really appreciated the various references in the pdf.
Extremely interesting is the image with the journey times in 1750 by coach, makes you really think.
A question: do you have any books (more recent of older) to recommend to me, which you may have already read, about the birth of the steel industry in the United Kingdom?
Something about Abraham Darby or the development of the city of Sheffield as a steel centre, for istance.
I have my own collection on the development of steam engines but now I would like to delve deeper into this part of industrial history as well.
Thanks in advance.
glad you enjoyed it Gian
sorry i don’t have anything on the steel industry per se, and i don’t know much about Sheffield
my history period is roughly 1700/1850-ish
Arthur Raistrick on Darby is good start on the iron industry, also barrie Trinder on the same subject
this liknk below gives you access to masses of info on the subject, that you can take and download as you need it
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#trash/FMfcgzQVxlLcQcqHZFtlldgcbbbHVNvW
you have to register for free to get the relevant subject downloads that you are interested in
Iron Steam and Money—Osborne
Victorian Engineering- Rolt
are also good books
I did find it interesting.
thank you drb
I found the presentation interesting. There are lots of nice photos in it, also.
It added a few details to my understanding of history. People often like to look at these things. Your presentation is not as threatening and difficult to understand as some of my posts.
Thanks Gail, glad you enjoyed it.
The audience for that talk just wanted industrial, local history,, not so much doom. (though its hard to keep it out)
it happens to be quite literally on my own doorstep, which is where most of the photos/artwork come from.
The point of it was to illustrate how our current mess originated.
We talk about fossil fuel reserves running out, but more worrying is that copper to transmit electrical energy is going forward, likely to be in short supply as it takes around fifteen years to bring a new mine on stream.
We must take nuclear power more seriously and bring more safe systems on line.
I agree that copper is also in supply. So is fresh water, for the world’s huge population. So are many other things that were not in short supply, years ago.
I am not optimistic about scaling up nuclear. Nuclear takes supply chains from around the world. It is really difficult to put in place and maintain, especially if the world economy is headed downward. France put in nuclear electricity years ago, because it had its own uranium reserves, but those are pretty much gone. The US has not produced any significant amount of uranium in a long time.
Processing uranium is a different big problem (taking fossil fuels). If reprocessing used uranium is selected as an alternative, this takes specialized equipment and fossil fuels.
Even with uranium, keeping up transmission lines becomes difficult because electricity doesn’t repair roads. The problem is too many things going wrong at once.
hi Gail
I sent that pdf to yourself at comcast.net
might be interesting
whatever a nuclear power plant produces, it still needs copper wire.
so i dont see what ”taking it more seriously” means
We really need quality food. As the human populations are rising, we get the lower quality food or the food that is too costly. The energy input into the food production becomes prohibitively high. Your quality food source becomes more and more distant from you. And you are ageing, so your action range decreases. We simply move away from the food and the food moves away from us. The same way as the cheap energy.
In the US, a big part of our problem is over-processed food. Our bodies are made to eat food in close to the form that it grows. Cooking some of it is fine, but pulverizing it, is not. Putting in all kinds of colorings and flavorings from fossil fuel sources is not a good idea, either.
The world’s GDP calculation doesn’t consider whether the manufacturing chosen is really beneficial to the population. Food products can be advertised as the latest thing, even though their nutritional value is very poor.
Thank you Gail. Hope your summer is going well!
I am doing fine.
We had hot weather here, but it switched to rainy weather now, and not wet. My few vegetable plants are not doing as well as I would like. The eggplant seems to be doing well.
As you mention, the use of fossil fuels allowed the population to rise 8-fold. Increased complexity has allowed the development of toolsets (computers, AI, etc.) that otherwise either would not be developed or developed much more slowly. A transition away from fossil fuels would seem to indicate a smaller population and a reversion to 18th. century living with obvious exceptions since knowledge gained is not lost. Does there exist a group of scientists and inventors planning for this transition? I do not mean the use of very temporary solutions such as underground bunkers. I mean larger-scale and longer-term solutions.
knowledge gained is not lost? hmmm the library of Alexandria is gone. nobody knows how the pyramids were built. knowledge of our biosphere is disappearing. I guess I beg to differ.
Some regenerative and similar farmers are producing comparable yields to industrial agriculture. However, no-one who hasn’t inherited a farm can now afford to start farming on that scale, i.e. hundreds or low thousands of acres (maybe 500,000-5,000,000 m2 or 0.5-5.0 km2).
As Simon Fairlie said in a Y.tube video 5 months ago on his own work on organic/regenerative/mixed farming, the UK price of land has gone from roughly £1,300->10,000 per acre since 1990. This price is now only loosely-related to the value of what one can produce from it.
He’s an expert on small-scale dairy farming. But at £10,000 per acre probably not even he could make a micro-dairy pay, even if selling milk at full retail price for organic, non-homogenised (much higher than what supermarkets pay farmers). I think Joel Salatin said the same in one of his books 10-20 years ago.
Are a group of scientists planning for this transition? I don’t really know any. 50 years ago there was a lot of concern at ‘Limits to Growth’ and ‘The Population Bomb’. Meadows and Ehrlich, the respective authors are now in their 80s/90s and are probably incredulous that so little was done to change course. I detected rather more interest in the mid-1970s in for instance UK food production and relative self-sufficiency than I do now.
Chris Smaje set up a forum on future small-scale farming if matters become even more difficult. I think people with decent-sized suburban gardens shouldn’t need a ‘farm’ to produce enough food. 1,000 m2 is probably enough for two or three people.
i dont think you can have ”normal” suburban gardens of 1000 sq m, not in uk certainly
Norman, I did say *decent-sized*. If I look around, being aware that we might have to grow far more of our own food again, a lot of suburban plots do seem to be at least 400-500 m2 and some >1,000 m2.
Large cities like London, Manchester or B’ham could be more crowded (higher average housing density). I live 250 km away from London, near a small city.
My other observation is that most housing built since about 1990 is hopeless. The gardens are so minute. I doubt that people in them think of this, in fact some people regard ‘the garden’ as a chore. I think they will change their minds as and when circumstances get tighter.
i too live 150m from london
witn 600 sq yard garden
if i had to grow my own food i would be dead in a month
Living in Cheshire, I reckon about 350 – 400sq yd per person; about 1/2 and 1/2 potatoes and beans would do as basic with some for onions, tomatoes, squash and herbs. Wood-pigeons, squirrels and rabbits if you can catch them would be nice.
mine is an older (shropshire) plot, sold when land was far cheaper than now
the big new estates are nowhere near that size, and you also have a proliferation of apartments, in areas where they used to be unknown
It is really difficult for people today to anticipate what will go wrong with a lot less fossil fuels. One thing that goes wrong is the ability to maintain roads. Another thing that goes wrong is the ability to repair electricity transmission lines after storms. Another thing that tend to disappear is government, especially the top layers, and governmental services. Farmers may need to provide their own security, for example. Replacement parts of things we have today are likely to become unavailable.
I wish sustainability groups well, but the ones I have run into tend to plan as if all of the services that they have had in the past will be available.
Kris DeDecker of Low Tech Magazine comes as close as anyone to someone who looks at the science of going backwards. But he seems to assume that solar power will continue to work–it doesn’t unless all of the replacement parts are available. Inverters are especially a problem, for example.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com
A treat to see your article and follow OFW again. Yes “The truth is that there aren’t enough resources to go around to support a growing world population. We are reaching a turning point where the total amount of goods and services that the world economy can produce will soon turn down.”
Glad that you liked my article.
Trying to allocate this smaller amount of goods and services will be a huge problem, I expect.
My son is convinced by NPR and associated left wing media that we will have a hydrogen economy in 50 yrs. I cannot get him to work it out. I have to admit that the propaganda/brain washing is pretty good when he believes I am the one who is misinformed.
I think that the pendulum has to swing back and forth. There has to be faith in the future based on something.
The nonsense spouted by NPR is definitely appealing. It makes it look like all we have to do is appropriate more money to solve problems. Jobs will be available forever, looking into these solutions. We can win any war we choose. The media and academic institutions support this false narrative.
It is probably best to stay out of arguments with people who consider our side deluded. Instead, ask questions like, “Which candidate do you think is best?”
We do not have 50 years. We will be very lucky if we get to 2030
The China/Russia alliance should have a good 30 years.
Not if they dont have a common enemy
Probably true.
Do you think that the political turmoil in the US is connected to energy problems? My graph global crude oil + US shale oil is here:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPHexjUaUAAcJjI?format=jpg&name=900×900
Do you think that Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” will help? I doubt Trump has understood oil and gas depletion
More debt won’t help the current situation much. Entering into a war with Russia and or China won’t help, either. These would be the gifts of the Democrats continue.
Drill baby drill won’t do much either, but the system is going down, whoever wins. The elite have had too much of the power. Also too much faith in AI and technology. The pendulum is starting to swing back.
“the system is going down” oh my.
I am willing to shed the MIC, all government schools and school funding, CIA, FBI, NSA, NRO, DIA, BLM, UN, NATO. There is tons of fat in the system. All Margaret and I need is food and electric.
Ed,
It is much more challenging to do in the real world than on paper.
No arguments, age is a factor no matter how the great one’s luck of the draw.
I see the Amish way working, they still use gasoline to run stationary machines in my area.
Suspect when the complexity of current government is gone we will once again discover the reasons for stone castles with turrets and cross bows. Some things never change.
Dennis L.
Perhaps we will start using turbine engines and run everything on spirits fermented from food scraps 😉
lol
if doomerama is the order of the day—just how much in the way of food scraps dyou think there will be?
unless you render scraps of humans into carbon based energy of course
So everyone above 55 to the fermenter?! Good pension plan.
And on a more serious note. Where’s your sense of humour Norman? I would say that it is now even more shrunken than before.
Wink wink 😜
I’m stocking up on this.
Charlton Heston loved it.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/humor–18084835991001955/
The advantage of living in the same town as Alex Soros the Kings guard will keep the rabble down.
Ooh la la!
Also, all these added technological complexities are draining the system of its much needed resources.
The added complexities tend to add “demand” of some sort. Added debt often comes with complexity, for example.
via wordpress, all comments now appear in my inbox
except my own, which now vanish
sorry—now that latest one has appeared
weird
Clearly, you already know your own comments.
I have found that WordPress keeps changing their software. Some things are better now, but other things are just different.
What Trump says and does are two different things. He claimed he wanted a trade war with China but In the end it was minor. Drill baby drill is just for the stupid people. Art Berman has debunked that totally. The new push is going to be small nuclear plants. I’m just hoping that AI fails because if it doesn’t we are all in trouble here. JD Vance is a big believer in big brother spying and acting on said intelligence. Him and Peter theil…. I see us all being reigned in by the hand of government for the next 15 years then all hell breaks loose. Lucky for a lot of you on here you will be dead.
15 years!? We should be so lucky! Pass the hopium, please.
Yes I used to think shorter but k think when they put the heavy hand on us it will allow for a little bit longer. Look around we are already in a recession but no one even knows or cares!?!
“My main concern is that the substantial cost to develop and run AI technology means that AI applications must solve extremely complex and important problems for enterprises to earn an appropriate return on investment (ROI). We estimate that the AI infrastructure buildout will cost over $1tn in the next several years alone, which includes spending on data centers, utilities, and applications. So, the crucial question is: What $1tn problem will AI solve? Replacing low-wage jobs with tremendously costly technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology transitions I’ve witnessed. . . .
The bigger question seems to be whether power supply can keep up. GS US and European utilities analysts Carly Davenport and Alberto Gandolfi, respectively, expect the proliferation of AI technology, and the data centers necessary to feed it, to drive an increase in power demand the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a generation, which GS commodities strategist Hongcen Wei finds early evidence of in Virginia, a hotbed for US data center growth. “?
https://indi.ca/content/files/2024/07/Goldman-Sachs-AI-Report.pdf
when AI, of itself and without external input, moves a one ounce weight, one inch.
let me know
i have $£ billions to invest in it.
It’s moved oodles more than that, in terms of diffuse heat.
Seems like you are “work”-ist!
all species must work in order to exist–that is the nature of things.
i would appreciate your ai ”movement of diffuse heat”–just what it means in real terms.
my comment still stands—-
when AI , of itself, and with no external influences, moves a one ounce weight over distance of one inch—
let me know.
if ai can’t do that, then it is the stuff that dreams are made on.
Ok, that’s due to external input. My error.
The point is the waste, though.
Was just listening to a podcast where a high-speed rail line was mentioned in CA, along an inland route. Still in its infancy, current cost estimates are something like $50million/mile.